on the edge, poem 31

Posted by sarahsmiles on April 1st, 2008 filed in poetry
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At the border, on the waterfront, on the beach,
a calm salt surf kisses our slippers
of brocade and gold thread slightly
damp from the cool moist sand.
We stand together, three of us, looking
out across the water towards a far
shore that is without more than
an image in our memories of two,
and a storied fantasy for the third
sister, conceived at home but born
after our journey had begun.
We hold her between us,
our youngest, our sweetness,
our treasured hope and worry.
The sisters, we three,
muse to our own survival, stalk
these shores in the evening
and again in the hours before dawn,
searching in those magic moments
for a way across to take our child home.


Poems 19-30

Posted by sarahsmiles on March 25th, 2008 filed in poetry
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This has not been as much of a different year’s beginning as I thought it might have been, and we’re 84 days into the year, and all I’ve come up with is 30 poems. How could this be, when in past years I’ve killed one a day for more than 6 months. WTF, that’s the way it goes. Words come and words go, and only some words actually stick. These have stuck so far, for good or ill, and I should be happy to have any poems at all.

The Seasons – 19
My voice is fractured by the cold,
frozen in darkest night,
and later thawed with spring’s bright rain
to summertime’s delight.
The summer bakes me sexy tanned,
languid lazy days past,
then the fall with a death’s head moon
puts me to rest at last.
[Appreciate the 8/6 meter]

Desire – 20
I feel my lips ripping from my flesh, unwilling
to leave you, even for the moment it would take to smile.
I want to smear your body with my blood, every pore and wrinkle
of flesh bright red and oxygenated with my heart’s desire.
I would adorn you body with tufts of flesh
torn with my finger nails from bone.
My tears would anoint you, and the sweat
of my burning brow will make you mine.

errant – 21
I am on a quest
for unspoken mysteries of my heart,
to find lost wisdoms I might have known.
Thoughts from where, thoughts lost
of purpose and meaning, I might find
a new beginning. My quest
among forgotten memories like landscapes
take me past all I never knew I once knew
of fictional hopes long abandoned
of supposed lovers’ unnecessary tears.
My journey will be over
when the prize is won
and the daylight has meaning
once again.

Daily Dichotomy -22
Each morning
it begins again,
impossible juxtapositions
that obsess my mind
driving thoughts
into fanciful apprehensions
I cannot escape.
Should I want to lose
the fires of my imaginations?
Sunny Days -23
“Ain’t nothing better in the world, you know,
than lying in the sun with your radio…”
Too early to call it spring, the warming
sun has returned with storied memories
that speak to skin and bone, soil and air,
plans and rain.. rhizomatic evocative
messages signaling the return
of the divine light that is seed
to new beginnings.

Write of Spring -24
Sun softly singing month before spring’s
crawling green invasion speaks soothing
apologetic regrets, a lover’s returning
from a bitter absence, again, with new promises
without assurance that she won’t leave again,
yet offering a season of new life warm
forgiving enticing embracing again
I take her in my arms.

Another thought, a paused regret awaiting
on the rocky steps up from the beach
looking back over right shoulder
at the path just taken and the panorama
left behind spreads before me
my life in a view in a moment of a day,
micro-epiphanic revelation:
though I return as spring, offering
“sweet delight”
I’ll take you with me when I go.

Administering Love -25
There is no question of your marked fidelity
and your acceptance of all obligatory gestures,
observed and completed. Each and every
gesture demarcated, documented and
conspicuously displayed for each and all
to see according to plan. Each caress
workshopped and methodologically sound,
conveying every appropriated nuanced
meaning, according to plan, vigorous and sincere
heart felt and without reproach, according
to need and duty without fault or complaint.
Such a happy duty is your love,
crying forth and announced, according to plan,
truth and meaning a public pronouncement.

