BROKEN COMPASS He lives his life In a grid Where every possible course Is plotted and charted With corresponding coordinates For his heart Thick red lined markers Clearly showing every lover Who ever departed. Order is the rationale of the day The bien etre of his existence Logical progressions precisely calculated the sole means of his stark subsistence. She is a child of the sun Searing, combustible Full of chaos and fire. BROKEN COMPASS A wanton creature of the jungle A prodigious student of desire. Thriving on collusions and collisions Incapable of finishing what she started Unwilling to commit to his steadfast decisions Reluctant to navigate any map that's been charted. Disorder is her dish du jour Ravenous for the road of most resistance Passion the only spice on her rack Seduction the meat of her existence. Their meeting was his calculation. Their loving her bold but sound prediction. Combined they balanced precariously traversing the rocky terrain to each one's inner nation The fuel for their love was spent Though the key always remained in its vehicle's ignition And they could no longer reconcile themselves to such a life of contradiction. She was his star. His brilliant quasar. His shining light in the darkest storm. He was her Gibraltar. Her stalwart altar. Her Camelot, the only shelter of love she had ever known. And their tears will drown the oceans. And their cries will still the winds. But what is done cannot be undone. They have reached their final destination. The end of a carefully compassed love.

There is no explanation for what you do to me... Words stumble & fail me like happy drunks in alcoholic stupor during New Year's Eve revelries. So giddy am I when intoxicated with the merest thoughts of you. Shadows of you blind me... Gamma Rays burst in your eyes... I shudder at the thought of what it would be like in your presence. Gleaming , brilliant, radiant, lustrous Glowing, beaming, blazing, dazzling, Yes, like the childhood songs of yore, I sing: Starlight, Starbright first star I see tonight I wish I may, I wish I might burn in your candlelight.... You are all things sunlit & moonbeamed... Effulgence is you... I want to bathe in the milky phosphorescence of your love And I? Supplicant... A grateful mendicant bowing to your glory. Your every utterance reaches me at the most visceral level. Limbic brain shunts all flows to all other functions Then my mind becomes: Electrified, Stupified, Mesmerized Til I am reduced to nothing But a dumb beast at your beck & call... A wild thing waiting to be tamed by your lion's whip... Longing for the lash of your tongue, All juicy fruited... Macerating like ripe cherries steeped forever in the armagnac of your words. You alone fill me with spirits divine. Command me to And I will melt inside myself, all creamy & smooth. My concavities- salt-licked oceans Thirsting... Longing... Needing... for your swim into my depths. I become slippery when wet... Let us ride these waves until the tides all run dry...

Your yearnings... They call to me.. from a distant past to an uncertain future... Echo Echo Echo In the ancient forests & dense thicketed mangroves that lead to the chambers of an illusory time. All those dreams... sweet dreams... Ballasts of hope sailing over the high seas I feel you like tenterhooks on the fraying fabric of my lusty memories Fastened tight In my brain In my veins Pulling & pulling... Until you yank the heart right out of me It flies to you hapless & willing On butterfly wings Firefly lit & milky moon soaked Dripping with desire Your words devour my soul whole Swirling it like drams of brandied madness all over that silvery palate of yours You don't even have to chew because I melt as soon as I hit your tongue And dissolve on it like one of those rock candies That burst with a POP! and there goes the weasel, Daddy Can you taste me? I'm not bad I'm just drawn that way And so are you... Your words should be scribed into hieroglyphics on the immortal walls of forever; Chanted by warrior angels ready to do battle With the wicked mindfuckery That pervades a witless Pavlovian society, but I really don't care about that Not right now... Fuck the world I'd tattoo them, They... Those... The things you wield as weaponry Yes... Your words Allover my body Cover me with your sinew & spew. I offer myself as living art Dedicated to the glory of you Burn into me Brand me with your need Color me crazy Paint me pretty I throw down my shield, lift up my veil and invite you in... How high are you willing to climb? The rungs to my ladder lead all the way up to heaven. What are you waiting for, Trojan Man? Armageddon? C'mon... CHARGE!!! Let the games begin...

