Wet afternoon in a Haberdashery

I am not ma'am, young shop boy with the tight can

whose waist makes me hungry for denim.

Oh, retail captive, let Molly free you; teach you to read.

Let's start with every man's primal: woman's skin.

Amber oil, reminiscences of cocoa butter, honeyed sweat.

Pick any book, it doesn't matter.

Let your tongue touch the page, lick every letter.

I'm no madame,

but Molly's hungry for a great read.

And if "How are you tonight, ma'am?" can fold legs

like he's folding shirts, we'll be reading Dostoevsky by morning.

Molly in the Alley with Flats

When Molly writes a letter she knows who.
When Molly wears a hat, there is that.
When Molly has a drink, she's not flat.
When Molly has sex, it's not with her ex.

And for a genuine special bonus
here is my furry pussy not bogus.

I love Molly in the alley.
I love Molly in the sun.
I loved "the man" at goddamn le Mans,
the rebel yell and the rebel belly.

And there was Too for Whoo

There were wanted and needed or had
Maybe listed if thought of and said

I do not write a letter to Santa or you --I write letters to authors and Sinatras
make cookies with fruit and ginger to give to Fruits and Ginger.

Anyone'll fuck a baker.
Star Fuckers will fuck a Maker.

Someone once told me that.
Once, someone told her that I had made it with whoo.
Quippy conversation, we were protean,
one missed meeting and a Lesbian drew conclusions without cunctation or substantiation.

Molly will not climb on les genoux de santa.
No chuchotement of parfume or laughter.
I won't even have to désir un visage je sais ou un scarecrow brain.

I am only do do do doing and
no wish no want no lists no Ella Fitzgerald singing haunted hearts into iPods.

We are not who you said they were

They were or seemed to be
kiss kiss
born with a clever hand
in Cleveland
absent the Miss
come softly or go with me.

They are or used to be
bang bang
dead with a silver hand
or tragic wand
present the gang
go stiffly or go to sea.

They will or not to be
sing sing
noon with a spectral band
who also ran
between the fling
die freely or live free.

love Loves to Love love

The new surveillance.
Was there a time.
She missed more than anything.
Consider her point of view.
She lost her job because.
Because of him I mean,
Had a girl in his room.

Four shades November gloom.
Get out of bed, off back.
She got it then but it was.
She got it on her back.

Stashed fear, cocaine.
Something else is
Running around her brain.

(Sonnet for DL)

Never Gonna Dance

Who's it gonna be girls, Fred Astaire or Cary Grant? Or is it Clark Gable? Or the Marlon Brando of the 1950s? William Holden? Steve McQueen?

Who here thinks that the most manly of these men is Clark Gable?

Who can hear the voice of the morning dawn in the chorus of birds at the end of the portrait?

Who hears and knows it's the voice of Helen Forrest?

(Possibly the greatest of the Helens though the competition is stiff: Ward, O'Connell, and Merrill to name three.)

And she who is abducted by the Trojans returns in the pocket of a man who never uses a condom, the red-haired champion of Sparta.

Could Helen have been happy following a spartan diet?

The warriors of Sparta were the heroes of the day. Just look what they did to the Persians.

Yet the magnificence of a man for a woman rests not in his proud display of manhood but in the subtler arts: the brain and the heart trump the sheer joy of muscular prowess.

Look at it this way. Each orgasm lasted forever. But the act really approached the act of love in its recklessness and greed when no contraception was used and it was the will of god biology whether you got pregnant or not.

Such strange couplings resulted from that initial attraction, evidently irresistible, that caused the male to enter the chamber of the female and to deposit his seed.

Yet the knowledge that Molly could cause a steep rise in a man of years, a handsome man, charismatic, complicated, accomplished, made her feel pretty damn fucking fine.

O morning on a drop of few an ode to the morning spreading itself for you.

Molly's Folly

The desire to write
the night was on fire
the morning star was a liar
yet showed me the light.

Let me not tire
of watching the fight
between wrong and right
or what the birds require.

Humans are the species that love
the sexual organs of the opposite sex.
Some of us are nervous wrecks.
You did not bend to pick up my glove.

The difference between masculine and feminine
is slender but not as much as it has been.

Male Enhancement

I can't stand the commercials for "male enhancement" on TV -- bad acting, fake script, "real science."

Viagra is a net plus from the female point of view as far as reliability of erection maintenance. By and large.

