Under Two Moons

Which do you prefer: sexy voice mail or sexy text?

2011-03-01T08:04:00.003-08:00

Which do you prefer: sexy voice mail or sexy text?

Answer here

How do you think organ donor recipient lists should be prioritized?

2011-03-01T08:04:00.001-08:00

How do you think organ donor recipient lists should be prioritized?

Answer here

How much money is enough money? Express this as a sum, a multiple, or a qualitative description.

2011-03-01T08:03:00.001-08:00

How much money is enough money? Express this as a sum, a multiple, or a qualitative description.

Answer here

What one musical instrument do you wish you could play?

2011-02-24T05:43:00.001-08:00

What one musical instrument do you wish you could play?

Answer here

MOVED MY BLOG

2011-02-23T11:04:00.001-08:00

I am not taking this down yet, but I have moved my blog to

http://dangerouslysweet.com/

Please let me know what you think :)

poem: the keeper

2011-02-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

handed over,
palm to palm,
one grasp released,
another set of
fingers tighten
in what feels
like a caress,
warm, dry,
proprietary

mother to
father, stranger
to lover, hand
over hand in
ritualistic
rhythm

paint a mural,
show me, actual
size, all of
the damage a
hand can do

twisted away,
shrugged off,
left behind, the
spine struggles
still, to find
its spiral
balance

how many
sets of
lupine eyes
watch with
interest, the
slow limp
forward, tongue
loose, salivating
for the chance
to be right
about me

the wolf's eye
is painted
yellow, white
squares reflect,
mechanically,
a beckoning
unseen moon

poem: bell, inverted

2011-02-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

this is a song
about silences
and scars,
days go by
dutifully counted
then I think, I
should call her,
it feels like it's time,
the phone sits
like a small,
wounded cat,
preternaturally still,
daring my hand
to slip over its back

in the years that
have passed, bells
have given way to
coils of wires that
make a sound like
a bell, so she'll
know I am calling

but her silences
are still made of
silence, no wires,
an occasional
defiant denial
echoes

the scar is white,
smooth, with a firm
line defining its
shape, it's a wide
bell, inverted, it's
a virulent germ, it
crosses the
hairline that
wasn't there
when I got it,
I lived through it,
I became a
woman
anyway

I touch it with
my fingertip and
it feels like there
is something
underneath

"What happened?"
I ask her. "I don't
know," spit
like a curse,
notes overlapping,
a symphony, a litany
of everything
I have ever
done wrong

it feels like there
is something
underneath

I touch it with
my fingertip,
and just accept,
it is part of me

poem: punch

2011-02-16T19:29:00.001-08:00

a five-year-old's face
is a delicate thing,
the skull still soft
in parts, green, pliant,
the teeth expendable,
tiny white pieces of
shattered porcelain
fall from your mouth,
meteorites, shrapnel,
they are baby teeth,
you need them no longer,
once, twice, thrice punched,
and you are a baby
no longer

a grown man's fist
has less give than
a tree branch,
the knuckles more
bite than
blunt knots or
bent twigs

what hurts most is
that erasable space,
between his skin and yours,
the friction, the pull
of tiny capillaries as
they empty their souls
in alarm, a bruise blooms,
paint splatters, teeth,
blood, the shape of your
face is a hideous scream,
from the inside out,
it says please,
no, please

after that,
nothing, ever again,
feels like enough

build a sarcophagus
filled with your wishes,
grow around it, seal it
closed, grow into your
grown-up teeth and bones

one day you
birth a child in
a rush of blood
and tears and joy

the space between
her skin and yours
does not exist, you
keep her close to
your armor of scars
your fingers laced
together at the knuckle
make a wide ellipse, an
orbit inside of which,
she is untouchable
and yours

she is losing her teeth
one by one, there are gold
coins brought by fairies

her tears are thin,
she dreams of wolves,
she loses rings, she
wants one more
chocolate, kiss,
song, or to sleep
beside you in your
bed so much you fear
it makes her weak

her cries are high,
wavering, like an
ocarina in a legend,
the highest notes
open the tomb, and
while you hold her,
you remember the
shape of your face

the rumbling demons
scratch beneath
the grave lid with
long bony fingers
like the branches of
trees in the forests
of a child's nightmare

your hand on her face,
soft, gentle, true,
changes everything,
it changes you,
please, yes, please,
please may she know,
no harm will ever
come to her
at my hand

#twitterotica #validate #wankwednesday

2011-02-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

#twitterotica #validate #wankwednesday

She drops the keys in my hand without touching me. I can't look her in the eye.

Focusing past her, a flash of flesh tells me her companion is naked under the plaid, pleated skirt.

I follow her hands as they lift and land on the dog collar around her neck.

I hold the ticket near the driver, panting in fear, my ambitious, always overreaching cock pushing up.

"Validate," is all I can manage.

The leather seat is cold under me, but my cock strains higher toward the steering wheel.

A clumsy three-point turn strokes the leather-covered wheel over me three times. I feel my pre-cum spot my briefs.

I accelerate to the far, dark corner of the garage. Beneath the guilty dome light, I search.

Under the driver's seat I find a leash and a small black crop. Under the passenger seat, the wet panties.

I wrap the sodden red lace around my hand, and pump furiously. Headlights bounce, reflecting behind me.

I close my eyes, breathe in the scents of the car: coffee, cough drops, leather, perfume, cum. -end-

Poem: Invited

2011-02-14T17:47:00.001-08:00

my good intentions
reach boldly,
a bright white
church steeple
against a
cloudless
periwinkle sky

my feet are
deeply rooted
in the fecund
underworld,
underfoot , always
tripping up
us sinners,
praying
so hard
to conform

my face a
porcelain idol,
reflecting
pure illusion,
blinding you
to stillness

flames below warm
the lonely soles
of your pilgrim's feet

inside you,
at your throat,
behind your eyes,
around your wrists,
against your skin with
savage force

you welcome me

stations of
the cross, I
count up all
the ways you
are my filthy
whore, I give
redemption

delicate rosary
beads, touched
tenderly, I
whisper my
devotion to you,
my angel who
offers salvation
in reckless,
unpredictable
spirals of
frightened
flight

a hunter's blind,
a testament,
an upturned palm,
a lie, a screed,
a stilted, feigned
indifference:
all the ways
I hide my claws
and my incisors

you see through me

raised from
long slumber,
released from
polite society,
my devil is
finally
invited

Erotica: Tangled #twitterotica #smutnotlove

2011-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

Following is "Tangled," my shot at #smutnotlove #twitterotica @SonicErotica in 10 tweets

I'm your "just friend" but I'm the one who gets the phone call when the driveway needs to be shoveled or the car battery dies. Apparently the mysterious mistress can fuck over the phone from 3,000 miles away, but she's not much help around the house.

I let myself in with the spare key. I was warned, but my jaw drops when I see you naked, tangled in wet sheets, arms cuffed to the headboard. Our eyes meet, jerk away.

My phone rings. I spy the key on the carpet as I answer. "I'm doing it now," I say to this bitch on the phone. She's polite, but I still feel like her servant.

My fingers touch your wrist, the love I feel for you is murderous. I am dead. I am buried. Your smell is overwhelming. Your free hands go immediately to the red leather choker that circles your throat. I watch how it calms you. You still haven't spoken to me. You aren't even ashamed.

My hands move to my mouth, holding back the I love yous that mean nothing. I want to kiss you.

"What?!?" I shout into the phone, realizing boss lady has been giving me directives, but I wasn't listening. Her voice is low and warm, like a death threat.

"Tell her to come now," she purrs. Or growls. I drop the phone. You lunge for it, listen, arch and scream for her like a dying animal." -end-

#twitterotica #100words #anything

2011-02-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

#twitterotica #100words #anything

"You said anything," her voice was sweet through her broad smile. Still, my jaw clenched, tense.

Her fingertips pressed against my palms in slow lines, comforting me as the soft restraints circled my wrists.

She held up the blindfold she wore for me without question. I shook my head no. Her eyebrows arched, persistent. "Just this once," I relented.

Darkness closed around me. She stepped away, the absence of her touch bleak, bottomless.

Then, the softest kiss.

"You're safe," she whispered, the flat of her hand smooth over my hip, appraising my skin, in a gesture all too familiar.

-end-

Poem: Skinned

2011-02-05T21:37:00.001-08:00

butcher paper
and a diagram,
follow the
dotted lines
around my
devil haunches,
follow the curve
where I waited,
coiled, ready
to spring, then
I sprung, made
my kill, licked
the blood from
the white tiled
floor, and rested

strike while I
am asleep, and
dreaming a peaceful
me, alternating
cheeks, turning,
offering, this is
the me I try so
hard to be, gentle,
kind, palms up,
painting my
stigmata, watch
my lips mouth
the word "vegan"
while I lick
my sticky lips

horses can
smell flesh
breathing
through your
carnivore's pores,
you must prove
to them you
haven't come
to kill them,
you must
whisper
convincingly

I fell through
a hole in the sky,
it took one kiss
from his sensitive
lips, it took one
call from her angel's
voice, it took
opening my eyes,
peeling back the lids
protecting me from
the hideous view of
myself skinned, flayed
by my mistakes, a
rancid slab of
spoiled meat,
a sad mistake,
rotting off a
twisted spine
so slowly

time passes
unmarked

I hang on
my hook

I swing
slightly,
soundlessly,
each time the
freezer door
whispers open,
gaskets kissing,
cold escaping,
hope dissipating
like hot breath

#twitterotica #100words #alarm

2011-02-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

In my dream, there is a boardroom, with a long, cold, glass table. I am in the power seat, legs crossed, skirt short.

But when I wake, I am flat on my back in bed, naked, not in charge.

Whispers and murmurs remain undeciphered, but I know the meaning of your teeth on the soft white vulnerability of my inner thigh.

"Let me brush my teeth," I say, as authoritatively as possible.

Without my glasses, I see a blur of determined smile, before, ignoring me, you lean back into your work in progress.

No crow of roosters. No digital bells. Alarmed, alerted, my body awakens to new music, swelling from the inside out.

Poem: Turning

2011-02-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

"When I woke up you were next to me.
Heart and bones . . ." The Pines

each day for those weeks
I turned the amaryllis,
the copper pot scraping--
one long note through
a wet reed, off key

the stalk knows
not to twist and
how to seek and
still grows slanted
but all eyes are on
the bright red florid
mouth of everything

it all would hurt less
if I would speak less

I would speak less if
the silence didn't
set my skin on fire,
burn me down to
ashen bone

petals stretch in
relative silence,
open green,
reveal red,
dare you to
look away,
then wither
under your gaze

poem: altar

2011-01-26T05:43:00.000-08:00

bread and wine
flesh and bone
withered lilies
weathered letters
begging for mercy
tethered heartstrings
pieces of things
I have broken

upon my altar
sweet offerings
a turn of my wrist
I'll not test her
hypothesis, lest
she see my human
weakness, lose
faith in me,
take flight,
leaving behind
both me and
my benign
simplicity

pierced, I climb
off my cross, and
the fourth day
finds me
dead as ever
my spine will be
dug up someday,
a first class relic
a fossil, a knicknack
a child's puzzle,
osso bucco, poorly plated
Jacob's Ladder, writ large
Alighieri's version
of the long climb down

focus slowly, I
move fast, fluttering,
striking, caressing,
touching, beckoning,
a mudra, a poem
read to ears deaf,
and eventually
an upturned palm

kiss its pure
white center
bite hard
taste
what it takes
to be mine

Poem: brittle

2011-01-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

when I was nine
my grandmother
spent days sliding
smooth leather pumps
on rich ladies' feet,
caressing their calves,
herself in stilettos
turning the heads
of younger men,
returning home
to her dying
husband, her
bones tired
but pliant

trapped all day
in a shoebox of
a store, by night
in that ripening
casket, avocado
paneling yellowed
with nicotine
and age, her
mind took flight
with the circling
buzzards, she
saw things the
rest of us wouldn't

she is brittle now,
the soft edges
of her love
ground down
to fear and
hapless insult,
her eyes are blanks,
her hands shake to
reach and read the
shape of objects,
her head tilts to
draw the voices
from the room, so
she might know, is
it friend or foe,
is it fight or
flight this time

afraid of the world,
she lives like a
reluctant princess,
a handmaid to
brush her hair,
clip her nails, serve
her toast and coffee

by day she
sees enormous
yellow birds
in flight, and
running men in
crisp white shirts,
things the
rest of us
won't see

she should rest
instead she
wanders the
house at night,
looking for
dishes to wash,
clothes to fold,
dirt to sweep,
children to scold,
doors to lock,
enemies to keep
at bay in the
grip of fear,
she looks for
the man who in
1956 watched her
through windows,
failed to kill her,
but planted a seed
of nighttime terror
that blooms every
night, simple and
indistinct as darkness

she paces, she circles,
the taste of the last
miscounted beer
in a small cloud
near her mouth,
that cave in which
all she ever was
so slowly
decomposes

Poem: Argue

2011-01-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

I cannot argue
with your words,
puddles of blood,
splinters of bone
I woke to find
in the place
I left you

I can't dispute
your testimony,
blood on my hands,
the taste of copper
coating my throat,
bilious, bitter,
lust I confess
as if it were
easier to bear
than the love
that isn't enough

take back our
lost innocence,
everything I
wanted to fix,
swallow this,
excise that,
I damaged all
I sought to save
and savor

the windy wake of
my violent kiss
left you cold

your featherweight
touch bruised
my lukewarm heart

Senryu Series: Warm

2011-01-20T05:52:00.000-08:00

cold bones, skin yearning
follow distant stars, weary
burn slowly, rest now

worship at my fire
fear not the blistering heat's
gentle, warm release

immolated, calm
destroyed and renewed
violently reborn

mirage, oasis
the pool of blue I dreamed
rises beneath me

then we are bathed
in a cool, melting kindness
protected elements

earth swallowing
every precious gem
compressed, honed

distant silhouettes
wandering dark horizons
searching that treasure

Waking

2011-01-17T10:33:00.001-08:00

faint scent of citrus
whisper of words,
deep yawn, salty lick of
your lips, innocent smile

lashes flutter open
reality falls, heavy,
empty bed, cold room
twisted sheets, low
rumble of hunger

stretch and shift,
skin over cotton,
fresh blood into tired
muscle, tiny fibers torn,
refueled, reborn, then
her body remembers

a hundred purple
kisses bloom, an
aching echo in the
cross of her thighs,
guarded until the
next hoarse demand
forces all of her open

quinine tears and a
silver tongue, a
paper-thin heart
overflowing with trust

emptied and refilled, at
dusk and at dawn, in
ten thosand moments stolen
while the world is asleep

I wake her with my
unapologetic heat,
and later, she sleeps,
sated, coated, in
the thick air of my
purest intent

Poem: Witness

2011-01-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

Meet me in the clearing,
tall pines stand witness.
Bring your steely eyes
as weapons, your
silences as shields.

I will rain down
all my words
from a violet sky
and bathe you in
every warm dream
of holding you
while you sleep.

I will wash away
your sins. I will
leave your
clean skin
vulnerable.
I will puddle
at your feet,
then drown you
in dark oceans
of my desire.

I will take your
offering, white
flowers floating
on blue water.
My body is the
altar on which
your gifts
are laid with
great care and
unspoken devotion.

I will rise like fire
from the ground
beneath your feet,
and worship you
with neither fear
nor guile. I will
not rest, until
this hell from
which I'm born
extinguishes itself,
and lakes of flames
turn cool and blue,
with white flowers
floating by, pieces
of you, petals I
collect, and gently
kiss, one after another,
marking the
lovely, slow passing
of time we spend
together.

Poem: Two Silent Suns

2011-01-09T20:06:00.001-08:00

I will possess you
from afar
my gravity pulling
two silent suns
in infinite circles
in the deepest space of
a universe open
only to me

then I will possess you
closer than close
all of me orbiting
one extraordinary sun

I drive a primal spiral
boring to the center
of the earth
I will find myself
lost in you, trapped
in amber, the slow
build of history

Gogyohka Series: Bread

2011-01-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

Christ offers you a wafer
paper thin, tasteless
the devil roasts you meat
that's a juicy piece of me
turning on the spit

I'll bake you a bread
warm with love and promises
when one day I know how
for sure
to nourish us both

for now I'll grind my bones
mix ashes of my past
into a bitter paste
just a taste of me
will not sustain you

Gogyohka Series: Shield

2011-01-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

I raise my shield
sometimes at ghosts
its sharpened edge
lacerates everything
I so fear losing

another life
naked, enslaved
comfortable, complicit
why rise up
freedom is such sour sorrow

he was gravity
and the dead light of distant stars
and the darkness of antimatter
I am the dust floating invisibly
in all directions

my hands are strong and careful
bold and easily confused
what they hold they won't let go
they always overreach
on my heart's behalf

an airplane made of paper
a book on how to fold them
a paper cut
a curse word
a dream shared, abandoned

Gogyohka Series: Knotted

2011-01-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

knotted
made of twine
twisted into infinite complexity
unravel me
and I am nothing

she unwrapped me like a present
squealed with delight
then set me aside to see
what else waited for her
I watch, crimson ribbon coiled at my feet

morning falls like a stone grave lid
crushing resurrection fantasies
with the weight of obligations
Roman soldiers trample
the sweetest dreams

Gogyohka Series: Risen

2011-01-07T17:11:00.000-08:00

winged passion contained
in a warm wooden box
high in a forest
empty of everything
except two reluctant angels

her fingers
work lotion into her skin
after her bath
seek mine across the table
rest lightly on my jaw
strum from me, low notes
sung to her only

she tastes of grace
I am risen
after three days
in the purity
of her attention

Senryu Series: When

2011-01-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

you tremble when I
press your back against the wall
whisper dark intent

you shiver when my
desire takes the shape of words
closing the distance

you surrender when
I lose myself inside you
an immortal coil

Erotica: Crate Training

2011-01-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

The first time she came over to my house, she said, “Oh, I didn’t know you have a dog.”

“I don’t,” I said. It was our fourth date.

“But that’s a dog crate,” she said. I stood at the stove. She sat at the kitchen table, already set for two.

“Indeed it is,” I said. “But there has never been a dog in it.” I deftly changed the subject to the cream sauce I was working on. Dinner was bad-movie romantic, just enough wine.

“Leave the dishes,” I said. And we did. We left them on the table. We took our wine glasses to the bedroom. What followed was about four hours of decidedly vanilla sex, though rich and intense as the last time, and I remained hungry for more. It would have been enough, really. I would never have asked for more. And I would have been satisfied. -- more than satisfied by her curious brain, her skilled tongue, her soft hands, her angelic heart.

But she stayed late the next morning. And she asked questions.

“Wyeth, did you get up in the night an do the dishes?” She asked through the shower door.

“I thought you left,” I said, opening the door. She stripped immediately and stepped in. “The dishes are done,” she said.

“Glad to hear it,” I said. I silenced her first with my mouth, and then by turning her around, face against the tile wall, and fucking her tenderly, thoroughly.

I was dressed and in the kitchen when she joined me, wrapped in a towel. She turned and saw it this time. The crate. She hadn’t really looked the first time. Her jaw literally dropped, like a cartoon character.

“What? You didn’t . . . You say you . . . Wyeth, what the fuck?”

“Ellen,” I spoke her name slowly, held her gaze. Then with perhaps more subtlety that the situation called for, I tilted my chin to the crate, or rather, the girl in the crate. “This is Renee.”

Renee let her eyes up for just a tick, licked her lips and looked back down. She was petite, young, wearing a short black leather skirt, a white blouse tied midriff, no bra, knee socks, loafers. I knew from experience there were no panties under the skirt. It had been months, at least three, since I fucked Renee. But I allowed her to come over on weekday mornings, still, and clean the kitchen, and spend some time in the crate.

“What the fuck . . .” Ellen muttered under her breath as she tuned and left the room. She returned dressed to find Renee at the counter, spooning raw sugar into my second cup of coffee.

“That went well,” I joked as the door slammed behind Ellen’s blur of coat, scarf, purse. Renee issued a tiny giggle, and knelt at my feet. There was a long pause, and then a tentative voice, that voice, her voice, high and wispy, frightened and delighted.

“Did I make a mistake, Wyeth? Did you tell me to come over later?”