The Harrow Inside -26
Razor-wire wrapped buildings crush my spirit from the outside,
sharp steel fetters cut and burn the soul without marking flesh.
The prisoner’s dilemma, an awkward gambit in a single roll:
to die on the inside from the infinite wound of timeless captivity;
to fight the metal machine harrowing punishment into flesh.
Sweet oblivion, succor breast of numbing nullity.
There is no crime that can justify a soul destroying fate.
Kill me, if needs must, but killing my humanity is an evil
greater than whatever crime you think I’ve just committed.

True Final Love -27
There is nothing to call into question, action, thought or deed,
recollection or half-whispered memory to come between us.
It just doesn’t exist… that thing to tear us apart. We are wedded
body to body, hear to heart, our soul is whole, indivisible:
Gloved flesh and mirrored sighs, never we’re apart.
Brain waves and smiles, syncopated bliss replete.
Gestured affection matchless, violent ruthless intimacy.
So close, yet so far, I know longer know you are there.
I cannot feel your touch, or feel your breath on my skin.
We are only one, now and there is no other to break
the immeasurable sadness of our lonely steps
that will never be echoed by a lover’s foot falls,
or be caressed by a new lover’s first touch.
When lovers are one, there is no one to love.

Get it on! -28
Get your learning boots on, and stop fucking surfing the net.
You pornformational sluttery and data whoring must cease,
along with your random access attention deficit shopping.
Give it like it is. Say it as you want it tattooed on your ass
in a nudist colony… “This is who I am!” Right here and now.
Get it on, sweet sister, get it on. And make your ramblings
meaningful. Without purpose, your sorry ass is just a heap
of pale processed GMO protein in gelatinous soup-base.
Forever never dance with only your finger tips, soft flesh,
when you can dance with every pore of your skin.

outstanding desolation -29
Flat flat land upsets my sensibilities,
as blank canvas to painterly desire,
promise both unrealized
and perhaps to be forgotten.
Desolate winter unbrushed by rampant spring
lies mute upon the brown scrub earth
mute testimonials; nothing to be done
to save the past, only hope for the sun
to ignite the green fire hopefully
to smother the stain with life.

The Gypsie Run -30
There’s something that I’ve never forgotten
since I was first struck, how the train
from Syracuse to New York is so similar to the train
from Budapest to Bucharest, and perhaps the same again
from any two points on a forgotten landscape.

Burned out and derelict, windows smashed, brick crumbles
as the train rumbles leaving each vista to its own fate
of post-war industrial rationalization and consolidation.
Forgotten unloved industrial monstrosities beached
after some gothically cataclysmic conflict unresolved.

Signs of life scurry at the edges, forced fences
and broken barriers hint at a new life within
unforeseen by architects and captains of industry
though the Roma, Europe’s gypsies, hang fluttering clothes
drying in the windowless frame like America’s dreams.


the public vampire 18

Posted by sarahsmiles on February 17th, 2008 filed in poetry
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The whole notion
of being a stripper
has never appealed to me.
Though I’m very happy that people
want to take their clothes off in public
for either praise or ridicule,
I wonder at either the desire
for acceptance or the need for exposure.
A vampire is not that
which needs cry for position
if it still seek to adhere to the name.
It is not an option or a lifestyle choice,
is it? It is a sombre and reflective state
of being that looks on the abyss
and is dismayed. To Jerry Springer one’s self
seems antithetical,
and I could imagine it easier to confess
and placate the monotheistic god
than to self-dissect before the world
on people magazine’s pages.


Poems 13 and 14 of 2008

Posted by sarahsmiles on February 11th, 2008 filed in poetry
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13 Transit

There is no illusion like today:
hands folded unquestioning,
face composed and serene,
eyes front, aware without expectation
or appearance of concern.
Back straight. Knees together. A novice
model of contemplative patience,
unhurried and unconcerned.

Amid the maelstrom,
good waves and ill,
that swirl vapors
of conflicting desires
and indecisions of possibilities,
the social hegemonies that battle
on all fronts seeking  to over whelm.

