Succubus

Here is the thing about a Succubus--
she won't schedule a date at a mutually convenient time.
She'll just appear--always at an unsuitable hour.
Don't expect her to ask if you were sleeping. She knows you were.
Don't wait for her to say "sorry." She's not.

Here is the thing about your body--
with the Succubus so close that her breath is as near as your own, 
it won't be answering your calls anymore. 
Your old familiar will be off the leash, off the rails,
off to hell and gone--pardon the figure of speech--
and you may as well put a band-aid on the fault line of an earthquake
as to try and master your flesh, with Her there.

Here is the thing about her purpose--
it has nothing to do with your body. It's become a door, that's all.
Lemme in, lemme in, lemme in, that's why she's rattling your ribs.
She'll fog your brain with her honeyfire ways.
She'll draw every tremble from every lit-up synapse,
and perfect a reflex from all your sweetspots. Then again. Then again.
All just to distract you and make you deliciously stupid.

Here is the thing about your heart--
it's next-of-kin to the thing she really wants.
Try to catch the words she whispers to her Master,
The One you're not supposed to realize is there, but she's lazy about it,
and you know, in a feverish, unreal way, that He's in on this with Her.
It's a metric that measures how fierce her appeal is,
that you know but don't care that she's sharing you all the while.

Here is the thing about it all--
She is after your Soul, and even a sparrow has the instinct to be wary.
Her lips, so soft they could make a god give up,
are the vehicle for every lie under the sun. 
Resist Her--yes, you, barely hanging on in the gale of her attentions.
Resist Her, even as She takes you over the edge.
Hold back just that one particle, that mote She's come for,
and know you're winning when she curls her lip and bites you awake,
shaking, in tears, but still a lit vessel intact despite the storm.
_______

From a dream I had recently.

Moon Men

You bring in Moon Men to take your side, the way you always do.
They seem unaware of their own absurdity,
and miss the irony when I offer them cheese and a jaundiced look.
Martians, Venutians, your whole catalog of 1950's movie space-crash schlock
take up for you and goggle at me with their several eyes, some on stalks.

I've had enough. I'm going to swing away on the rings of Saturn
and land on a moonless world, where everyone is courteously silent.
But just as I start to unclench, here you come, with Moon Men to the right and left,
charting my shortcomings, agreeing after much discussion, 
and then stuffing me into a sock to be swung like a cat until dazed, dented, dead.

Garden Wall

They stood daddy up
against the garden wall
and shot him through the head for writing against the regime.

Our ginger cat
hid behind the tomato vines.
Its eyes were yellow. The sky was blue. The leaves speckled red on the green.
_____

for "Walls" at Real Toads.

 

In The Year Of

In the year of the pestilence,
in the time of the puppet government,
we fell in love.

We held hands, and gamboled 
as others doubled over and died.

In the year of the pogrom,
in the hour of the public noose,
we were giddy,

and grateful for our milky corneas
our couplings, and our luck.
________ 

another starry-eyed love poem for flash 55.

Anything

Anything.

That is what I would do for you--
anything.

Write my name....here.
Put it on pastels, the little squares I keep just for these occasions.
My heart, and the ornate clock on the face of the observation level
are in harmony--

tick...oh.....tick....ohhh.

Anything.
That is what stirs me when I look at you
and your sweater rides up in a fold at your hip, soft as a cat.
How could I deny you
if you stand there and tease me, so deliberately, like that?

Here is the key.
The one I keep next to my heart, warm from the skin of my breast,
where the two freckles stay, inseparable, like us.
Here is the key.
The one for opening the carefully restricted,
faculty-only
strictly-by-appointment reading room with the soft lamps and the throws.

Anything.
Possessed by me, made accessible to you,
with fragrance of rosemary, pansies,
fennel, columbine, rue, daisies, and violets.
Find me, look for me
at the desk beneath the clock at two,
across from the locked doors,
I'll be waiting--wearing colors, not white, and my little slippers.

I have catalogued our love, collected our sweetest words.
Find me, curl your arms around my head, whisper to me and don't stop,
don't leave, just kiss my hair, trace the edge of my ear, and love me back
like Anything.
______

 for my own Fireblossom Friday challenge "Looking Beyond The Obvious."

Love Me

Love me.
Do it by post,
semaphore,
or even by foot messenger.
(By the way,
I've moved.)

Poor drowsy tippler,
so sad for so little reason.
There are only a smattering of countries.
Don't you see, we can hardly avoid crashing into one another
at some point
if only we stop looking.

Remember when I read you
the poem about the falconer?
The widening gyre, and all of that?
You'll remember Yeats better for the way I recited it
with my tongue in your ear
and my finger lightly circling with every syllable.

One day, not soon,
I'll be giving myself a manicure with a jack knife,
having forgotten all my softer ways, when your signal will arrive.
Send love, little sparrow.
Send me your heart with a red silk ribbon tied around it.
Time is pitiless, and I need a tangible token
to prove that someone, once, looked for me

Even though I'm the way I am--
just bones and scrimshaw
in a language that whales know, and sing, and go...
to find harpoons that only hit us when we rise.
________

for Get Listed at Real Toads.