“No, sweetheart,” I stroked her head soothingly. “She was to have been gone before seven.”

There was a long pause and then she spoke. “I’m jealous,” she said, seeking my permission with a brief flicker of eye contact. She rose and proceeded to the bedroom. She began to strip the bed.

I listened to the soft, heavy sighs of the linens as I composed a text to Ellen. “We will discuss this tonight,” I typed. No, too declarative. “Call me.” No, sounds like a command. My jaw twitched, my hand flexed. “I would like to talk about this more. Please call me when you can.” Perfect.

I heard crying from the bedroom. I went in to find Renee face down on the freshly made bed.

“This is not our agreement, Renee.”

“I’m jealous. She’s pretty—”

“You’re pretty,” I interrupted.

“She’s pretty, and older, and vanilla, I assume based on her stupid reaction.”

“Don’t, Renee.”

“You’re either going to have to punish me or fuck me.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Renee,” I said, holding my voice steady.

“If you didn’t want to fuck me, you would never be here when I come over. And you are. You know the schedule—”

“Stop talking now.”

“Please, Wyeth . . .”

My reply came by way of entering my closet and removing my favorite soft, black leather belt from its hook. She knelt beside the bed, her upper body resting over the edge. I popped the belt threateningly. Then once again, and she complied, lifting her skirt, revealing her perfect, ample, soft, white ass.

The first blow wrenched me free of all the conflicted feelings Ellen left me with. The second reminded me of who I really am. The third made me wet, and far hungrier than I had been in the presence of Renee in a very long time. The pivot of my shoulder joint. The almost imperceptible woosh of the belt through the air. The undeniable physicality of leather on human flesh. The jerk of Renee’s body. The sounds from her mouth. The arousal glistening between her thighs. I savored all of the sensory data, rising, floating on the feeling, no longer thinking. Lost in an upward spiral.

I stopped, even as she murmured, “More, Wyeth, more, please.” I sat on the bed beside her; she moved her head into my lap. I stroked her hair, and she stroked my hand with her shaky fingertips. I closed my eyes, pushed back the thoughts, keeping open space for sensation. She turned my palm over to its open, soft, vulnerable center, and kissed me. Her tongue, tentative, made small circles that radiated all over my body. Her kiss was sweet and gentle, though Renee herself was neither.

“May, I?” she whispered. I opened my knees a fraction in response. Still on her knees, she moved between them, opening me wider. “May, I, Wyeth? May I?”

“You may,” I answered, leaning back on my elbows. Her assault was direct. Her mouth closed over me at once. With no preamble, she sucked my clit between her teeth and held it. Even before her fingers pushed inside me, my first orgasm unleashed in a hot flood over her face. It was just enough chemical reaction in my brain for me to lay down and let her continue. There were a few small aftershocks as she fucked me with her fingers, the hard tip of her tongue spiraling, then alternating with soft, broad strokes.

There was a pause. She kept going. I fought back objections and ideas that tried to force their way into my brain like the oxygen pushing into my lungs. I grabbed her hair and pulled hard. I heard her breath hitch. I felt her teeth clamp down on my inner thigh, marking me in a way she knew not to. I jerked her head back again. A low growl escaped her throat. I let go. She thrust her hand into me hard, trying to force her way in past her knuckles. My cunt crushed her hand, forced her out. Still, my orgasm started deep, and moved though me, slow, hard, agonizing. After, she placed my hand on her wet cheek gently, stroked, removed it, returned it with increasing force. I knew what she was asking for. I would not slap her face. To her, it was a stupid limit. But it was my limit all the same.

She didn’t want my strap-on. She had a husband for cock, and everything else I couldn’t give her. She wanted two things he couldn’t offer: She wanted her mouth on my cunt. And she wanted my perfectly sized fist in hers. It took what focus I had left to move slowly as she urged me forward. When she felt my hand roll closed lengthwise around my thumb, she pushed back violently, then groaned loudly when my fingers curled, fisted, deep inside her.

I paused, held very, very still. It didn’t feel like it used to feel. When I was in love with Renee, every twist, every turn meant something. Every pivot, every spiral was claiming. Every extension and retraction of my bicep was possessive. None of that layered desire rose in me now. This time, I pounded into her in frustration, desperation, and with a rage I wanted to deny.

She came quickly, her cunt collapsing around my hand. When I withdrew, she sobbed, and begged me for more of the belt. Her next orgasm started with the second blow of the belt, and lasted through the next five. Large red stripes raised on her skin. I kept going, my muscles shaky, through at least 15 more lashes and four more orgasms. I was lost in the searing pain of my arm, my own slick thighs, and her cries of release and surrender.

“Crimson, Wyeth. Crimson,” Renee’s voice, soft and far away. Her safe word. I dropped the belt. I was dizzy. Then scared. She had only needed it once before. That was a long time ago. I went to her immediately, not sure how long I hadn’t heard. I sank to the floor beside her, pulled her onto my lap.

“It’s okay, Wyeth. I’m okay. Really.” Then she kissed me, with the smallest, sweetest kiss. I knew she was okay. I knew she took much more, so much more from the man she married. Much more than I ever, ever wanted to give. That is why she could never really belong to me. An angry tear made it way out of the corner of my eye. She captured it on her fingertip.

“Don’t be silly, Wyeth,” she whispered, then hotly, directly into my ear, “You know I love you.” She left my room for the crate, where she would spend the next few hours alone, feeling contained and content. Later that night, when the welts subsided and the bruises raised purple, she would send pictures to my phone and goad me, pushing my boundaries further.

“I’m not a sadist,” I explained to Ellen three days later, when she finally agreed to speak to me again. She had stopped by after work. We both sat at the kitchen table, overdressed.

“Honestly, Ellen, I am not going to deliver a BDSM 101 class for you tonight. These are my key messages to you: 1) I am not in a relationship with Renee. 2) I would like to be in a relationship with you 3) I am not dissatisfied with our sex life so far, I mean, well, it’s not a sex life, per se, we’ve had a few dates. We’re just dating.”

Ellen smiled, clearly having regained significant composure since the morning in question.

“So you are not in a relationship with this, this Renee,” She spat the name out as if it tasted bad. “But she comes to your house on weekdays, does your dishes, changes your bed, makes you coffee, kneels at your feet and naps in your dog crate. And you don’t fuck her. But you used to. And you don’t spank her. But you used to.”

“I sense your feminist feathers are ruffled,” I replied.

My jaw tightened at the lie. I wouldn’t be doing any of that to Renee again. I was sure this time.

“You told me you weren’t seeing anybody, not that I asked for exclusivity. I barely know you, well, I know you, but we haven’t . . . been . . . dating . . . very long,” her speech slowed, she lost her place, but just as quickly took the offense again.

“I fucked you the other night,” she said, emphasizing the last syllable. “Where does that fit into your, your lifestyle?”

“I don’t have a lifestyle, Ellen. I have a life. You’re being petulant.”

“Right, I suppose you’re going to spank me now,” she said with great sarcasm, yet still, she blushed.

“As you wish,” I said. And walked to the bedroom for my belt.

She followed. “Oh, no,” she laughed nervously when she saw it in my hands. “Here is what you need to understand, Wyeth: There is not one submissive bone in my body.”

“I like the way you say my name,” I said.

She stepped closer to me. In my sharp intake of breath I tasted my own relief that I am taller. Not much. But enough. She stood on her tiptoes, kissed me lightly. My eyes closed, I felt her hands on mine. She took the belt. I let her. She tossed it on the bed, and began unbuttoning my blouse. I let her. She kissed me harder, and for the first time, I felt her teeth.

Later, alone, I would reflect on this moment as like the moment you realize you have cut yourself, badly. The sharper the knife, the more damage it causes, but the less pain you feel. You are slicing carrots, quickly. The knife misses, and slices the end of your finger almost all the way to the bone. You feel nothing. Your body recoils. It is involuntary. You get dizzy. You see blood. It doesn’t hurt. But you are damaged.

I felt the edge of her teeth, just barely. Then harder. She bit me, and I groaned into her mouth, so grateful for the contact. I realized then I had spent several days frightened of losing her. Her hands were in my hair, stroking harder, then grasping and pulling. I didn’t know what to do with her. The vanilla girls drive me nuts. Girls like Renee, everything is negotiated. Sure, they throw in their drama, build suspense, and occasionally surprise me. But it is always clear how much they want to be pushed. (And if I am honest, they want to be pushed beyond my limits in most cases. I am not a sadist.)

“I am not a sadist,” I spoke into her furiously kissing mouth, “Not that there is anything wrong with that.” She broke the kiss.

“Now is when you tell me some of your best friends are sadists,” she said, looking annoyed but clearly very aroused. She undressed herself as she spoke.

“Well, now that you mention it, Jonathan. . .”

“Oh, shut up, Wyeth,” she said, and man-handled me back to the bed. I felt the belt under my back as she pushed be roughly down, and started tugging at my skirt. She moved back up over me, and pinned my arms back on the bed. I grabbed her wrists.

“Ellen, you might want to stop a moment and consider why you are so aroused.” I waited for a shadow to move across her face, but nothing. She sat up, straddling me. She was panting. Her lips where wet, her teeth gleaming. Her hair hung down, teasing my skin. Her breasts were full, her chest heaving.

“I said shut up, Wyeth,” she said, and I let her pin me down again, and kiss me hard. Just as I was about to say I didn’t appreciate her tone, even in jest, something in me shifted. Maybe it was the feel of her hard nipples on my skin. The heat of her cunt on my thigh. But something in me shifted, and my mouth just . . .opened under hers. It was subtle, a minute change. The air was still. She got up and left me there, cold and naked. I listened, relieved to hear her step into the closet and open the secret drawer. I heard her rummaging, helping herself. She came back with a blindfold in one hand, and a strap-on in the other. She held up the blindfold. I shook my head no.

“I will if you will, Wyeth. Or more importantly, I won’t. I won’t and I never will if you don’t, just this once.”

And that quickly, she was back on top of me. And I let her. I let her blindfold me.

She didn’t have my crop. She didn’t have my paddle. But she didn’t know what the hell she was doing, so I was nervous. No rules. No safe word. No scene. Just me blindfolded, with a pretty girl putting on a strap-on that was several sizes larger than what I usually allowed.

I could imagine her standing at the foot of the bed, but I couldn’t see her. I didn’t like how vulnerable I felt, naked, in the dark, with someone inexperienced and rather agitated. She grabbed my ankles.

“Turn over,” she said gruffly. I complied. I heard the sloppy noises as she fumbled with the bottle of lube. There was a seemingly interminable silence. Then I felt the head of the massive rubber cock press against my ass. She didn’t linger. She pressed forward slowly, painstakingly. In my dizzy swirl of surprise at her boldness, pride in having chosen her, and fear of what was about to happen, my body opened to her.

“Jesus, fuck,” she groaned. “I’ve never . . .” and her voice trailed off as she reached under and gently pushed two fingers in my cunt, pushing against my g-spot. She fell across my back, and began to fuck me in a slow, careful grind. I came almost quietly, a deep, rolling, protracted orgasm. After she withdrew, we were silent. She lay on top of me, breathing hard. She removed my blindfold. Her fingers crawled across the bed and found the belt. I tensed under her. Inexpertly, she doubled it over in her hand. Then she leaned to my ear, and this is what she said:

“I am open to learning new things. I will try almost anything with you, Wyeth. But the crate has to go. And the girl has to go. Are we clear?”

Before I could answer, in one fluid motion she slid off me. Ellen kissed me as our bodies curled together, facing each other. She took my hand, and holding my gaze, placed the belt in it, closing my fingers around it.

“Are we clear?” she repeated. My heartbeat raced as I gripped the belt tightly in my hand once again.

“Yes, ma’am,” I smiled wryly. –end-

Senryu Series: Left for Dead

2011-01-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

my mouth sliced on
the sharp edge of his silence
blood kissed away

the air followed him
from the room, the house, the sky
breaths, echoes, footsteps

his words remind me
that I did all the leaving
that was left to do

once more, down my throat
his reach rips apart, revives
that girl, left for dead

a white chalk outline
a dark stain on pavement
a movie cliche

Poem: wash

2011-01-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

the smoothest
of stones made of
space and of strength,
carved of pain, shaped
by years of neglect,
they respond not
to the high heat of
a lesser molten ore

their brilliance is
drawn slowly, kicked
in the dirt under
boots both
ignorant and blind,
they land safe
one day under
treacherous water
and are washed clean

some age into fragments,
they become more than one,
the sand on the beach
that envelopes the earth
and holds back the tides
and defines the horizon
where everyone comes
to pray at dawn, looking
for hope they can't
feel, underneath
their calloused feet

the smoothest of stones
forgive those who would
pluck them from the beach
pocket them, then forgetting,
leave them alone to navigate
the eternity home
through wood and
iron, vast space,
hot sun, violent storms
and layers and layers
of lost hope

they journey alone
to the rivers, then,
cooled, in comfort or
quiet company, they
make their way
back to the
dangerous
open ocean

Poem: fairytales

2011-01-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

an untalented witch
in a lesser castle
in an urban forest,
I pace wooden floors
gaze into a crystal
cube, edges rounded,
to see from afar, how
you are, where you are,
if you can sleep, if you're
warm enough, if your
heart has stopped aching

these prophecies aren't
magic at all, they are words
from you, poems, pictures and
nighttime calls made with
whispers like incantations
over swirling hot water

were I more than
merely mortal, would
that I could slip into
your room like mist,
and flow around your
heart, fill it, warm it,
heal it, paint it with
the crimson of true love,
a tiny whisper, bold, secret,
then leave, lift, dissipate,
without a trace

you'd never know
I'd been there, you'd
wake up rested, you'd
feel at peace and safe
and warm and strong
and never know I
was even there

instead I type
tiny messages,
and blow kisses
and intentions
into the air
onto the wind
always pleasantly
surprised to
learn of their
safe arrival

when your lips tingle,
that is me imagining
our kiss, practicing
my remedial magic

Poem: violet

2010-12-30T08:55:00.000-08:00

the sky was bruised
on my drive home
deep purple and yellow
I drove away from the sun
due East while behind me
everything grew smaller
every kiss, every touch
every swallowed down
promise

hope hit me hard,
like a rock, like a gun,
like something more violent
than I would ever admit,
with her delicate skin held
by the edge of my teeth,
my breath hot with trust,
the cushion of her silence

due North one morning,
another bleak landscape,
blinding, flat, green, a brave
bird on an alligator's back
all of it so much safer
than it seemed in
the pictures

what was I running from,
my wrists bruised violet
not enough, never enough,
I belonged to him and
still he wouldn't mark me

you will meet a man
he will slit your throat,
this is the narrative
of every lonely girl

blood is red, then it's blue,
it never mixes violet,
it's always old, or it's fresh
and new, it doesn't learn,
it just spills and it pumps,
it gets lost in the depths
of your very own flesh,
then it finds its way home,
and starts
all over
again

Poem: Corners

2010-12-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

painted in a corner
the floor so shiny red
brushstrokes sweep
the blood into magical
swirls, a fancy paisley
of everything I
did wrong

I cut myself on that
one, running to hide
in the confessional
poem, or fleeing it
instead for less
obvious metaphors

I sleep in a shirt
that was a feast
for the moths, long,
long ago, I have kept it,
the bite marks made
a lace more fine, a
filigree of shame,
delicate, beautiful,
like me, you see,
look too closely and
I am monstrous,
broken, generous,
too rough

but, still, listen, I
need to tell you
something:
I found that
piece of paper,
I remembered that
7-note melody, I
washed my mouth out
with the taste of
other people whose
names you don't
even know

and I am turning
another corner
looking for darkness
to shut down these
wide open pupils
like a chemical
vasoconstrictor
instant, jarring
and full of
nasty side effects

Love is a Bird of Prey #gogyohka series

2010-12-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

when the snake of my spine
closed both eyes in slumber
my keeper, in malice
unlocked my left rib cage
let love out, to plunder

love is a bird of prey
set loose over the ruins
of the city I was
peace flees like rats, frantic
for cover of darkness

love has mouths it must feed
returns to the nest full
of loud blind open beaks
fledgling and flightless
screaming to be filled

love is feathered and free
powerful, synchronous
it casts monstrous shadows
giving birth to great myths
of death and creation

to make love you will need
divinity, feathers
an eye for the details
a taste for what scares you
a vast ocean of loss

#ears #twitterotica #flashfuck #100 words

2010-12-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

(yeah, the prompt hashtag was #ears . . . well, I tried . . . )

"I can't come like that," I whispered my apology as her mouth opened over me.

She paused only seconds, "Of course you can," she assured me. "I remember everything."

How could she remember twenty years ago, we were so young, so stupid. But she knew then as she knew now exactly how to break my will.

"I won't," I said, then "don't . . . " a feeble, hoarse denial as she entered me, first gently, then more determinedly.

The decades evaporated as she fucked me, my orgasms crushing, flooding, cascading as they always had . . . then reaching a sudden stop, then beginning again, as her false whispers of devotion burned into my vulnerable #ears.

-end-

dream me

2010-12-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

dream me
inside you
stretching
the confines
of everything
you think you
can feel

wake to find
me beside you
my teeth on
your skin
sharp desire,
my soft lips
gently soothing
my mistakes

hand closed
twisting, pushing
all of me into
all of you,
underneath
your history
my fear
swallowed,
giving way to
my need to
be held,
your need to
be taken,
your will
is safe
with me

take as
collateral
my honor
at being
permitted

release me
open to me
everything
you keep
hidden,
I want it,
I want you
crushing me,
collapsing all
around me

give in to me,
completely,
and in the wake
of crashing bodies,
I will allow.
I will allow you
to take everything,
leave me empty,
annihilate me,
pick up the pieces,
start all over again

trust me with
the tiny flailing
bird that is your
soul, the growing
ball of muscle,
your new heart,
I will make
you scream,
I will break you
down, I will
worship you
like sixty-three
mysterious suns,
ever unfolding,
and I will never
harm you

dream me
inside you

Heart-Shaped Box

2010-12-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

for my daughters

when I was born
my heart was soft
like every baby's heart

then I grew up
like every baby does
and my heart hardened
into something less
than a human heart

it was more like
a heart-shaped box
with a metal clasp,
and it was stuck,
closed

then you were born,
my children, my daughters,
first one, perfect, strong,
beautiful and golden,
then another, perfect,
soft and brilliantly blue

I watched as the sun
changed from something
that shines down on anyone
from an open, empty sky

into something that
shines just for me
from inside your eyes

the brush of your lips
in a kiss against my face,
the touch of your fingertips
as your hand seeks to hold
mine, the sound of your
breathing when you
sleep safe beside me

these beautiful things
have broken my heart-
shaped box, and taken
all of me apart, nothing
is left of the woman I was but
tiny fragments on the ground

you planted these carefully
in the earth, and I grew back
differently, so I can be
the towering tree that
stands only to protect
you

I let in light, and just
enough rain, over branches,
rolling off leaves like tiny
jewels, all the things
that you will learn to
keep your heart a heart,
soft enough to love,
strong enough to live
inside your delicate
rib cages, like beautiful
birds, feathered with
hope and love and
happiness, all
the things a mother
wants for her
treasured daughters

Easter Wednesday

2010-12-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

"No one will ever know how to push your buttons like I do because I installed most of them myself."
- Serik Amaterasu

"I'm painting, I'm painting again."
- David Byrne, Talking Heads, Artists Only

I have been in
secret mourning,
black silk hidden
under everything,
black leather coat
draped over everything,
avoiding mirrors as if
they have been covered,
seating myself
almost imperceptibly
lower.

Oh but I am
faithless and gentile,
I will not leave home,
without my face painted,
my armor polished,
my lips coolly aflame.

Would I be so devilish
as to drain your
blood and stuff you,
mount you on the wall,
next to an 8X10 framed
sepia photograph:
me with my foot
jauntily atop
your felled
carcass.

You are dead inside
without me, this
is what you say,
in the vacant
stares between
your words,
the ones that
pierce, and the
ones that numb,
the order so
perversely
reversed.

I lied about
my infinite love.
I ran out of
blue blood
with which to
fill you, clean.

I lied about
one or two
other things
that you would
casually brush off.
"That's nothing"
you would say,
and you would
mean compared
to everything you
ever said, and
sadly, you'd
be right.

