All I want is to put it in her, only can ‘t pump it up enough and wonder what I might do instead, even now,
so much later, I finally managed to get it where it ought to be, too late, you
can’t do it to a ghost, and sometimes, I wonder if she always had other plans
for me, wishful thinking inspired by wish-filled dreams, putting it wherever
she wants, my head spinning like a top, an issue I can never resolve, leaving the
climax to take place in m dreams.
I feel the absence like I would a missing tooth, not fully
aware after all this time why it occurred, only aware of the reality, the blackhole
into which my whole world collapsed, back then, this day before the day when
Spring comes, a long six weeks since he groundhog saw his shadow. This time of
year – like back then – is always the start of something new, and often
unexpected, the vacancy of winter aching to get filled, and I wait, and I
wonder, how is it I can fill up something so long gone, something I still crave
to get back, even when it is clear, some spaces just can’t be refilled, and we
must live with the vacancy.
I see a lot
Even when I’m not
Looking at her
not all through
the camera lens
with which I steered
through this odd
landscape,
where I had no business being,
her world, not mine,
even she seems a stranger here,
remote, sad, concerned,
under dressed for the
occasion
most thought might be
black tie,
I look elsewhere each
time
she came into view,
scared I might turn
to stone
or a pillar of salt
yet (I was) aware of where she is,
and her stares back,
and the sense of the
misplaced,
the need for all of
us to play
new roles in this
passion play of politics,
in which people switch sides
so often it is impossible to know
who is loyal to whom
and for how long,
yet, she seems to fit anyway
a humming bird
flitting
from flower to flower
until she finds a
flavor
she likes,
sometimes needing to
sample all the nectar
to see which tastes best
and which wants her
tasting them.
she is what she is and will always be
not a china doll yet as distinct
bearing herself with
great nobility
yet humble to as if she can't distinguish
between the two and
we
who see her like to Honey are drawn
dreaming of what she might be
like at dawn curtain,
sheets rumpled f
rom the night so sweet
we paint portraits of
her in our minds
though in truth these
are not kind reflections
they are of of what
it is we wish to see
not the woman we should know her to be
she is what she is
and always will be
even if it is not the
soul we think we see
Noble and sweet
And we at her feet
she being all she needs to be
and we too foolish to
see
WTF
The old year
Like an old man
Passes away today,
We see rebirth,
Only she throws out
The baby with
The bath water
We don’t know
What is what
Some bit of
Theatrics played
As the ball drops
In Times Square,
Leaving us to believe
What ends up
At the bottom
Isn’t what it was
When it started
On top.
Who do you blame?
It feels like
A conteniental shift,
Leave me wondering
Which side of the
Great divide
She’s ended up on
Will we ever hear
From her again.
This idea of change,
The sense of new
Replacing old,
This desperate need
To begin again,
On the right foot
This time,
On the right path,
Towards the right
Destination,
Leaving all
The baggage behind,
To find some new way
To get what she needs
Or wants or deserves,
The old year dying
Right before our eyes
The new year crying
For something
We as yet
Cannot give
How many angels can you fit on the tip of a pin, this age
old question hanging over me, and yet has only one real answer.
How many do you need when one is more than enough?
This idea that everybody has a guardian angel has always
puzzled me, as if God mass produced them to keep up with all the people popping
out, like a rubber stamp or on an assembly line.
One to one is enough if it is the right angle, whose soul
(do angels have souls like people?) is gentle and kind, unlike the stern nuns
who used to beat me in grammar school in order to bringing me salvation, and
get me back on track.
I keep looking over one shoulder for the angel God assigned
to me, then over my other shoulder for the one the Devil sent, the second
having had much more influence on me than my angel or the nuns, though more
than once I’ve wished for the protection angles are supposed to give, hoping
the good outweighs the bad I’ve done, and while I might blame it all on the
devil (the devil made me do it), I know I got here all on my own.
“I got good news and bad news for you, “ my Urologist said
during my semi annual check up.
The good news was the m PSA levels had gone down, indicating
less chance of cancer.
