The Free Hounds of Will

Sometimes, just sometimes, I think

I was born to be someone’s

Lover.

Not a Slave who’s forced to work

against his will for no pay. Not a Slave

who’s seen as an inferior race,

and feared for his superior traits.

A Slave out of being born free to choose

his own shackles and chains. A Slave

out of being taught how to break a lock

and yet never breaking free

without first unleashing the hounds

that will track him down,

and bite his brain

whenever he tries to be his own Master.

In defence of a crush

Isn't it true that, if I kiss your foot, you will limp not to hurt my kiss?

Nichita Stănescu

“If you start with a crush it might lead to a crash,” I was once told, and that assessment sounds true and solid to its very core.

However:

A crush is a fragile winged creature akin to the ephemeral mayfly. As it’s a single one, it will not reproduce. But it'll produce a show of life during its lifespan.

The lovers’ butterflies are altogether other creatures and imply laying eggs in each other’s stomach, nurturing caterpillars, admiring the chrysalis, and waiting for the full spectacle.

A crush starts as a nymph or naiad in freshwater. Freshwater is water that looks fresh for the one who has the crush. Water is his crush, his thirst. 

When it reaches adulthood, a crush is called an imago. I suspect because it produces images that might have not been seen before. 

A crush comes to existence of its own volition. No one’s to blame. No one should be ashamed.

Though laughable, a crush has sufficient wing force to influence the length of airwaves, thus changing  how words come to sound.

A crush was chilli to a writer such as Hemingway. He called it being in love, but most probably they were crushes, and still his writing benefited from them. Thus Hemingway arguably crushed crushes to turn them into chilli powder for later use. Or he might have used only fresh crushes. We'll never know.

A crush is a Stănescu’s kiss. Either you limp or it dies. As it’s impossible to sustain such a funny way of walking for long... 

The colour of feelings

Blue cannot be of sadness.
It’s scientifically incorrect.
Objects approaching blueshift.
So blueshift hugs and kisses.

Objects redshift when moving away.
Rage and goodbyes redshift us.
Words blueshift or bulshit us.
No shift when we stay.

And Love? In the Sahara Desert.
A deep marine shale deposit.
Life's first ink extracted:
Bright pink.

At a Glance

I
The opposite of Hatred was never Love.
Empathy.
And Indifference's the neutral stance.

II
There's no moral high ground here from where to lecture;
I too shouted hatefully,
in indifference mumbled,
and empathy silenced me. 

III
Megaphone.
Conversation.
Listening.

IV
And every stage in between.

Trial and error

Side by side, a couple of young lovers placed the L and R eartips in each's appropriate ear canal.
The earphones wires became one necklace when their free ears touched.
The plan was to form a full circle of shared simultaneous experience, thought exchange, and equal enjoyment.
Their indexes pressed the single play button.
The music kicked in.
It didn't fully work.
But they tried.

Slow Breakfast

for Jennifer


Fish and coffee in the morning,
fried the day before, the coffee fresh,
favourite day start of mine,
from mother's culture to son passed.

And stories and news in the morning
are not so hard to take in and absorb
as the day is yet to be unfold
against the ending of the world.

Her skin from dreams lightly salted,
her wild mane flowing perfectly,
hiding her face from me as she
heads to the bathroom to holy pee.

That white noise once extinguished 
tells of her return to warmth,
those air-cooled body ends all
touching and soft awakening me.

Bed linen a seascape of stormy seas
bettered by relation-ships: vessels
brimming with coffee and fantasy,
bound from her brain to our bed.

'Stay the course!' the captain
shouts to whomever's the first mate, 
soon to be promoted by sheer  
sharing of raw fish being fried.  

Under Maintenance

M  A  I  N  T  E  N  A  N  C  E

Maintenance of the brain, a muscle, which thus needs to be exercised. Of the limbs, of imagination. Of the herd, or the garden. Of peace, of the weapon. Of friendships, of each ship. Maintenance everywhere, all around us. 

Maintenance is the humdrum of life, and without it there would be no life not even in a cell. Even in a monk's cell.

I have been not very good at maintenance, and I don't know if I ever possessed such skill. To realize the dimension of my ineptitude, all I need is to examine my home which has lately been maintained by me alone. It cries out for maintenance. I'm either deaf or enjoy the melody of its wailing walls.   