Hands on skin Peeling back the need Of unfulfilled touch This healing An elision of thought and movement Sinuously gliding In the arc of spines and The covenant of hips Intertwined She will wrap herself around the wound of his want Bandaging him in the glisten of her lips Extracting the blade of truth From his blue throat with slow licks and soft sucks. Sweating out the poisoned word, Her caresses become milky light glow. His radium drips in her grip. With the rain of her fingers, the crescent moon rises in him untangling the Ganges from his locks to release the nectar of immortality. Three planetary systems explode In his ecstasy... And their star dance Gives birth to the loins of God.

There was a time Before I knew you. There was a sun Before you shone. I know I breathed Air of contentment. I know my world Has always spun. Yet now seems like A breath-locked vacuum, A tuneless chord, A chimeless ring. On kissless lips My truth cries at you; With wordless psalms To you I sing. For now you're gone And though I know The lark still flies Tulips still bloom. Without you, I prefer the penury in the hollow sepulchre of my gloom. My pining heart wears itself on me; Pinned to my breast like a cameo brooch. The soffitted light of Life's charmed chalcedony; The feathered hope of Nature's rhapsody Now exist here For me only as echoes within these pearl chambered dreams of You.

Improvised!

Crash and burn... Sandpapered thoughts... Scratch, rake, rasp That endless scraping So painful to hear The drone of confusion The shrill pitch of fear My mind just a whirlpool Eddy currents of tears I can't stop the noise of you Your siren song still wails in my ears The brain bleed is ceaseless endless flow of red tide my harrowed heart is fathomless wondering just how your love for me died But dead I am to you My existence no longer a blip on your screen I crashed on your watch yet... the shattered remnants of my wreckage still remain by you... Unseen.

He wondered... "What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object?" Quantifiable, Qualifiable, Quiescence took his tumescence into a rigid state of existence. Her undeniable, justifiable acquiescence made him feel adolescent The heat of their concupiscence licked his flesh with its flames of desire. All wet lips and silken skin she did him inspire set him on fire while casting her web of pure spun seduction. She wrapped round his molten member lit him up like a glowing ember He could not remember ever spinning in such ecstatic shrouds and folds. Senseless he was rendered during their planetary exploration and felt such heavenly sensation without hesitation he into her tread more ever bold. With her palm's firm grasp on his rock hardness he plunged into those depths of darkness Rocking into her restless seas as wantonness unfold. Plunging oh so deep into her raw essence He came all milky and pearlescent drenched in her sweet surrender all their erotic contemplations told. Candy-soaked & body tender from the ardor Again he felt himself grow harder ready for another dip into the honey laden bowl. But ever curious the mad scientist within him searched for the algorithm that could ensure a perfect replica of her lover's gold. Longing to experiment for his cerebral pleasure he would destroy her with his need to measure her passion with the scales of relative unknown... Try he would for alchemy so clever that could keep them passionate forever or die from lusty Greed's strong hold. No matter to him then that love could never sustain such graduated measure without entombing his beloved treasure beneath the earth's dark sad catacombs. He strapped the wings of Icarus on her supple spine Hoping for love Divine to ignite places within her yet unknown. With no mercy he bound Iago's scarf around her neck Choking out her strong reflex against his intellectual probe. He felt his Desdemona would surely rise No question of her demise from wicked Curiosity's sensual enterprise. As she flexed her waxen wings His lover's knot grew taut Left her gasping and distraught She was crashing into Icarian Seas of lusty thoughts. Searing her next with his lover's brand leaving her forever damned, he attached the probes to her head, genitals and hands. He counted her orgasmic throes and recorded her high-pitched screams Carefully inscribing all her nightmarish dreams In a steady stream of endless flow. "Don't stop! Don't stop!" Pitiful wretch cried muffledly into the night Dying with delight as the wings of Lust once again took flight. Oh he was so pleased as he documented her pitiable pleas You see, he never let compassion interfere with his pure scientific need. Up went the amperage ignoring her excruciating pain. more electrodes were attached to her poor brain and He plunged once again into her celestial domain. Bare-fisted he tore into her unrest yanking the heart out of her as he ripped the life from her bared chest Yet she moaned with ceaseless pleasure while he stripped away her soul she offered no vestige of protest as he clamped the last scope on her full round breast. Beseeching him to fuck her with her last dying breath she wanted to go to her death in passion's overwhelming hold. She cried out with a soft shout these words of agony without one shred of dignity or doubt: "Strip me, whip me Grind me, bind me get inside me... please Don't leave me in the cold" As her right wing melted into gooey puddles of wax He eagerly jotted down all the significant facts and proceeded to take her into their embrace of old. When the experiment was over she lay there lifeless... Ecstasy had claimed her for his own. Another "le petit mort" victim of a horrible misconception in Love's alchemical gold. "What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object?" Horrified, he realized he would never know...

