Required Attention
Be careful when you go out; things look so distant,
they almost vanish. The Naval Yard in the soft light,
After the rain, perhaps it involves all your anticipation
to return home without meeting in your way that empty
ice cream cone that was rolled, slowly and carefully, by
the white cane of the blind man.
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The taste of her mouth aroused all his instincts, and he wanted
to touch this girl all over. However, they heard the clearing of the proprietor’s
throat and stopped. Hermes pulled back, and she gave him
her best smile, showing a straight line of teeth and a hungry tongue.
They stayed there for another half an hour, and then she
wanted to go.
“What would you like to do now? See a movie?”
He looked at his watch; it was eight o’clock. “Where do you like
to go?”
She suggested they go to see the latest movie in a cinema close
by, and he agreed. They walked to the cinema, and Hermes offered
her his arm. She took the chance and leaned toward him a bit more,
which Hermes loved. They got to the theatre and realized the place
was almost full, so they made their way to the balcony, where they
noticed that it was almost empty. They found two seats. He turned
to look at her, and she took the courage and offered him a long and
passionate kiss. His hunger for her body became evident. She took
his hand and placed it between her legs, a move he took even further
by sliding his hand up and touching her pubic hair. That made her
go wild. He didn’t let go, and the rubbing of his hand inside her
made her move her body left and right with such intensity that she
had an orgasm in a matter of seconds. She then found his erection
and played with him for a minute or two, but he wanted a lot more
than that.
“You like to go?” she asked.
“Where could we go?”
“I know a place.”
He wondered where this place might be, surely not her parents’
house.
“A friend of mine, she whispered, is out of town; I have the key
to her place.”
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“I’m glad to see you’re not hiding, Mr. Clarkson,” Pease said.
Fred hoisted himself up on an elbow and regarded the young
man. “Not hiding and still not talking about myself,” he said.
“I thought perhaps you’d be willing to confirm what I found out
about your background before we go with the story. It was fairly
simple to trace you through the state bar association. You had an
impressive career in the law.”
“Now, why would anyone care about that, Mr. Pease? It’s
ancient history.”
“I suppose no one would care if you hadn’t made yourself a hero
in the train rescue and come so eloquently to the defense of Poodie
James at the council hearing.”
Engine Fred indicated the captain’s chair. “Have a seat. I’ve been
thinking of something that might interest your readers far more than
anything you could write about this old hobo. Want to hear about it?”
“Do I sense the offer of a deal?” Pease said.
Fred’s eyebrows went up. “Does that offend your journalistic
sensibilities?”
“It depends on the nature of the deal and the quality of the
information,” Pease said.
Fred fell silent while he studied Pease’s schoolboy face, its earnestness,
its shock of hair over the forehead, the glasses losing their
struggle to stay in place. Pease returned his gaze without moving
his eyes, without a flicker of expression.
“Do you know the story of Poodie James being attacked and
beaten shortly after he moved to this valley?” Fred said.
“As of two days ago, I do,” Pease told him. “Winifred Stone told
me about it shortly before the council hearing. She directed me to
the clipping in our morgue. Sketchy story. Not much to go on. It’s
interesting that someone was attacking hobos around the same
time. 1927, a long time ago.”
“Matter of perspective,” Engine Fred said. “Seems like yesterday.
Still, it’s been sketchy for me, too, until recently.”
Pease looked at Fred, saying nothing, waiting.
For Kariotakis
The young men who came to the deserted island
one night counted themselves and found you missing.
They looked each other in the eyes and no wonder
they shook their heads in sadness.
Many nights they recalled that from your loneliness
a sign of fire you would send and they knew
the sad welcome of the abyss that lighted the roads
and for this they stayed in their familiar places.
Left in their grief, as if fatefully and sorrowfully
hanging from the “rock” of danger.
And when you said goodbye, you, the forever desperate,
they sang a few verses of a traditional dirge.
The young men arrive to the island every year
and they search for the elegy of life in your vacant spot.
In their eyes two tears they maintain for you
and for the new Epoch you have established.
“Wish you the best”
What does the lover mean?
Most likely what’s best for him
since the circumstances,
those threatening monsters with the nine heads
clench their teeth.
Shamelessly
since that water diluted soup of excuses boils
better in slow fire,
without nostalgia,
as if one is to read a newspaper
with his legs up on a chair
he better undo his heavy
boots that always remember.
“I wish you the best” then.
Would have been better if he wrote:
“Sorry that I couldn’t?”
Climb
We climb the narrow path
above tree tops
houses fade to invisible
and distant shore
changes to pewter
sun reflecting hours as
a lady bug in her red dress
hops to the other side of
my palm and my eyes
fix on her glamor
grand presence in
minute scale
an immense love
springs from my river
quenching the thirst of
every tree every need
Poetry the Noble Grave
Poetry offers a fine funeral to its beloved dead
with official tunes and mythic splendor
it buries them deep, salutes with music
dedicates wreaths, a cold grave slab
the endless procession behind the verse
all the sepulchral History above them.
