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No tongues, no lips, no
pussies no clits no titties
no nips, no dicks - not even
just the tips! (no "practice
dips"), that's just
how it is.
These things, contact with,
each to each
is reserved. No, it didn't
need saying, but it's good

to observe.

hurry on, torchbearer

I'm not smoking, I'm just carrying a very small torch. I
took it up right when you gave me a ring, quite a small one

but grand! we both thought. Give or take
four more and, by the time I am though
with the added tax on every pack, beginning in April
then on 'til I quit, I am sure I'll have paid twice over
for it, and more. But it isn't for you,

that I go through the world like this. Shed my
light, passersby incensed,

And it isn't for you,
this world's smallest torch. Oh it's you
that I carry it for, I admit, but

it's more on behalf of my very last breath, and
the sake of enjoying my way to it

that I light this torch, and I hold it high

as if lost in the mist of its heavenly scent, or

what passes for it.

universe plans

the universe plans nearly all
of my moves, in the obstacles
waiting wherever I roam. They
make sense to me, at least one

sometimes three

So I'll see
or I'll feel, my way up
if that's where
I am trying
to go. And with taste,
I will find my way home,
if that's where

I am

or am trying to go.

They make sense
to me, so I know
what to do. Where it goes,
how to act, and:
accordingly. Is
how I act.
Is there any
way else that I've
missed? Accordingly works,
I have found. That it is
always evident,
always makes sense,
where I go. On the way
to wherever it goes.
It is always the plan,
so I've found.

So I ask: why bother with those?

Roads, so much easier read than their maps.
Obstacles, easily through or around, or
at worst, back the way that you came - which
is wide. Buildings,

so easy to read from inside.

Why bother with plans? You can plan
it all out, but the universe can,
and it has, all you need

to decide.

"Distress Damsel"

I don't mind a damsel
in distress, but if I can,
I'd rather get you out
of distress. Distress
is ugly, awful. Where?
did you get distress

Was it on sale? Did
you check all the
stitching? It may
have been a factory remainder, or
counterfeit

with a logo on it, but
you bought it. Well,

let's get you out

of distress,
now

Shall we?

"Nothing dirty"

The visual is all we have
to go on, through our eyes. That's why
we depersonalize.
We get to know you better, as
you speak. Eventually

we wish we could know
as much as could be, about
how you feel. Nothing dirty
in that deal.

disappointing forecast

heavy features in a stormcloud face
but when sun breaks through, you
would be amazed. But you won't
be, though. Because you
don't bring out the sun.

Patronizing

As a child, I took delight
learning the names of the Saints
I could pray with to help me through,
this or that emergency, problem,
contingency, need – specialists,
really. Anthony for lost things,
Jude for lost causes, Christopher
(who I understand may not have
existed) to break traffic jams
and keep airplanes aloft, which
isn't hard, Nicholas
to get me on Santa’s list,
and so on. I did not “pray
to” them. Scandalous, that would seem.

Later, though, I learned “to pray”
does not mean what I thought it means.
It just means “to make a plea.” I could
pray to you if I wanted to. Prithee this,
prithee that – neat! That’s just
what they did formerly, medievally,
of old to their feudal lords, and
they weren’t worshipping them.

In my adulthood (so
-called), though,
having learned well enough
who’s who and handles what, I seem
nevertheless to have been
delighting in sending up
the perfectly right prayer
to the completely wrong guy (or
girl sometimes – as I recall,
most of the women saints
were girls, and had died so
sadly). Why? Some kind
of perverse urge, I guess!

Generally it would be a guy.
I'm a little shy around females
of stainless and perfect virtue,
sometimes. Depends on the situation,
but generally, it was a guy.

I imagined some of them might
have been annoyed.

They're specialists, after all.
The best there is at what they do, and
if you're St. Jude, me praying to you
about my car keys might strike you
beneath your dignity.