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. ~ Song of Solomon

In this crush of petals Where Hope lies bleeding Left only to perfume The stony mortar Of a resolute resistance... I ache for you My heart halted Can no longer keep the rhythm Of Dawn's dance Nor feel the alchemy Of Night's slow heavy breath That which once gave life to us Is now in arrest The vow of the stars Shatter in the futility of my muted cries. The galaxy quakes The skies like brittle bones break As the pestle of a terrible Reality grinds Pulverizing the patience of an already restless Time. My tears become a sacrilege to my eyes For my mind sacrosanct in its commitment To the justice of us Refuses the witness to see Such villainous mutiny Against the captain who unfurled the sails of our Bounty Gliding us along the glassy trust Of Love's Horizonless blue In Eternity, we drank deep and cruised true. My blood now no longer flows free It sputters and pools Flooding the gutters Holding the air hostage to this treasoner's body My poisoner veins protest the pain in This sullen shell Attacked by a forlorn female infused with a frantic Frenzy An alien Whose lying lips wail Whose throat chokes on the pale Sobs that soak The curse "He does not love me" into an unwilling host. Its viral language trapped in the contagion of Doubt's cells Draining the well Tell her, the liar, that it's untrue Tell her such blasphemy is for fools I don't know what to think What to do I only know that The she in the me The we Both Desperately wish to believe In you Of you With you Or die In the suffocation Of the blanketing lie without you. These battlestations a self-immolation, Burn in the barrage of words Fired like bullets Burrowing in the tender places that hold onto faith My fealty, a sacrifice, Trapped in the line of Psyche's own crossfire The hemoptysis, a confused Pandora's releasing A catharsis of the vile thought Trying impossibly to escape the mind of Zeus In spes phthisica, perhaps My Lady of the Camellias consumption could at last feed Delusion's need And find peace in that final exaltation If I could with a last kiss explain to you how much you're missed, our lips would never part... I should stay away, I know, but I have nowhere to go Because I, in my infinite madness, still hope Somehow Within the flight of a blackbird's broken-winged rise My presence can still draw you nigh To ride proud on my prow. This ache This need Is why the Nile bleeds And why Aetna still shivers Beneath the surface of countless Centuries Of hardened cold ash Feigning calm It is why the tectonic plates Chafe and crack the Earth's shell The searchlight eyes of Forever lies In the redemption From a lonely hell Collapsing the light. And men create Gods for such purpose And the Gods Like abandoned children In the wilderness Die For lack of it...

Just give me a chance to catch my breath. Feels like I'm a hundred years older & I'm falling deeper in debt. But if you stop this fight, I'll kill ya! cause mama ain't raised no quitter, I got one shot And Imma rock it harder than Ali in the Thrilla from Manila Yeah, maybe life is a losing game A crap shoot that I can't win. Man, those dice might be loaded but I sure as shit ain't gonna cave in! You stand on that ringside waving that towel in the air forked tongue in your mouth feasting on my cauliflowered ear, Screaming at me "Down! Down! Stay Down! But fuck that! I'm the one eatin' the dirt off the ground! Fuck YOU! I'm getting back on my feet. Einstein flunked out of school, twice! Yeah, Beethoven was deaf & Helen Keller was blind! This is my chance, my life & it's about TIME! I ain't no bum, Mick. I ain't no bum! I got my own rhythm I'll beat my own drum... 'Cause I was thinkin', it really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. Apollo's Creed ain't about nothing but greed. I may not win, but I'll make that motherfucker bleed! Ain't gonna be no rematch. Don't want one. when that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'll know for the first time in my life... That I am my daddy's son!

