Oyster Boy Review 11  
  April 1999
 
 
 
 
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Poetry


Tantrix

Romeo Z


night one

came like the doubt my life had become.
another bejeweled traveler
tired of the cities
sought me out of her winding circles,
or was receptive
to the passing of time in the cabaret,
going against alcoholic inevitiblities.

I frightened her intentionally;
a spooked mare wearing tight jeans.
little did I care for sex-games,
the wind of anarchy blowing
through the reconstruction of my past.

when she came close to escape,
to sniff me out,
admiring her choked throat,
i breathed volcanic fluorescence;
words without equivalent morals,
compassion and rage.

this was her test.
and I hoped to drive her
back to the dullness and the repetition
of bar talk, of the grey closing hours,
or into the blacknight
with her tedious social climbers,
the look-good-feel-bad-jet-set.

night two

was brief like a broken wicked candle,
nothing said, everything spoken
on the downtown down trodden street.
I wanted to leave her with eloquence ,
to run from her
wearing porcelain flattery.

night three

crossed the conflux of directions
upon neo-roman new-age frontiers.
even here I was held
between the bookends of desire;
the madonna and the whore.
but she gave me a number
as if she wished to be unlocked,
as if she sought distraction
from the airport sickbed,
while she waited for her flight
to the coliseum.

night four

came in cadence of viscid mood
under the banner of tedious tenderness.
it started out as rain
on the steps of her mother's porch,
moving into the parklands
past the waddling ducks,
the lurking lusting homosexual.
her illness came up like vomit
to meet the diarrhea of my mouth.

the priests were there,
enrobed in their synthetic cocks, incanting
the usual litanies that bind,
while the maharishi ran after us
with a withered claw.

the piano was our theme,
wherein lurked the possibilities:
a foot tied to a heavy weight
sinking into an abyss;
a finger newly severed; a child;
a moorish love
that called to katherine and heathcliff.
a sonata rose
to haunt our hangovers
of past lovers
and crush the faces of the future.

we were forced to embrace,
and I told her plainly
as we lay enfolded, I loved her,
I loved her.

night five

brought us to the verge of suicides.
not of bridges or barbiturates,
but of words between us.
she talked of this venue, that forum,
while I stumbled around the ruins
of old roots and kingdoms,
their foundations still intact,
their potential for armed resistance
a nightmare of stampeding forests.

her vehemence broke like the sun
upon the newness of my face.
the ensuing seige
occupied the remaining night hours
in ferreting out old fears
and other lovers.

night six

fell with lucid sense disease.
the cascading face of a stranger,
spilled tibetan devotion,
flew flying saucers
suggested mutual abductions.
we watched astonished
as a man broke up
in outerspace,
entering our atmosphere
six days older than time.

night seven

screamed into us like ambulances.
I opened her like seaweed
and parted like the tide on stone.
she knew me in seven days,
her reign ended before
the eighth could dawn.
somewhere in the room I lit a candle,
paused to see the lovers
fly off on a skynbound chariot.

there were skeletons present.
a brooding malice
beat its sickly pungent wings
over our happiness.

love juice did not cover everything.
my flesh withered like grass
while the majority of mankind
moved on and in and out.
she knew the priests,
she knew nothing of me.