And yet, when they depart,
the figure remains without
apparent perturbations
as the light of another day
transits the heavens
and leaves for night.

14 Knowability
There is no confusion like the night:
arms twist with golden turns
as jeweled fingers gesticulate
unspeakable stories, promising
horrors of delight and unattainable sorrow.
Shoulders bathed in sweat, breasts glow
and heave under a midnight chemise
as the air is cleaved and swept by long curls
of ebony hair that reflect aught but the moon
and starlight as they while in serpentine frenzies.
Eyes dart as vipers strike–freeze, observe, pause
and strike certain death or uncertain oblivion,
charting existence, mocking or praising
with equal abandon and delight.
Frozen lips never speak, as nothing
can ever be known
again.


9 – Man of Action

Posted by sarahsmiles on January 27th, 2008 filed in poetry, strangers
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Man of Action
A rumbled trust growls deep; barrel chested voice
confident, unquestioning of variable truths or meanings;
unconcerned with ulterior alterities or liminal ‘facts.
No paralytic notions elicit questions for reflection
to deter the waking lion with a mission to fulfill.
In this micro-maniacial moment  you do nothing
but say, “I see…” as you slowly awaken from
an eternity-like slumbering repose , shaking dust
and leaf from your beard, and fixing your good eye
on the goal beyond the horizon, move to act.


Poem #8: It’s a beautiful day…

Posted by sarahsmiles on January 27th, 2008 filed in herself, poetry
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It’s a beautiful day
Just to wake up in the morning remember who I am;
intake of breath and exhale.
Feel my chest move,
diaphragm relax, the air sing on my lips.
To touch the world, eyelash moving air,
lazy hand catching dust motes in the sun.
A warm sigh showering moist breath.
To wake up and realize that you have survived,
again, one more night.

It is enough, just to live, without dreams or despair,
past or future; to worry the moment. It is enough,
when faced with the alternative, to reserve judgement,
forego questions or hoped for answers. Just to be
a part of it all. It is a beautiful day. A new voice awakes
me from slumbered contentment, compliant reverie,
this passive repose of someone lost
to expectation and desire.


Poems 1-7 of 2008

Posted by sarahsmiles on January 27th, 2008 filed in poetry
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First of the year;

And I’ll sing you to the sky
as I’m looking to the stars
as I see you standing
on the edge of here and beyond.

Only when, at that final moment
as you look back at me
reaching for a small reflected
memory that I hold in my heart

you see my eyes, red and kohl,
an arm stretched as if to grasp
what cannot be caught, and
a name whispered on the tide.

Round and Round
so much of the now is riding on her wheels
motion towards, there and back again,
without ever being sure that the direction
is chosen or guided by life’s obstacles
though if there is choice, can one ever choose
to hit or miss, when the wheels are spinning?

Bad Day
It’s a bad year. Wedged between the past and the future,
pollaxed hache body to soul. A sour season.
Short fiber wired, mono-filament that slices flesh,
gnawing bone, wrapped tight around my waist.
Maelstrom month. Hormonal blood-red clouds dim
the sun and blot the light from the sky. Rotten day
once again, telling me it isn’t going to be different
thought the furniture has changed.

4 Solitary Voice
Writing for yourself, each word carelessly placed,
forgiving of trite contrivance, unworried, uncondemned,
spelling out half hopes and stories no one understands.
The voice is clear, full of half thoughts and contradictions,
the dream of a drunken woman, I wrap myself in hope
that I would never share were I not alone by a fire.
My words please me, pleasuring my heart still
uncaring of their eloquence or proper pose,
meaning locked in the reader writer’s soul.
When I sing, naked by the pool, with the wind
carrying scents of the world on my lips
there is nothing but that mingling,
and that perfection in and of a moment
in the lack of any other listening
is the when I ever say I still love you.

