raise the camp fire,
blankets spread on
the ground,
singing dead and door
tunes,
sex chorus behind
rolling orange orb
waiting for the sherbet

raise the camp fire,
blankets spread on
the ground,
singing dead and door
tunes,
sex chorus behind
rolling orange orb
waiting for the sherbet
there is a dirt road thunder
away from city limits
dust and grits
and over burnt coffee
crows feet eyes
and indistinct touch
nothing cellphone can resolve
jukebox clicks to vinyl
see her in the kitchen
with a smile
I will eat her pie
like pressed garlic creamy crushed husk blown away, i held her forgetting the argument, forgiveness and playing with that blonde hair thinking of …
Lean against the letting go by Christopher Lawrence
I look at my penis
skin collar
lychee tip
then piss
a long straw stream
you are not a memory
you are a gift
finger folds
and soften furze
we know we belong
but until when
the scythe decides
Chris Lawrence
Concussed by mornings
sharpened light
grasping cotton silence
each breath was tentative
alone
without the other
that shadow fragment
of a once upon a night
recalling synaptic responses
she knew
he had departed
but to who
or where
tears where of no consequence
why shed them
fuck memories
and fuck those
who fucked them
The girl reveals a thigh,
the girl reveals an ass cheek,
only she doesn’t show me that thing
— conch shell, beryl, emerald —
which blossoms, with four petals,
and contains the most sumptuous
pleasure, that hyperboreal zone,
a mixture of honey and asphalt,
a door sealed at the hinges
with a giddiness held captive,
a sacrificial altar without
the blood of the rite, the girl
doesn’t show me that thing.
And she is torturing me, this virgin
with her modesty making me dizzy
from the sudden blow struck
by a vision of her luminous breasts,
her pink and black beauty
that winds itself into a ball,
wrinkled, intact, inaccessible,
that opens, then closes, then takes flight
and this female animal, by laughing,
dismisses what I might have asked her about,
about what should be given and even beyond
given, what should be eaten.
Oh, how the girl kills me,
turns my life into one in which
all hope is consumed
by shadow and sparkle.
Rubbing up against her leg. The fingers
discover the slow, curving,
animal-like secrets, yet
they are the greatest mystery,
always crude, nocturnal,
the three-pronged key to the urn,
this concealed craziness, it doesn’t
give me anything to go on at all.
Before it never would have provoked me.
Living didn’t have a purpose,
the feelings walked around lost,
time wasn’t set loose
nor did death come to subject me
to the light of the morningstar,
which at this hour is already the first star,
violent, rising up like nausea
in the wild beasts at the zoo.
How I might know her skin,
where it is concave and convex,
her pores, the golden skin
of her belly! But her sex
has been kept a secret of the state.
How I might know the cold, dewy
meadow of her flesh,
where a snake rouses from sleep
and traces its path
back and forth, among all the tremors!
But what perfume would there be
in an unseen cave? what enchantment
what tightness, what sweetness,
what pure, pristine line
calls me and leads me away?
It might offer me all its beauty
and I would kiss or bite
and draw blood: I would.
But her pubis refuses me.
In the burning night, in the day
her thighs come together.
Like a deserted inn
closed on the inside by a latch,
her thighs seal themselves,
seclude themselves, save themselves,
and who said that
I could make her my slave?
I could debate this possibility
without a glimmer of hope for victory,
already her body erases itself,
already its glory tarnishes,
already I am made different by that thing
which wounds me on the inside,
and now I don’t know for certain
if my thirst was more ferocious because of
that thing of hers that I might have possessed.
There are other fountains, other hungers,
other thighs of other animals: the world is
vast and the forgetting profound.
Maybe today the girl in the daylight . . .
Maybe. For certain it never will be.
And if it hides itself away
with such fugues and arabesques
and such stubborn secrecy,
on what day will it open?
What would need to change for it to offer
itself to me on an already cold night,
its pink and black blossom in the snow,
never visited by me,
that boat carrying incense that I can’t board?
Or is there no boat carrying incense at all . . .
* * *
i see a page that gives
words once as progeny
becoming blue scented nothing,
perched over it
in a damp saffron autumn
umbrella a discreet protection,
i had bathed in those dreams
yearning to be magellan
seeking
beyond the evil trolls,
petals in the forest
delicate uncut,
giving kisses on the souls
which resonate to those who are dead,
strawberry meadows
by the river
tiny seeded red,
dont go asleep
or you will miss
the elephants post themselves
about the pillar,
returning the hopeless
as is the passionate,
consuming beyond sainthood and glory,
arriving back
to a turned page
with fingers that have ancient tremors
stairs cluttered with toys
piled to be removed,
except one
that discreetly coiled
it’s own way down,
suction brush
to that clattering canister,
a sound
disturbing to child and cat,
drowning calls
of the need to suckle
partake in natures feast,
goddess did not yield
flowing locks
size fourteen
barefoot
not pregnant anymore,
prepared her strength
as he in den,
stressed oblique
took their life up his nose
snorting and breathing,
saying he had control,
yet so far from shore
he was unable to wave,
her way
inhaling only air
with bare soul
loaded the car with kids
and left,
leaving vacuum writhing
a headless cobra
on the hall floor
Action Figures by Edith Vonnegut
alone on a dreams forgotten shore
that stray thundering sea
reached towards the sky
wind creased and folded grass,
elemental human hearts
away from pale insignificance
chime together
the fire has not vanished
silent dune blue air,
these memories will scar
and no holy intervention
can claim a dedicated tear
sigh and embrace
an eloquent arrival of intimacy
ripe silent love
ingest the once plain indifference
short breath saliva glisten
someone else can trace you
by indentation in the sand
and what sea birds say
in discordant voice