Kickers

 

I fashion for myself silk stockings,
torn of course,
form-fitting corduroy suspenders so
my shoulders roll, so the crescent
of my breast delights in swinging laissez-faire
from the tepid pool of muscular linkage
nestled in the cleft of my armpit
to its carpeted milk bone anchorage,
high heeled in wet leather kickers
whose cliff silver sparkles clank a
patois of two-step patterns,
twill courage proliferating from a
back pocket fold, when it is needed least
a blade hidden on my proper,
to make threats at my throat,
to cut her tie-down if she pulls back in panic,

I lean heavy into the lather and polish,
curl the tips of my moustache with your slick
spit
to remind me of your taste
and your poison, praying to father Fibonacci
in helical conscripts over your coiled corpse
hissing at me
with your long wet tongue,
in my hands the white lariat,
binding the bones of your translucent wrists
in knots of gauze, submissive
rawhide bleached,
to find you bound, to cast you
into the lake of fire,
of my eager devotion,
my infatuation.

TA

Tepid Pink

 

A glittering emerald crucifix guarding brittle
bird bones, pseudo drawbridge skunkworks
of her skeletal architecture, waiting to hang some
future king
for criminal intent to (maybe probably) heal the world,
everyone who has ever tried has
failed,
a cigarette trial for the trouble you've caused,
reaching below the dinner table corpse of
Last Supper riceandgravy snaking
your stormy shorn panties
along goose stalks long, poison offerings
in tumblers turned up,
may I be excused?

tip-toeing under citrus star clusters
through the maze-riddled
midnight garden of your suburban spiderweb,
where once buzzed Magic
now bundled a silk suitcase cocooned
and cold, frozen diorama of
yesteryear's wonder, a cup to the door
listening
to the tempestuous divorce of adventure
and circumstance,

wrong to be
brave,
wrong to have
fear,
rigid in all kinds of heat despite the
tragedy of something irretrievable, like some
obscure life-raft has already (maybe probably)
been abandoned, a disoriented dreaming,
a forfeiture without destination,
and into my grey and unforgiving hands
your bundle of tepid pink cotton
fingerings
crawl like warm whiskey,
like virtue we never had
nor wanted
nor needed,
a long lie nonetheless
about the disparate hardships of our unequal traveling.

TA

Her Happenstance

 

In coarse shimmer paradox
she gift-wraps her crescendo
argument, peppered as it is
with golden flakes of charm and intellect,
her happenstance,
she badgers me until I am
tilted, with alarms blaring spinning in
red petticoat and court jester aftershave,
her spittle a luminous thread across the bridge
of my french nose like the money shots
openly hiding in my browser,

mother gestures a holy pattern her
long skeleton fingers hovering over a
bleached breastbone, the mole of a thousand
generations, stolen pearls her grandmere
lifted in a New York braggart,
her heart yet to give up on a brute
alcoholic menace that gave up on her,
fellatio and affairs in the dark corners of
eight-ball tournaments smelling like smoke
and trophy polish,

don't go near her, she warns,
and the waitress brings the check,

later I am drawn into the trap on my
knees in the wet limp lit afterglow behind
Linda's Lady, a wet garbage smell, rancid
urine aftertaste, overgrown splash of
wild weed in the concrete
exchanging grey grit
for a taste of my blood,

I oblige,
I bleed on,
she kisses me cloaked in the silver drapes
of countless midnight American Spirits,
she does not waste time on dramatic overture
or useless diatribe, she is
vapid,
and angry,
she pulls the trigger and I am sent remembering
my mother's words into something else
entirely,
into abyss,
and sleep.

TA

Jazzing

 

She calls from across the
street a serpentine tongue twisting
along the coiled
rhododendron drawl of the telephone's
nervous system, take your
panties off, her wet temple
planted against the drywall panel,
an advanced mosquito strategy
developing in the war room,
and on pine needles
and on black cold stone
and on the midnight ground
we skipped crickets we skipped
crawling ants we skipped an unlikely
encounter with that
sacred hairy growling forest god,

I lift one corner cowardly, then
the next with courage,
she flashes the porch light a pertinent portion
same as a flasher in a city park, shadows play
in the apartment twilight over
damp toddler toys tossed willy-nilly in
the unkissed tufts of heather 
company of sleeping snakes,
even sweet things slumber,
but tonight I am jazzing and putting on a show.

TA