instead of television

the first time that i saw her
she came to me when i moved away
i was very shy and worked very hard
and didn't know what more to say
there were easily restraints
i never asked her what she knew
when she finally told me the truth
i didn't know what else to do
she had the strangest eyes
occasionally wore a bright red rose
i had no idea what it meant
and it was impossible to suppose:
a kid sister or a saint?
the barbed wire twisting in her hair
at times intimidating
other times completely fair.
black and cream
like a monumental dream
but at the same time
i was hers and she was mine
instead of an individual dance
we moved into a mutual trance
i loved to tease
she loved to perplex
instead of television
we both loved sex.

accelerating to highway speed

fine
sitting on my sofa with rich dark coffee and thoughts
spilling
over the hardwood floor
like spent shells ejected from the slide of a small handgun
still smoking
like cold raindrops hitting on a hot summer tar road.
i watched her get naked in front of a tall mirror
turning the tap for more warm water than cold as she stepped
into the hard white porcelain tub;
a thick rubber mat kept her from slipping if soap bubbles
would form underfoot like memories
dangerous in the dim light of the steam-filled room.
i knew she would shampoo her short hair.
later
when it was dry it smelled like an early spring morning.
disturbing
current events are uniformly awful and my current book is filled with stories
of a mad Moses and an unhappy Abraham picking sand fleas one after another
from their crazy beards, looking always for a safe place to toss them and finding
nothing but candle grease, cheap wine, and refugee camps filled with
cotton canvas tents
and aging black-eyed children who
once upon a time would have been in a school.
i showed her my book and it was written in Chinese or Japanese, I can't
remember which, and we spent a long time trying to translate it,
alternating places on the sofa, finding extra time to feed the starving chickadees and
adding wood chips to the nesting site for the colorful wood ducks when we
occasionally walked outside for a breath of fresh air.
contemplating
chasing a great romance on a well-tuned Harley Iron 883 and
never missing a shift while cruising the grand boulevards in search of
the love of my life and feeling the wind in my face and big breasts, sturdy thighs,
and chocolate brown eyes and a voluptuous body wrapping her arms
around my waist and even deeper into the garden shed,
all the while i'm accelerating to reach highway speed.