What if my brain is likewise in need of fresh paint, plaster to cover its cracks? 

Could I just disguise decrepitude with classic statues of missing limbs? Keep foreign music playing so that the visitor's brain is too distracted to notice the ruin? Glue newspaper clips onto the walls distracting the visitor even further? Leave poems on the rafters or boards that need to be replaced? Place olive oil scented candles in every room? And the sex scented candle, should I put it out?  

All I know is that this was written under maintenance.

Relief - a double entendre

We talk on the phone about our pains,

Our victories, our demands,

Absurdities, peculiarities;

About love, about strength,

Hair loss, diets, sex and penis length.

Sometimes we even sob holding the phone as a life line

Invisible, wireless these days.

But we must connect and reconnect,

Regret — and reregret if we’re pathet.

She does all that on the phone with me.

But while peeing. Splash.

And it feels great.

Cruel Love Duel

   How many masks wear we, and undermasks, 
   Upon our countenance of soul, and when, 
   If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks, 
   Knows it the last mask off and the face plain? 

in Fernando Pessoa's Sonnet VIII, 35 English Sonnets


Though Pessoa took off every mask
And found but more masking of the soul,
He probably forgot one item in such task:
A Dorian mirror that we must face
Naked and unsure,
Vulnerable as the clinical eyes of Love
Reveal the masks and the masquerade
Our lifes have been.

Then our biological self kicks in:
We either freeze, pretend death, 
And believe in rebirth,
Or we flee the scene,
Or fight against the image obscene. 

Rodin's Riders

Auguste Rodin's "Centaur"

To ride with and be ridden simultaneously;
pure, coeval, ride and rider:
the very stuff of synchronicity.  

Abandoning self-control, sweaty, 
animal and anima together, 
the longer they trot the more
their minds bloom away disarmingly, 

Then they gallop:

road, dirt;
orchards, colours;
stones, moons;
town, church;
hilltop, silence;
beach, breeze;

Halt! A break: 

a verdant picnic ensues, new smells,
sight scanning the surroundings,
a radar which will bleep only once 
to tell love to home in on the lover
thus beginning their face à face,
coeur à coeur: il faut courir.  

I get it now

I get religion now.

I get even self-flogging.

We all want to be loved. Deeply.

We all need to be loved. But deeply.

And if we don't get it, we'll create it.

And if we don't, we'll suffocate.

And if we do, we'll suffocate?

Love or a surrogate,

a threshold we didn't set,

and this life is a quest

for a key,

for there's sorrow,

for there's a gate.

Bring on your whip!

All we have is blood to give.

From Red to Gray - A Scale

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
Anne Tyler


"Contrast," she said, "is what art's all about."
I stopped and ruminated on her leafy words.
Sometimes my mind's a giraffe,
and her idea was elevated enough. 

Contrast sensitivity was thought to be fixed,
and that it would only worsen with age. 
While as I age and experience more,
the more contrasts are my focus.

So I turned to stare again at my love's face,
her dark hair against her white skin.
Her dark moods against her smile,
my love for her against all others.

"Contrast," I said, "is what love's all about."
I stopped and ruminated on my starry words.
Sometimes my mind's a space shuttle,
and my idea was burnt by the sun.

My eyes melted under such luminance;
no contrast, no trace; all flamboyance.

X & Y Rated

for Jennifer


Perhaps our love making is not a creation.
Recreation? A frolic fuck, for a while, 
Then waves of otherness roll us over;
Another's on top yet not to subjugate,
Undercurrents tell us to surrender,
“Wave a white flag!” how can we?
Shades of white, our shivering skin, 
Our inner colours Pink and Punk,
Contiguous walls--buildings in Lisbon--
Our furnace rages on,
Levers are pulled, manipulated;
Is it too soon, too late, is it now?
Hair embroidering hands, needles
And needs met; all moist, all wet;
Over we roll, ensemble;
Synchronous dancers, swimmers
Of the deep, surfaced creatures,
Lazy lizards, trees, and ripe fruit;
Coffee in the morning,
And cock and tails later on;
Faces full of lips, nipples full, 
Food sources that more hunger fuel,
The ultimate richness of the poor, 
White trash meets Avalon;
A ghetto behind a neck and back, 
The privacy of chest on chest,
Teeth and tongue, so to speak;
Books shout from the bookshelves,
Dust and words fill in the air,
Pleasure shouts from within us,
And love garnished by lust.