Well, I'm sitting on the side of the road Contemplating this and that The either/or of my neither/nor... As I look at dune grass sway and shadows play, I realize: Most of my writing is baroque It lies in the rapacious rococo realm of the sensual Overdressed, Overblown Salome's biblical dance weaving between the fibers of every gaudy veil that obscures diaphanous thought with smoky kisses and John The Baptist's blood. The stuff awash with the sweat of the sin in skin The carnal in the carnival... The siren call is my mantra It opens me up to the universe Seduction is the oxygen I breathe The paradoxical struggle of The irresistible force meeting the immovable object is a favorite of mine. One that I invoke time after time. The truth is I want my Odysseus to tie himself to the mast of that mighty ship tightly as I quire to him Then... I want the sheer power of his desire for me To cut those ropes free, even against his will Even as he fears the inevitability of his destruction The melting of his Icarian wings The final splash the last gurgle of a heady breath as his lungs fill with the reckoning of an inordinate craving that can only be sated with the undulations of my body. Here's the caveat... My siren song does not end as a crashing into rocks... It will, instead, be a releasing to his higher self through the rapture of the seeming of our seething we would find the emergence of true being... Yet... I don't want to feel this anymore The sex The pyre of desire The immolation The hot lick of the hellfire I want to feel... Nothing A blank unholy nothing The biggest crime against nature is to deny her... The possibility. That's why everyone loves the Spring La Primavera is the queen of swing Gaia is bursting with a symphony of pleasure The air is an orgy A spinning riot of color and forms The lusty waxen combs of honey Dripping with the potential for anything... Life breaks free of all confines Through the cracks in pavements Through the fissures in walls Through the soil's sullen chambers Every layer of Earth rejoices. Possibility is the most seductive state of being.... She cries "Look Pa, no hands!" As she dangles the fruits of Winter's labor Lusciously. Bees buzzing Trees cumming Birds humming Blossoms lose their inhibitions To the wind and spread their petals wide In anticipation of every sunrise The rain soaks the thirsty loam The sea spumes a delicate filigree of foam Inviting, delighting in the song of the fishes The musky scent of satisfaction Permeates it all As it should be Anything else is an abomination A bitchslap to the natural order of things And should be Chuck Norrised Into the stone age with all the other stark deniers of life's truth The truth is We are here to fuck and be fucked Creating more fuckers and befuckers. That's just the way it is. Propagation is the reason for life. Life is the gift that keeps on giving With a fractal certitude that is The fusion of poetry and science. Quantum Physics meets Relativity while reciting a Shakespearean sonnet and dancing to a Mozart waltz. But I am neither a fucker nor a befucker. Lately, I have become a weed A dandelion wish kissing a hurricane... Lost & blown apart... Maybe my seeds will land somewhere, someday, carried on butterfly wings but for now I feel like an inert gas in a vacuum of madness A thing released from the embalmed breath of mummified memory My leading man is the Phantom of the Opera Our libretto was written by Gepetto And in it Pinocchio has outgrown his nose And cutoff his apron strings So I sing the St. Thomas Blues Blue as I can be A hooey A hooey That man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me To him with plangent voice, I sing my aria, "Oh child of the moon Plant your seeds in me... My soil is moist and fecund and longing for the plunge of your spade..." The child of the moon smiles placidly and drifts away on the Wizard's balloon. I think I'm going to bury myself In layers of fat and fascia and hide for a while. I did it once before Funny thing was how healthy I stayed Because I did not gorge myself crudely but fill myself I did With a prodigious amount of ambrosial foods so pure That even the angels could not demur. My doctor was certainly amazed. It's astonishing how a thing that climbs Under your dermis and swells it up Cushions it, protects it Can seem so vile to the naked untutored eye. Reubens saw the beauty in the soft rounded form Of course, he was both a hedonist and a genius Too much is never enough for such a one. But for those of a grim, tunneled ascetic nature Who are stringent of soul and astringent of heart Even the most beautiful symmetrical features become distorted Under swell of fleshy carnality And so one ceases to feel like an object of desire. You're insulated from everything during that time It's like walking around in a bubble world I'll be a bubble girl. It's a Socratic syllogism in applied psychology: The moment you cease to feel desirable You become undesirable. Ipso facto Roll me in Playdoh Cover up my mojo I'll be a snowy doughy Pillsbury girl With vanilla glazed thighs And chocolate chip eyes It's safer this way I will cease being tempted by that rare divine male For whom I loom large As he zooms into my view with a sonic boom Mostly because I will cease being a temptation to him. I am never interested in a man who has no desire for me. He must want me. Since It was the apple tree that we eyed in Eden not the pumpkin patch, I will put a latch on the hatch Of my sexuality. Lock it tight Bury it with Kryptonite And not even Nietzsche's Super Uberman will be able to set my yoni free With my feminine essence gone I can be at peace On the edge of the Nile In Denial Like Dante's demon's dreams swimming Along the river Lethe, I'll forget. Mnemosyne is too divine for the likes of me Besides omniscience would be boring as fuck I thrive on mystery. I have done it once before Bury myself in flesh to abort the womb of need I remember Andreas A tasty Bavarian pastry of a man Whom I met by a roll of the galaxial dice He was my physical therapy Figurative and literally I've always had a thing for the Nordic male I never realized it til now Something about the fire beneath the ice With eyes that sparkle like the faceted cut of a diamond's blaze. White hot in its stoicism... Scorching me as I melt in his gaze Every session with Andreas was like tantric sex My Kundalini was coiled around the lotus of his third eye And he reeled into me, But I was married, you see And so was he And while we never engaged in the act, We fucked each others auras It just doesn't get better than that He had an older Japanese spouse who took care of his material and emotional needs But neglected his physical ones. He was a Stradivarius unstrung but I could play his etude. Like the good ex-Catholic school girl that I am, Eventually I hopscotched away from the our little recess fray. When 4 months later we bumped into each other All he could do was look at me and say No, Lori, no... tenderly... I had put on 40 pounds, you see Very quickly He knew why instantly... We had that kind of visceral connection Even after he A few other golden delicious apples Fell from their tree rolling at my feet And though their perfume was sweet I just didn't want to chance The infidelity So...my word became flesh. Mounds of it. Yes, I think I'll do that again. It will feel like a vacation. When you take a vow You should keep it Doesn't matter if your partner desecrates it You can only control how you treat others Not how others treat you... It's not that I'm unhappy It's just that I'm hungry So I'll eat what my integrity affords me.