I told you I am flailing.
What I meant to say is,
I am fucking. We've
been precisely here
one time before.
The insignificance of
someone else's
flesh under mine
doesn't even
make you
angry.

I told you I am flailing.
What I meant to say is
I have given up our ghosts,
I have been seen, I have
been held, and one day
I might let myself belong
again, impossible now,
improbable when I am
but an empty cavern,
pirates drawn to the light
of so much
glimmering
fools' gold.

Long ago, before
we ever met, in
my most secret
of histories, I was
a painter.

I have allowed so much,
I have offered up the
parts of myself it took
you years to earn. I found
such treasures treated
better by strangers.

What is inside of me,
under black silk, beneath
my black heart, blood
diamonds earned
under the immense
pressure of the very
air everyone else
so easily breathes.

My marrow is deep
purple. My lungs
are bird's egg blue,
my eyes still sad and
green as when I saw
right through you.
I am a wild beast,
a cubist, a surrealist,
a fauve. I stand on the
brink of renaissance.

I'm painting again.

Armature

2010-12-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

"Let the wild rumpus start"
-- Maurice Sendak,
Where the Wild Things Are

1.
A careless word,
the slight touch
of a stranger,
just enough
to let slip the
savages for the
mayhem of broken
glass and shredded
skin, yes, let it,
let it all begin again.

2.
Your stare moved
through me, rough,
brutal, righteous,
The Crusades.
Your absence
fell upon me
and the Huns
ransacked to
their greedy
hearts' content.

3.
It grew, sneaky
like a cancer, but
when it hit my heart
it spread like upper
G.I. die, waiting to
be seen, cells line
up, whispering your
name, an army of
platelets squeeze
through miniscule
capillaries to catch
some glimpse of
this, this, this . . . you.

4.
Sleep. I find I'm
better dead with my
head beaten, caved
in, bloody, bloody
red, and cracked,
collapsed, spent,
raw, natural.

5.
First we are idolized.
Next, we are scrutinized.
Finally, we are pulverized.

6.
Beside me, on
the floor fall
my sketches
of her hands,
his face, a nightmare
landscape rendered
in eerie accuracy
by the charcoal,
a tiny child
smudged into
nothing.
That one's me.

7.
Elizabeth, her
name could be,
now, which
one is she?
The space is
warm and dimly lit,
narrow, wet,
burgundy, like
the famous, famous
wine that fell the dove.

8.
Her thought was
incoherent, incomplete
and by daylight
it had gone, replaced
by images that right
the wrong those words
were doomed to
catalyze, fate,
falsehood.

9.
By noon my
face repainted,
the smoke drifting,
an SOS, the throbbing
artificial heat inside
her room. It is all
so painless now,
even the infant's
blood-shriek cry, her
eventual demise
to demon sleep.

10.
In silence we lay up
like sacrificial lambs

11.
Admitting the gods,
lunchtime in
The School of Athens.
I say, not flesh enough
at either jaw, not
length enough from palm
to fingertip.

12.
Still I speak in my vibrato
of ordinary things, to cover
hide the child's heart
I hide inside my blood
red coat. You notice all
when I am bleeding,
the hat, the coat,
the boots. This is why
I wound myself at morning.

13.
I was a painter then.
My eye pulled out
the purple from the
pigeon, without
disturbing her pulse.
I matched the paint,
applied it to my wound.
Nothing remains
but underdrawings.

14.
The plumage is all pink,
all purple. Red and blue
don't stand a chance.
I offer a red feather.
I offer a blue band.

15.
Inside my eyelids I have
scars of seeing love unfold.
My lips bruise in
anticipation, my
one hand holds the other.
These eyes bleed,
heal, then bleed again,
then heal again. They
scar upon the scars.

Three Voices

2010-12-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

1.
my ear lifts, opens like a
petal to the sun at the
soothing sound of her voice,
the sinous s, the whisper,
the telltale compression of
a broad, irrepressible smile
meant for me, aimed at me,
smiled for me, in all my
innocence, I listen, soak
it in

2.
a fragile bloom, torn, crushed
under the boot of anger, left
to decompose, my death nourishes
the earth so that the children
seeded with such intent might
grow strong, bend while still
green, never break when they
are wooden, fully formed,
I give myself to the dirt
for them

3.
he played music and the
flowers unfurled, swayed
in the wind, shuddered against
the assaulting waves; it was
the silence in between that
weakened the fleshy petals,
nothing left now but two
dried blue roses he put away
in a book, and then ignored

Crush

2010-12-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

I am a stranger now
to my own warm bed,
I returned from the snow,
something missing, maybe it
was my fingertips lost to the
miniature pond-top ice floe
I just had to touch, maybe
it is the shape of my hand
forever changed, having been
lost inside you, my balance
with it, forever gone, weak-kneed
now, at the faintest whisper
of my name across your lips,
those lips, crushed under mine,
tiny blood vessels, burst, crunch,
surrender, offering me your blood,
behind the curtain of your skin,
a theatrical display of how close
I can get, and still not be in.
I pulled your hair hard, no
marionette string, no, I in service
of you, the rope of the mission bell
calling all followers to worship,
not alone on my knees, just not
quite used to it, or you. More skin
cells left behind, I am exfoliated,
eviscerated, excommunicated,
explained away, the sum of my
irresistible charms, I am indeed
a calculus to be trifled with,
yours to enjoy, at odd turns
speechless. I lost my faith
before you knew me to a silver
tongued lucifer bearing flames
of blue, I died wanting that
dark rose to be true, and I
wandered in a pornographic
purgatory I painted myself, out
of flesh and blood, and tears and
cum, ashes of his promises.
And after the feast of gratitude,
I made my own hejira, ice cold,
wanton, terrified that I was wrong,
I'm wrong. I'm always wrong.
What's wrong? It's one of a
thousand questions you will ask,
and I will answer, each time trying
harder to approximate the truth
that you expect, as if I knew it or
ever even heard such language
spoken. Taken once by you, I
left behind an oracle of doom who
once answered to my name;
a shed snake skin, crisp, sinister;
a bag of gold in a long-dead currency; some
broken idea of who I ought to be.
I still feel as if I need these things to live. Please help me find and gather them again, or teach me otherwise

The Bridge

2010-12-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

" . . . a void is not needed to define the space . . ."
- Hope Nicholls, Fetchin' Bones

dead leaves late in the ending year
beneath my feet like corpses
ice breaks, slides, snaps as I
make my way across the bridge,
I worry you are watching,
I plan my retreat, through black
woods on a cold night, a light
without a source marking my trail

I'm guided through, I'm drawn by
images of you, a mouth, an eye,
a graceful hand, four eloquent
fingers, a band of steel on a
porcelain thumb, sweet, poised,
immaculate and gentle, like
the hand of god, once held,
a gesture irrevocable

I look inside my own black eyes
and find an evil lurking, looking back,
the voice of my father, some words
inside his broken child. Stage
whispers, heartfelt lies, we reassure
ourselves as infants when
our skin is thin like paper
over veins, no muscle,
no integrity

Somewhere, I know
all the suffering grows thick,
like the bark on the trees that
live so long, but so singular,
grouped in forests, never touching,
anchored, but unyielding
tall and solemn
wise
and centuries past caring

I forfeit wisdom just to touch
a hand so perfect, still so young,
so pure, so light, just tissue
over muscle, barely thickening

Ripping into tissue, I
turned muscle into stone,
beneath white fibered
delicacy there is a silent
source of heat and strength,
I see then the light has source,
the glow in the forest,
I follow snakes of cables.
I find you there.
I say things.
I make mistakes.
I take my leave.
And it's your luminescence
that surrounds me and
sees me safely home

There is hole beneath my ribs
the size of an average human heart

I bleed and you restrict the flow,
replenish me, remind me. You reject me,
make me wait, you take me, lie beside me,
you recoil, retreat, return, you call me out
even as I exorcise you, arms
around you, hand inside you, I
am swallowed, as if by leukocyte,
you are stronger, I am gone,
I am lost, and I am damned

I wake in terror, purgatory,
cast out. I am holding in
my fingers, your slowly
beating heart. I have taken
it from you, and you have
let me. Your blood, it warms
me. Your blood, it feeds me.
I lick the muscle like a predator,
I need, I feed, and then I lay
my killing hands to rest, like
words revoked, uncertain.

I search for you with sorry eyes,
I find you fine, recalibrated.
"It's okay," you whisper softly,
"I have others hidden all around
the world. I never go without."

You are safe and I am sated.
I lick my crusty lips, relieved.
I go to sleep lonely.
I wake up hungry.
I am afraid of everything.

I should never say a word.
I sit still as an apology.
I am silent.
I am wrong.

The Annunciation

2010-12-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

First all of them were red,
the images, until the goddess
stepped in human form and
then they changed, texts
and tapestries exchanged
for human talk, mortal
convictions, sharing wine
and breaking bread with
a new and soft messiah.

There is no task so
infinite, impossible:
to find the mother
of man's earth in
every woman's eye.

There are few who understand
the purity inside the tainted soul:
the immaculate conception,
the hidden sin and soul of god.

It's only nature.

Now the images are blue,
new, soothing, an alternate robe
for an oil paint Madonna
and a confirmation of my base-
level humanity: I am
common, I am wrong.

It is my nature.

A misplaced kiss lands
awkwardly on your
holy, holy throat and
I awaken, awaiting,
at my window,
the flight of malice
from my vision.

Canonization

2010-12-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

I see a ring of light above
your head, and there are
soft pink radiations of warmth
all along your left side,
a photographic sunset
over sand dunes, still
heated from the day.
You sleep, and I watch you.
Then, safely nestled
at your breast, I watch
the rise and fall, soft
and white, in rhythm
with your satisfied sleep.

The city is not Assisi,
nor the saint Saint Francis.
Joan of Arc was burned at
the stake for having visions.
Your only fault is
you aren't mine.

unwritten poem

2010-12-04T05:00:00.001-08:00

the space between us
an unwritten poem
each touch a word
carefully chosen
placed with intent
each hesitation
a syllable counted
deemed in excess
reluctantly redacted
breathed back, kissed
reworded, tried again
more subtly, sneaking
up on gentle reader
with secrets, surprises
touches, questions
fingertips and open palms

Broken Shells

2010-11-29T16:51:00.000-08:00

Tendons bend, a mussel from
a shell, pulled taut, separated,
broken from a rocky womb,
shattered under strong fingers,
struggling and precarious,
a stranger to the openness,
the very air a danger.

Then I'm the sand made
by a million broken shells
grinding together in
cacophonous accord,
as if they had a choice,
and everything is sticky,
vast, endless,
like sex, or truth.

Then I'm something else
altogether. I'm warm
inside her throat, safe,
swallowed.

Kept, down I move, she
holds a place for me not in,
but just beside her heart, where
softness can, for once,
protect me. Without confines,
I float free of the broken,
rigid remnants
I abandoned.

There is nothing in me perfect,
round and hard as a cultured pearl.
I took away the calcified steel girder
his love grew. I burned some
nerves down to the quick. I took
back a sinuous spine, pliant and alive.

I grew myself new supple bones,
and moving I begin to feel, squirm,
enjoy my independence, swimming
free, a severed cord, bleeding
out all four chambers with a
reckless strength, with wild abandon
sure to end in pieces. Chum. Look at
all this risk, an infinite, unpredictable
sea, black and blue, tender, roiling,
deadly, so alive, liquid
inevitability.

The trying is what matters.
The trying, the time we spend,
the words we say, the
mouths we kiss, the marks we make,
we float forever in the fluid
of our intentions, we drown in
oceans of effort, but not before
floating lazily under a
great big burning sun.

She holds me close. We breathe
in alternation.She is water, I am sky.
(All the earthly cliches apply) We meet
at dark in the silent night of the horizon
line, we rest, we overlap, and then
we roll, then come to rest again,
lightening into new dawn, with colors
our eyes have never seen and peace
my heart has never felt, sense memory
now of passion I thought was dead,
the excavation proved me wrong
(how I love to be wrong) and proved
her right to lie beside me, sleeping
in the dark, under my eyes, a car
drives by, its headlights brush across
her closed face, like a lighthouse
beam across the midnight tide,
she does not wake, she only breathes,
and moves her body closer to me,
broken shells, smooth, come to rest,
all softness, water, sand.

The Harpy’s Leash

2010-11-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

"The car is here, Renee" I say, picking up the leash on my way to the door. The metal makes a soft click around the d-ring of your collar. You suppress a slight gasp, press your lips together, dark lipstick smoothing like velvet.

You keep perfect pace behind me, the slack of the leash a consistent curve. Jacob opens the suicide doors of the vintage limo, and with a gentle, practiced turn of my wrist, I guide you in first, the links of the chain jingling musically.

"I do this for you, Renee. You know I hate this place. It's filthy." My jaw tenses, signaling just enough anger rising to get me through the next few hours.

"Yes, ma'am," you answer obediently. "Thank you."

"You will come for me, when I tell you to, Renee. You will come for and about me, Renee, not because of some stupid idiot standing there watching."

"Yes, ma'am," a whisper, a lie I don't know why I tolerate.

Jacob walks us to the door. We're a side show, the three of us. He is a towering black wall of muscle. I stand to his shoulder, my black leather trench coat and boots a stark contrast to my pale hair, porcelain skin, refined and faintly lined. A tiny Chanel clutch signifies my rank both in this trio, and the larger group. In my other hand, the fine platinum chain curves in a cold valley leading to your throat.

And you, well, Renee, you are the piece de resistance after all. A blood-red corset, little else. Your exquisite face is a Modigliani oval. Your perfect, youthful skin is exposed to the air and the cold and the wet, hungry gazes of leather-clad poseurs queued at the door as if it were a depression-era breadline. Jacob speaks the silent language of consumer mercenaries. The bouncer steps around his podium. The sea of horny club kids parts. I raise my wrist in a study of haughtiness, and you and I walk in. Phone in hand, Jacob waves tightly, nods his commitment to stay near, car ready.

Inside, the music and the air and the people are equally repulsive to me. I watch your skin. That pleases me. It telegraphs your arousal, shivers in waves, blushing around your curves. I find my place along the wall, and lean. You kneel at my feet, a perfect nadu, eyes downcast, but watching the crowd peripherally. It's not a sex club. Where would be the sport in that? Most of these idiots have never seen someone leashed in public. I like them stunned that way. It makes my job easier. I've had more than one self-appointed, sloppily anointed Dom removed by security for challenging me. I prefer the big dumb ones and the wide-eyed innocents. The voyeurs. Submissive boys. Virgin tops. The undiscovered. Fresh meat. New talent.

From my bag, I remove a tube of lipstick and a small mirror. I touch up. I then deftly switch tubes to a smaller one. The heaven that hides in that fine white powder assaults my soft septum with ecstatic agony. Oh yeah. Let's go. My fingers are dusted lightly with excess. I drop my hand, and you lick them clean, growling somewhere deep in your throat. If you ask for more later, when we are alone again, I will deny you. Your health is my responsibility. Eventually I will lose you to someone who doesn’t honor the line between hurt and harm. This I know, but I never met a risk that didn’t ignite my desire. It’s what I do.

There is a tall man at 2:00. Older than me, awkward in his expensive suit, out of place, in fact, out of town. Young, dumb girls in rubber skirts are eyeing him up, more for the Cartier on his wrist than the cock in his trousers. Cartier. Effete. Overconfident. But he’s clean. I bore a hole through him with my expert gaze. He touches his face like a schoolgirl, pretending he doesn’t notice. I laugh. He actually thinks I will look away. I don’t. This nonsense goes on a few more minutes until he surrenders and walks over. When he rounds the bar, he sees you at my feet. A small amount of scotch tips from the highball, no longer neat.

“I’m really good at this, let me guess,” I interrupt him as he starts to say hello. “Connecticut. Sexless marriage. Daughter in college.”

“Widower,” he lies. “Son at Rutgers. And yes, Connecticut,” he lies. I’m sure I’m right.

“Stand, Renee,” I say wearily. Underneath my anger, a bitter wave of love rolls through me. I sniff. I maintain my composure. I forgot the please, so I lavish the thank you. “Thank you, my beautiful pet,” I say gently. And I mean it. You are so beautiful. It hurts me to look at you. This is the worst part. The fucking small talk. The man pretends to be interested in anything but seeing what I am going to do to you. I tune him out a little. Within the hour he’ll be dribbling cum on last season’s Armani rack. I am scanning for bachelor number two.

When I find him, I warm. He is perfect. Fucking perfect. Soft, authentic levis. He dresses left, high, he’s half hard and he is staring at you, jaw half agape, too. His white T-shirt is real. His jaw is a perfect square, clean shaven, hair damp from a recent shower, not sweat. And he’s young. Twenty-two if he’s a day. He’s never seen a girl like you, Renee. I leave you with Sir Cartier and walk across to him, all confidence. I stand too close.

“This is where I clumsily ask if you’re a real cowboy,” I say, my false humility not lost on him. There is intelligence in his gray eyes.

“Then this is where I say, no ma’am, I’m just a curious college boy,” his voice is warm honey. I lea in close, rest my fingertips on his chest. My whisper is husky.

“Renee belongs to me. You will not be allowed to touch her. But I will let you watch. I won’t ask twice.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, as if he were auditioning for Oklahoma!

The men eye each other warily in the back of the car. The inside of my nose tingles hungrily, but I have to pace myself. My cunt is dry, but my clit is achingly hard.

There is nothing in the Ritz Tower suite by which I can be identified. Even the penthouse deed is under a stripped holding company. Everything is decorator generic. Lots of black leather and weathered white wood. The centerpiece is a platform bed, next to it, an upholstered bench, restored from a Catholic funeral home. There is a nice, padded level for your knees. I want you to be comfortable.

Jacob opens all the locks and leads the men in, I follow. You have become impatient for the promised impact, so you move slowly, causing me to tug gently. The irony of who leads whom is never, never lost on me. I jerk the chain regrettably hard, but you don’t mind. You settle back at my feet. I drop to one knee and kiss your mouth more gently than I would like in front of an audience. Jacob is making the men drinks, and settling them into the two Eames chairs selected for form over function. Cartier takes his jacket off, folds it foppishly over the back. Cowboy spreads his legs wide, the outline of his half-hard cock clearly visible. I break the kiss, and I hate you for about half a second because I think you see the need in my eye. I lick the blow from my finger like powdered sugar, kiss you again, and wait for the surge in my brain cells. It is like beautiful math, all colors and numbers. My lungs fill with some fantasy version of air, and I am overwhelmed by my own competence.

I stand and look at you: Palms up, knees apart, perfect symmetry. I walk over to Cowboy, lean and whisper so Cartier can’t hear. “I can teach you to kneel like that for me, boy. You will never know release like the release that follows kneeling for me.” His cock twitches. He wants. My brain flashes pictures of me licking coke off the head of his cock, then letting him fuck me until I am bruised against the floor. You are not in the dream, Renee.

“These are the rules, gentlemen,” I explain, like an over-polite 1950s hostess. “Keep your seats. Do not speak except to say the word ‘Please.’ You may not take your cock out of your pants or touch it in any way without my explicit permission. You may not address Renee. You may not touch either of us. Stay. In. Your. Seats. If not, Jacob will escort you back to the street level.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” chortles Jacob. Jacob doesn’t get hard watching us. Jacob takes high blood pressure meds. I can’t speak for what goes on his head, but his body is loyal to me.

These are my lies of omission, Renee: I just want to take you home with me, and make love to you gently on my overpriced featherbed, and wake to some toast and a nice egg-white omelet and have you love me back for who I was before I became this harpy. And I want to love you for who I pretend you are, not the strung out whore you are trying so hard to be. I love you. You don’t exist.

The belt of my trench coat is soft, buttery leather. A perfect lash.

You stand, and strip slowly, no rhythm, Rachmaninoff muffled through ceiling speakers. You look at me with desire, worship, confusion, acceptance, gratitude. “I love you,” you mouth silently as if no one will know. You bend over the bench where thousands of rosaries have been said over thousands of corpses. The first strokes are soft, loving, honest. You hear me sniff surreptitiously, and your legs open in anticipation of more force. I see your cunt glistening. First I am harsh. Soon I am brutal. You cry out. Your skin begins to raise for me in thick red stripes. Your voice deepens, begins breaking.

