People told me to avoid you

said you had teeth like a demon

eyes with no good intention

I liked how wolfish you looked

without scruples or goodness

it turned me on

see, I had nothing left

except the desire to burn out

fast and hot like a candle without sufficient wick

wax pouring over the table

a great bloody mess

reminding me of the time you

bent me over that same table

and carving my legs apart in your insistence

we’d live forever if we kept dying

a little death wrapped in roses

those days seem distant now

I haven’t been sexed on a table in

a very long time, I don’t burn

candles much, fearing fire

when really

I ought to be flinging windows open in redress

in the midst of a hot flash

tell the world to burn me

reduce me until I’m unrecognizable

and laughing in my ashen dance

there on the table, driven into highways of wax

dripping on the floor

leaving a great bloody mess

live in the face of death

in the way of the young

those who have yet to build pyres of fear

live unencumbered

sexing on tables, hot with longing

with tongues that taste no ash

no day of dying soon

18 Replies to “Dia de los muertos”

  1. The cautions and hesitations grow,
    Take such deep root
    When youth goes
    Taking illusion of immortality away
    And the brief candle goes
    Not out, but burns slow
    Toward that goodnight

  2. Thank you. Considering how much I like yours, that’s a lot. Of course, any time I find myself referencing both Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas in one poem is a pretty good day.

  3. Thanks. Maybe your muse and mine are talking behind our backs? I know when what I write feels right to me, but it helps to hear it feels right to you too.

  4. I like the idea of dancing to rock music at 80 😉 with the windows flung open

  5. I know what you mean. I try not to depend upon others for ‘encouragement’ but I utterly fail. I think growing up with criticism all the time I had my fill and now that’s what spurs me to be encouraging and supportive of others. I don’t expect that in return but appreciate it when it exists. The hardest thing is when you work or live with people who don’t appreciate you and never say so. I think there is no good excuse for that, it’s just poor-spirited and I greatly appreciate people like you who make a point of encouraging others – believe me this helps so much and so many and whilst they may not tell you – they feel it. I literally have given up (or wanted to give up, I can be a stubborn bastard) things for want of some recognition/appreciation and i’m not talking smarmy fake excess praise but just that normal appreciation for when you do something – it strikes me as incredible when someone takes and takes and never thinks to thank someone who does so much for them. I know these days the excuse is ‘i’m neurodivergent’ or something similar and I am sympathetic to differing communication styles and limits but I also think excusing ego-driven selfishness is a completely different animal and one we shouldn’t do because many are just unable to give because they’re selfish and that in of itself seems a poor reason. I hesitated for a long time to write for Borderless because I’d been told by people I work with and family that I was a long-winded writer who wasn’t very good. I was finally persuaded that writing in a more European style wasn’t ‘wrong’ nor ‘long winded’ so much as a style many appreciate and that I was a good writer. But for years those kinds of comments really held me back from doing it because I didn’t have that ingrained self-confidence. I try to instill confidence in others but don’t have much myself when it comes to believing anything I do is good. It helped to realize those criticisms weren’t true – but what if they had been? Why does someone think raining on another’s parade is for their own good? It rarely is.

  6. Well, I’m glad you decided to go ahead and write for Borderless. Your essays there are excellent and reveal aspects of your thought and knowledge that don’t show so clearly (but, can sometimes be inferred) in your poetry.

    Thinking about people thinking that raining on somebody’s parade is for their own good reminds me of a book.
    For Your Own Good
    Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
    By Alice Miller

    So, why would they think that way? For the same reason people think it is for the good of children learning a sport to have an abusive coach (who, no doubt, had abusive coaches, and so on).

    Part of what meeting with other writers in the blogs means to me is that it is a community and mutual support and encouragement is what makes it work, makes it fun, and makes it safe to take risks and try new things.

  7. Thank you very much for saying that. I find you a wealth of knowledge and it should not be assumed that is because you have lived longer, as many who are ‘older’ are not wise. So if you think I’m doing something worthy that really means a lot to me. Oh I must get that book I shall see if the library has it. I think it’s mostly an oldfashioned concept a little like puritanism. The almost superstitious ideals or ideas that are basically forms of control and punishment from the frustrations of others. I have never believed we were all good. I have often thought many were born cruel, hence the child who is spiteful without cause. But when we are good we are very, very good 😉 You are right about the encouragement. I wish it were more evident in say, workplaces and others, but yes, here I have met people like you whom I cherish and value and who inspire me greatly. A wonderful lovely thing.

  8. You too are one of those people.

    “But when we are good we are very, very good “, reminds me of a fun little poem:

    There was a little girl
    By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
    Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good,
    She was very good indeed,
    But when she was bad she was horrid.

  9. “in the midst of a hot flash / tell the world to burn me” is where 100% I’m at literally and figuratively right now ^_^ Aging is a fascinating, ferocious thing.

  10. it’s weird when you get it young too as all my friends haven’t yet – you really are?

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