Counting

Ten more minutes before the train arrives
at the station, the terminus. At the one
solitary point where I will find myself

in ten more minutes. A journey
will be complete. A passage
that seemed endless, a travail
that seemed pointless, after
I realized that the assumed purpose
what not what I’d expected

with ten more minutes to go
until my arrival, I want to go on.

Flowing
Narratives of ruthless lust and never slaked desire
gush unbidden from the love abscessed pen
that has forgotten the gulf between
the tender touch and the ripped flesh,
so lost in her own shame,
poisoned b regret and yet still inside
a young child cries without surcease.
And the words flow forth on a tactless
waste of white that would but wed the lovers
twain when nothing would release the shadows
and the shade by the spring at dawn.

Prayer
Let the morning sun shine around me,
burn me, burn the terrors of the night
that cling as hoary frost on the hem–
wind blown dust that haunts every crevasse
of flesh–cling as sticky cobs that web
my hair and halo this shrouded form.

Let it shine and burn and drive these
thoughts that rise unbidden from memory;
distorted lens and subtle liar.


poems 93-100

Posted by sarahsmiles on December 31st, 2007 filed in poetry
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I’m thrilled shitless! I’m done!

93- the third way
Learning is different from knowing.
Listening is not about acquiring knowledge.
Reflecting on what you’ve listened and learned is not dangerous.

I want to learn how to live and how to die,
and that is not the same as living or dying.
Few people know how to do either; they just let it happen.
That is a passive way to pass through life.
I think I’d rather be an active participant
through my own passage through the world.

If religion could do that for me, that would be great.
I am sure it does for some.
If science would do that for me, that would be great.
I don’t think it has done much in that regard.
If laughter and joy could do that for me, I’d be happy.
I think that this path looks most promising.

I’ll take door #3.

94 – can’t someone else?
(inspired by )
“I’m tired of being the go-getter.
Can’t someone else be responsible for once?”
Someone else is responsible…
the little gremlin who fucks everything up
when we don’t take care.
There’s someone ready to step into the breach
when we leave the room, just for a moment.
The understudy has taken her place, ready
to become me when I forget who I am.
The fat lady is ready to sing
as soon as I stop talking.
There’s always someone willing to live
when we’ve lost the will to do it ourselves.

95- And it begins again
I’ve always wondered, late at night, why
the hurting hurts more than it ever should,
than it has the right to, than I ever expected.
The pain of the cut is almost a solace,
that moment of assurance of being alive,
compared to the inner uncertainty
of never having lived at all.

From cries of anguish comes nothing but pain.
Those cries of terror will drive you insane.
Cries of doubt lead to cries of loss.
Cries of nightmares turn you and toss.
The end is near, if you go all the way.
And after the end is the start of the day.

96- Buttercup Victory
Looking for words that will fit on the page.
Sinking to verse for a form to be filled.
Forgoing blank verse that appears so sage
or soothing words of emotions now stilled,
for language of anger to incite my rage.
thoughts of before to which my heart has thrilled
to free me at last from my poetic cage.

97 – I can’t listen any more
An image in my head that I somehow cannot shake
is driving me to choices I would rather never make.

Sitting, fretting, remembering then forgetting
what I thought I’d never have to realize;
that my days with you, like those without you
have done nothing to change what I’ve become.

The impact of your life on mine is not what I expected,
and that I was to make a mark on you is something I neglected.

Sitting, thinking, pondering then realizing
what we are keeps us too far apart;
that my nights with you, like those without you
is like sitting, quiet in the dark.

98 – Read and weep
I read, in your letter that you left
atop the pile of your things
that you had packed so neatly,
completely numbered, boxed
and wrapped and labeled,
the reasons why you have to go.

I read, in this letter written so neat
in that professional rational voice
that you save for when you want
to be finished and done, the list
of decisions and deliberations
that you really just thought I should know.

I read, in this letter, held to my heart
words slightly wet with my tears
that drip down from my nose,
past the smile on my lips,
that behind all your actions and words
that love that will not let us part.