The palms of angel seal their silence
until their Second Coming when
the dead will shake the gravestone
and move the moist body
to harvest our ripened life leaving
behind the borderless homeland.
Our dead hope to be resurrected and wrap
their arms around our necks
with their great strength and rigor.
Avengers, tyrant killers will choke us.
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…made and she could not take a chance on hurting them by refusing
their generous offer. It was kind of them to even think of an engagement
gift, but she wished they had decided on something less ostentatious.
Oh well, maybe if it was a small, inexpensive car she wouldn’t
feel so bad about accepting it.
She had not told her parents. She did not want them to feel they had
to give the newly engaged couple a gift. Such a thing had never entered
her mind, and she hoped Cam did not expect it either. And anyway,
her parents certainly could not afford anything as lavish as a car.
Maybe I’m out of my league, Tyne thought. We’re just simple
country people. I shouldn’t be marrying someone like Cam.
This new revelation made her uneasy, taking the edge off the excitement
she felt about returning to the city. She turned to look out
the window onto the bleak winter landscape, but a little girl in the
seat beside her suddenly caught her attention and offered a welcome
diversion for her thoughts. The blond-haired child held up a story
book and asked her a word.
“That says hospital,” Tyne replied, smiling into the innocent face.
Noting the pictures in the book, she asked, “Is your story about a nurse?”
The child beamed. “Yeth. When I grow up, I’m going to be a nurth.”
“Are you? That’s lovely. I’m a nurse, and I work in a hospital like
that one in your picture book.”
The little face turned up, the blue eyes wide and incredulous. “Oh
… oh, you’re a nurth … oh.”
Tyne laughed softly, and could not resist the urge to put her arm
around the little one and hug her. Looking up, she saw the warm
smile of a young woman sitting across from them.
“You’ve made her day, thank you,” the woman said, smiling.
“Are you her mother? Oh then, I’ll trade places with you so that
you can sit with her.”
“No, no,” the mother waved her hand. “She wouldn’t thank me for
that.”
Tyne laughed and turned back to the admiring child. Someday,
would she and Cam have a little girl like this dear one? A girl who
wanted, more than anything, to be a nurth?
Ah, I’d like to kiss the hands of your father, the knees
of your mother who gave birth to you for me.
I’d like to kiss all the chairs you touched with your dress
as you walked by
to hide in my heart, like a charm, a piece of the bed sheet
you slept in.
I could even smile
to the man who saw you naked before me
to even smile at him, who was graced with such
happiness.
Because I, my beloved, I owe you something more
than love
I owe you the song and the hope, the tears
and again hope.
In the tiniest moment with you, I lived all my life.
https://draft2digital.com/book/3562930
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763831
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…lavishing her body, erotic and desirous, promising and promiscuous;
Mona, the nurse who came to replace his gauzes. Mona, a woman,
came to the help of a man desiring nothing more than what nature has
allotted to him: lust, even with his half-severed penis, a man desires to
ride on top of a woman’s body, this woman’s, Mona’s. In this war zone,
man never stopped longing for that exquisite moment of coupling,
nature’s first and most powerful expression: a man, an injured man,
coupling an eloquent, musical, poetic, female body.
His eyes still closed, he saw himself on a bed where he was battling
his last, three days and three nights, with his stressed breath in
irregular spasms of a living-dead man, skinny, leftover of stamina
recluse in his austere village bed. Shadow of a man left to perish as
nature commanded, yet, his last breath was delayed as for three long
days and three long nights, he kept on gasping for air unable to release
his soul to his creator while from time to time he would whisper in
his so ever weak voice one word, “pussy” to the amazement of his relatives,
especially to his two sons who didn’t know how to play out their
father’s last wish. And the night arrived again for the fourth time, and
the owls sang their lonely songs in the nearby barn while the moon
kept on playing hide and seek behind the clouds, while the unrested
soul of the old man repeated the same double syllable word, “pussy”.
Indeed, it was tragic and comical for the three relatives who stayed for
the vigil: one of his sons, the old man’s niece, and the servant girl who
attended to the wishes of the almost-dead man. Not any special wishes
did the moribund man have other than perhaps stir him from time to
time to check whether he was still on the upper stratum, although his
occasional whisper, “pussy” was witness to the fact.
At the desperate moment of ambivalence when no one of the three
knew what to do to help the old man relax and let his soul be released
to the elements, Mona, the twenty-four year old maid with her flaming
eyes and promiscuously half-open lips and her voluptuous breasts, an
angel of mercy nonetheless, neared the bed of the old man, raised her
skirt, took his fragile hand and placed it behind her light undergarment
and between her legs upon which time and upon feeling the touch of his…