“Please,” says Cowboy. My laugh is a little mean, but I let him. I look over my shoulder to see his cock, and it is as pretty as I imagined, perfect, pink, uniform, and he comes in thick, white ropes all over his jeans. Cartier just sits there, transfixed. He is licking his rapidly chapping lips. His tiny boner pokes his trousers up ever so slightly.

I drop my hand, and kneel behind you. I am overwhelmed with everything I want to do to you. I bite your ass. Hard. You cry out. The coke is steamrolling through my brain and I want to tear you apart. I want to fuck you. I want to kiss you. I want to kill you. I open you gently with my tongue. My soft precision is your greatest torture. You moan and shake. I know just how close to get you so that the next lashes with my belt will make you come. Your cunt opens to me, begging to be fucked, filled. Not tonight.

I step back, and bring the belt down hard enough to surprise everyone. You are silent.

“Hey, wait as minute now,” Cartier dares to speak and actually stand. I am not pleased, and my eyes speak to Jacob.

“Shut up you stupid fucking idiot,” you spit at him, all venom and bile. “She knows what she is doing.”

Over my shoulder I see, despite his crisis of conscience, that Master Cartier came in his pants. Jacob escorts both men out, and waits outside.

You catch my eye, and the quiver in your lip I know means please don’t stop. I stroke the last raised welt, skin broken, with my fingertips. I bend and kiss gently. “You may come now,” I say. I stand and resume, just hard enough, right up against that limit – my limit -- until you come in violent, shuddering cascades. I sink my fingers into your open cunt to feel you contract around me. I sink to the floor, and you twist, wrapping yourself around me, holding to me as if I were the mast of a ship in some stormy nightmare.

Then you kiss my face gently. You tell me you love me. I reach into my bra looking for the vial. “No,” you say. “No more tonight, baby. I can feel you coming down. Come down with me. I’ve got you.” I think it can’t be possible, but I don’t know how much time has gone by. “Stay with me,” you whisper, rocking against me gently, as if were, indeed, your baby.

I reach again, and take the vial out. I clench my jaw. “Genuflect,” you say, your voice firm. I stare. It is your safe word. But we are done. You take the vial from me and I let you. You extricate yourself from our tangled limbs and walk away. I hear the water. I hear you washing it all away. You return, and fold yourself back into me so you are taller, and it is my head on your shoulder.

“I’ll just buy more,” I whisper petulantly, suddenly so tired.

“You won’t,” you say firmly, and your kiss is excruciating and gentle and open. “You can’t have everything. You can’t have that and have me.” I hear the click of leash on d-ring, and feel your hand place the other end of the leash in mine.

You are teaching me new truths, the perfect gift for the woman who has, heretofore, had everything.

-end-

Quills and Quivers

2010-11-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

Otherworldly and at a distance,
I saw her and she didn't see me.
There were 13 arrows in my
archer's quiver. The first one
was meant to distract,
the second to stun, the third
to take her as my own.
They flew straight through,
she is smoke, she is fog,
I woke with ten points barbed
into my back, and some
pieces of me missing.

I learned to breathe
in opaque air. I decided
to write her a letter.
There were 13 quills in
my writer's desk. The
first letter was dry
brush and striking flint.
The second hearts and
roses. The third was
lawyerly and vain.
All three came back to
me unopened.

Upon closer inspection
I could see, she'd steamed
them open, yes, indeed,
she'd read the words,
then covered her tracks.

I slid out the pages
for a smirky reread
and found she'd red-lined
all my errors, and made a
few suggestions. When
she was finished showing
me how everything I said
was not quite right, she
signed it with a big red XO.

The quiver of my heart
overwrote the hissing
sound escaping
my punctured ego.

If she were a small mammal,
she would be a porcupine.
And I, yes, regal, feline,
am a stupid, wounded, quivering,
rather hungry mountain lion,
felled by strategically placed quills.

She can't be held,
she is water, she is air.
Learn to swim, learn
to fly. Whatever
shimmering fish am I,
may I end up gutted if
her hands should brush
across my heart as they
go about their sloppy
work. And what of flight?

I stand and preen now,
a metallic blue peacock,
throat quivering, quills
on display. My flight skills
remain my secret.

5,000 Days

2010-11-13T18:47:00.000-08:00

"Love is my religion - I could die for it."
-- John Keats

"Oh, oh then suddenly you know
You're never going home . . .
You're not Ulysses."
- Franz Ferdinand, Ulysses

I ate dinner alone
in the shadow of
the flowers given to you
by another woman, they
are lilies, deep red, florid,
they are tired, past their
prime, echoes of their
youthful beauty vibrating
the petals, blurring lines

these words come to me
as if they have always been
there, but I stop and I count,
as is my way, and what I know
is this: I haven't written for you
in at least 5,000 days

the tiny room in my heart,
with its galvanized steel walls,
the one that holds words for
you, it holds only a few, and they
are angry words, bitter words,
words I keep swallowed,
though it hurts me, it protects
you from knowing the deepest
truths about all the lies we have
both so silkily told to
one another

after my rebirth, my heart
grew huge as an antebellum
mansion, full of rooms bursting
with words forced form
me, comedies and tragedies,
love stories and farces,
pornography and fairy tales,
hundreds of thousands
of words, words for
anybody I so much as touched,
words for everyone else but you

You wait for me to die again,
the long, slow numb, the
artless rot, the bitter,
contrived poisoning,
your single malt, your cabernet,
whatever it takes to dull the
curves of your pickled brain,
to reveal you stupid, to
reveal you mean, to peel
back your curtain, I know,
I have seen. I was scared.

All those years I journeyed,
I fought the wars of
Wall Street kings, I came
back with sacks of gold,
and broken bones, and
a mysterious disease,
that let me imagine you,
from far off places, home
and waiting for me, you
were someone entirely
different than the woman
I made up inside my head.

Oh, how she loved me.
More than the gold.
More than the weakness
of broken bones.

The first betrayal was
only a dream. I spoke
to her by telephone,
and woke up with
one of her long, blond
hairs inside my mouth.

It was ten years before
she came back to me,
demanding. It was her
touch that reminded me.
how to feed like an animal,
what is is to be
a human being

And after her retreat,
I let him. I let him
tear me limb from limb,
I'd rather martyr myself
to passion than sit near
you, while you pretend
to thaw.

You are at her house tonight,
and I know that the way you
look at her is not the way she looks
at you, but this is my fantasy

she has one hand, with propriety,
around her husband's soft shoulder,
the other on her child; you look
at the paint beneath her
fingernails and you see
everything you lack,
life, heart, lust, vision,
what you took from me
that I took back

the deep, deep burgundy
of the fleshy petal I now see,
heart tissue, toxic liver,
severed tongue, remnants
of some mortal coil, not
my own, I look to the stars,
I can't read a compass, I
pray for your safe return
tonight, the spoils
of some combat, that
will finally set me free

The First Lesson - Erotica

2010-11-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

You look a bit nervous, but your husband, he looks terrified. Hardly a word is exchanged as we gather and cross the front foyer. In moments, my husband has left with all three children – two mine, one yours, one big double stroller, a scooter, a picnic lunch, all the gear he needs to be at the park around the corner for three hours. He will wait for my call.

I look at Paul. Pale grey Bermuda shorts, orange polo.

“I’m going to need you to shave,” I say. He looks horrified. “Your face, Paul. Go take a shower and shave your face.”

“But I did that this morning,” he whines. “That was at least three hours ago. Paul, the agreement today is you will do exactly what I say. Let’s start again. Go take another shower. And shave your face again. And Paul, wash everything. I mean everything. Go deep. You will thank me.”

He turns, a bit angry, but soon the shower is running.

“How are you today, beautiful?” I ask, and your shoulders relax and you move my way, your open arms a question. I pull you to me, so soft, and hold you. I kiss the top of your head. I can feel your breathing quickening against my breast. I bend to kiss you, then send you after Paul. “I want you both in bathrobes,” I call after you.

I hear faint murmuring from the bathroom, but your voices don’t get louder. He asked for this, asked for my help. He knows he will lose you if he can’t get past his inhibitions. I hear the door between bedroom and bathroom open as I let myself into the bedroom. As requested, you have placed a large leather wingchair from the living room at the foot of the bed. I take my seat. You stand there like teenagers, both of you. Paul is blushing.

“Take the robe off, Paul.” I say quietly.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” he says.

“Now.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Kimberly, bring me the robe.” Paul shrugs out of it, and immediately he is half hard. I inspect his cock out of the corner of my eye. Not terrible. It might finish out at just under seven inches, we will see. Nothing to write home about, but not bad. You step to me holding the robe up. I remove the belt from the robe and instruct you to tie his wrists behind his back with it.

As you do, I address your naked, half-heard husband:

“Paul, I am going to review the rules with you again: 1) You do not touch your cock unless I say you can touch your cock 2) You do not touch Kimberly unless I say you can touch Kimberly, and then only in the specific was I say – the same goes for me (by the way, don’t get excited, that is unlikely to happen 3) You may not have an orgasm without asking my explicit permission.”

You both have a safe word. You won’t use it. I am not here to hurt you. I am here to teach Paul how to give you pleasure. This husband of yours is a piece of work, so oppressed by his own religion that he thinks he is too good to put his mouth on your cunt or bear any responsibility whatsoever for your orgasm. He conveniently loses his religion when he’s shoving his cock down your throat. Today will be a sort of catechism of the cunt, though I promised you I wouldn’t disrespect his beliefs in the process.

I instruct Paul to lean against the wall, with his hands tied behind his back. I lift my feet up on the foot of the bed, and lean back on my chair, my dress falling open. I instruct you to lay on the bed, robe open, knees up. Paul has a perfect view of your cunt, you have a perfect view of mine. My hand strays down, and parts my lips. I am wet, always ready. You gasp. Your eyes are pleading.

“Kimberly, you may touch yourself now, very lightly, only on the outside, only your clit, very, very lightly, with your fingers. Show Paul how you do it after he falls asleep.” Paul’s jaws drops at your obedience. Your eyes are still riveted on me. I stop touching myself, you keep moving, immediately your circles are tight and hard, racing to the first finish line.

“Stop, Kimberly.” A half sob escapes. I turn to Paul, his cock is high, hard, twitching already. “Hands and knees, robe off.” You comply, and both Paul and I are rewarded with a clear view of your glistening pussy. You are already rocking, but what lesson will Paul learn, or you, for that matter, if I let you have that first, fast orgasm right away? I sit on the bed behind you, and I look. I open your legs, and act as if giving Paul a guided tour.

“This is your wife’s cunt, Paul.”

“I know that,” he snarls.

“Do not speak, Paul, or I will get the ball gag.”

I push two fingers roughly inside you. You groan in pleasure and hunger and push back against me for more. “That’s two fingers in your wife’s cunt, Paul. She can take more. Your cock is roughly equivalent to three of my fingers, hmmm, I imagine she can take much more. Let’s see.”

I go to my bag and remove a large black dildo, with a handle on the end. I take it over to Paul, and hold it up beside his erection. “Let’s see, this one is a couple of inches longer than you but about the same thickness.” His cheeks flush again, part shame, part lust, mostly confusion. A ripple of tenderness moves over the surface of my skin. I circle my fingers gently around his cock, and hold very still. I kiss his lips softly, and whisper, “Keep trusting me, Paul. I promise you will feel really, really good when we’re all done.”

I take the rubber cock back over to the bed with me. “Please, kiss me,” you plead. I allow you to lift to your knees, and clasp your hands around my neck. In this position, you are momentarily taller. I open my mouth to you, and pull your tongue inside. I hear Paul make a low, guttural noise.

I press you back on all fours, and move behind you.

“This is lube, Paul,” I demonstrate. “I will leave this for you. People have different preferences; I prefer mine to be light, with no taste, odor, or potential allergens. I am fond of this brand.”

“Why do we need that? Paul asks sincerely. “She is always wet for me.”

“Indeed, Paul,” I reply. “But this is bigger than you are, and it’s going several places this afternoon, so a little help is . . . well, helpful sometimes.”

I press the dildo against your cunt, and he is right, as I know first-hand. You are very, very wet. You lean back onto it, groaning. I hold the handle with my hand, and slowly grind into you. You are doing most of the work already, rocking back against me. Paul is mesmerized. He is pulling against the terrycloth restraints. I can tell he is thinking this is nothing he can’t do.

I move my other hand over your clit, placing two fingers over you, and pressing. My motion is hard and fast, and you begin bucking against the dildo even harder. Paul looks puzzled. He has seen enough porn to understand the anatomy of what is going on. He just can’t seem to integrate that image with you. “When you fuck your wife, Paul, one of the simplest things you can do is touch her clit with your fingers. Most boys learn this in High School. From now on. You may not penetrate her without doing so.”

I turn my focus back to you. I begin to fuck you in earnest, and you’re muttering unintelligibly, sounds of begging and confusion. I kiss, I bite, I fuck, I hold back just enough that you work your own leg muscles hard, meeting me thrust for thrust. I grant permission. Your first orgasm is loud and hard. You howl like an animal. I slow but I don’t stop. I look over my shoulder and see pre-cum glistening at the tip of your husband’s raging cock. “You may not,” I mouth silently to him.

I allow you a second, softer orgasm, and then remove the dildo from your body. You collapse, and curl yourself around me without asking. You are sobbing lightly. I can sense your shame. I stroke your hair, and comfort you.

“Paul, your wife needs to hear from you that you enjoyed that. I can see your cock is speaking for itself, but Kimberly would like to know what is going on in your brain.”

“I want . . .” he hesitates. “I want to be able to make you feel that good,” he says.

“I want you to get on your knees now, Paul, over here, by the edge of the bed.” He obeys; I slide over to the edge of the bed beside him. “Open your mouth.” He looks alarmed, but he complies.

I hold the dildo up and bring it to his lips. My other hand behind his head, I push, and he is able to take about half of the rubber cock in his mouth.

“That is what you wife tastes like,” I add. And that is what if feels like when she sucks your cock. Suck, Paul, lick it clean.” Paul closes his eyes and complies. I grasp the back of his head and shove the dildo into his throat until he gags. “That’s what it feels like to her when it starts to feel really good to you, Paul. Except she wants it – wants you – so much she welcomes it.” I thrust it hard a few more time to punctuate my message. “When you fuck her face, that’s how it feels. Remember that. Remember she loves it.”

I take the cock out of his mouth and guide him back to his feet, then face down on the bed. I remove a smaller dildo from my bag, but I don’t tell him I have downsized. He groans in fear when I push it, slowly, deep into his ass with a single deliberate movement. I call you over, and replace my hand with yours. I stand and watch as you tentatively fuck your husband, his hands still tied behind him, as he writhes on the bed. I place my hand over yours, and guide you to fuck him harder, twisting and pivoting. I know if you keep at it, he will come, his cock spilling all over the duvet. I help you, and together we bring him right to the edge, and then stop. All the while, I whisper to him. “Do not come, Paul. I forbid it. Do not.”

I untie his hands. His cock is so hard; I know that he is in pain. I position him on his back, and then take you by the hands again. We stand on the bed beside him. Your arms move around my waist, mine at your neck, and we begin kissing again. I can feel all of you against the silk of my dress. Your body is heated. Your nipples are hard. Your breath is ragged. And you are wet, so, so wet. I guide you to the bed, to your knees, and position you so you are straddling his face. Paul makes a sound I can’t decipher.

“Paul, it isn’t astrophysics. Just kiss her. Open and close your mouth, kiss and lick. This time, don’t move around too much. Let her do the work. She is on top. She is in charge. Understand that. Kimberly is in charge of her own orgasms. Her orgasms are a gift to you. Earn them.” I reach up to you, and roll your nipple between my thumb and forefinger. You close your eyes, and lower your open cunt over your husband’s eager face. I watch him. And his hands wander down to his erection.

“No, Paul,” I say firmly but gently. “Think for a moment, where should your hands be? Earn her orgasm, Paul” He knits them together in worry, and then they wander back to you, grasping as your ass, following your circular movements as your grind over his face. His touch is at first tentative, then loving, then proprietary.

“Good boy,” I say, and I watch. I have been where Paul is now enough times now to recognize your rhythm. Your chest heaves. Your pace quickens. As you get closer, I move closer to you both on the bed. I slip the smaller dildo back into Paul’s ass, give a few gentle thrusts and then hold it still. With my other hand, I reach for Paul’s cock, and gently stroke. I know he can’t last.

"Please?” you ask.

“You may,” I reply. “Both of you.”

I watch your head tilt, and I lower my mouth over his cock. He comes instantly, shallow in my mouth as you come over his face. He pushes the dildo out. I watch his body start to power down. But I know you have more.

“Kiss her, Paul, gently, but don’t stop.” His cock limp, he holds your ass in his hands, and kisses your cunt gently. I hear him struggling to speak, all of it unintelligible. I kiss your mouth, I lead you gently down, so your face rests over his spent cock. I watch as you kiss him. He feels it. He kisses back, still lost and muttering between your legs.

Your ass is in the air now, his face still kissing between your legs. I move behind you. My hands are on your shoulders, gently stroke your sides down to the curve of the small of your back. The trail of my fingertips I follow with soft kisses. You shiver, and quicken your pace against Paul’s mouth.

“What is that you said, Paul?” I ask, a smile in my voice. “Louder, please.”

“Fuck my face,” he says to you. “I love you, Kim. Fuck. My face.” I nod to you.

You collapse onto him, coming in huge, angry waves. One, twice and a third time as you pound yourself violently against him. My hands move over your ass, followed by my tongue, which finds its way first to your husband. Our tongues intertwined for mere seconds. Then as he sucks your clit, and I push my tongue deep into your ass, you come again for both of us, long, painful, silent, exquisite.

We embrace, stretch out, kiss gently, recombine. Paul and I hold you between us, your back to me. I reach over you and gently stroke his face.

“You’re a good boy,” I say. “We learned a lot today.”

After the Cafe

2010-11-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

Sunday night I poured
water over you as if I were
John the Baptist, healing
you of ills still undefined.
It was there then, the light
as orange as morning,
citrus, sweet and sickening.
Now I salivate for more.

The next night, I held to hear your
heart beat like a holiday parade,
like a Russian symphony;
swiftly, roughly, loudly,
to feel your short, hot breath at
my neck. My lips singed your
skin, like a brand, like an A,
for one moment I marked you;
for one fleeting moment
you were mine, and that
is what I would not say.

Afterward, I peeled myself from
you as if I were your very skin
and walked away, out of your sight,
out of our ostentatiously orange light.
I walked home.
Home, sacred, home.
Home: sacred, cavernous:
a temple for the neophyte,
a shelf for the fake gold icon.

Over tea, your eyes glowed cinematic,
a fake sun. A travel ad: we sat alone.
The streets of Paris.The streets of Rome.
The streets one mile from my home.
In your eyes I saw them all,
You are Eisenach, St. Petersburg.
You are Hamburg. You are home.

Adagio, Allegro, I stare at the baton,
anticipating Presto. Moderato still to come.

I lie alone, a room at dark, where
all three windows nightly vigil keep,
like Shostakovich
playing in his sleep.

The Ocean Basin Lies

2010-11-08T10:25:00.000-08:00

the sea floor spreads, new
crust coughed up along
a thin and mouth-like ridge,
the sediment, it stacks
and sifts, interlocks the
rocks and silts and
clays and sands, the
bottom line, the growing
years, years and years,
beneath the deep blue
coverlet, the interlace
of salt and foam like bed sheets,
like cold blankets, heavy,
flowing, sleeping, still, in
undertow, across and down
and down, and down, I wake,
washed up, sand crystals
pressed into my face,
bleeding minute diamond shapes,
bleeding perfect blood-red
lines from me to my blue blanket,
lines and lines and time and
drying fish spines, an eyelet
pillowcase beneath my heavy,
sleeping head, shark's teeth,
whale ear bones and single
shells dissolved by the pressure
before they reach the bottom,
uniform like a graveyard full of homes,
each skull beholds a word here said
whispered across the
head of my bed, slipped
through teeth, the empty
talk accumulates.