I do not believe that the concept of "cock" can be fabricated with a toy.

I believe in the beauty of the female body and its relation to the reproduction of the species.

Somehow it always sounds like consolation when people tell women how powerful are the mothers, how powerful are they,

The mother of a son will love him better than anyone, but let's look at it from her point of view.

She has tits and every painting is a tribute to her tits and her hips and even her belly.

One committee is as good as another for constructing the anatomical destiny of the race.

So Many Literalists

There are so many literalists out there instead of "literalists of the imagination" (Marianne Moore).
I went out with one of them last night.
He looked at me and saw a pair of tits pointing upward good child-bearing hips plummy ass nice belly that could grow big with seed.
According to Baudelaire, the answer to "too many literalists" is "do many literalists."
A critic was walking beneath my window and I dropped a vase on his head without smashing the flowers.
He looked up and saw nothing.
The gods and angels were laughing.
The critic said: "Make life beautiful!"
The poet said: "Life IS beautiful."
Who was right?
I'll just say this.
The poet was a literalist of the imagination.
Reader, I married him.

Loving the Blues

What is kink?
And why are we attracted to it?
What do we discover about ourselves?

Can you define that please?
Are toys necessary?
Which have you used in the last year?

Is sex with your partner an example?
Of what?
Of mutual masturbation?

What is a facial?
Can you get one at the spa?
Did your regular masseuse goes awol?

What happens then?
What do you mean you never?
Would you accept a substitute?

Would you let a man enter your ass?
Does it hurt?
Does the pleasure outweigh the pain?

Would you respect a man who let you?
Is cockhood a physical or metaphysical entity?
How about cunthood?

What about the word cunt do you hate?
Does your hot boyfriend whisper cunt in your ear?
Would he let your voice curl up in his ear?

So I said like why so he said like maybe my place?

So he said cock so I said what
so he said like Cambodia like it was
like he looked straight
at you when he spoke of guns
versus flowers versus Picasso
versus twat
is hot is not
so I said typo
so he said type-A
so we fucked
or we balled
or we ambiguously
did the thing that has no name

Lovely to fuck the queen of the wards

Look look my heart is an open book

Check out what they're doing:
Screwing!
Not rueing
in the ensuing
days after wooing.

Molly knows what Molly knows.
Look at yourself: if you had a sense of humor, you would laugh to beat your hand.

This is the sound of one hand stroking.

Not free, not bound. Prometheus, here I come!

We love Eros but Poe knows more

Good golly, Miss Molly, Where have I been!
I been away from you a long time.
This is my theme for English A.

Don't be sore!
Smell the rose.
Don't be a bore
or spite yo' nose
or wear
fishnet hose
the mother vs whore
syndrome (she goes)
(who knows more)
here not queer
and her pantyhose
in a twist more
often than rows
of apple cores,
and all our woes,
and all our cares.

This is my imitation of Edgar Allan Poe
but not Poe's prose.

I'm back!

Molly has been reading blogs and breeding dogs

. . . and leading logs . . .and greeting grogs . . .and fleeing frogs. . .and weeding bogs. . .and not heeding hogs . . .or meeting mugs . . . or needing rocks (off) and rugs (because bald is better). . .

Nin Andrews is a natural born blogger: http://ninandrewswriter.blogspot.com/

The contests and quizzes at the Best American Poetry web site are also worth a visit:
http://bestamericanpoetry.com/

Molly Knows the Roses Go round

What Molly knows is not for your nose to smell like odor of violet or attar of rose if rose and such beautiful beautiful long legged hose she wears and the thorns that prick your prick do we not bleed?

O you men are all alike it's when they want something out of you like the muffin or a drive into the rough, a dive into the muff, they just want to struts their stuff and they expect the pearl to land on your tongue it's then they flatters you they say O Molly we love your pussy divine so sweet like the rose whether trimmed or grown wild O Molly O let me luxuriate in the folds of your flesh your bush the tips of the your tits your mound I will climb like the back side of the moon O let me nibble on your nipples.

Sure. I know. I can be patient. Your sperm well well but spare me your scorn your spurn your spur I need none. Just let me right.

Barbara, you're thinking of D. H. Lawrence's lady friend, the German Friedl who was a little older than he was, a cock worshiper perhaps but with more than a bit of the domina in her, nyet?