Contemporary Superpowers

for Jennifer


I’m no hero on Meatspace
nor am I engaged by nature 
in any rodent’s race;
I just take a step at each time
at my own pace.

I’m not even incomplete,
too feeble, too weak;
I’m just limited
or awake as possible
to what I can perceive.

One day, in a curious Street, 
I saw her, admired her cape,
examined my own back
and a dusty piece of cloth
bedecked it.

I witnessed her, for a couple
of years, distractedly,
engaged in love and life,
glancing with half an eye
when she passed me by.

And then, by mistake,
I touched her shoulder and,
seeing who she was, I said,
“Hey! It sounds strange,
but I’m sort of entranced.”

She smiled back
and offered me questions
as others offer candy
or a selfie
of a dirty bit.

I took the bait.

And since then, every day,
she allows me to peek
at a vast array of worlds 
she flies in, my Heroine!

Her powers include
extra vision, femalespeak,
emotional storms, super scent,
a smiley mask,
and a fast flying pack.

Mark my words,
I fear for her villains’ health
and can see them trapped,
with one option left:
cry for mommy; help. 

She’s a Gem yet Ferocious,
and thus known in comics
as Gemyfer,
the defender of fair
opportunities to mortals
and immortals alike.

I fell for her. 

“I love you,” I wrote,
and then pressed delete
as I want to have it saved
for us again on Facemeet.




  

Late Bloomers

for Jennifer


Blackberries blooming late,
wild, tucked in thorned beds,
a flower for a throne, fruit
evolving colours: green,
rose, red, black;
a fruit which is many, 
a face each drupelet. 

Summer’s ending, thus
much longer shadows are being cast,
grapes and longing are being harvested,
reduced into wine.

Two blackberries are now jam;
sugar was added and they were boiled,
mixed first with other berries,
the right consistency was reached,
screwed was a jar lid, 
and a hand painted cupboard 
gathers dust, a daydream,
a kitchen door left ajar.




______________

photo by Sage Ross,
admin on Wikimedia Commons

Classic and New

for Jennifer


I don’t believe in soul mates, love.
That would be demeaning to you:
you who were born in years later
made specifically for me? Yikes! 

What I’m sure it exists is rhyme,
where we can rhyme with others
in couplets, strophes that we read
to others each, then to each other.

All our poems depend on factors
beyond reason and thus in poetry,
which is music in text fabricated,
from the mighty ode to the petty.

Even without text we still dance
and our common dance is tango:
the male holding you, directing 
your female self back to trance.

All of us slaves to our rhythms,
which rhyme even in dissonance, 
the length of our time revolving
on how we rhyme day after day.

My rhyme and dance with you
is scary: we might not stop ever,
thus I sense fever lurking yonder,
as music without silence is eerie.

Yet we rhyme as we never did:
to celebrate such new wonders
I opted here for a rhyme different
with alliterative letters or words. 

[pause for a tango nuevo arabesque]

As I write my love poems to you,
freedom of speech is decapitated
fundamentally, almost yesterday,
a vulgar yesterday that's yet to die.

I wonder if similar worldly events
that turn lovers' woo into wounds
should make my wooing you end 
or by rebel contrast gain weight.

This much I know: the structural
world is flawed, and we must try 
to bring back its humane stance 
by rhythm and structure of tango.

A pause, love. And here we go.



_______

image: a postcard of circa 1919.