The ocean basin lies. And
if by land I ever cease
to breathe, I won't regret
the sick intricacies by
which the ship-hulls land and
stack beside me on the bed,
beneath me on the floor,
behind me in the past, when I
have fear that those first years
when I completely knew
were taken from me willingly by you
and scattered on the waves, I
can recall the stacks at sea, layers and
layers of history, of earth and
sky and truth. These things
are somewhere.

Somewhere there lie all the words all
ever said, all counted, qualified,
nothing happens on the deep deep
lifeless blackened ocean floor, thick
as grease, the fish are eyeless,
blinded by their purpose, sinking,
swollen, stacking in the
fleshy sand like turgid,
dull-edged axes.

We live the lives of
thieves. What we stole
from one another was immaculately
clean and like a newborn mammal
once touched by human hands,
the infant can't be passed
back to me safely. I will
kill it in my hands before I
live to see it grow
up sick, like me.

Time for me is just
verification of my fears,
human wants and needs
are rooted in disease,
see me, feel me, heal me,
make me once complete,
the sick twist loosens
and we breathe, but
it is water, thick, saline,
and we cough tides
up on the gray dusk beach
at night, and with them, bones
of all that would. On skeletons,
we sleep, solid, spiny, pointing
at history. I can't outlive my past.
I can't. I can't breathe easy
knowing what we did. We
drained each other's
blood and innocence,
we left each other bleeding
and bereft, I left for dead
you limping on alone,
like murderers we
fled the blood-bathed
scene.

I still hear you
screaming in my
sleep. The
long songs we repeat,
long, sad, sultry and
complete, across the
ocean, one voice to another,
there is nothing we can sing to
redirect the course we swim,
upstream, uphill, we
redirect the make-up of
our flesh and leave
the ocean for the
bleeding, lesser, rivers, swimming
them until they dry, reach
land, we crawl, we walk
on amputated words,
something determined
growing beneath us.

I lie in my bed at night
and your voice
floats through the line
to me. I suck it up
like plankton, then fulfilled,
I hang the heated phone up,
swimming, still,
treading the dark water.

#window #twitterotica #flashfuck

2010-11-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

Hard rain rushes down the wide expanse of the picture window in a thick, blurring sheet.

Cold wind blows through junctures of wood and glass. Inside, our bodies are in conflict. Chilled bones. Hot skin. Warm breath smoky in the cool room.

You are on your knees at my feet. I stand, bewildered by your devotion. I watch you breathe. Your skin is perfect.

You tell me you love me, and I don’t understand. You tell me you need me, that I understand.

“The window,” I say. You shiver, nod, stand, walk to the window.

“Turn around.”

You turn your back to me, and your fingertips touch the cold glass. I know you wish to protest, to politely suggest it is too cold. It’s a reflex. You suppress it.

I walk to you, stand behind you, close enough to touch. But I don’t touch. You feel my heat.

My cold right hand lands softly right in the middle of your back, pushes you firmly into the glass. I push hard, and step closer. Exquisite pain begins between the glass and your nipples, and radiates all over your body. You gasp. I push harder, and lean my full height against you.

You are trapped between the heat of my body and the frigid, smooth glass. I kick your feet apart roughly, press my knee between yours, my thigh separates you higher, and I can feel how wet you are for me. We both see faint reflections of ourselves in the black glass. My smile is predatory. You are wide-eyed, captured.

My teeth close on your soft shoulder. My right hand drops to open you. I fuck you roughly, with intention, hot against the cold indifference of the smooth window glass.

-end-

unhinged

2010-11-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

your name flashes
on my phone, red on
white like a blood-
soaked bandage,
fresh blood on
an old bandage,
stitches ripped,
femoral pumping

don't come looking
for me, don't mistake
one accidental dream
of your mouth over
mine as permission

I deny you

don't hunt me down
when you think my
wing has healed

I'm another animal
altogether now,
feathers hardened
into scales, belly cold,
close to the ground,
I will unhinge my jaw,
and the grip you know
all too well will
swallow you out
of existence

do not dare think
of me, my image
belongs to me,
my name is mine
to speak, mine and
mine alone,
understand, I
leave you with
nothing, not a
single trace of me,
I leave you with
negative space,
antimatter, telemetry,
oblivion, a hole
in your chest the
size of the average
human hand

lose my scent,
forget my name
inure your tongue
to the acrid taste
of my love boiled
with my hatred,
lose me

lose me
wear my absence
like a scar across
your disingenuous
coward's face

don't crawl for me
soft-bellied and
submissive, don't
lick my ankles,
I see your teeth,
don't take the thing
that's left of me,
I have children
with hearts and mouths
to feed, I can't afford
the luxury of silent
tears behind dark
glasses, a pretty
but poor imitation
of motherhood
they need me

I deny you

I woke up sick,
throat closed,
breathing labored,
spitting out more
poison than a woman
should ever have
to swallow

that's you in there,
and I am calling you out,
I am killing you dead
I am sending you home
I am erasing every
trace of every form you've
ever taken, incubus, succubus,
you are nothing but a pile of
dust that I am too refined
to sweep away myself

I call someone
to serve me,
clean this up, please,
I say, haughtily, in that
tone you say you hate
but we both know your
cock belies you

clean this mess up,
please, take this,
take this, take this
all . . . away

she does as she is told,
then she brings me tea,
she does as she is told,
she works for me

and you, you dare
darken the door of
the room of the queen
after your phantasmagoric
absence, cold ash in the
wake of the dragon's breath,
false scales, fantasy,
you have made a
monster out of me
for the very last time

Time Unfolded

2010-11-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

you folded time for me,
I'll never know the cost,
was she alive before that,
your wife? or was she already
the empty shell, the wire monkey
you said you could never love
but could never leave, or did
you slowly sacrifice her, letting
all her blood drain out
while you held me through
midnights and lifetimes

there were explosions,
there were sunspots, we
were blinded, we bled
for one another, and when
there was no more air left
for us to breathe, you would
leave me, fade like a wraith
into some imaginary landscape,
leaving me to be filled by
the lust of strangers until
my shame seeped through
my pores like old, slow poisons

on the mornings I would wake
up free, you would return
to stake your claim, you
would pull me from the arms
and mouths of others just
in time, you said, before
I gave away my heart, the
one you ground beneath
your heel every time
you left me

I've unfolded time. I've set things right.
It moves more slowly now.
There are differences between
my days, when they aren't marked
by long passages of waiting
for you to call, waiting, wondering,
hollowing myself out with worry
that is mine and mine alone

From my paucity of happiness
I throw these things into the deep
black nothing, like death wishes:

the sound of your voices, both;
the false shelter of your broad shoulders;
the release I allowed at your hand,
at your mouth; the completion of
everything broken when I let you inside;
the stroke of your fingertips on my face;
the look of surrender in your eyes;
eighteen tiny jars of honey and
a love note I asked for, to
replace the one that was a lie, one
lie, one in ink, and a thousand more
in ether, fade like wraiths into
the night sky.

#waiting for #twitterotica #flashfuck

2010-10-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

Over breakfast, I deliver your instructions: Wear the black corset. Leash. Collar. Kneel next to my bedroom chair, in your place, at 7pm. I may be there by 7:30. Maybe 8. Maybe not at all.

“I will be waiting,” you say, solemnly. “I will wait all night if I have to.” (You grin when I remind you about the pillow. It amuses you that I worry about your comfort. It amuses you how the whole thing usually turns out.)

All day my nipples are hard, sore even, because I am thinking about your breasts in the corset; how it feels when I slip one finger inside your collar, how my breathing changes when I hold the leash. My hand drifts absentmindedly to my mouth when I think about looking down at you, your hair, your eyes, your lips, parted, your breath heavy.

The air will be electric with your anticipation. You will be soaking wet from the waiting, the hoping, the not knowing.

You love the waiting. I don’t know why or how. I don’t understand the psychology of it. I won’t be kept waiting for five minutes. But I know how much you love the waiting. And I love what it does to you.

At work, my arousal has moved beyond discomfort to complete distraction. Pain, even. I haven’t heard from you but I know you’re home. You won’t update me. You won’t change the plan. You will be there waiting when I get there, no matter how late it is.

By 5pm I am wishing I had said 5pm. I have a conference call with the West Coast that occupies me for 90 minutes. I’m alone in the office. My hand strays, but I show restraint.

My briefcase is packed and lights are off before the call ends. I race home. I stop before opening the garage door. It is 6:55. I don’t want you to hear the door. I idle in the driveway for 10 minutes, feeling as if my head will explode. I’m rocking back and forth like a child now, trying to calm myself, soothe myself, make myself wait.

My composure is compromised. So are my panties. I watch the clock until I just can’t. I just can’t. Wait. Any. Longer.

I go in the house. I walk straight to the bedroom. I see your silhouette through the doorway. I make my way to the wing chair. A wry smile plays at the corner of your lips.

“Is there something you would like to say?” I ask, feigning insult.

“It’s only 7:15,” you say, smiling. Your chest rises, your face is flushed. “But it’s okay, because I have been here since 3.”

“Good girl,” I reply, taking your leash in hand.

-end-

#shaken for #100words of #twitterotica #flashfuck

2010-10-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

He leaves the hotel room promptly at 6, as if he were leaving the office. His wife and children wait.

Wrapped in the sheet, I bolt the door, return to the bed alone.

I'm still shaking. The bed is ruined, soaked with passion wrung from us both with alternating tenderness and violence.

I'm shaken, sore, bereft. My lip is bleeding. My cunt still spasms, hollowed, damaged from the inside out, wounded most by his leaving.

My jaw is rigid, my nipples ravaged, my skin raw.

I can't complain. I've been well fucked. In the morning, again. Now, I wait. Shaken.

-end-

#vital #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how much time has passed. The room is cold, dark, timeless.

Our bodies are heated, exhausted, defeated.

Even our hands shake, holding, fingers entwined, muscles weakened, skin worn numb.

The only thing that exists in the world is your mouth on mine.

Your kiss is a sweet caress. Mine, a thinly veiled threat. Lips, tongue, teeth. Gather, hunt, feed.

Both of us bruised, swollen, taken. We kiss in greed and gratitude.

I feel the warm release of blood in my mouth, not knowing if it’s mine or yours, this vital fluid, that flows, like trust, between us.

#poppies #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

When I have waited one minute too long, muscles fire across my shoulders, I twitch, step forward, look down at you, seeking that millisecond of consent in your eyes.

Your back against the wall, my knee parts your knees, my quad muscle flexes hard, pressing up between your thighs.

My mouth opens over yours; my tongue enters, finds you yielding.

Your arms circle my neck. I wait to feel your fingertips, the gentle touch of butterflies landing on poppies, an ancient ritual dangerous, delicate, necessary.

I reach back, take your hands, and pin you, like a butterfly, to the wall.

-end-

The Mercenary Position

2010-10-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

Rob’s penis lay sleeping against his leg, softly curled, reminding Alice of a marzipan piglet her grandmother had once given her at Easter. So pink! She was the only eighteen-year-old girl she knew who had never before seen a live one this up close and personal. She tried not to stare at it, instead looking around at the walls of Rob’s dorm room, Duran Duran posters, cheap Hockney prints in black plastic frames. She hadn’t seen the room in over a week, and she realized in that moment she had never been there alone with Rob, without Germaine, who never needed an invitation to show up at Rob’s or kiss Rob or hold Rob’s hand. It bothered Alice of course, all the sloppy affection between them, but Germaine had dismissed her jealousy with a finality Alice had learned not to bother decoding or resisting. Now she was there in Rob’s room, alone, invited by his own quick phone call directly to her, while Germaine was at dinner with her parents.

Like Germaine, Rob was very blond, from the thick straight spikes covering his head, to the downy dusting on his arms, to the thicker, slightly darker thatch Alice was seeing for the first time. He stood up quickly and slid first one leg and then the other into a pair of soft blue Levis. He tucked the piglet in cautiously, lovingly even, to the left, and buttoned the fly. He tugged up the waistband of the very tight jeans. “What do you think,” he said, not really asking her, looking in the mirror, not waiting for an answer before unbuttoning the fly, rearranging himself higher, and then buttoning back up. Alice didn’t have a chance to answer. She was looking at his flat, muscular stomach, which disappeared triangularly into his pants, like the point of a shovel into a mound of earth.

“Hot, hot, hot,” he answered for himself, and tossed his head in a theatrical way, with a practiced effeminacy Alice regularly witnessed him cultivate. It did not come naturally to him at all. She wondered why he tried. She wondered why she was there. Why had the invitation to “help him get ready to go pick up guys” seemed at all enticing? And yet it had. It was a chance to be with him alone. To learn something, find something, the kind of something that together, Rob and Germaine might collude to keep from her.

“So, I understand you two finally did it!” Rob said absently, holding his own gaze in the mirror as if seeking to seduce his own handsome reflection. Then Alice understood why she was there. Germaine had broken her confidence after just three short weeks. A spark of anger toward Germaine flared somewhere deep below her belly but was extinguished by the wave of cold that projected from her breastbone. He kept going without missing a breath, “That Germaine, she’s a regular mercenary, out there trying to convert all the sweet little Catholic girls into heathens.” He stretched a tight white T-shirt over his torso like a snake sliding into new skin, then turned to her with a flirty smile. “No offense, I’ve seen your little uniform.”

“I thought you said you liked the uniform,” Alice answered coyly, echoing his tone, hoping a humorous defense might neutralize the charge in the air. But Rob could twist anything.

“Oh, I do, I do,” he said. “Just not quite as much as Germaine does!!” and he erupted into his fleshy machine gun laugh that scared her, “Heh heh heh heh. Germaine loves a Catholic girl in uniform. It’s a Protestant fetish. Were you wearing it the night you two finally got to it? And when was that, by the way?”
A barely perceptible charge – slight relief -- crackled the surface of her skin at the idea Germaine had not told him everything. Likely he had bullied out of her some basic facts, some explanation for their long absences, unanswered phone calls. Or perhaps Germaine had made a proclamation, had claimed Alice, her love for Alice, proud and defiant. The thought of Germaine claiming her in this way, outside the confines of their own bodies or the four walls they shared, flushed her face with a mix of comfort and shame.

“Anyway, I think you mean missionary,” Alice tried again, feebly, to redirect his assault. He wanted something, she just didn’t know what. Rob was significantly less intelligent that he imagined himself to be, and Alice’s only defense against him was correcting him from time to time. She meanly enjoyed it, especially when it made Germaine smile, but it never released her fear. Her tone was the pedantic sing-song of a third grade teacher’s pet: “A missionary travels the world spreading the gospel. A mercenary’s loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder.”

Rob ignored her correction and set about pulling on his costume cowboy boots, gleaming, pristine, having never been in shouting distance of a barn or any actual horseshit. “It must be hard for you,” he said. Alice recognized the bait, even if she didn’t know where the line led. She stood to leave. Another tactic she had learned was to change the subject back to him, and he would almost always follow.

“You’re right, Rob. Hot, hot, hot! You’ll light the boy bar on fire! I gotta go now. I’m meeting with my scholarship group tonight,” she regretted the admission before she finished the sentence. Rob snorted midway through and impossibly, his face appeared to light up even more, his teeth gleam whiter, more predatory, more beautiful. He took aim, “I mean, living together in the dorm now. Roommates. And in an all-girl’s dorm! It’s like a bad porno. Horny co-eds!” Then he dropped his voice to a funerary whisper, “Seriously, though, it must be hard for you. But when Germaine wants you, it’s impossible to resists. Believe me, I know.”

Like a gifted fish resting, resisting, motionless in deep silt, Alice simply watched the worm wiggle, the hook float. She knew better. She asked Germaine directly if she had ever had sex with Rob and the answer was no. Unequivocally . . . no. As if reading her mind, Rob backstroked slightly. “Of course, we all know I’m a pig for dick, and Germaine doesn’t have what I need, so . . .”

Rob could always shock her. Alice blushed, less from the word “dick” than the word “pig” -- was he reading her thoughts? Then she was lost for several seconds as her head was filled with the image of Germaine’s naked body before her, golden and warm and beckoning, and she couldn’t think of a single thing it lacked. Germaine was complete, abundant, excessive.

“Look at you!” Rob almost yelled, pushing away her hand that had wandered to her mouth and was stroking her lips lightly, absently. “You’ve got it bad! Should I be jealous?”

It was quiet for a few beats, then he asked, hushed and hoarse again, “But how do you deal with it?” And before Alice could try to determine what the “it” was, Rob filled in any blanks. “Being with someone who is so much more beautiful than you are.”

Alice hoped he had not heard her gasp. Her revulsion rolled upward to her throat, because she saw his cruelty only after she allowed herself to bask in the notion that Rob thought Alice beautiful at all. Rob thought she was beautiful, even a little bit, even as a basis for comparison. He was not repulsed by her dark, wavy hair, her black Italian eyes, her olive skin, her collection of contrasts to him, to Germaine. Or maybe he didn’t think she was beautiful at all. Maybe, as usual, he just couldn’t muster the required grammatical precision to say that it was “Germaine is beautiful, and you are not.”

“Germaine thinks I’m beautiful,” Alice said coolly, feeling strong but then liquefying from the inside out as she heard her own defensiveness. In her mind she saw a crisp, translucent fin breaking water as she felt herself pulled up and out of familiar depths.

“Of course she does!” Rob said triumphantly, picking up his keys and wallet to dismiss her. It was dark when they walked out, and she watched him drive away after a hug that was a bit too hard, though short enough, and a quick peck on the lips that was a bit too wet for her taste. Rob smelled like freshly oiled, brand new saddle in a pristine tack shop.

Alice walked to the quad toward her meeting. She could hear crickets and cicadas cutting through the murmur or student life, the energy still high, the air still sticky and humid as September drew to a close. The scholars were meeting to plan for the upcoming retreat, about a five hour drive south to the Okefenokee Swamp near the Florida state line. It would mean a long drive in a smelly van, a weekend of bonding with the other scholars -- a random mix of drug abusers, nerds and posers with the evangelical choir girl thrown in for good measure. The list of reasons Alice did not want to go was extensive. Mostly, though, she didn’t want to go because Germaine was not included, and it would mean three days and nights without her. Alice would sooner give up food, water, sleep, oxygen. She dreaded it.

She walked the length of the quad, dully aching for Germaine’s presence to fill her up, to close the wounds Rob left in the wake of his words. She promised herself she would never fall for his false kindness again. She had sensed danger all along and yet had never been able to understand his motivations. She still didn’t. He pushed the two of them together every chance he got, then he would double back as if he wanted Germaine for himself. Once she had broached the subject of Rob’s intentions, and Germaine shut her down, dismissive and protective of him.

Alice was certain Germaine didn’t know her own healing power. She didn’t know that the circle of her arms, or the feel of her tongue in Alice’s mouth erased any pain she had ever felt, replacing it with a hot, salty, uncomfortable safety. To be desired by Germaine was the most important thing Alice had ever accomplished. To be desired by Germaine was blinding and deafening. It brought Alice to life. It gave her worth. It jettisoned her guilt. Everything disappeared except for Germaine and her appetite: her eyes, her skin, her lips, her teeth, her tongue, her fingers. When Germaine’s teeth gripped the paper-thin skin of Alice’s fragile throat, she was claimed, taken, owned, and it was only in those moments Alice ever came to rest.
“Pig for dick?” she said aloud, laughing in spite of herself. Even when she tried to steel herself, or study up, Rob could always surprise her with some fresh vulgarity. It galled her and excited her. One of the first times Rob and Germaine visited her house, Rob had entertained them with a lengthy, colorful story, something about a blowjob in a parking lot while someone else watched. Alice was horrified to learn the next day that her father had overheard (though misunderstood) some of it, and she was terrified when her father suggested she not see Rob anymore because he was “common” and had “obviously picked up bad habits in public school.”

Alice’s father had sensed the risk of Rob, but he blindly missed the danger of Germaine. He had no idea that night after night that innocent-looking blond girl was thrilling his daughter by pushing a little more and a little more: hands held tightly until knuckles ached, lips kissed and bitten until they were puffy and bloody, breasts rubbed into submission and soreness through clothing, promises that sounded like threats of what was still to come. And the reverse, oh the offering! When Germaine lifter her shirt and pressed Alice’s mouth to her breast she was confident of Alice’s hunger. Through the summer after they met, there had rarely been enough privacy to undress completely, and for that, Alice was sadly thankful. Her fear of what lay below that seam of denim kept her up nights, in silent tears of confusion. Germaine was insistent, pressing her hands to Alice’s body, and Alice’s hands to hers. Germaine was fearless with her mouth and eyes, and lethal with her words.