But would it? Would it really? Lately,
it struck me - I bet you’d be delighted
by a nice change of pace, now and then
in eternity. Wouldn't they? So, I don’t really
know if I should knock it off
or not.

People up there love me! To judge
by results, anyway

some of them do

Despatch

End so it ends. Another exchange
of letters of pixels through ether. Another cut
of soul, shamelessly laid bare. Another heart
in throat leap, trusting that YOU KNOW. WHAT? Eh,
I dunno, whatever's appropriate to know, reasonably
accurate to the facts, within the scope
of the overlap between the mutual understandings
we each mean to establish, and to otherwise
question the questionable,

Even if one's standing to ask is idling
curiously by the curb while you or they
loiter indecisively nearby, unsure of
whether to tug down the hem of somebody's skirt. You
could get picked up for that
in this town, and when they drop the charges
for lack of any sense it's not going to
break anybody's heart, or make the day's news
any smarter. By the time it hits the front page,
it'll be mustard from a street vendor's oversauced
dog.

Acceptancy

It's time to be alive in the world you've made,
your destination's here. You are on its way
and your path is as sick or as well as you care
to acknowledge every symptom, and call it all
fair.

My Inner Kirk II: The Wrath

My inner Geordi said "Detecting a surge!"
My inner Data said "I seem to observe..."
My inner Worf simply growled in rage
My inner Picard said: "LOCK!...ENGAGE."

My inner Spock said "Phasers on KILL"
My inner Kirk said "Fire at will."
My inner Sulu said your shields gave in,
My inner Bones said "HE'S! DEAD! JIM!"

Film Review in Poem Form #1: Casablanca

So because basically he's all "In
one of the gin joints, in all
the lousy towns in the world
- and then she walks in!"

They had a history, you see, but
you don't know that. You find out
later. He'd already had a history
himself: a real idealist, mercenary
type. Running guns, participating
in losing revolutions, he thought
he was pretty much "all man"
and knew the difference. But
he had to take a little break
in Paris, between gigs, didn't he? It must have been

fate at hand,
that day - because next thing
you know, she meets this guy
and they're being all coy and
joyfully mysterious about their
pasts. Drinking, smoking,
implying sex, it was as if

it was a game to them. A game
they'd heard about before - no time
for it, then. But now, it was a game
they could both afford to play,
because it was so plain
they'd already secretly
won.
Somehow,
by that point, what did the past matter?

As it turns out, plenty. He was kidding
himself otherwise. He thought he
was the one from the big dark past
with shadowy crap in it, meanwhile
she herself was just about as rough
and tumble a revolutionary
as he'd been - and worse,
even more willing

to sacrifice what's worth living for,
even more willing

to sacrifice everything
for a hard, bad cause:

whatever's right.
Next thing you know, like a chump
in the rain clutching a note,
all the meaning in the world
was running away

and he finally realized that train
wasn't ever going there. Somebody lied,
or maybe somebody just didn't say
the truth out loud.

It amounted to the same thing: beans.

One hill.

By then, naturally
the only thing left with meaning
in life was to go crawl to some
Gottforsaken desert hole, and act
mister big shot in a white tuxedo jacket,
play coy and mysterious with suave,
brutal German honchos, wink sarcastically
at the disgusting antics of the barbarous
French sheriff, bandy a lot of banter
with Sidney Greenstreet and assorted
other characters, and then what?

Everybody's sitting there by this point
going, "the dialogue is delicious!" "How
can this man possibly have so much savoir faire and yet
care so little about it?"

He can't.
Nobody can.
It's because they don't know the history. Then

she walks in with it.

Ingrid Bergman
was treated so cruelly in that movie,
you know. The story's famous, and as it happens,
it goes that they shot both endings. All along
the way - even in the flashback scene,
where realistically
she shouldn't have even been thinking about it!
- the actress had no idea which man
she's going to end up with

Much like life, really,
but a cruel way to treat an actress. How's
she supposed to describe an arc?
When she knows somewhere out there,
in the future, an alternate ending
DVD extra has already happened
- was released.