99 – tonight
What are you doing to night?
Will you hold me closely in your arms
and sing to me with lover’s charms?
Caress my lips with pearly dew
and create for me the world anew!
Find me open, smiling, waiting,
ready for some satiating.
Spurn me at your own risk
for I am ready to be kissed.

100 – The day is done.
The day is done, and put to bed.
This year is over, year of dread.
The failures I’ve failed will all be forgotten
as the new gives birth to what I’ve begotten.
My heart is a horror filled with delight.
My soul is now ready for a brief respite.
My flesh is new marked with scars of the knife
I am now ready to make a new life.


Poem 81-92/100

Posted by sarahsmiles on December 31st, 2007 filed in poetry
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Surfing Strong (80)
Sunrise over infinity is a smile for the moment
to appreciate when the day is every day
that has ever been, now and forever,
and what it left behind, in sorrow and sadness,
a maudlin memory tears blinking away i
n smiles and sobs of laughter
of release at dawn.

There are crimes that cannot be forgiven
by any god, of passion and regret,
that needs must live inside
to just live once again in the end.
And folly can only forgive what folly
once foolish allowed and one heart must see
what always must be that single smile
in the crowd. I hold you in my heart as
I touch you in my words while
the rest of the world
can fuck off and die,
I love you, it’s just that absurd.

seven eights of the ocean (81)
So much rides on the surface of your ocean;
flat still, choppy rolling, surging gale ridden,
catastrophic maelstrom, that speaks only of appearance
as seen from wharf and shore, a float, delicately plumbed:
your face revealed with your eye in the storm.
The smell. Your taste on my lips and thighs.
Cold, silent and fecund, in that order,
telling me to stay away. My head hurts.
I want you badly. A strange and singular desire
that reaches me even on desert sands
far from any hint of shade or moisture.
I bite my lip and taste you, lover like none other.
If all happens below the waves in the deep,
the cold where the heart of all things waits,
calling me into your arms once again.

I found this, written on a bit of paper torn
from your notebook after you had left,
and I knew you had written this to me.
And as I watch the ferry leave the harbor
to Corsica or somewhere, I know it is true,
and I let it fall from my hands into the sea.
As the ink runs awash in the surf,
I know that it is true. And I want to die
with you once again so that I might
pull you from the depths into my arms,
like a sister’s kiss to bring you to life
after your heart has failed and your soul
thought it had finally left me and this world.

Hard for you (82)
It is hard to write a word until you feel
like you are dying: for love, of life, forever,
because of a dream come true,
unanswered, beyond recall.
When the weight of life, of pain, of memory
is too much to bear, ignore, accept
without distraction, acceptance or exhilaration.

The words I have written,
remembered and forgotten
are all for you, myself, the other,
and I find myself lost, found,
discarded in the warm,
cold indifferent words
I write, somehow.

Return (83)
The lost ports of my storm return
in my dreams, dead, revenant
ghosts of wood and sale, rotted
iron, echoing gulls and the sea,
salty on my lips and warm in
my thighs, misty on my throat
and in my chest… a slow engine
throb where my heart once cried
long into the night for you to come
home to my shores and beach
your keel on my warm wet sands,
run aground between the rocks
of my shoals on the island of my heart.

Find a place to live (84)
You cannot live with them, and it is getting
just too hard to hide the bodies, any more.
The pain of change translating into the unknown
or the pain of the trite recapitulation into the comic
recreations of the every day. Liminal desire
forever at the edge of waking consciousness,
bloody border of passion in the day
fraught with routine and borderline sanity.
A reminder unwelcomed, that another world
awaits, a vision of a better world, rhizome
of evil telling me to kill this world so that
from the ashes you might live again.

The same question, again… (85)
You made yourself into who you are.
You volunteered for this, remember?
Remember the alternative that was too
much to bear, and all that fate worse than death,
you can always go back to, if you can remember
the steps you took, people you stole dismembering
act by subtle wound, tearing fear with fright.