“You will belong to me,” she would whisper hoarsely until the first night alone in the dorm room, when afterward, she changed to present tense. When Germaine said, “I love you,” it was hard for Alice to hear. So hard to believe, it swam around her head and dissipated, neither true nor false. When Alice said, “I love you” back, the words disappeared on the air, vague, inconsequential. But when Germaine proclaimed “You belong to me,” there was no doubt in either of their minds that it was truth.

It was this truth that was burning tonight, as she walked home in the dark, alone after her meeting. Was it the physical distance, Germaine more than 200 yards away from her, or was it the time, that she hadn’t touched her in three hours? If she belonged to Germaine, and she was not allowed to even question Rob, why could she not stop thinking about the nape of his neck and the button fly of his jeans, the softness of his lips even as clever vitriol poured forth. Why was her fear of his malicious intent now crawling with some reckless reaching tendrils she could only admit as desire.

She wiped absently at her lips, where he had wet them unexpectedly. She remembered the smell of warm leather and fabric softener. She thought about the flaccid little pig flower resting against his leg. That piece of softness was what she had read about, swelling and raging. It was the thing he stuck in other people, their mouths, other places. The thing with which he poked and rutted, plowed and dominated, pleasured and loved, even. She thought how it might feel in her own mouth, and if Rob could ever keep such a secret form Germaine.

She didn’t stop to think about how Germaine might feel, that it might hurt her. She had never seen Germaine hurt. Germaine said what was going to happen, and everybody around her obeyed. Even Rob, most of the time. They had a sort of perfect balance, one acquiescing whenever the other questioned, so there was never more than a tiny instant of conflict, especially in front of others.

As she walked through campus at dark, alone, separated by time, by distance, she remembered for a moment what it was like to be -- to think -- just as Alice. So she didn’t think about how Germaine might feel. In fact, she didn’t think about Germaine at all. She didn’t think about what she might be sacrificing. She realized then, decided anyway, hypothetically that is, that she might do it, maybe, why not, really, she might. If Rob wanted, she would at least kiss him. If that was why Rob was displaying his body to her, she just might do something with him, even if it wrecked everything. She realized she wanted to. A tense giggle erupted from her tight throat.

For a moment, it seemed to Alice like a big decision. Even as soft as it was, it was as big as a fortress wall, tall as a tower built in the center of town. But without Germaine there to hear the decision, to judge it, or to even be the context for it, there was no scale. It could have been a giant redwood, purposeful and grand and undeniable, or an accidental sunflower sprout under a birdfeeder, unknowingly crushed under Germaine’s bare foot. Germaine reached beyond time and space. So as Alice thought about the taste of Rob for a moment’s pleasure, the liberating acquiescence to some raw albeit vague desire, eyes blurred, dreamily leading her lamppost to lamppost, her eyes snapped suddenly into focus to see the specter of Germaine. Alice halted in her path. She saw a face, felt the full weight of Germaine’s potential reaction bearing down hard.

Alice reeled with compound guilt. Was it not bad enough, sin enough, at least, in her father’s eyes, were he to know, that she was sleeping with Germaine. She had not given in to some lifelong attraction to women, in fact, she had never known it was there. Germaine had wrenched it out of her like a sharp and valuable diamond from a hunk of worthless and uninteresting coal, and it had obviated any thought or feeling she might ever have had on her own. Was it not bad enough Alice had left the church for a new religion of hands and mouths and eyes, of straight, blond hair mixing with her own darker, of desire so palpable it manifest Alice into a new dimension so she was seen and heard and felt like never before. Was it not bad enough she had done all this, no, she had to be evil and greedy and want even more attention, from even more suspect sources. She need only be out of range of Germaine for an hour to discover some hidden desire of her own, to be wanted by Rob, Rob, of all people, Rob whom she feared and despised.

She didn’t think it possible to hurt Germaine. The face she saw was angry not hurt. Whatever force was required to humble a mighty Teutonic goddess was certainly outside the reach of Alice. But if little Alice, Catholic schoolgirl, were to be discovered sucking the cock of Germaine’s, well, other, her not-quite-lover, her unattainable heart’s desire, then what would happen? Alice, in her own mercenary way, calculated the risk, and skipped straight to the solution, big and bold. What would be crushed would not be Germaine, no, never, not Germaine, but Germaine’s desire for Alice might be interrupted. Alice’s throat closed at the mere thought of losing that oxygen, that blood, those carbohydrates, that daily feeding she needed, was granted, every time she looked in Germaine’s pencil-lead gray eyes. What was she thinking? She could never risk Germaine that way. She shook her head, laughed it off, a simple thought crime. No harm done. She was tired, lonely, missing Germaine and still recovering from the mind-fuck of Rob and whatever it was he was up to this time.

It wouldn’t occur to her until later, far too late, that Rob did not really want her at all. Alice so much wanted to be wanted, to be noticed, pursued, required. Germaine had proven it possible, and Alice could not help now but scan the horizon, stare down the still surface of the water for some other source, some corroborating evidence of her desirability, her worth as a fully realized woman.

She was too drunk with his mixed messages and the possibility of his want to protect herself, to think it through. She was only beginning to understand the display of his beautiful body was Rob’s way of poisoning the air, stunning his prey, clearing his path. But most of all, once she had entertained the thought of Rob wanting her, the converse thought that he didn’t was too devastating to consider. Of course he did. Hadn’t he been halfway hard when he kissed her goodbye? No she wouldn’t act on it, but her belief in his desire took up some space in her body, helped her stand straighter, walk stronger.

Inside the dorm hall, the air tasted like wet newspaper and burned popcorn. She walked furtively, head down by the open doors of sociable girls, straight to her room. Germaine should be back by now, and, yes, thankfully, there was light under the door. Would she be tired and grumpy? Naked and waiting? Happy or angry? Alice felt prepared for whatever aspect of Germaine she might find. They all were exquisite, beckoning, possessive. She opened the door, and the eyes she met were steely, the hair blond, but the smile was Rob’s. He stood leaning against the back wall, jeans open, low, while Germaine, fully clothed, knelt before him, the back of her head dipping and rising like a small boat moored in choppy waters.

Rob’s blue eyes held Alice’s. “Oink,” he said. “Heh heh heh.”

#ignore #100words #flashfuck #twitter

2010-10-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

The corset: In it, locked, over her heart, her skin is soft, her nipples lifted, high, hard, defiant.

My lips want what is delicate. My teeth, my breath, want what hardens and responds to force. I am gentle but hungry, humbled by her abundance.

Entanglements are freed, bindings opened, her beauty released. I am undone, my control unravelling.

Before my mouth is open, I am lost. My skin wants her skin. My hands test, touch, tease. I punish and I adore. My mouth takes everything the corset kept.

Her thighs part. I ignore her cunt as she lifts to me, and opens. Waiting.

Please

2010-10-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Let me kiss you

at the intersection of

throat, chest, shoulder.

Let my teeth graze the thin

paper white skin that

covers flesh, bone, heartbeat

racing; let me calm you with

a soft kiss on your open palm;

Then let me quicken you again,

marking a path back around

your heart, heavy with

desire, to your open mouth

so sweet with possibility.

Let me, please.

#string #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

It was less a string than a long silk thread, elastic, iridescent as if spun by some deadly spider.

He assumed his position, hands behind his back, a puzzled wave crossing his face.

She tied the string, ever so loosely, around his wrists. Then she tied another slack loop around his throat. She tapped his heel with the toe of her boot. He took the cue. He knelt.

“Do chains bind you to me?” she barked. “No.”

“What, then? Rope? Collar? Cuffs? ” She sounded angry. “No, dearest,” he whispered, placating.

“What binds you to me?”

“Love,” he whispered, “Love.”

#heel #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

He lays face up, arms at his sides, helpless, naked on the floor. I stand over him, one boot heel pinning each of his open palms. Tomorrow he will have marks. Stigmata. Proof of my divinity.

His chin lifts in pain. His cock lifts in pleasure, straining toward me. I stroke it gently with my crop. Around. Around. Lazy circles until he groans, guttural, and then I smack. A small leather pop against his angry cock. And he is mine.

Time dissolves. I keep going until my arm is tired and I stumble. My cunt opens, rages. I am his.

#thrice #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

On my knees, swallowing him whole, and still I am in absolute control.

Eruption, collapse, urgent pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears.

“That’s twice,” he says. “I can’t. It’s sore.” I bind his hands, his raw cock still lifting to me.

“That’s okay,” I comfort him. “This time you will come without me ever even touching it.”

I push him gently face-down onto the soft bed. My knees spread his knees, roughly. His ass lifts to me, and opens. Far away, a voice whimpers at his body’s own betrayal.

First cold, wet. Then pierced, full. Last, sticky, spent, taken.

#lied #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-10-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

“I lied,” I said.

“Why would you lie about such a thing?” she asked. The floor pressed into my knees. The cuffs hurt my wrists bones. I bent down like titanium, resisting her control at the molecular level. I was trying, but it was painful.

“You said he cuffed you, bit you, fucked you,” she murmured.

“Yes. He did exactly what I told him to do,” I explained. “I never submitted.” She nodded. Stared. Smiled.

“I’m a little scared,” I said flatly, looking away. I waited for her to laugh.

“I know,” she said, kindly, stepping closer, crop in hand.

evolution

2010-10-03T16:36:00.001-07:00

ask yourself who you are
with your two kinds of teeth
one for grinding up grass in
your bovine simplicity,
the others, weapons with
which to tear apart
enemies and lovers
sisters and brothers
biblical battles, grand scale
archetypes you cannot
rise above, no matter how
much you read, your vestigial
tail, ornamental, for balance,
you tip over, tip over
under the weight of
your own solipsistic bullshit
look at yourself, ask
yourself who you are

dress it up in the language
of romantic love, gothic, tragic,
I can write volumes on your
beauty, the curve of your lips,
the strentgh of your jaw, all
I really need is your hide
against mine, leaving me
punished and brutalized,
all my blood at the
surface of my skin,
all of my emotions
spilled on the floor

the friction of cricket wings,
the blur of the moon,
the attack of mosquitos
the constellations I can
never fucking see

I don't see the bears
I don't see the warrior
I don't see the dippers
I just thirst for the water

even now that I have left you
you are the one gone, stone silent
and I am still the one waiting, breath hitched

what monster grew lungs what
hybrid first walked on the water,
how hideous must I make myself
to survive you

Christ nailed to the cross
that was just bad publicity
I know how this works
It's my job, I sell money

I will take the forked tongue
the barbed tail
the fiery dance at midnight
every time

Day Trip to Sitges

2010-10-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

(long-form gogyohka)

day trip to Sitges
a seventh summer
Barcelona bound
the sand will not stick
to innocent skin
it can't achieve its
granularity
instead staying
individual
smooth, minute pebbles
shifting in whispers

a kick in the gut
a mouthful of blood
unspeakable, please
no, please, no, please, no
wings lift, break, fail, fall
flightless and all wrong
copper, bits of bone
I want to go home
please let me go home

a charcoal pencil
all coal and all black
records the event
after the event
after the event
an artist in Spain
sketched a sketch, captured
a moment, some tears,
the taste, the salt of
humiliation

my mother framed it,
hung it on the wall,
made a legacy
of a broken child
a point of pride, it
hung until I was
old enough to leave
and take it with me

the tip of the sword of Lucifer,
godforsaken beast,
broke off in me, my
flesh healed around it

I'm cutting it out,
grinding my bones and
rending my skin like
offending garments,
I am finally
naked, bleeding, free

#incapable #100 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-09-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

“Incapable,” she hissed, teeth unclenching, her cunt crushing my fingers the third time. I refused to let her push me out. I pushed, twisted, filled.
“I know,” I whispered gently, “I won’t love you either.” Then it was that moment in the heist movie when the tumblers roll and the safe opens. “Again . . . uhm . . . no?” her weak question, bitter edge gone, full collapse, complete surrender.
“No,” I said. Declarative but not unkind. “I don’t love you. Can’t. Won’t.” Each word punctuated with a soft claiming kiss on her cold, twitching lips. “Don't. Love. You. Incapable.”

fractal

2010-09-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

"Take me to the river, drop me in the water . . .
washing me down."
- Talking Heads

Love is a fractal, stalked
through a fly's compound
eye. Look too closely
and it shatters into
a million fine fragments,
sharp, lethal, meaningless.
Lose focus, and you'll wake
in a blurry swamp
of indecision, cut
by someone else's
lack of intention.

Love is a cypher,
you can tell me the truth,
and when my lungs hurt
from whimpers and
war whoops, I will
be sore in all my
soft spots, but it
doesn't add up
to much.

Love is a fiction,
manufactured by
either one of my
sad green eyes.

#crush #twitterotica #flashfuck #250 words

2010-09-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Following behind her. Parking lot to front door. My middle-aged schoolyard crush. Three paces behind, I watch. I follow. I'm silent. Invisible.

In the line, her child hugs mine. I watch her lips as she kisses him goodbye. My fingers drift to my mouth, wondering how it might feel to be the object of even her most sacred, chaste kiss.

Back in the parking lot, she stands in front of my car, waiting. "You run now, right? Tuesdays and Thursdays?" I stare stupidly, stutter, discovered.

Then we're off, and she leads me. She is younger, faster, stronger, more sure of herself. Two miles to the clearing, and I'm winded.

I stop, call to her, lean elbows to knees, gasping. She runs ahead. She circles back, laughs at me, but not unkindly.

There is no bench. Just a low stone wall. We sit. That's the idea. But really, I sit. And she stands between my knees, with her hands on my face.

Her kiss is excruciatingly soft, endlessly long. I'm immediately wet. The mere brush of her skin would crush me.

"You're coming home with me," she says, all confidence. "We have two hours."

#okay #100 words (exactly) #flashfiction #twitterotica

2010-09-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

“I won’t,” she said. “We can’t.” I smiled, “Okay.” And I waited, across the room.

“I’ll sit over here,” she said. “Okay,” I said. I rose, crossed the six steps from couch to bed and poured her wine.

“Stop smiling at me like that,” she said, squirming, twisting her wedding ring back and forth in poetic circles.

“Okay,” I said, and my face turned slowly serious.

She moved so fast in a flash of pink linen that two buttons fell, like tiny sea shells, to the floor. She landed like a frantic gull, wings beating furiously over my waiting body.

The Sommelier

2010-09-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to impress you. The plan was all wrong from the beginning. I picked a pretentious restaurant. Yes, the food is good, really good, but the air is hostile and competitive. I manage very well in places like this. It is a skill I had to learn. But a few minutes in, I see something shift in your eyes. My stock is down a few points. I hear myself think like that, a pretentions twat, robotic, mechanical. I watch your face, I realize I have it all wrong. You don't care about all of this artifice. And you aren't measuring my worth as a human being, not like this. If anything, you look concerned about me.

The maitre'd has called me by name and shown us to a good table. As we are seated, I see it, in the far left reaches of my field of vision. The thick wood door is ajar, and it is dim, but every tiny pinprick on the surface of the rough-hewn brick wall telegraphs a tiny pinprick signal right to my skin, awakening. My eyes dart around the room, I see a few people I know, and everyone else looks like someone I know. I shift uncomfortably, the dark solitude of the wine cellar calling to me. I can handle myself in the bright artificial light, but I am at home in the cold shadows. That is where we should be.

"The sommelier will be right with you, Madame," he says. But I'm looking at the wood, and I'm looking at the brick, and I'm already adapting tonight's plan. Radically. Just then the sommelier walks up, his tasting cup on its chain around his neck, making him look like a Catholic bishop or a rap star. The last time I was in, I spent a small fortune because the client expected it.

"Gianluca," I say, manhandling my cell phone as if it were actually turned on. "Something has come up. I need to take a call. We . . . need to take a call." You're watching him fawn over me, and you're a little wide-eyed. I think you are deciding how despicable I might turn out to be. I interrupt his soliloquy with a silent raised hand, whisper a pardon, and lean to you. I put my hand on your wrist. I'm jolted, jump-started, and I didn't need a reminder of how important it is to me for you to really see me.

My breath is warm and sweet; it tickles, I whisper, "Hi," and quickly, lightly kiss you at junction of jawbone and ear. I squeeze your arm and I say, "This guy is a pretentious little fucker, isn't he?" I don't know what you had been expecting, but you laugh. And your eyes are warm and wet again. And I kiss that spot again.

"Here's what we're going to do," I say, turning back to the sommelier. "Please order for us. The tasting menu with the wine pairings, but (counting courses in my head) only one red. Substitute white, not too dry; you pick. I trust you." His grimace at my suggestion he take our food order soon gives way to flattered delight. "We'll just step into the cellar and take care of this . . . urgent matter. I apologize for the disorder." I grab your hand and lead you away, not giving him a chance to reply.

My palm on the wood door; I push it slightly; we slip inside. "I hate this place," I say. Closing the door and guiding your back up against it. I step close to you, lean into you. I speak quietly, urgently into your neck. Kissing you lightly, grazing you with my teeth.

"I'm sorry," I say. "It's terrible. I really hate it." And I have you by both wrists now, your arms over your head against the door. The fabric of your dress is sheer, I know you can feel the wood grain against your hips, your shoulders, the backs of your hands. I stand up straight, press against you. My breasts against your breasts, my face against your face. I look down into your eyes. I’m smiling, warm and genuine. I hold your gaze. The tiniest of smiles tells me I have redeemed myself. An almost imperceptible flash in your eyes tells me you like the cellar better, too.

An almost comical shudder passes through me, like the moment in a werewolf movie when the camera flashes to the moon. My shoulders lift and tighten. My eyes are hungry, but tender. The next kiss is soft. Almost loving. Time flickers and I am vulnerable, you have seen me, your eyes cutting through the layers. You have seen me, and you know. You have seen me, and I am angry now. And I'm scared. And I'm, oh, so hungry. The soft smile vanishes, replaced by a snarl.

My hand moves to the nape of your neck, and in your hair. My fingers search. I find my grip at the base of your skull. I twist and I pull, pull you to me for a hard, wet, angry animal kiss. You whimper when our teeth crash. You whimper louder when my teeth close on your lips. Hard, angry, hungry. Again. Again. Your lips will be bruised and sore in the morning. You will wonder what it means.

The air is cold on our gasping mouths when the kiss breaks. I grab you by the shoulders, turn you around, and move you away from the wood door, up against the cold, rough brick wall. In the morning your beautiful face will be scraped. Tiny red lines, bitter, miniscule droplets of blood. Not much more than a man's rough beard might leave behind. A light but meaningful mark.

I press your face into brick and mortar. With my other hand, I rudely lift your dress, lower your stockings. The press of my palm against your ass dizzies me. I smack hard. You cry out. It echoes in the small cold room. You look at the door again. You're worried we will be discovered and this makes me laugh. You've lifted your hands now, to either side of your head, trying to hold yourself up. My hand grabs you, kneading, pinching hard. In the morning, you will have black and blue marks over the softest parts of your ass. It will hurt to sit. You will remember the strength of my fingers. You will remember my appetite. But you won’t allow yourself to feel the adoration with which these marks were placed. You will deny me.

I lean my weight against you. You feel my nipples hard against your back. Your breasts scrape, too, against the brick, through the sheer fabric of your dress. I release your hair and reach for your breasts, groping, pinching, and exhibiting some loss of control. It worries me. I let go, snake my arm around you so my hand is on your throat. Your dress will be ruined. It will be snagged and it will be torn. You will throw it away. When you get the envelope with reimbursement, you will keep it, but you will be angry with me for my arrogance and my impeccable good manners.

My teeth close on your shoulder a bit too hard. You cry out again, and at your wince, I push three fingers roughly into your cunt. Without ceremony, without preamble, I begin to fuck you hard. With each thrust, you break your own fall, palms flat on the brick wall. But still your face hits against the wall, your breasts press. Your eyes roll back into your head. Your speechless mouth mutters unintelligibly.