Two years ago, these levels jumped from one to six, and
while not the deadly level of ten that indicated possible cancer. it was a real concern, prompting painful procedures
that included a snake-like camera pushed up into my penis (with only a local that
only reduced the pain at the tip. Later, I underwent an MRI, pet scan and other
similar procedures, topped off with a very painful series of biopsies.
The surgery that I got later was a scraping that allowed me
to pee, but had screwed up my ability to cum. While I could still have sex, the
cum tended to remain in the plumbing long afterwards, oozing out into my
underwear at most inconvenient times.
All that said, the bad news is that my prostate – almost the
size of a baseball – was showing no sign of reduction, and as a result, my
growing prostate began the inevitable shrinking of my cock.
As a teenager, I had accepted the myth said claimed a man with
a nose as big as mine had a large cock as well.
But now with my prostate growing, my cock had gone from a
barely adequate six inches to slightly more than three with every indication I
might watch it vanish entirely. This, of course, affected erections
I consulted my gay friend, Max, who knew as much as prostates
as my urologist, and I asked him what could be done.
He gravely told me not a lot, but with hopeful news, I might
find ways to compensate for my inadequate sex life, and might enjoy a revival
of the pleasures I had when I was still a teen.
It took me a moment to get his meaning, and when I did, I
said, “no way!”
When I consulted my urologist on the matter, he reluctantly
confirmed my gay friend’s analysis, though added I would need to do much more
if I intended to go that way, estrogen shots and testosterone blockers – which would
shrink my penis more and might require the removing on my testicles entirely.
But what I lost down below, I would gain upstairs. Max said this often resulted
in development of breasts – but the process could help me shift my source of sexual
gratification to my mouth and to my ass, which Max called my boi pussy.
I asked Max if I could still masturbate. He shook his head.
“You could rub what’s left, but you’d get more pleasure by
sticking your fingers up your ass,” he said, noting that if I went the drug
route the urologist suggested, I would find my pleasure center shifted to that
part of my body anyway.
I did not consult my urologist about Max’s suggestions for
oral and anal sex. Frankly, I did not want to know anything about it, even
though Max said he would help dress me up so I was in a more receptive mood, by
which he meant wearing women’s clothing 44/7, making me fit the role that my enlarged
prostate appeared to be seeking me to play.
“So, you’re saying you want to turn me into a woman?” I asked.
“As close as you can get without getting extensive surgery,”
Max said. “You’ll never be able to use your winky the way you used to, so why
not go all the way?”
I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. I ached to feel the way I once
did. But I was still attached to my winky, having lived with its up and down
moods my entire life. I would miss it if it wasn’t there.
Max was clearly disappointed when I told him that I didn’t
want to go that way and I would just have to live with the shrinkage.
He proposed a compromise. If I didn’t want men fucking me in
the ass, I could still derive pleasure from sucking their cocks.
“I’m sure you’d make a great cock sucker,” Max said.
If I look carefully, I can still catch sight of the bits of
snow which only a short time ago buried us, just a smattering here in those
places where someone had piled it high on curb or lawn for lack of a better
place to put it all, storm after storm, bringing us more and more snow, after a
number of years of no or little snow at all.
I’m not sure if this bodes ill, the returning to what I knew
as a kid, or that there is still hope for the world which is its own mistress,
and perhaps suspects the fantasy wishes of fools who inform us we are so potent
a force we can defy mother nature.
Maybe now, this slow fade out of winter and coming of spring
will tell us we ought to live with what is, rather than making up what we think
we believe, this said, I’m not yet putting the snow shovels away, and will wait
and see.
We all want to go back to get to a point on the meter where
me might do over what we did before, not always because we made mistakes (as we
inevitably did), but because we might do what we did back then better, and preserve
who we were, are or intended to be, each choice we’ve made changes us, steers
us in a new direction, to a place we may not have wanted to go, but went to
anywhere, then left us to wonder what might have happened, who we might have become,
if we had turned right instead of left, or three times, picked ourselves up off
the floor, dusted ourselves off, and staggered on, not to look back until it
was impossible to go back.