And that was the real film, in that universe.
In that universe, everybody said "Ah! Casablanca.
A slight film, a charming film,
a film with wit and characters - not much
heft to it, but at least there's a happy ending!
That much is certain,

those two were made to end up together,
early, often, and ever after. What
a piece of business."

And so she had no idea. What universe
was she living in?
And she looked it! She looked like
she came in from a better one, still
had hopes of getting back there.
But at the point of her crisis, she gave up on love
for what was right. He, meanwhile, gave up on love
because of what was right.

That's also why he gave up
on what was right, or had been. He'd found out,
by then, what was worth living for.
What's right isn't it. Not a broken man, just
a bent animal in a white tuxedo jacket
and a sense of style, both of which
fit perfectly. And by then,
she walked in.

God damn it I hope I never hear that song again But
if she can stand it, so can I.

I learned all those
same lessons he did, when
I first saw the film. And
I was deeply moved because
it was just a movie. That's
what consoles us to these things. That's
what reconciles us to movies. Later,
I was sitting in a gin joint
in some forsaken town in the real world,
or what suddenly no longer passed for it:

because all of a sudden, she walks in.

It's all a lot of history,
and it never amounts to much.
The right person got on the plane,
that's all that matters.
It took me forever to realize that
the whole time, she didn't know who

she was going to end up with.

stupid intelligent

Slow and dense, these boulders of mine
- in mind, they grind the world
so fine that by the time a problem's
solved and done, the trace of it
will coat the works and everyone
need never be a bit concerned by or
with it.

Every turn it comes back round
the wheel of chance, I'll recognize
what I had found and dealt so slowly,
densely with - at half a glance,
dispense with it
with graceless ease. This guy's so

smart,
they tell me. PLEASE

only on things I have already found,
overthought by a million too many
degrees too fine, and in
-to the ground.

"Sell-By Date"

She seemed so fresh and appealing, He
sure looked like a likely bargain, They
made an impulse buy, on the way to check out
each other
each other

And a date was fixed, but they didn't check
what was wrong with it, when they opened up
they'd depended on these ingredients
to not go so wrong, but something's up

Didn't we want this?
Why did we get this?
Destined for breakfast,
originally - Wasn't it?
Weren't we convinced?
So sure! the sell by date
was eternity

So sure

He seemed so funny, but something
smells funny. No, not amusing, no -

not at all. She looked something sweet,
but something's sure soured
between these two, maybe
there's some way to save
what they saw?

The date was fixed, but it they've broken it
Or maybe it rolled off the line that way
Anything else that they add on top now,
what chance will there be that this taste goes away?

Didn't we want this?
Why did we get this?
Destined for breakfast,
originally - Wasn't it?
Weren't we convinced?
So sure! the sell by date
was eternity

So sure

"My love for you is like the end of a book, not"

My love for you is like the end of a book, not
there yet but close, oh so closing
in, so much no please don't
going on - in the narrowing
thickness, each whispery flip
and flick, hope is giving way
to enjoyment or at least, trying to
as it becomes frantically clearer
what the author is doing to you - why
run out of pages like this! So much
further, you wish to be taken - eyes
intent on every foreshadow, crying out against
resolution, willing into being possibilities,
complications, cliffhangers,
sequels

In the movie version we will play ourselves, but
which of us wrote this damn thing?

hypothetical panties

It's none of my business, really
and a fine, fine line (if any)
and curious that such a thing
(or not) would engage curiosity.

I realize I have no excuse to guess
but look, I was pretty sure, just a sec
I could have sworn - but the point
is neither
here nor there - or "either,"
maybe?
Here or there, or nowhere. Say
we believe
or not, it is just
as well.
It's a matter of faith,
anyway. A gentleman

cannot tell