My fortune cookies

May you rest in the peace of my mind.
Once loved, twice forgotten.
Secrets should be taken to the grave.
Don’t get angry, get even.
Don’t get even, it’s a waste of a good time.
Time is short, use it well.
The well of wisdom is as deep as the universe.
The universe doesn’t think about you, it just is.
What has been is what there will be.
Life is good.

Beginnings and ends - Do.

Do we ever get to know?
No. Does it matter what we know?
No. Should we ask you why? no.
We’ve talked about this
so many times, chewing on it,
on this tasteless gum sticking to my teeth
and I can’t spit it out.
There’s little I can do.

Personals

You got eliminated. 
Slightest detection of deficiencies
gets you to the bottom of the list.
I spy with my little eye:
idiotic impatience
emotional imbalance
crude impervious ignorance, 
saturated hate.
Keep them to yourself.
All opposites – welcome.

Seaweed

Once these curls billowed like seaweed
like me in the shallows of your attentions.
willowy no more, nothing svelte remains
except that love, now twice as thin as the ghost
swishing in the gutters of my ego.
My artillery bilious, my owl eyes tired
my squandering generator absconded,
and so I stand upwind, my curls fast asleep.

In Memoriam

Commemorating is for pain.
bliss is remembered without.
I’d rather pierce his heart
for commemoration, she said.
That thing is perfect as is, why spoil it.
Perfection needs no additions.
Or edition. At any rate,
he never forgets his cock.
cocks never need reminders.
they hang there
oblivious of memory
indifferent to memory loss
or rather, they thrive on it.
They forget and move onwards and
upwards. If they can.
When they flounder, the cocks that is,
then they remember, something.
They get a little sad around the edges.
They look for signs to remind them
of lost glories.

handle with care

we put mental stickers around our hearts
fragile
handle with care
this side up
do not bend
while our bodies go on without protection
we let others come and go
In and out,
like a train station.

we issue invitations
we attach ourselves to other bodies
in great delight, or misery.
When we grow old, our hearts stay young,
at heart we are all seventeen.
and look at the devastation of the bodies we live in
and look at the pickled mess we leave behind when we die.

Who needs these poems

These flowery love poems, emotional bursts
of metaphors and people, who needs them?
Not the reader.
The wordy poems, cascading
one word after another, gathering force,
or losing it, as the case may be.
you never know unless you read them all the way,
until it's too late. You've lost precious minutes of your life
reading someone's curious words.
Who among us can vouch that our lines
are of any use once out there, living the life
in the world of other people's thoughts?
Not unless you're Pablo Neruda, who's words are worthy
of this invasion, this occupation.
Pablo is Pablo, and we are not. We must remember
this and conserve.
All I know is you don't need my poems,
and I need yours like another hole in my head.
And you're not writing, which makes you the best poet of all.

A Fool in the City of Lights

What does a fool do in the city of lights?
Does he drink his fill of the good wine?
does he eat and savours each bite?
does he raise his eyes to see the sky?
does he notice the delicate blanket of clouds
resting over the chimneys tops, colours of ashes and dusty roses,
can a sight so old sooth his wanting heart?
Are the banks of the famous river washing away
his sins? does he feel the smart and worldly
fool he imagined himself there, before he came,
while sitting in theatres from a different time?
is he flirting with a slender leg passing
as he sits at a charming corner cafe,
early in the morning when sleep doesn't come?
Does a fool think of home with longing or disgust,
out there in the city that doesn't know his name?


And the 'she' version:


What does a fool do in the city of lights?
Does she drink her fill of the good wine?
does she eat and savours each bite?
does she raise her eyes to see the sky?
does she notice the delicate blanket of clouds
resting over the chimneys tops, colours of ashes and dusty roses,
can a sight so old sooth her wanting heart?
Are the banks of the famous river washing away
her sins? does she feel the smart and worldly
fool she imagined herself there, before she came,
while sitting in theatres from a different time?
is she flirting with a slender face passing
as she sits at a charming corner cafe,
early in the morning when sleep doesn't come?
Does a fool think of home with longing or disgust,
out there in the city that doesn't know her name?

I hate Paris

I hate Paris.
Paris has you now, I have you never.
I hate Paris, its posh ladies
prancing around with their Hermes scarves
and their elegant shoes and pouting mouths,
waiting to eat you up, or at the very least
chew a piece of you and spit it into a cool Bree bag
to use later when you might be alone.
I've been there too, walking along the river,
ill equipped to bring you into my fold.
I always feel poorly in Paris,
though I love the bread and coffee.
You’re walking the streets of stinking Paris
not thinking of me, and for that I hate Paris.

Soul Noir

Put your lips together and blow, she said, 

with menace and flare. I could never pull that off

but oh how i tried. 

You, my boogie man, Why have you let go of my mystery, 

yet unsolved. I haven't given up on you, the black mark

on my character, black as the night we had dreamed of

long ago, far away, in the fog of our shameless minds.

Would I one day wash you off my bloody hands, 

like Mrs. Macbeth? like her, we haven't got a future,

 it's all used up.

I wander the streets on wintery nights, wondering in voiceover

what am I in this noir story we've been telling each other,

bit by bit. A two-timing femme, a liar - not born but made by you. 

I took to it like duck to water, like Bogart to Bacall, 

I've perfected my darkness to match yours, and more.

No gun in my hand yet, don't you worry my love, 

I could never shoot you down.

Isn't that what they always say, just before the shots ring out?