The Street Life of Salamanders: Part 1

She said her name was Tabasco.

it wasn't.

It was true, however, that in the frantically vivid hallucinations that followed our first meeting, i saw her walk down wooded halls, shredding the ti leaf.

Oh lovely deranged sweet sweet deranged; I ran my hands over her life more than once.

She had knock knees. Like anything that springs from wood. She used more prepositions than a prison break. She has, to this day, never finished a sentence.
She stamped her feet and her head shifted from side to side. But you wouldn't consider it punctuation.

She was provoking the wrath of the trespassed margins all along. which preferred abstinence and cleanliness of course.

We talked about all the stupid ways people die. and how many batteries it would take to electrocute someone. And how there's never been a better name for a two-headed woman than Zsuzsanna Budapest. And how good astronaut strawberries would be with pink champagne on a warm night. and the if onlys beginning with if only we had a picnic table! (followed closely by if only we had a woods to put it in!).

Her smile was leathery, worn, like a smoker's kiss, a ranch hand's tan, and manifested itself slowly.

She was riddled with contradictions,
She was held with the tatters.

She pronounced one day that memory's screams punctured her dreams. And they moved along only with the force of the air streaming out of them.

this made a lot of sense to me. it was a metaphor consistent with familiar physics and upheld by memories of cartoons. and everything that passes through my lens is subject to these simple tests. especially dream propulsion.

though truth be told, i think it was more of a massive black hole situation. the surrounding galaxy provided an eloquent spot to nest my own slighter being. and orbit blissfully the borders.

she indoctrinated me in a new shimmering science that was lovely enough to likewise be a religion and simple enough to hold your hand. i never held hands with it but maybe i should have. i imagine her hands were as intelligent as mine, being so too a sensualist. she gave me a stunning paradigm for understanding the earth. she always felt dangerous, like there might be a gaunt insanity in her, peeking out of her person, that i would figure out existed too late because i already loved her and was overly determined almost stubborn when in that state; i just always felt she was about to propose something i could never do and then i would still love her but a rift would have arrived.. but then she didn't. or i could.

She was like jalapeno coffee and my favorite thing in this world is jalapeno coffee.

with a tabasco nip.

poem for an ex

I want to hear how you loved me then.
Because something evil in me sleeps.
And dreams not of you exactly
but through you.

Ex-lover,
I can’t remember anything clearly, least of all you.

Why did I crawl naked into your winter coat
to whisper your name?

Maybe the breeze or alternately the humidity reminds me.
There are games you were good at.
That worked so well to make me difficult.

But now your voice low and sweet makes me
feel the south brush my fingertips.
And your eyes remind me of something I want to taste.

But then of course I hate you.
we are both such similar creatures,
struggling against each other like self-loathing.

I wish you no goodness,
as I would wish any other I have kissed,
(it’s now as if I kissed them only to bring them luck).

But I hope my kiss pursues you like a howling curse
and gets all the pretty girls wise.
And when I calm down if I ever calm down,
I want to know how you got me to call myself
by another name.

Retrospectorant

Retrospectorant

She contoured to his emotions as adeptly as the wrinkles in his face.

Her loose edges folded in geometrical submission.

The end result hid her own dim and sketchy little lines like a sonogram.

Because she had not been ready for a compliment.

She had needed.

To be pushed.

And I imagine she still smelled like him after he left (or was it she that left?)

Was of him in essence, though not in fact,

Like an empty perfume bottle.

Beautiful within the boundaries of its purpose,

Beautiful in its alignment,

Ordered,

Proud.

Its afterlife spent lingering on tabletops.

Perhaps moved to a dresser drawer.

But if you cross the borders of purpose,

They say you are likely to fall from the earth.

She was made more interesting by the bruises he gave her.

Staining her reds, purples, blues, greens.

And the spectrum between these.

Not with negligence,

Nor by wear,

But something wholly different.

Careful attention to detail, the work of a master craftsman with the hint of the poet/the artiste there.

She too gave meticulous, analytic attention

To these chinks of colour like shattered stained glass

Filtered light

Over her.

These extraordinary shades,

Shades her body would not normally credit her.

And when he left (or was it she?)

She would vomit.

And vomit.

She would learn to vomit.

She would learn to vomit

And make her own.

We all have so much

Creative energy

Begging

To be brought out