Who might we have become if we had not pushed on, would we
be better or worse, or merely different? Would we really want to change
anything if we could, not knowing who we might become if we did, better or
worse, not the person we are today, knowing now how we ended up, good or bad or
different.
I can’t blame her for how I feel. I let my guard down,
knowing what I could have had back then, but blew it, knowing now I would never
have become “the one,” her insatiable need never able to be fulfilled by
someone like me, always a temporary arrangement, my back just another rung on a
ladder to someone else, a stepping stone; a man like me needs to learn his
place in her world or have no place.
I still see her face when I close my eyes, as vivid now as
when she sat across from me, forbidden fruit, dangerous but tempting, yet
always just out of reach.
I can’t blame her for stoking up this fire in me, when I
laid the kindling there first, desperate for the right match to set me ablaze,
as she ultimately did, she more than just another face in the crowd, someone
filled with a potency I could not resist, but should have, and even now, thinking
if I had kept to that high road, I might have retained my place, if not as
lover, then maybe a friend, and now, thinking, it might have been enough
They say you only know who your friends are in the midst of conflict,
the hand that holds your elbow when you struggle, the word whispered in your
ear when you come near to giving up.
But what do you do when you’ve already won; who do you trust?
What is it that inspires you to this “serge to fight?”
Are these shadows you box against?
You say you’ve gotten used to the smell of dirt, having fallen
so often, exhaustion dragging you down, and still you rise, torn and bleeding
to resume the struggle – instinct telling, you’re not done yet, even though you
keep telling yourself to give up, you never will.
It is not in your nature to surrender without a fight, even
when the odds seem overwhelming and the whole world dead set against you.
The world refuses to understand you, though a few doe, those
true friends you’ve hand picked who pick you up with you call, and treat your
wounds, and feed you words of encouragement, telling you again and again, you’re
quest is right
I prick my finger each time I try to pause and sniff what is beautiful in the perfect world, where everyone has a two-car garage and plastic seat covers and drive to places most people in my neck of the woods would walk to. Only unlucky workers walk, the maids from the bus stop side by side with the nannies. Men come in pickup trucks trailing trailers full of garden equipment, leaf blowers where a generation ago they were forced to use rakes, piling up the remnants from the previous fall so they can no longer burn, as laws prohibit them from filling the air with fumes we used to love smelling as kids, now instead of piles of leaves, we get big orange bags.
Gardeners plant rose bushes or fill trellises for grapes,
men with gnarled and bloody fingers, gloves unable to hold back the bite of
thorns, or is it the sticky touch of the rose they resist, not even
appreciating the scent, as if sweat mingling with it all ruins even that for
men and women who labor their lives to maintain the houses with fancy lawns and
picket fences, roses that in any other time or place would smell so sweet.
“If I was getting what I needed at home, I wouldn’t have
been looking for it elsewhere,” she said so matter of factly, I felt like a cuck
again, but refrained from mentioning how she sometimes brought some of those
men home, screwing them while I was at work, she telling me they had no other
place to go, which was why she insisted I let them sleep on our couch. I’m sure
she would have moved them into the bedroom and put me on the couch, if she
could have found a way to justify it.
“You had your nights out with Hank,” she said, suggesting I
might have been doing what she did while out on the town, when I stayed loyal,
even when she did not.
Jane, on of the girls she went out with, did not warn me
about what went on, how my ex acted like a slut in the clubs near the mall, and
sometimes took on more than one man at a time, and often many more men in sequence
during the long night, I catching a whiff of cum and cologne when she got back
home.
During those nights, I took care of the baby. When I lost my
job, she suggested she might get a job instead and leave me to become a house
husband.
She told me I was good at cleaning, doing dishes, and other
chores. She was extremely disappointed when I resisted.
“You’d look real pretty wearing a French maid’s outfit,” she
said, while later I wondered just how far she would take it, dressing me up as
a sissy for the amusement (possibly pleasure) of her male friends.