There’s nothing to love in the hero,
anymore. Anymore than a statue or a sign
pointing to the impossibility of the fictionalized
account of something lost in a past that
never really happened as any of the
survivors remember it.

It’s a beautiful life.
But you’re not allowed to live it.
Severed spit and sinew from
the smile of a child playing,
blood and bone from
a kiss, or the play of words
on the mind and soul.

And you don’t get it, still
you stare into the mirror
maudlin and despairing
thinking your pain matters
more than that which you
have caused, never able
to fathom that it is this
moment of understanding
that always brings it to it’s end.
Stop looking at me that way!

Last Summer Gone (86)
Blood-heated summer crawls like an endless
unfinished tattoo across young unblemished flesh
coursing intricate patterns of unexpected color
and patches of calm cool shade to relax the senses.
Languid with pools of cool water and dappled sunlight
that warm into human afternoons of lazy buzzing
insects, and not much else. Fire-driven sunsets
without beginning or end. The eternity of midnight
until dawn where quiet is an illusion of the senses
when each pause or corner turned reveals
soft voices in lover’s conversation sleepless
for all sensual swelter leaving whispers on sweat.
Warmed stone of yesterday’s sun beneath,
blood of life on my lips, tongue and skin
mixed with the moist oily sheen of this summer night
tells me that I’m still alive.

‘Speare and Thorn (87)
Your blood is like a red read rose,
green stem wik and alive, frustrated
with the thorns that bite and scratch, growing
wild with your sisters along side of the road
before an abandoned farmhouse, between
the highway and nowhere. Leaves young
succulent grace your skin. Aphids sucking
your youth as spider mites crawl about,
everyone calling on the sun for one more
drop of life. My blood rose, all pretty with ruby
spires, green impaler of the blue sky,
I crawl to you wingless, on many legs
to hide in the long grass wet with dew,
anathema. Caustic breath, biting, sucking.
Teeth, ripping and tearing, voiceless,
my only music is the slow worming
deep into your heart.

And your heart will fail, and you will crawl to me
on broken stem and wilted leaf. Crawl to me,
the canker of desire eating you but and root.
That final bud, driven to the sun by every
photosynthesizing cell hoping and dreaming,
flowering, and mating into seed, thrall to me.

That bud, first flush of blush struggles on with
tears of early morning dew, hormone driven,
pheromones flying sweetness scenting
each molecule of air, stamen ready to
to thrust forth, petals ripening on summer’s
warmth, forgetting for the moment my gaze
writhing lecherous, grasping need entwining,
endlessly constructing.

And the moment comes. The bud shoots forth
to flower upon the setting sun,
all energy spent, the evening has begun.

Try as you might, dying against the night,
inevitable plight and dark delight.

Caught in the tarantella, young perfumed lips
becoming saccharine sickness sweet,
all too red and ripe, each tear drop
to be savored

88 – She sleeps in anger
Too many low slung blows have caressed my flesh,
slights too slight to rouse the serpent from her hot
sun summer repose. Gnats and flies and myriad crawling
life abuse my skin. Noticed and remembered,
all below the action threshold, she sleeps,
lazing the hazy days with an inward smile,
tonight is her turn to bite.

89 – nothing but time
I crawl on shattered knees, crushed
on impact, tendons severed, flesh torn.
My way is clouded by hair hanging
down into the dust, tangled with scrub
and brush. Sight fails behind grime-
rimmed eyes, kohl black with tears
that wash nothing away, but time.

90 – Blown away
The moment is lost in the winds of desire
maelstrom; the evil whirlpool has swept
everything away but your titanic force of will.
Remorse, reflection, even my hard-won sense
of self, flushed away in rip-tides and wind-driven
salty spray that etches you into my soul, tattooing
my flesh with a thousand deep caresses that morph
my thoughts and dreams into a mermaid’s siren call
to be at one with the sea and find myself fathoms down
in your stormy waters.