I feel your cunt opening to me, thighs widening, ass pressing up and back to me. I don't need to ask permission, not now, but I do. "Okay?" I whisper hoarsely, then bite at your face, your cheek, your ear, your neck. This is what you say:

"You can fuck me," you spit, between harsh breaths. "But you can't have me. I am not . . . one . .. uh . . . of your possessions."

My infatuated heart caves in, as you come hard, wet, relentlessly around my fingers. Twice. A third time. Then your cunt pushes me out. I don't stop. I twist the same three fingers and force them, wet, into your ass. A low, guttural groan escapes your clenched teeth. A fourth orgasm, and your hands fall to your sides. You are limp against the wall. I release you. Your dress flows like black water over your hips, covering you again. You don't move. Eyes closed. Breath ragged.

I have a half-second to make the decision. I watch you like a Bloomberg screen, ticking up, ticking down.

I want to hold you now, to soothe your body. I want to kiss each tiny wound as it blooms. I want to feed you, then take you home with me.

But I am trained to read the data. You don’t look at me. You don’t speak to me. You don’t see me. All I have is your words, however incomprehensible. You don’t know me. But I must trust you know yourself.

I recognize Gianluca’s fey knock, and the door swings open a tiny crack.

“I’ve been called away, Gianluca. I apologize for my confusion.” I say quietly. “The lady will need her coat before she can leave the room. I will call a car for her.”

I lift my phone to my ear, make one last call for you, and walk away.

#bloom #fist #100words #twitterotica #flashfuck

2010-09-24T20:11:00.001-07:00

Advance. Retreat. The hardest part is the excruciating patience.

First, four fingers folded, thumb tucked, slowly, slowly, coaxing silent permission. Open to me, under the heat of my intention.

Her cunt gasps, pulling me in. Knuckles hard against the walls of her containment.

I twist, smothered. Open around the force of my devotion. Open to me.

Her knees rock us both forward, return her back around my fist.

My hand unfolds inside her, a tulip blooming, violent, red.

I pivot. We spiral. All of me inside of her, breaking her down from the inside out. Then the gentlest kiss, flutter of bird wings.

#suspended #100words #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-09-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

The best part for me is her impatience. One at a time, I move slowly, buckling the leather. First the left wrist. I kiss her palm, each knuckle. Then the right, my teeth grazing papery skin.

She sighs, bored. But I adore, and her body is mine to appreciate as I choose.

The ankle cuffs take longer. My tongue travels the arch of each foot. Then metal to metal, pulley to chain.

She rises above me like a Renaissance angel in full relief. I am artist, chisels and brushes exchanged for hands, lips, leather. She is art, skin of alabaster, glorious artifice, genius intent.

100 words #anguish #twitterotica #flashfuck

2010-09-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

Four couples in rhythmless waltz. Chaste cheek kisses. Envious air kisses. I hold her arm one extra beat.

"I want your tongue in my mouth," she whispers, warm steam against my ear.

Round table for eight. I circle away. She circles back. Seated. Hand on knee. She grips me, harsh, proprietary.

She excuses us both to the ladies room, hearts pounding. I don't want to go. I go. We are gone before we can be followed.

One hand on her throat, angry, anguished. The other thrust rudely up her skirt finds her cunt wet, hungry.

"I love you," she laughs, meaning not one word.

#needle #250 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-09-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

“Lay down,” Dr. Trey Said, gently grasping her shoulders, directing her, face down on the cold metal, thin paper cover crunching, gown gaping open in the back. Her nipples hardened.

“Let me explain the procedure.” Trey was not his last name, but one of those pretentious aristocratic nicknames, a matched set with his jaw line and his Roman nose.

His fingers found her spine, and pressed in perfect synch on either side. A rough edge on his fingernail made minute lacerations as he moved.

“We’ll insert a needle where the fractures are here. . . and here . . . and here . . . and here . . . feel that?” he asked, blunt pokes of his fingertip painfully punctuating each injection site.

“Yes,” was all she could manage, her eyes in soft focus on the hard edge visible in his gray scrubs, eye level. She licked her lips, winced, swallowed hard.

He both saw and heard the sharp intake of breath at the word “needle,” and his other hand flattened, warmer, lower on her bare back. His voice went warm and sweet, “Don’t worry. You will be sound asleep. You won’t remember a thing.” He pressed down.

Her hand went up and over the waistline of his scrubs in one fluid motion. Simultaneously, her body curved into him on the cold table , around him. She lowered her mouth over his cock, taking his full length. His hands were still gentle as he grasped her head, completing the circle.

#dress #250 words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-09-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

His phone buzzed in his front pocket. Again. At dinner. With his wife and kids. His cock twitched like it always had, but his stomach turned now, too, because, well, everything had changed. He couldn’t stop himself. Couldn’t block her. Couldn’t make himself not look. He excused himself to the bathroom, opening the text before he crossed the kitchen threshold.

She used to send pictures of her mouth, her nipple, her tongue, her cunt. He would retreat to bathroom or closet or garage, beat off in a pathetic, furtive frenzy, unable to control himself.

Now it was just the dress. Always the dress.

Only the first one was captioned; it said: “This is how I am going to reclaim my dress.”

And there she was, on her knees like a pig, letting some guy jizz all over her. Every night a different guy. She made sure he could see that. Every night the same theme. Cum dribbling out of her mouth down her front. Some filthy stranger shooting all over her back, her on all fours with her dress hiked up high. Sometimes it was two guys. Once it had been three. Young. Old. Fat. Thin. Clearly, it didn’t matter to her.

He hadn’t been allowed to cum on the dress. She wore it for him once, and he spent most the evening on his knees at her feet, under her boot, face down, fucked from behind. No, he hadn’t been allowed to cum on the dress.

His phone buzzed.

Haiku & Senryu Collection #1

2010-09-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

This is my first collection of Haiku and Senryu, all posted separately to twitter. It can also be read as one long poem.

the story is carved
in spirals circling my bones
a brittle archetype

caverns of memory
twist and turn and narrow
contain and confine

words you can't rewind
silk and skin and poison pens
apologies and lies

silence kills reason
I'm sated and I'm sorry
hunger, love, remorse

frailty of memory
the faith I never had, the
safety of objects

bruise ribs cage the heart
a palace of black and blue
a monarch's regret

smooth or serrated
a blade, a choice, a purpose
pleasure, fury, pain

torn, thin as paper
your throat makes an offering
of red, liquid trust

in the dusk of loss
circling and circling
mourning doves ascend

I kissed your closed eyes
reminded of your beauty
you calmed your bruised heart

dark room, darker heart
seeking infinite blue sleep
counting shades of black

under one smooth stone
far beyond the locked garden gate
she found my desire

it isn't mine, I lied
I'd never wanted anything
more than she offered

I have three lovers
each keeps me in a treasure box
nested safe from light

one whispers to me
that I am everything to her
please wait, forever

when she lifts the lid
she looks, she licks, I slink away,
await recapture

two worships by day
with a robotic gracelessness
tasting of disdain

she listens through holes
punched crudely through the coffin lid
taking no chances

three just disappears
leaves me languishing in silence
I cease to exist

he's confused and surprised
by the cause and effect
of decomposition and neglect

I made the mistakes
of queens alone in walls of stone
all icy air, echoes

Haiku & Senryu Collection #2

2010-09-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

A periodic collection of haiku and senryu, most of it posted to twitter, not necessarily related

soft notes of her voice
break through distance and static
drawing me closer

wind, water, wood, will
freedom, speed in fearless flight
soul released, aloft

tips of my fingers
the hard knot of my wristbone
all of me inside

blankets hang heavy
in this cold and empty bed
I'm longing for you

everything I want
I'll lose, because I'm broken
longing for release

single silver bone
long spine of automobiles
curving to nowhere

Single silver bullet
fit tightly in the chamber
awaits the trigger

origami failed
time and space unfold again
pulling us apart

lie to me again
your truth hurts so much more than
your eight hundred lies

what you took from me
was immaculate as truth
filthy as a lie

the summer was long
the cactus took no water
even the blue rose died

I woke to find you
slipped away while I slept warm
face against your back

your words pierce my skin
set anchor, take root, hold me
open to your mercy

silence softens me
tears the pith around the orange
now you can skin me

I offer what's left
you take more than you wanted
and spit the rest out

demons call now, I
slip off my borrowed backbone
succumb to them again

Whore

2010-09-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

You were not my whore
when I filled your room
with blue roses, dyed,
contrived, ruinous,
nothing left now but
five dry petals you
pressed in a book and
promptly forgot.

You were not my whore
when I paid for dinner,
ordered wine, fed you
crème brûlée across
the table, my other hand,
lovingly situated,
between your bony knees.

You were not my whore
when after I took your
cock inside of me, I made
you take mine inside of you.
Back bent, knees up,
resisting, never breaking.

The words "Property of"
didn't make you my whore.

A gift for your children
did not make you my whore.

The suggested retail price
of my watch does not
make you my whore.

You were never my whore.

I am not my money.

I stood in the gutter,
and I watched the filth
wash by, forgiving and
forgetting.

I am the one used up,
emptied, ruined,
discarded.

#eviscerate #100words (exactly) #flashfuck #twitterotica

2010-09-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

"On your knees," I said, my voice a calm whisper. I loved the sound his kneecaps made, bone on marble, air forced from his lungs. I jerked the leash, pulled his hair. “Pick up the scalpel and do it,” I said.

“I won’t,” he pleaded.

“You will,” I said, my voice softer. “It’s okay. You can’t hurt me.” His hands shook; light reflecting in jagged lines from the exacto. First his soft fingertips traced over the softest, whitest flesh of my inner thigh. Then the blade pierced, drew a prefect line, opened the skin, releasing my pure red liquid trust.

#flashfuck #twitterotica follow #dark #100words

2010-09-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

“Your eyes are sad,” she said. I had her by her hair, pulling hard at the nape of her neck. Again and again, I let her get close enough to kiss, just barely touching my lips to hers, then roughly jerked her head back out of reach. I let go, and keeping her pinned, reached for the light switch. “Then I will make it dark,” my response, more a growl than a whisper. My fingers back in her hair, a tiny gasp escaped somewhere high in her voice box, as her head snapped back, and my teeth descended upon her throat.

#breathe #flashfuck #twitterotica #100words

2010-09-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

When first we finished, the air felt cool. The only heat in the room was her skin, echoes of each blow rippling under the surface. Cascades of small pleasure were still making their way out. Each exhale cooled her, slowly, little by little. I watched her breathe. I lay my hands on her gently now, knowing she could feel every point, every pixel. She was a clean slate, an empty canvas, mine now. Even the finest braille of the 1200 thread-count sheets would leave my mark. I moved to her, teeth bared, talons no longer retracted. I watched her breathe.

A Light-Adapted Eye

2010-09-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

Dead in a box
is where he found her.
His fingers stroked her
palms. His lips pushed
into her brittle lungs,
a mix of oxygen and
need, love and lies,
carbon monoxide,
kindness and benign
neglect.

He lifted her
into the violet
night. "There are
two moons in the sky,"
he said. Her eyes
no longer functioned,
but her skin was
so, so smooth, her
mouth so hungry.
She had no choice
but to believe him.

The first time they
were done, he
lay her gently
on imaginary grass,
and stuttered
unintelligible
farewells.

The very air was
heavy on her surface.
Quiet winds and distant
wings roared through
her. "Please," her lips
said, making no sound.

So in that box is where
he kept her.

Time folded and spiraled.
He checked on her,
between his visits,
sending silent birds
and iridescent
dragonflies she
sometimes didn't even
know had come.

The sun of three summers
warmed the wood, let in
more light during long
stretches of sleepless
dreaming.

In that box is where he left her.

One lavender morning,
she realized, she could see.
The wood grain inches
from her face, she studied
her side of the door.
And waited.
The wood grain
spiraled, marking time,
tiny faint points of
golden light, woven
into the burl, a tapestry
made from a dead tree,
and this dead woman's
poisoned memories.

"A golden thread," she whispered,
and she watched it quietly,
not knowing where it might lead,
but thankful for the gift of sight
restored by the reflection
of unfathomable light.

She pressed her palms flat
to the wood, and pushed
the weight of the world
away.

Blood Orange

2010-09-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

Don't fear the name,
don't let it stop you, its
skin is soft, tough, smooth,
its weight liquid, solid,
fluid as you pass it
from one hand to another,
imperfect but pure,
plain as dirt and
beautiful as earth.

Beneath the flesh, if
you are willing to tear it,
waits nature's sweet reward,
red, wet, proud, tart,
cool, sweet,
stinging.

Madrugada

2010-09-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

"None thought of the others they would never meet,
or how their lives would all contain this hour."

- Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings

Mad, I stalk and flounder
searching and collecting bits
and pieces I have hidden
from myself, and you, and
sanity, reality, presentness,
grace.

Drunk Americans
stumble home in Barcelona,
in a timeless time in dark
in light, in night, in hours
right before dawn,
in the almost-morning,
the memory of darkness,
there is no
English word.

Sliced like beef into
lethal letters that I keep,
pictures, history
incomplete when
one day I was strong and
threw words away by
the tens of thousands.
Sleep reveals me
in different coats,
in different colors,
leaning on you as you type
letters, letters, you write me letters,
wax seals, promises, wax
resist painted over wet clay.
I am wet clay, you are
explosive letters, a tiny cone,
a canary in a coal mine, some
measure of how much of me
you'll burn.
Atom bombs, lace,
crinoline, black,
down I burn, I burn down.
Three grueling years
like Sisyphus kissing the stone,
Tantalus vomiting, I
am threatened by steel sheaths,
sleeping in still sheets,
still sleeping,
still.

Whitsun morning,
she looks slick and thin
and perfect in the sand,
hiding pitchforks in her teeth,
lakes of flames in her pockets
you share gold and blood with her.

I lay under a thick pine door,
glistening
and listening,
carving out a liturgy,
scraping it with my fingernails.

The trains pass.
Humans battle history.
I am destined to
decline with paint soaked
into my skin, my hands
those of a failed painter,
scarred, worse for wear,
nothing to show for it.

Through my windows I paint
pictures of the neighbor's windows
in the rain,
declining sleep,
thinking of your wedding day,
the petit fours like bathers
on the beach. I found
four photographs,
her shiny hair
dark with winter.

The Laundry Room

2010-09-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

When I shake your husband's hand, I squeeze a bit too hard. This would be rude if I were a man, but coming from a woman, well, I saw the blip in his pupils, sensed the slight twitch in his cock. I thought about his hand for those brief few seconds of contact, where it has been, what it has done. But mostly, I was watching his mouth. He spoke a few brief words of greeting. "My wife talks about you all the time," he said. (That was my favorite.) Yes, I looked at his mouth. A weak mouth. Nothing spectacular, nothing to indicate why he thinks his mouth is too good for your cunt. I stared intently at the man who refuses to go down on you. I read him. And I softened the tiniest bit. Clearly, he is afraid.

You stood back, smiling, nervous, holding your son in your arms. My kids stood shyly behind me, watching, eager to welcome new friends to the party. Nieces and nephews, neighbors and schoolmates ran in and out of the open door to the swing set and trampoline outside.

"She talks to me about you, too," was my reply, a wry smile threatening the corners of my mouth. I felt you looking. My nostrils flared. My hand flexed. I shifted my weigh on my feet, my eye moving from his face to yours, standing a few feet behind him. Behind you was the open door to the laundry room. My eyes traveled, then, from yours to the stainless steel machines and the cold black marble counter that leads to them like a runway, then keeps them pinned into the corner.

I stepped around him to you, hesitating briefly. I smiled at your son. I know you both from the playground, sitting awkwardly close on the bench. I called you "yoga pants" in my head for a few weeks before we spoke. I know your name now. I know a lot about you. Most of what I know is how frustrated you are. "We have sex all the time," you said, first, later relenting that he has his every night, leaving you alone to finish yourself off, visions of lips and tongues and teeth, all the pleasures you imagine you will never have. Sometimes you imagine you don't deserve them, the toxic overflow of his dogma seeping through your skin at night, when you lay, alone, sweaty, unfulfilled.

I asked my children to take your son out to play, and directed your husband to follow, so you could stay behind and help me in the kitchen. I made eye contact with my husband, and pointed to your husband's turned back. "Him," I mouthed silently. He looked at you, smiled at me, and walked toward your husband. He had instructions to keep them busy for exactly 20 minutes. At his smile, the heat that has been tight, high in my chest since you walked in begins to spread deliciously down my body.

We're alone now. I take you by the wrist, and lead you into the laundry room. I shut the door behind us, locking it in one swift motion. I turn you around, and push you gently, face first, against the dryer. It is a tall one. Your hands go over your head, grasp the top edge. It is a hot day. Your shirt is crisp, white, sheer. "Cold," you whisper. I press the full length of my body against you. I press my thigh between yours, you can feel how strong, how hard my quad muscle is. You can feel my nipples hard against your back. I am hungry for the back of your neck, but careful not to get lipstick on your white linen. I just breathe into your ear.

"Oh god," you manage to push out. "There are people everywhere. I can't." But your ass presses back against me involuntarily, your thighs parting, lifting yourself back, opening to me. I laugh, and hold very still, listening to you breathe. "He will come looking for me." I just murmur encouragingly as you list all possible objections, waiting for you to get to "It isn't right." Then I manage to work my hand around, unfasten your linen skirt, watch it pool around your ankles. I pull your panties down roughly, and caress.

"Then let's get the punishment over with first," I say, my tone matter of fact. My hand makes contact with your ass, a sharp, stinging smack, with no pretense of being gentle. Your tense and cry out, the tone begins with surprise, ends with guttural need. Again. Again. My hand stings, my wrist absorbs each reverberation. Your ass heats beneath the blows of my open hand, reddening, readying. You continue the cycle, cry out, lift, open, push back against me. You are beautiful, delicate, vulnerable: a captured bird.

"Please," you say. "Please?" I ask, as if I don't understand. "Please stop." I stop.

"Please no," you say, your open mouth steaming against the curved glass front of the dryer, the eye of a giant predator. "No?" I ask, hiding my amusement. "More," you whisper, defeated. And after three more blows, you speak a deeper truth. "Please, fuck me."

I drop to one knee, still in absolute control. Your whole body shakes at the soft touch of my lips to your red, hot skin. I kiss you gently now, stroke almost imperceptibly with my fingertips. I think to myself you might come from this, just from this, from just one secret code of a woman's body, that butterfly of tense desire that connects your clit to your ass cheeks. My fingers find you wet, so engorged you can hardly stand my touch. I stand again, turn you gently, and kiss your mouth hard. You collapse against me. I lift you onto the counter. In one elongated sweep, I lean you back, part your legs, drop to one knee. And then I lower my mouth over you. You convulse.

I press my tongue deep into your cunt, filling it differently than he ever has with his cock. He is bigger, stronger. I am more determined and precise. All of my intent is focused on your pleasure, on making your body respond. Each kiss, lick, bite is for you. All for you. My tongue slides out and around, in soft, flat, broad strokes. The circles tighten around your clit. Before I can grasp you between my teeth, you start to come, my mouth flooding with years of your pent-up release. Two fast, hard orgasms and your legs scissor shut around my head. I push your knees back apart. As I move back in you plead, "No, I'm done, I did." but I bite hard along the flesh of your inner thighs, and you lift to me again. My lips encircle your clit, my hands move underneath you. I slide one long, thin finger slowly into you ass, and feel your clit jump inside my mouth. You come again, your voice upturned with surprise. My other hand moves to your cunt, two fingers easily press inside. My mouth finds yours, you kiss me, hungry for your own taste.

You come for me one more time, tightening around my fingers. In your ear I whisper things you need to know. "You are perfect," I say. "You are beautiful. You deserve all of this, and more."

#switched #FlashFictionContest

2010-09-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

100 words exactly, tweeted under the hashtag #switched for the Twitter Flash Fiction Contest

“No. No, those are only for me to put on you,” I half-whimpered, losing composure when I heard the clink of the handcuffs. “I know,” he said quietly. I felt them click around my crossed wrists anyway. He guided me, so gently, face-down on the bed. He knows I would have pushed him roughly. My chest thumped, the safe word a coward pushing at my lips. Two little syllables and I would be back in control. I need to be in control. His open palm challenged my angry skin, as proof of my submission ran so thickly down my thighs.

