Housekeeping

The windows were cleaned every Saturday
with raki, since no one drank in the house
sparkling, boozy antiseptic control
 to view the world from high ground

Keeping up appearances and shining armors
compulsory liturgy of ceremony were
benedictions to sustain a life
drowning in bad Karma

Order and ritual, painkiller and torture
slavery and freedom at once
A house story, my story, feet planted in the basement
canopy never breaking the greenhouse's ceiling

Companionship

The pace slows, the banter

apprenticed over years of practice and correction

cloaks emotions, thoughts with earned comfort

 Domesticity, a shelter from sudden squalls,

 angry winds, even scorching, boring, summer days

tags along unknown paths, abbrazzo with your mate you saunter

Ignorant you are of the blessing you received
 and others envy, when you  frivolously discard it without doubt,

seeking novelty and do-overs 

Lust

Volume and swells
vermilion and star shoots

lips velvet and skin silk
stubble and forest

limber trunk and supple hands
climbing up a tree to light

dying out coals into funereal pyre

Lust

Soft roundness of your backside
down low sweet halves
a surprise to feel
undressing
your hardened shoulders
holding to
your knees hurt
by so many genuflections
to absent masters
I appraised flesh and soul
like a stolen goods merchant
ravenous for the prize
of bondage

Pain

My joints cry,
 bead by bead
tears hurting

the light of the camera
flooding the dark
sea that almost drowned me

Texture

My responses are cement
cool, stony, grey with that fake gravity

of monstrous  apartments of my 70's youth,
disintegrating
into toxic dust

The bitter dowry of trauma
and fire smothered

Cellophane swaddling


Take sheltering cover, loop a chain
 genes to cells, cord to skin
keep on gathering
time and memory and comfort
and back to feeding
the circle

The auction of things loved,
used and useless anymore, grating on
my heart on my sleeve
the sluicing of life lived
and recycled

And one from the mistress of pain and its exaltation:

Maenad

#14

Once I was ordinary:
Sat by my father's bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.
The birds made milk.
When it thundered I hid under a flat stone.

The mother of mouths didn't love me.
The old man shrank to a doll.
O I am too big to go backward:
Birdmilk is feathers,
The bean leaves are dumb as hands.

This month is fit for little.
The dead ripen in the grapeleaves.
A red tongue is among us.
Mother, keep out of my barnyard,
I am becoming another.

Dog-head, devourer:
Feed me the berries of dark.
The lids won't shut. Time
Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun
Its endless glitter.

I must swallow it all.

Lady, who are these others in the moon's vat —-
Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds?
In this light the blood is black.
Tell me my name. 

Sylvia Plath

Debate the merit of overexposure and initiating, gambling on blowing a cover, leaving the safety of margins and scurrying ahead: it almost feels like I am out of time for errors or repeats, out of time for hesitance and procrastination.

I am not seeking attention anymore, not even respect, which my horoscope assures me  lasts longer.
I am floating downriver with not an intent in the world.

And all of a sudden, the ride is freedom and peril at once, action and tranquility.

https://goo.gl/images/KqvG0w

Untangling knots

It takes the salt of many a sweaty brow, tear-welling eyes, tight as a rope stomach, halted breath from paralyzing fear, to tackle tangled messes of knots.
Especially if they are not your own, but you can wearily foresee the future strangulation for your loved ones; especially if you feel ever so responsible and inclined to act as savior Alexander without a sword.

Age is a good thing when it comes to messes and complications and twisted paths, it irons smooth the  impatience of youth, it salves the sharpness of anger, it even allows for defeat and letting go to be viewed as just another walk, on the bright side of the street nonetheless.

Thank you!