I suspect she might not have left had I agreed to her terms.
She really wanted a life in which she had total control.
“I’m sure you would have had a great time walking the baby
to the park everyday,” she said during our recent conversation, suggesting she
still felt sad about the turn of events. “You might even have gotten lucky with
some of them.”
I didn’t want to fuck lonely housewives; I wanted life to go
on as it was supposed to, husband, wife and baby.
It took me a decade to get over my failed marriage; she got
over me right away.
“The way you get over a man is to get under another man,”
she told me.
Why she had contacted me again was a bit of a puzzle, since she’d
had a string of men after me (including several additional ex-husbands), but
assured me none of them were anything like me.
“You know we could make it work if we tried,” she said, with
that same glint in her eyes, as if she already pictured me in that French Maid
outfit, and was already calculating how good life would be if she could once
again bring her male friends home, where I could feed and entertain them, maybe
hiring me out to those lonely housewives she envisioned me with long ago, or
perhaps to the parade of lonely house husbands.
I felt the same twinge as I felt back then, intense jealousy
over the men I knew would be fucking her, and a pending “what might have been,”
over me serving them when she got finished.
“It doesn’t matter who you fuck or who fucks you,” she said.
“As long as you fuck.”
This made it clear that even after a decade, nothing fundamentally
had changed.
“I think you would look very pretty in a dress,” she said as
an afterthought. “And I’m sure some of my friends would think so, too.”
Needless to say, we never got back together, although from
time to time, I still wonder what might have happened if we had.
Christ had two Marys in His life,
the virgin and the
whore,
He loved them both,
the woman who became his mother
by immaculate conception
the woman who bore witness
to His death on the cross,
both Marys residing in most women,
giving choice to which they might be,
often fluctuating from one to the other
when we foolish and lustful men
(sometimes women)
go back and forth
from
wanting one or the other,
sleeping with the
women
who look up at us on
our self-created cross,
yet aching to spend
our lives with the other,
the Madonna who we
need to mother our children.
How does she do it,
being both,
when once she becomes
the one,
men won’t want her for the other,
except for those rare men
who like Christ
willing to embrace both as holy.
on the rim of her
glass
to tell the bartender
we would be back,
a tiny smudge in the
corner,
a stain of lipstick
to match
the smudge on the
glass,
like two sets of lips
embraced in an ever
lasting kiss,
while outside,
in the still chill of the end of winter,
she draws deep
draughts
from the cigarette
she says she hopes to quit,
lipstick smudging
the filter as she inhales,
while I watch her every move,
the fingers, the
lips,
the billows of smoke
that rise around her face,
adding mystery to her already
mysterious eyes,
all of her surrounded by
the darkness of the
street,
weak bar light
emphasizing
the purse of her
lips,
the glint in her eyes
the long fingers
lifting the cigarette
to her face
again and again and again.
It is still the same urgency, and the same question as to how
it might be resolved, no one to relieve it but myself, and that often a
disappointing resolution, dripping out instead of a gush, despite the same effort
and heat, like a Gennie in a Bottle that promises to fulfill all my wishes, but
if I rub too hard or for too long, what pops up is only a ghost of what I want.
Do we leave it, refuse to stroke it, let it brew on its own, this potency I crave,
must appease, or have it bring me to my knees, not her fault, she’s just the
match that lights the fuse to something that has always existed, waiting to explode,
this Gennie in a bottle, this urgency that consumes me.
She emails me stories asking advice, and it’s difficult to
tell her she doesn’t need it.
I gave her a book some time last year on how to do weekly
journalism when she said she was a little over hear head.
It seemed foolish then since her work is as good as mine is.
So what do you say to a person like that?
I send back suggestions and then notice that she has signed
her email as “cub,” something I didn’t get at first.
I don’t pretend to understand it.