I miss you I cling to your memory Like shadows huddle beneath the bruise of thunder As they seek the deeper alchemy in the light of sound... Clasping to hope I want you I want to be engulfed by the reassembled sky in your eyes Tantalized, I'll soar in them Those flashes of aurora that arc dance in the jolt of spirits magnetized I need you Will I finally hear with more than a veiled mind's ear that voice whose bass tones play me like song prayers in chanting Tibetan bowls? You... Sinuously weave me in the frantic fabric of your torn skin, I'm wrapped in your ice-nine cat's cradle knowing you have always echoed in my sin-wat bones. I am the falling in water I am the drowning in desire I am the fire in the pyre I am the lady in the lake Sinking in quicksand Grasping for Excelsior's mercilessly glinting blade While The dry consumption hacks at me Slowly I am severed My nucleus ruptured short circuiting this body electric and the yellow light flashes well past all caution Amber runs through my veins since you've been gone, illiquid relics of our sensuality's arrested viral lust, becomes a plasma promise turned to sorcerer's stone Our desiderata Fossilized A thing that lived and now has died Preserved in a river of resin Secreted by an igneous need Forever unsatisfied

Crash and burn Sandpapered thoughts... Scratch, rake, rasp That endless scraping So painful to hear The drone of confusion The shrill pitch of fear My mind just a whirlpool Eddy currents of tears I can't stop the noise of you Your siren song still wails in my ears The brain bleed is ceaseless endless flow of red tide my harrowed heart is fathomless wondering just how your love for me died But dead I am to you My existence no longer a blip on your screen I crashed on your watch yet... the shattered remnants of my wreckage still remain by you... Unseen. Crash and burn Crash and burn Crash and burn Crash and burn Crash and burn Crash and burn