Real Life Mathematical Problems and Solutions

Emma wishes to buy a new sexy pair of pants that costs 80 € and six new books that equally cost 80 € in total. She counts all her money and finds out that she’s 81,27 € rich. How can Emma fulfil her wishes? Choose only one of the following options:

a) Emma buys a new sexy pair of pants and increases her chances of getting laid.

b) Emma opts for buying the books, reads them and increases the chances of being loved.

c) Emma browses through an expensive clothing store and steals a pair of pants, then goes to the bookshop and buys those six books, reads them, puts the pants on, and increases the chances of being loved and getting laid. 

d) Emma equates the morals of option c) and comes to the conclusion that stealing from a clothing store linked to the slave-like exploitation of Latin American workers is unlikely to perturb her views on global social issues as much as stealing from a bookshop would, and thus proceeds and executes option c).

e) Emma is ecstatic at how much lower clothes prices are since the economy went global and thinks that books can always be read for free in a library where she went twice in her lifetime to try and seduce George but he was never there, and so she embraces option a). 

f) Emma is the ideal catholic, buys a sandwich for 3,50 € and gives the rest to charity, in the total of, err, well, 81,27 minus 3,50. 

g) Emma uses her credit card to buy the items she wishes for but cannot afford.

i) Emma cannot make her mind up and sits on a park bench lost in thought.

j) Emma, sitting on a park bench, wonders if this listing of options will ever end. 

Spooning

for Jennifer


We are spoons, you and I.
Face to face, staring at each other’s concavity.
Reflexes reaching out from our deepest ends.
Distorted? 
Upside down images in each reflected upright?
And then when you turn around we fit in perfectly. 
Puzzle pieces.
Puzzled in a way that makes sense.

And our spooning soon progresses.  
One of our favourite sex positions.
Your leg on top flexes.
It opens the middle gate.
The common country where we'll unite.
One of my arms holds the weight of your thoughts.
That hand freed for touch.
The other hand fully free to touch you bounteously—
a fisherman's wife's dreamed octopus but in a decimus form.
And then we feel.
Spoons holding our liquids.
Drops us.
Flow.

*   *   *

The other days, most of those days, we were lying down.
Our convex back on various pillows.
Our minds flying above us.
Scooping for organic food.
Lost in translation, in complexity found.

Mongolian Horses

for Jennifer


Mongolian horses, Mongolian horses, over the hills
and it's plain their piercing ululating voices will
bring us vast warmongering love; much pains.

My people withdraw to the mountains,
take the shortest route to the sea
while I, witless, witness all that and me.

I, under the shady protection of a brave olive tree;
their composite bows bend and arrows
rain on my ancient people in the meadow.

Their armour more visible as distance narrows,
I feel slit eyes now narrowing on a figure
immovable, in the shade of peace yet eager.

Eager to snap a branch and summon a dove,
eager to hear their tales of wanderlust and murder,
eager to show this native innocence of love.

A mounted bowman draws near;
a arrowhead well aimed at
the very heart of fear.




___________________

photo by Jennifer Allison
http://onestreetshy.com/

You must love a loop

“Write only about the things you love,” many said this in slightly different ways. They might be right. The love, or enthusiasm, one puts into one's work is contagious. But so is smallpox. What if one loves to write about the things one detests? Tricky.

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous,” writes Kurt Vonnegut. That reminds me of a very short lived love of mine, or perhaps just love for me, that ended up with her telling a few persons not to be my friends. Intoxicating stuff.

A friend once told me that I'm at my best when I write about animals. Of that kind other than chimps capable of self-referential loops, also called self-awareness.

You got it. Let's talk about loops, not love. Or why not about love-loops. That's pretty suggestive.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote I Am a Strange Loop, trying to answer the question of why some of what is alive is conscious, or self-aware. So I've no need to talk about loops; I'll just ask you to read his work. And that's a good thing about books: they can speak for you. What those books will put in your mouth is a never-ending story that I will not never-end here.

Back to the love-loops, J.S. Porter wrote Spirit Book Word. It's a lovely and loving personal story on how he thinks certain writers to have a word that defines them. But then again, Porter's wife, he writes, thinks he “falls in love too easily, much too easily.” He's a writer engaged in a love-loop, if I ever saw one.

Other love-loops that come to mind are Vonnegut's we need extended families pervasive concept throughout his work, and also Saramago's use your eyes to see. I'm talking about these two because I explored their works the most lately. If one could squeeze their body of work, those two droplets of blood in between quotation marks would drip onto the thirsty wooden floor of poetry. But I'm too prosaic at the moment, and I'm picturing a marble floor there instead. And that's a clinical remark.
  
But what I really need is a love-loop-hole to get out of here. Now imagine that if you please.