I lay down
On the cool grass
In the head of summer
And see the clouds
Entwined above,
Heavenly bodies
Embracing each other,
Shifted even
So slowly as to make
Easy to fit in the
Other’s perfection,
The huff and puff of
Our mundane existence
Unnoticed in the heat,
In their unrelenting need
To greet each other.
I law down on the cool grass
In this summer heat,
And think of you,
Recalling the movement
Of heavily bodies
Feeling how perfectly
They embraced,
We did with even
The simplest kiss,
I feel the earth’s movements
Under me as I wonder
If we are clouds
Engaging in the most
Primitive acts imaginable,
All the pieces of this
Puzzle coming together
For us.
No way to get around it, when the mood comes on me I must come or go, or do something to use it all up, to make it go away, my version of fantasy football or baseball,making up for what won't happen for real, she always inspires me in that way and it won't go away until I do it for myself, I don't always have to look at those things she sent me, just a memory of her will cause the uproar, giving rise to what might otherwise lay dormant, yet inspired I must retire to a private place, to do what I need to do to get it over with, though in Truth I never fully recover, even after the release, always something lingers like an old wound that throbs with the weather, and at times like these, I please myself and do it twice knowing there is no way to get around it
I don’t believe it;
I refuse to believe it,
regardless of what
the Hometown blogs say,
maybe this is proof
that she’ll only go so far
to honor her
commitments
to the clutch of
characters
she’s hooked up with,
perhaps,
she even put her foot
down,
forcing those others
to find someone else
to do
what she won’t do.
In this scummy world
full of scummy people,
she seems the least tainted,
desperate to fit in
when fitting in means
doing something beyond the pale
of what she’s even
done before,
even if the old woman on that cruise
long ago taught her
how,
doing for herself is different
from doing for
someone else,
so I refuse to believe,
maybe I’m as blinded
by the light
as all the others who
love her are,
seeing what I want
or need to see,
rather than what is,
needing all this
not to be true
if only for my own sake.
Written early 2012
(This is from my poetry notebook and must have been written prior to April 2012. I’m not sure. I don’t date poetry notes. I tend to write descriptions of things as warm up for an eventual poem. This must have been a first impression, although I worked for some months with her. This, I wrote, but never went on to write the poem Why I never posted it is beyond me.)
She stands out, even in a crowd, even when she doesn’t want to, not too tall for a girl, not too skinny either, her dark hair framing a slightly tilted face and dark intense eyes that make you wonder what she is thinking when she looks at you, what exactly she sees, and how exactly she sizes you up – her blouse often open one button too far and would draw your attention if you could drag your stare away from her eyes. You might divert your gaze to her mouth, full yet tilted lips that change color day to day like a mood ring with no shade of lipstick predictable enough for you to read, lips often parted slightly as if to imply some deep secret she might at any moment divulge, absolutely kissable lips, though you get the sense you’re not worthy or lucky enough to ever get there, yet you listen to what she imparts – if not great wisdom, then some sense of deep experience she alone has, and you need, her voice soft enough to suggest she has struggled, and yet is determined to survive.
Sometimes she sounds so innocent, you want to throw your arms around her, to protect her, and yet, something in the way she looks at you, the angle of her head, the slant of her smile, tells you she knows more about anything than you ever will.
For some reason she always smells like spring rain, the scent that rises when new leaves drip, and you ache to catch the tase of her on your tongue, when like all illusive things, it always escapes you.
You get the overwhelming urge to touch her, to feel if her skin is as tender as it looks, bumping into her by accident or dropping something deliberately so her fingers might make contact with yours when she gives it back.
Sometimes, you want to sip from the same cup she just sipped from, to taste how she must taste, thinking maybe she is sweet, when deep down in your being you suspect she is bitter sweet, like a Chinese dish you can’t keep from devouring, no matter how full you think you are, it is never enough.
And you strongly suspect men have thrown themselves onto rocks over her or tied themselves to masts of ships when they hear her sing, driven mad by desire for her, great men, strong men, made weak – Odysseus, Jason, Hercules, even the mighty and angry Achilles, who plucks Cupid’s arrows out of his heals.
