xativa

The feel of Negril sand between your toes Is one you'll never forget The soft itchiness As the pure white refuses To dislodge itself from your curly-curl-curl hair. You'd stand, facing towards the sunset on a gentle slope not too far from your house Not sure if you were in the African Steppes as the pregnant sun, shimmering red descends to bless others with its light, peeking briefly, bashfully, through sparsely-leafed trees. As you visit that Mango tree in your Granddad's back-yard (far far back, far far) You see a bull under it, lazily munching on the soft peel of your favourite mangos. They are just right, not the stringy type t

Five years of half-formed thoughts, Of car-to-room trips, of candid meetings At downtown bars, of us 10 years later today, at the beach, in offices, on holiday, mocked blue-tinted views of us, dew-clad, embraced by swirling fog in Mother's hands. Mother's hands: Firm, planted roots digging into matrix soil. Us – Slippin on carpet, hers, ours - Indoors. You and I, twin half-souls. Oh hello-o-goodbye. Flicker of moments, worlds merge, Collide, coalesce, de-unify, Post-haze of climax YouandIyouandIyouandI Dancing, oh yes, dancing, Warm hands on oneanother Time, in time, to the time To no music our music Twin sighs Doubled

The glare of the tv flickerclickerstatic woosh, the pen rolling across glazed marble with a patterned clink, the sip from a frosted glass, cool drink sliding over salted gasps, your hand on my knee, brown on brown, warm, lingering with possessive calm; I observe you, feel you with my eyes, your hard planes, white teeth and your smirking smile. So handsome. the glass, fluted, kips to one side with a warning sound. Notquiteshattered, it says. Liquid seeps into the carpet I wonder if the cat'll get drunk. Not that I'm wondering this now, with our lips pressed to each other in passionate desperation this is reconstructed from

Ach, ich hab zu Dir gesagt: "Don't take this the wrong way Darling, Babes, Adored, Mine; I love you." Liebe. It's there within us both beating rapidly a clenched bird with no double, without a stone. I sink deeper. There are walls, beautiful things, The kind I used to call gothic before you Pointed true gothic out to me. I laughed, Then, At your knowledge, how much you knew, How you complimented my own. At that wall, which cut us off from howling voices, I said: I love you. Can't I swim? One. Two. Three. A breath. Yours pulses across my cheek, Tender reminders of never-beens. You stroke my hand in a gentle manner, Ta

Come to this banquet (gentle beast) Find here a spread To suit your elegant tastes Here, on a jungle of plates (darling monster) Find an array of depravity On which to feast And then: (terrifying creature) Use all your strength Sated for once And sweep your plate With a moist pink tongue Lap up the last acts of man Succumb to none The spirit plane fills with confusion A vision of terror haunts their minds Only innocents sit, pale, withdrawn, Paying for the crimes of their elders And they watch                      With unblinking calm                                                   As you (wicked spectre) Stalk the

And when they made you Rat-catcher extraordinaire Your fury, dear lioness Could be heard to reverberate throughout The carved halls of stone Then, the youngest royal son died, Of a deadly plague and your roar Turned into satisfied purrs, you into a Docile cat Until they worshipped a splintered image, Never knowing the secret of death.

as spring mutates into summer the pen in my hand is bleeding cool, refreshing showers of red that smear the text along my palm and settle the words there forever temptation   resistance      stargazer lilies withered and parched on a living room floor our antiquated Hope, our allegorical Time straying far from the white beard and biceps of he who clipped the wings of Cupid and came to rest in a marble mausoleum downtown it was the print maker's heavy hand that now pulls our eyes to the victim's chest forcing us to turn and say:     yes!          none of us has it easy in the game of Love! and so i sit as spring crawls madly into s

snow came like a grenade from heaven. overnight a dimension had pressed its felt to the world & our minds softened to winter― everything was bizarre with snow, under a glass dome with close invisible walls. seeing the primary fall is like being shot, or seeing an angel be shot in slow motion only to have it rewind upright, standing in a flurry & silence. when the angels melted (another overnight) it was less like a gunshot & more like loud kidnap by teleport―spring suddenly hounded us with scents, birds returned bewildered; I raked leaves in the front yard dazed because a season had jammed― a pheasant