Molly talks of Roses

(Deuteronomy 27:16)
Cursed is the man who dishonors his father or his mother.

I have been Molly and much writing about (not hear, of course)
about not assholes and not tacos but
about bouts of being orphaned or not phoned
or about being the scorned phone that scolds
untold of perfect days and life above the border.

Just let me right.

Don't die me off,
to have a baby in your singular, pretty-how town
Miss me. Miss why oh you.

Miss Frieda Kahlo make me give your mirror back
and I will be resolutions for the new year.

Poets, etc.

We're poets and we don't need to know calculus syringes
the legal implications of incorporating
versus a limited partnership in the English sense
nautical miles or the metrical system.

What an admirable ass has that hussy who just passed.

And we came and we sat and we waited.
Everyone hoped Molly would read what she had created.
But it was not fated
to be although the fates hated
to disappoint the community of the gated.

Not correct! Not correct! That is my goal:
O all you ass holes (two words, please note),
in the digestive system of any of us
this is what I wrote:
because
the boss is always an ass hole,
the ass hole is the boss.
So fuck you.

Give a thought to Molly or a "Frank" for her thoughts. Do.

Mexico

What happened to the country below the border
of childhood?

What happened to the black cat?

The names of restaurants tell you little
but we continue to eat baked pussy
with caviar like a tourist
asking a blind man for directions
why did Edgar Allan changed his last name to Poet?

Yet I miss the life beyond these walls
this room a universe centering on my bed

Most people are either assholes
or pains in the ass
but I wasn't most people
frequenting the always empty sex shop
a front for drug money

after all Everything is a front
if not an insult

Molly's tits are a front to conceal
she asks two questions only
from the highest point in the town

The boys miss them and you, they say.

Molly took a break

Molly is back but not on her back.
She receives messages:

<< I wish I was a poem of the
48 states
and you lived inside me.

<< -A Kansas born poet >>

Who could it be?

You could put quote marks around anything and then everything and then nothing. Or start each line with quote marks and end each line with a cigarette and a question mark. There are women who, if you seduce them, will suck your cock for you, Monsieur Teste, and don't look so scandalized since you did take advantage of her rump. But you and he and we are not they and I am not the you that once lived and neither is he Henry or she am I July honeymoon birthday. But I am and was and not she nor he can make the greater claim.

They Were Being Assholes

I have been jealous, unkind, mean.
It is easy to be an asshole
When you are surrounded
by human assholes.


Is it possible that this is what God hath wrought?


Is it likely that if the dance floor were suddenly lit
and those boys – grinding to Cincinnati-born rapper Dr. Dre -
their hands stuffed so far up the stiff prom fabric of women they
might be asked to go and might fall into the great depression
and leave the contiguous 48 states for good.


But this is what happened after the dreams and the prom.

The Man in the Elevator Got Fired

She said it was my fault
I need to be alone right now
which is as unfair as
most bosses or games of chance.

I live in a poem entitled
"Poem of the 48 States"
by a Cincinnati-born poet
who couldn't wait to get away.

The girls were naked in Kansas
in a boy's guiltless wet dream.
But what were the girls in

their own dreams doing and what were
the boys doing before taking them
to the high school prom?

And death shall have no dominion

What brave flower
-- and Molly is nude in her bower
-- and she is shampooing in the shower.
I am Molly and you can kiss my hollow or my holly.

What fair weather
-- as long as you and I fare together
-- you take the low road and I will take a sweater --
I am Molly and you can kiss me if it makes you jolly.

What pussy blooms
-- like jasmine smells in rooms
-- where you smell me and tell me

What cock will crow
-- like smoke or like a black crow
-- where I feel lucky because you're so fucky.

I Wonder

I'm tired like the undershirt dried on high heat, worn to fray around the collar
and worn while painting the wooden boat this summer in the basement that filled with acrid epoxy stench on the humid August night when nothing dried -- not even the sweat on our arms.

Today, some things are very hard. A number five on a card, a thank you note not written for the gift too generous for words, conversation, lessons to be planned, books to be read in order to keep just one running foot ahead of the bolder about to roar over me.

Question:
Is it forgivable to live unashamed of your dreadful, human self if your life is now solid and loving and full of entitled decency? Especially, if you are a possum who can play dead and can barely see, who can sniff out a lie, and find a family in the dark.