Broken hearts. Broken bones. Broken hope and dreams.
I see all this in your eyes when you look at me.
Wasteful days and wasteful nights, wasted empty life.
A forced smile painted to hide nightmare dreams.
Tears of sorrow. Tears of pain. Tears for lies and memories.

The future is a smileless past played out again,
and again I want to save you from yourself.
I want to take you away. I want to start you fresh again,
help you find your way. But you won’t listen when I call,
or see me when I stare, still lost inside your anger, and despair.
Call to me my lovely. Strike me when you hurt.
Drag me down into your hole and wallow in the dirt.
I am beyond words of shame, scorn or praise.

91 – Doubt
Taking everything but my pride
in a maudlin twist of fate forsaken
by what I’d thought to forsake.
Ripped and shrouded, broken and abused,
body and soul are reduced to a cold burning
embrace, feral and self-contained, writing
in blood every moment, every day, every step
from the instance when humanity
was no longer an option.

92 – Where went my heart…
Being elsewhere bound in languid autumn folds
of warm flesh, welcomed absence.
Lost in wondrous arms.
I was lost, running from the horror
of being found, trussed up and dragged
back to polite society.
Stayed lost, ambivalent to the hunt,
left behind dreaming of becoming
lost again, when you made yourself
into who you are, and came for me.


poems 78-80

Posted by sarahsmiles on December 23rd, 2007 filed in poetry
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<strong>Impaired Liberty</strong>

The contagious identity of our inventions;
restrictions from heaven, restrictions from the law.
Injunctions and invocations.

My constraint biased love:
the trap of unweary charlatans,
my own fantastical myth
that has no meaning
even to itself.

<strong>Gypsies @ Garre du Nord</strong>
“Do you speak English?”
“No.”
The quote of the day.
Roma in Paris have British accents.

North Africans at Sacré Coeur with wristlets.

Hassled outside the museum of man by a
buck-toothed gypsie who wanted to return to me
the cheap ring he ‘found’ on the ground for a reward.
Never fell for this in the past, as he quickly realized.
But I was looking ‘la touriste’, so he is forgiven thinking
I’d want a 0.00009 carat gold ring… and it was a man’s ring
though it might have looked good on my big toe, though it
is surgical steel or nothing… well platinum.  Poor guy,
I’d been watching as he’d reached down to pick up nothing
before the ring had appeared in his hand, but I guess
that is my fault for noticing. Just a gadja, an infidel to the people.
I don’t exist, except as a raw resource.
The tragedy of that assumption is clear.

We sat in the park, eating and drinking; goat cheese with peppers,
Auvergne sausage and some ancient grained baguette, all served
up on a backpack with a swiss army knife.

What was the response? “Oh, that’s not my ring.”

And the wanker wants my sausages! Not at 28 euro a kg!
Shout and eye to eye expletives.  Thinking he could shout
two women down. Women with a backpack and a swiss army knife.
It is strange to say that I had to go european on his ass,
ameri/british packing up and moving on just wouldn’t do.
Pointing the knife to my chest I ask “Puyuria?” laughing,
do I look like some gypsy groupie? Third time he gets it.

<strong>You must!</strong>
When did I stop loving art?
Perhaps when it got to love me.
When it, body and soul,
made love to itself, on show,
for the whole world to see.
When it stopped seeing me as a woman,
a person, a sinner a saint. When it saw
me as just a consumer to sell to.
Don’t forget that I am your art,
I inspire all that you do,
and you must make me immortal.

<strong>Salvatore Rose</strong>
Action–action in the sunshine.
Passion–but little feeling, and less thought,
such was meant to be our existence,
but we refine, we sadden and subdue.
We call up the hidden evil spirits of the inner world.
We wake from their dark repose those who will madden:
“He was made of all nature’ s most dangerous ingredients…”