Blasphemer

Despite the praises

that came chanting

from my lips

last Sunday morning,

I don't pray.

My panted sighs

of "Oh my God"

escaped between

clenched teeth,

filling your right ear,

leaving the left free

to listen

if my grandparents

would return early

from church.

Piano Fingers

Five extremities creep,
daintily, and uncertain
across the sheets --
sliding along
like running scales on a piano
until they stop at those long desired
slender ivory keys
and claim them.
Your thumb plants itself over mine,
and our fingers weave together,
finally.

Disclaimer

Not only can you lie, you also shouldn't tell everything.

poetic license - license used by a writer or artist to heighten the effect of their work; freedom to deviate deliberately from normally applicable rules or practices (especially in behavior or speech)

Bent

Years of plié, plié,
have strengthened my thighs
for climbing into backseats,
parked in backstreets,
and onto your lap,
where there's room
to stretch out (comparably)
and spread my legs
as if they were in 2nd position.
I kept thinking of us from 1993,
bending in half,
hairlines meeting the bowls
made from our cupped feet,
as a warm-up,
while I was bent
up against the steering wheel
of your mother's SUV,
and how you don't think I have cooties anymore.

Happiness is colors, at 2:14 am

I am an expat to this reality,
relished without relinquish
by those that think verbalization

is the sole means of communication.

A raise in volume,
speaking slower,
gesturing wildly,
makes no difference
because they don't

speak my language, or care to.

So I speak theirs,
bumbling and about to burst
while my kinsman remains quiet.
He might as well be withholding
air while i'm gasping, grasping
for a gulp to fill my stifled lungs,
suffocating in his silence,
when I hear a snatch of familiar speech
and I surface,
I breathe easy,
inhaling your perfumed oxygen,
your weighty words.

He was yellow.
But you,
loose lipped
and strong jawed,
you could be ultramarine blue
deep, and warm, and I could sink into you.

Interior Studio

Just as stars,

only hear tales of her

glory, her radiance,

catching peeks of her

crown creeping

over the horizon,

I am banished

to the dark

and the

cool grays

and warm yellows

of artificial light.

Marked

Frail ghosts

of fireworks

trickle down

her pale palms,

after an untimely

explosion,

staining her pure skin

blue. Like the putrid

blue in the breasts

and thighs of

Renoir's

ghastly women.

(Ugh, Renoir.)

She left the pen,

oozing,

on the bench

in front of the

Toulouse-Lautrec

without remorse

and washed her hands

of the scribbles

any child

could do.