Lately Molly’s been busy doing possum-y things in the dark. Dark things in cities where people are dark and there are dark cars and strangers leave garbage next to Molly on the subway as if it is hers. Garbage should be explored in a possum-y way. Headlights beckon. My eyes look bright and surprising when you come up on them quickly in the dark.

Stay with me. I’m tired. I have questions.

Where were you?

Twin Squirt
the war of Afgan desire rages on

1. Tom Brocaw

Recalling the falling, our failed mission,
no admission of contrition,
no immediate deaths, not not stressed
(or jest) just unimpressed or tested.


2. You Porn

Tonight it’s shooters, hooters
mechanical put-it-to-you’s.
Then or when, if (someone needed) yenned
a defense against, might portend the (your) end.

School rhymes with rule, fool, tool, drool

Every year it's the same. Labor Day is blue Monday.

"When is she expecting? "Labor Day," her husband said.

Due diligence means I am driving my car into the past. Vermont fades in the rear-view mirror like the image of Eurydice abandoned by Orpheus.

The dirty secret of death is it stinks. There's nothing admirable in failure. I'm back and I'm alive.

You walk down the corridors of the school where you were once a citizen and now you are invisible.

But your tits remain alert in your sweater and you walk out the door when classes end and a new season of revisionist history begins.

And then you know how it feels when the fools with the limited tools talk about you with envy on their breath like salami.

But I'm back and I'm alive and I'm going to work on Tuesday.

You new Me

I have been hiding. Folds of love, fasting, fever, and then last week was a few days of driving around Shaftsbury, some Bennington with the voice of an old teacher creeping out of the car's speakers. There's been India, death, sand, sailing, love so wrong it tasted like lime and pepper even the first time I kissed it and I kept on kissing anyway.

I might have plowed through the entire summer, eating cigarette butts and licking skin, but the impending return of Labor Day always brings out the insufferable teacher in me, the eternal hated shame of necessary list making and tendency toward syllabi. The cleansing realization that there is need for more than mango and that limping along on 3 hours sleep feels drizzled but tends to deaden.

There is hardly a space on Molly that has not been filled, explored and adored and slipped in and ginned or thoughts of thoughts bigger than myselves and men and endings and havings and gettings and although it is another summer gone it’s never a season wasted.

I’m home to dusty piles of mail and I’m not empty.

Bruno Walker makes an appearance

Molly has a new admirer. His name is Bruno
And what he wants is you know
Which is what I want too.
A little earthly happiness would be heaven.

When we met he said his last name was 111.
That dog won't hunt, I said, with a fuck you
look in my eyes. But he was a go-getter
and he said his last name was Walker,

and before that it was Walter.
And he said he would write me a love letter
and compose symphonies in my honor

And he said he would do it right
or write me a series of love poems. Well, sir,
you ghost them, I'll post them on this site.

Bewitched

Hysteria:

Wry heading (sip dream hosting) make
bone conversation about failed wake
and crimson (lush);
Al stays late after work (you trip) bush.
Eager, sea (not) ripples.
I don’t know what happened to my nipples.
Oh, there they are. Firm as rocks.
Lovelies for straight jocks.
Wish I’d stayed home and fucked.

Bothered

Listeria:

Dry wedding (whipped cream frosting) cake
phone conversation about sales (fake)
any velvet (crushed)
always late for work (blue slip) rush
eager peanut nipples
tight clothes sausaging ripples
movies for eight bucks
wishing I'd stayed home and fucked.

Do I have opinions?

Yes!
I believe in Romeo, as Juliet said
when she lay in the coffin pretending to be dead.
That Bush is no good, said the ambush chief
and I guzzling gas can get no relief.
The father figure resembling Charlie Chan
believed in the decisiveness of a fatal gesture.
As for me, I believe the most important news of the day is Lindsay Lohan
was an also ran (what could be truer)
a hundred years from today
when my reasoning, logically sound though obsolete as bonnets,
will have gone the way of Sir Thomas Wyatt's sonnets
Because you can't strut your stuff
when you're old and gray
amd there isn't time enough
There'll be some changes made
beside the hemlock tree in the shade
starting today
A change of heart or in the weather
in the bread and butter eaten by Werther
who has to decide whether
or not or not or not or not or not
nobody wants you when you're doubt and out
and this I know without a doubt
let the luck that was once a blaze remain an ember
I swear to be true to you come December.