The Collector

2010-09-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

I will send a car for you.

I will be in Manhattan on business, less than 48 hours. I won't have time to make the trip. Besides, it's tedious. I don't enjoy waiting. In fact, I won't be kept waiting. I will, however, enjoy making you wait.

Michel is my floor butler at The St. Regis. He will arrange a town car from the Carey livery. He will call you and tell you the driver's name. You have my word you will be safe. Please wear the medium plug for the duration of the car ride, and the black calfskin trench coat the driver will bring to the door. It is vintage Gucci, my gift.

Michel has ordered 3 pairs of size 6 black pumps from the Christian Louboutin Boutique, I specified the Fetiche, and two similar styles. The driver will bring these to your door as well. Assuming they fit, please keep all 3 with my compliments, and choose one for me to see you wearing. That will please me.

Underneath the coat . . . surprise me. Pink, black or white. No red, please. I like corsets. I like lace.

I look forward to seeing what you choose. As you dress for me, I want you to think about how you're going to feel, turned over my knee in the corner suite of The St. Regis. As I type this note, I stop and flex my hand, anticipating how I might feel.

As I said, please wear the medium plug on the drive. Please bring the large plug with you. I might need it if for no other reason than as a basis for comparison.

When speaking with the driver, Michel, or other hotel staff, you may refer to me in the third person as "Madam Bailey" or simply "Madam" (they will know you mean me).

Please do not refer to me directly as Madam, Ma'am, Miss, Ms. or Mistress. My first name alone conveys all necessary authority. It pleases me to hear you say it often, to watch your lips and tongue coordinate to force the syllable.

I will perceive your respect in the tone of your voice, and the words you choose. My favorite phrases include: "Yes, Wyeth. No, Wyeth. Please, Wyeth. Thank you, Wyeth. Please, no, Wyeth. Please, yes, Wyeth." And . . . so forth.

I know you well enough to know you will be tweeting on the car-ride. I will permit this, with no location details. Of course, I also request you text Sylvanus all details along the way to assure him of your safety and comfort. He knows how to reach me.

As you ride in the back seat of the town car, black leather on black leather, I will be finishing my meeting. The generic bankers will leave my suite, and Michel will bring me tea, fruit and champagne as I have my bath.

I do not wait for you, of course. I ask Michel to open the 1996 Veuve Vlicquot La Grande Dame, and I sip, to calm my nerves. You're still an hour away, and I have to manage my adrenaline.

Out of the bath, I choose something simple, black silk. Of course, I will reveal very little of myself to you. Tonight, you are the art, I am the collector. I will admire, test, appraise, enjoy.

Before he left, Michel removed three leather cases (one hard, two soft) from the armoire and placed them on the bed. I fold one open, revealing a series of stainless steel plugs of various shapes, widths and lengths. The next one contains silicone toys of various shapes and sizes, all designed to be held in my hand. The third case holds 5 black leather crops in various widths & lengths.

If I am pleased at your arrival, you will be allowed to choose one implement from each case to start. Sylvanus has communicated to me that your cunt is off limits to me tonight. Your ass, however, is mine to pleasure as I see fit. To test. To admire. To appraise. To enjoy.

Michel's soft, unmanly voice announces your arrival. I stand and move to the wing chair in the main room. You enter, somewhat meekly, wearing the coat, and pumps I don't recognize, but that please me still.

You look at the floor, the faintest of smiles flickering at the corners of your lovely mouth.

"Your coat, Mina?" asks Michel, and not waiting for an answer, he helps you shrug out of it.

My eyes brush over the contours of silk and lace and skin. My pupils dilate, revealing appetite behind my studied stillness.

I reach out one hand, my long fingers gently tipping your chin so your eyes can meet mine, so you can see my approval. I know you understand.

"Welcome, Mina," my voice is soft, but firm, every consonant ennunciated clearly. "You are indeed beautiful." To myself, I think, you are petite but not frail, delicate but not fragile. My right hand flexes involuntarily.

"Thank you, Wyeth," you reply with complete confidence. In one fluid motion, you are kneeling before me. I extend my hand. I tell you you may kiss it.

three lovers (a haiku cycle)

2010-09-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

I have three lovers
each keeps me in a treasure box
nested safe from light

one whispers to me
that I am everything to her
please wait, forever

when she lifts the lid
she looks, she licks, I slink away,
await recapture

one worships by day
with a robotic gracelessness
tasting of disdain

she listens through holes
punched crudely through the coffin lid
she takes no chances

one just disappears
leaves me languishing in silence
I cease to exist

he's confused and surprised
by the cause and effect
of decomposition and neglect

bruised ribs cage the heart
a palace of black and blue
a monarch's regret

dark room, darker heart
seeking infinite blue sleep
counting shades of black

I made the mistakes
of queens alone in walls of stone
all icy air, echoes

in the dusk of loss
circling and circling
mourning doves ascend

under one smooth stone
far beyond the locked garden gate
she found my desire

it isn't mine, I lied
I'd never wanted anything
more than she offered

dirty windows

2010-09-11T20:50:00.001-07:00

kind words get deflected, filtered and
rejected until they sound like they are whispered
from seven rooms away, through brick and mortar walls
or they are pleading, from a hidden chamber underground
where we as kids are kidnapped, scream for help
through a little tube that sticks up through
the forest floor allowing air supply, they give
us just enough to stay alive, with our crackers,
our water, and our jar to pee in, like a connecting
flight to our caskets, which are warmer, safer and much quieter,
a telephone booth, an egg cracked on a plastic toy skull,
monochromatic promises, the sour smell of old photos

I can see me calmly, my good self, washed for company,
I can see it through dirty old farmhouse windows like
a broken clock under glass, through a window, through a window,
through another window, the dirt layers make a kaleidoscope of
browns and grays and spider legs, these are the things
that stand between, dirty, dead and crispy, these are the things
that stand between me and me, and wouldn’t it be easier
if I couldn’t see it, wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t know I’m in there

I am as light as a piece of paper, and everything about me sits
on my surface in blue ink for the world to read, and in frantic script
the margins plead, Please, don’t read. Please, don’t tear. Please, don’t
lift me up to a gust of warm wind that will twist me and turn me,
fold my words back again upon each other, so each one knows the
other’s truth, exposed to war or syncretism, instead
I water them down, the words, I pour, I pour, until
the pulp is sodden, heavy, grounded, the words are
fuzzy, blurred, obliterated, until there’s nowhere to go,
until there’s nothing to read, just a curdled useless
mess, the sloughed off skin of who I could have been.

the same sand

2010-09-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

what sifts and shifts, the ocean silts
in the gray and white nubs of my Nikes
buried in the undercoat of my old dog,
he shakes, he sniffs, he stinks somehow
like corn chips rolled in seaweed
he dug a hole but not as far as the legendary
hole to China that we stopped digging
when we were kids because of reports of
pinworms in the sandbox

how long, how bony were Moses’ toes, how
worn were the sandals of Jesus, scratched and
smoothed by the contact of sand against skin
glistening crystals, sweat and blood, how tired
were the feet on cold desert nights of the hegira,
Medina a million shifting steps away
made all the closer by the certainty
in Muhammad’s mind’s eye

we are all of us hunted in the service of the same god,
haunted by the specter of slithering, opposite vermin,
we press our fleshy, calloused soles against the same
sand, coughed up by what the single ocean
sees as one contiguous beach that we have
chopped and maimed, differentiated and named
knowing deep within ourselves that
we are always, and we are all,
ultimately named by others

Bees' Woods

2010-09-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

European styling, black
fenders on black tires,
black tires on black
highway, black highway
on black dirt, green grass,
brown and yellow leaves,
green and yellowed clover,
dead dogs, shed black
tread skins, glass, whisky,
blood, bones, teeth,
teeth on the cloverleaf,
teeth on a side street,
teeth sunk in the flesh of a
soft, curved shoulder.

His fingers skimmed the
air off the flat stretcher
like water from a sailboat,
like sea spray passing, smooth
like a caress, light, lips
on lips, fingertips on
fingertips, rescued
from the wreck by a
wailing red white wagon,
full of meat, fingers on the
steering wheel, fingers
in my hair.

Black glasses on
black eyes, the cinder
in his lips while I
walk the line like a high
performance highwayman,
exit sign to exit
sign, a gas can
in my hand, full.

I am on my long
way back.

No knight on
horseback gallops by,
the tiger trips
between my feet,
the big cat slips,
the big cat sleeps,
the big cat purrs
like a machine, fans and
belts and pistons, strings
of B.B. King, the black
upholstery swallows me.
I left the petrol back
there, smaller, smaller,
pieces of the past, names,
dates, occupations, a
bony hand on a fleshy
knee, tightening
and tightening.
He tapped ashes through
a straight stripe
in the window glass
and they flew backward,
finding the can.
We drove.
The world we
left behind burned
red and blue and
rolling.

The clearing: a clover
field, a game reserve, a
jungle for all jungle
cats, he turned the
key and left the lion
there. We walked.
He pushed me on a bed
of leaves and burned
red ashes into me
spotting my skin,
like a smoking
snow white
snared, smooth
leopard, I scratched
and bit and screamed
and died.

He did his work
on a dead machine.

The freeway fire
caught up with me,
I woke to the heat
and the fleeing bees.
"These are bees' woods,"
he had said, bees
and bees and bees and
I stood up like
Don Quixote in the fire,
my sword cracked at
the hilt, I stood and
breathed the fire like
the air. They were
bees' wounds, they stung
me, fleeing, on my black
charred spots, still hot
in the center, seeping red.

He stood leaning on
a tree. I can't explain
the part of me that
felt relief. We walked
hand in hand into
the stream and washed away
my burns. He forced me under,
and my eyes bulged
and burned and
I fought him, until I
breathed the water
like the air.

It rained on the drive home.
I stopped and found a metal
square, red burned black,
the square where we began,
the accident, the fault
of time, miscalculations,
warp speed, center lines,
degrees, bones, faults,
glass like giant grains
of sand: a sacred beach:
two animals collide,
copulate, then pulled
apart by gods they go
their separate ways,
one to the hospital,
one to the morgue.
I killed a man, his panther's
bones lay on the road like
pieces of a dream:
a bee sting,
a siren,
a swordfight,
a car.

Spitting

2010-09-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

"Fifteen minutes with you, well, I wouldn't say no . . ."
~ The Smiths, Reel Around the Fountain

Golden nicotine, the circles
on his fingertips were like coins,
spitting gold and spitting ash
with smoke rising like hands,
like his hands on the back
of my neck. This is how I
wake up, still, the telephone
a silent stone, a second-time
offender, unforgiving of my sin.

Tea fills me like an oil spill fills
the bay: viscous, alien, unwelcome,
because waking is the tragedy,
because sleeping is redemption,
because dreaming is the truly lawless
land, where I can kill the man,
again and again, with no fear
of repercussion, resurrection,
resolution, or peace.

Your door closed slow
behind me, and I
dusted myself off,
my knees, my hands. I
stumbled to the car, my
pulse points glowing in the air,
like coals beneath the bellows
of your words.

Your shadow in the window,
black, straight, rigid, cold.
I melted like the weaker ore,
bending beneath your touch
a burning torch, acetylene,
I curled up into myself,
rolled down like molten gold
into the gutter drain.

After my mistake, I cooled
and hardened in another shape:
free-form, undefined, crisp,
purposeless and delicate, like
lace or screen or grating,
a filling or a fencing mask,
a spill.

A father and a coat of arms:
I unfulfill my legacy. A night
walk on the beach, waking up
in sandy stranger's sheets.

Morning falls like a stone
grave lid. I am barren
and divorced. A dried up
stylus in an arthritic claw
scrawling hollow carvings
into wet paper, hatch-marks
never to be read. I try in vain
to rewrite all the lines, to change
your mind, to turn my hand and
rewind all the time, redact all the lies.

I have crossed them out,
in black ink and in blue but I can
still look through to see them sitting,
still untrue, still strong and blunt and stabbing
as they ever, ever were.

The devil is a ranting, raving cunt,
devouring youth by candlelight, swallowing
us at either end, then spitting up remains.

alchemical

2010-08-20T19:17:00.001-07:00

the charges are wrong
the contacts corroded
the taste in my mouth is
bitter like my tongue against
the snap of a 9-volt battery,
that and other dumb ideas
started on a dare, ended badly

blood tastes like copper or
does copper taste like blood?

exposure made me brittle
something in the air eats me alive
immutable to good deeds,
inexorable as rock to rain,
but the silences fold centuries,
accelerate decay
that's what happens when
the core starts unstable

it was a whole bag of kittens
tasting creek water through a burlap sack
and she saved them, just like she saved me
but when each met their early end anyway,
she said, some of us just aren't meant to be

I knew then she was talking about me

what is the reverse of alchemy?
treasure into trash, golden, molten
magic into ore less beautiful, impure,
to serve a useful purpose, be strong,
stand tall, persist, like words and keys
and families, the currency of
a civilized life, lick the pennies
resting on your cold dead eyes,
to see if they taste the same
as the blood in your mouth

Contained

2010-08-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

I wake in the dark just to
swallow you whole,
chew through bone and
sinew, grind the fleshy parts
to mush, leave you speechless,
soak your blood into my
emptiness, fill myself with
strength I've stolen, gifts
you've given. You cannot
escape. I digest. I absorb.
Some sane part of me knows
and sends bile up the back
of my throat as a gentle
reminder to sometimes
just let you go.

I subdue the devil
that resides in me, licking
your generous purple heart,
red and blue blend what's old
with what's new, and leave
a scene of beauty, painterly,
like the Sea of Cortez bleeds
into the Pacific, Playa del Amor,
a fantasy tourists pay extra to see
by water taxi, surrendering
to the clash of conflicting currents.

I am wounded, I blame you. You
are the one who knelt to me.
I am broken, I blame me. I am
the one who can't seem to believe.
We are contained, one
in the other. When you retreat,
you take me with you. But when
you let go, I fall into zero gravity,
I am lost to the physics of crazy.

I need to feel you hard against my skin.
I need to know. I will let you in.
I will allow you. No words required.
You cannot escape. I love and I own.
You cannot escape. I digest. I absorb.

Semiprecious

2010-07-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

With deliberate slowness, Alice climbed the ten half-flights of stairs that would deliver her, slowly, quad muscles hard and burning, to the fifth-floor apartment of the man she knew only as Lazarus. He had given her a key the night before, after they had finished, and before he sent her out into the bleak night street alone. It was a monumental gesture of trust, she understood. It was not like her mother giving a key to the gardener or the housekeeper. It was more like the night he first collared her, less an offering than a symbol of his ownership, his taking of her, and her subsequent deliverance from the disquiet of her life and its inherent responsibilities. The memory of his voice, his hands, his pressure, his command still burned deep in her gut like the red embers that remain after the fire, less beautiful, but generating the more enduring, the more important heat. An image of his face formed in her mind, the beard trimmed sharp, angular to disguise the weak chin and the soft, unmanly lips.

Her hand moved involuntarily to her everyday collar, the choker of white gold and peridot she could wear unnoticed by the light of day. “A proper man gives a girl a ring with a diamond, certainly nothing semiprecious,” her mother had admonished one afternoon, as Alice used her right hand to conceal the bruises around her left wrist. This memory of her mother’s unsolicited feedback was tangential to her task today, and itself generated more tangential thoughts of other days, other teas with mother, other feedback. What Alice came back around to was this: A proper man tells you his real name, particularly if he intends to continue using your body for his own gratification. This shred of convention was to be her justification for using this key today, for entering his empty home and searching his drawers and papers to inform herself of the one thing he held back. She was breaking, she knew, the promise of her collar, the vow to be under his complete control – body, heart, mind, soul, blah, blah. She rebelled, she knew, like the slaves history remembers. From her purse she removed her formal collar, its black leather still stiff, unbroken. On one of its four D-rings hung and ordinary house key.

Her first thought was how dumpy the apartment looked without him in it. Last night, it was his lair and she his fallen prey. Last night, the dirt and disarray, the musky odor of adult male mixed to make the markings of a hungry animal, restraining her, isolating her from the outside world. In the morning light, it was a shit hole of an apartment, and it stank. Her choker felt too tight suddenly, around her throat, as she imagined him in a corporate cubicle in off-brand khakis and a short sleeved shirt and tie. This was the apartment of a loser. This was the apartment of a man with a weak chin. She sat on the burgundy corduroy couch, more stink puffing out upon impact. This was the apartment she broke into. This is what she had become, a slave to a man in the lower quartile of society. The realization was a different kind of debasement and not so satisfying. Yet as she sat, her brain processed the input and her sense memories emerged. Lazarus with his booted foot, gently pressing down on her windpipe. Lazarus fucking her so hard against the wall that her cheekbone bruised in a perfect line. Lazarus using her body for his own gratification, with such a tender brutality – or was it a brutal tenderness – that she dissolved into a state of complete nothingness. Alice’s hands drifted to her throat.

Data Exchange

2010-03-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

"I fell under your spell, and I lay where I fell"
-- Flesh for Lulu, Postcards from Paradise

I cannot speak or
understand the language
of your fingertips, whispering
over the surface of my skin,
like words of an aria sung
in a foreign tongue, the
music moves me viscerally,
I wonder what it is you ask,
what I promise, how I answer

I will never know if there
are even words exchanged,
or just the woosh of space
as your skin cells dance with mine,
changing places, making each of us
a little bit more into the other

lost in the dizzy surprise of
all I do know, one sure true
thing, binary, simple as the
sun's hot light, I am cherished,
I am loved, I am held above,
taken apart, reassembled by
hands so very gently that
nothing will ever, ever,
break my fragile heart again

the words I can read, I read,
and read, and reread, when
we are separated by the
choices we make, and the
promises we try to keep,
kept apart by our own good
hearts, that character we most
admire in each other conspires
against us, time and space
work against us, but nothing
can ever stop the truth from
being true, I read it every
day when you type the words
"I love you," and we become, each
day, a little more, part of one another,
when the winds stir subatomic
particles into your phone and
out of mine, and back again

you can feed my need, my greed,
with artifacts, for now, with relics

give me, please, the shirt off your back
so I can hold it to my face,
smell you, sweet, kiss the cotton
that sleeps against your body
in what is inarguably my place

write for me, please, with a pen
in your hand, the words I know
so that I can hear them in a whole
new way, arcane, ink on paper,
subtle turns and curls that map
the surface of your complicated heart

play for me the music that lives
full and rich and endless in your brain,
teach me that magic language so
I can understand why I am moved
by feelings I can't put words to,
when words are all I have

fill the air around me with the
charge of your intentions,
the soup you would make,
the tea you would steep, the
kisses you send me travel
over the air with so much
force sometimes that I feel
them land on my closed eyes,
the back of my neck,
my sleeping lips

let me be the archeologist who
finds you, after so many years
lost in the deep sleep of the lonely,
let my touch awaken the parts
of you that want to be seen, known,
ultimately loved. Every question,
I will ask; every secret, I will keep;
every promise, I will hold dear. In
every story that you tell, when
you pause to breathe, I will gently
sigh, or squeeze your hand, or hold
your eyes with mine so you will
know how much I want to know you

Yours

2009-11-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

I want to be the book
you hold at night, open in
your palms while your
eyes stroke gently over
my skin, reading,
loving, understanding

I want to be the softest
cotton of your sheets, your
pillowcase, touching your
skin all through the night,
whispering soft sounds of
comfort, so you might sleep,
safely contained within
this love I keep for you

I want to be the sip of tea,
craved, green, strong, sweet,
that rolls around inside
your mouth before being
safely swallowed, over
your throat, into your
chest, nourishing you

I want to be the
piece of bread
torn gently asunder in
your softest of fingertips,
then crushed between
your teeth, pressed,
tamed, reduced into
ecstatic nothingness by
the strength and pressure
of your hunger, and your jaw

I want to be the blood
inside your heart, making
everything that was ever blue
red, awake, alive again,
helping, healing, holding you

I want to be the mouthpiece
pressed against your lips,
the bell around your hand,
the gust of wind forced
from your lungs through
twists and turns, through a
labyrinth that transforms
me into something beautiful
that you might love as much
as you love Stravinsky's Firebird

just one note, one puff,
one sip, one touch,
one night, one heart,
one love, I long to be