You want to think nobody is good enough for her – especially you, when it is exactly what which paint the look of loneliness deep in her eyes, this perfect imperfect beauty that scalds at even the briefest touch.
Who is she?
She wanted to go and I didn’t want her to, but I couldn’t
stop her.
All this hadn’t started out bad. She and I had moved to
Hollywood because that’s where the hippies were. But once she saw the Walk of
Fame with all those famous names, she decided she wanted to be one of them.
We found a place to take a portrait shot of her and then distributed
it around to all the modeling agencies.
I was shocked when one responded and asked her to come in
for an interview., shocked more when I found out what kind of modeling they had
in mind.
“You can’t be seriously considering modeling in the nude,” I
said.
“Why not,” she responded. “Girls do it for Playboy.”
She was determined to do it, even over my objections.
The agency did not like the fact that I accompanied her to
the audition, and insisted I wait in the outer office.
She went in, but didn’t come out for over two hours, and
when she did she was flushed and excited, and chattered nonsense the whole way home
She refused to talk about the gig, only that she had another
one lined up a week later.
“This time they want you to stay home,” she said.
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“Don’t be a sissy. It’s good money for a few hours work.”
The agency sent a cab to collected, taking her to some
remote shoot. She would not tell me where, and I sat at home waiting for to get
back. When she arrived, she went straight into the bathroom for a shower, telling
me later just how satisfying the job was, but also that it was a lot of work.
She did not tell me precisely what she had to do, even when
I asked her repeatedly.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” she said, patting my
arm measuredly, adding that she had a couple more gigs liked up. “They really
love me.”
Two weeks passed, and she was out more than she was at home,
several times overnight. Finally, I told her that I didn’t want her doing this
any more.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s getting between us,” I said.
“But it makes me happy. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“It’ making me unhappy,” I said.
“That’s not my problem,” she said, suddenly cold. “It like
doing this and you’re not going to stop me.”
“Even if means our breaking up?”
She glared me.
“You won’t break up with me,” she said. “You love me too
much.”
“I don’t love what you’re doing.”
“Stop being a sissy,” she said, laughing at me. “You’re just
jealous because I can do it and you can’t.”
“What said I can’t?”
“You don’t have a big enough dick,” she said. “Maybe you could
do it with other boys. But they would be the ones doing it to you, not the other
way around.”
So, she laid it out there, which shocked me, but also shut
me up.
“Now if you’re finished complaining, I have to get ready for
my next gig,” she said.
She was right. I did love her too much to leave her, and
resigned myself to live with the way things were.
Only a few days later, when I tried to make love with her,
she shook me off.
“Not tonight, honey,” she said. “I’m too sore.”
She fucked and man she picked up in a bar and said it didn’t
mean anything, a working something out kind of fuck, I’m stunned about when she
tells me.
In this world, man think they own the women they fuck, and
she seemed to want to prove otherwise, maybe even giving me fair warning not to
assume I mean anything more to her than the man from the bar, when I always
think fucking means more than it does, and may, I suspect, she wants more from
me than just a fuck, when I want it to mean more, when she’s telling me fucking
means nothing, and she will fuck anyone she pleases as long as I pleases her,
and I think, she could own me if she wanted to and ever have to fuck me at all.
That’s just the way life is.
What will she do
to get it back
now that it seems
like it’s already gone,
words of love,
as the pop song goes,
soft and tender,
won’t make it any
more
(win a heart back),
traction in the race
for the heart lost, too,
somewhere along the long trail
from that sharing of
sunlight
to the dark clouds
thinking in her mind,
her saying, doing,
thinking everything possible,
though she has not the right spells
to cast to make his
heart
as soft as I once was,
an affair of the mind
she once called it,
gone for real
when it all became too real,
tamped down to keep it
from erupting in a public (space)
when she deep down
does these things always in private.
What does she do
when the words run out,
and she loses her
power of persuasion,
winning him once,
and yet unable to do
so again,
is his heart that
hard?
Or does he simply have
too much to lose,
chancing, loving her.
