the gentlemen's code

marriedtothesea.com

paris

not london, but paris calling who is it? who is calling me from France and not leaving messages? i'd take a postcard " the Parisian night sky lit up like a harlot... the smell of dog shit and cigars... wish you were here" i need a holiday

wise teaching - Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other by Osho

"Everything can be lost, nothing is certain, and that's why everything is so beautiful. And that's why you need not postpone for a single moment- if you want to love a person, love them here, now. Love them. Because nobody knows what is going to happen in the next moment. The next moment there may be no possibility for love, and then you will repent for the whole of your life. You could have loved, you could have lived. Then remorse surrounds a person, repentance and a deep guilt felt, as if you have been committing suicide. Life is uncertain. No one can make it certain. Life is fragile, delicate, always moving into the unknown; that's its beauty. One needs to be courageous, adventurous. So be a gambler. Live this moment, and live it totally. You will be there to tackle it - as you have been able to tackle the past, you will be able to tackle the future also - and you will be more capable because you will be more experienced. So it is not a question of whether the other is going to be there the next moment. The question is that if he is available to you in this moment, love him. Don't waste this moment in thinking and worrying about the future because this is suicidal. Don't pay a single thought to the future because nothing can be done about it, so it is a sheer waste of energy. love this man and be loved by him. So become happier. From this very moment, try to live this moment. Use this moment not in worrying but in living. Small things can become so beautiful. A little caring, a little sharing, that's all life is." - Osho

six seventeen

i breathed into your palm
whispered into your shiny hair
muttered softly through sheets
sprinkled with sunlight
while you slept -

your kiss is sublime.

cannot taste sweet (an old sad one)

i have no convictions.

i said no
to cake today.

no longer tasting sweet...

i thought i'd say
no.

i thought i saw you catalogue my faults as you were leaving

number them 1 thru 25

and shove them into your glove compartment

with an old pack of cigarettes.

i thought i saw you forget me like an MDMA dream-

remember your front door

and scuffle down a dark hallway.

i thought i saw you toss off your pants
lean in the shower
and rinse away my DNA.

i thought i saw you dive into clean sheets

whispering
as you held her to sleep.

i know i came for you that night in your dream.

i took you by the hand

and led you up and out and over

to an ocean's edge.

we walked down cool black sand
our favorite songs washed ashore

we ate dessert

and we liked each other.

we laughed at the absurdity

of needing nite lites

to crease the darkness
of our own familiar hallways.

i have no convictions.

i said no
to cake today

and i do remember that i loved it.

Fireworks and Generals final final draft 2015

A dopamine haze
Sank on our handshake,

Under a southern American sky.

(my stained teeth,
your emphatic gaze) the

Low din floor drop
Flare and

Screaming whine.
 

Leaving out the back door in Piccadilly's theatre,
Trafalgar lit up all white

Lord Nelson
Lady Hamilton
 (the one who bore his child)
The Battle
The Fire
(the wife he left behind)

A shitty French car in Waterloo Gardens

Your reference book atlas
Your sleeve and its stripe
Your uncluttered fingers and
Glance of my hand,
(neighbor's baby seat

behind the driver's side)
 

Old Clifton churchyard
Where there is no longer a church
Silent graves still behind me
Friendly dead sit before me

My groceries on some vicar's bench
Waving a laptop down the valley night
Sky-searching for a signal.
These lovers walk where they last shot fireworks
Off the Clifton bridge
Lit like Brooklyn.
O, Fireworks! (these days)
Titanium bursting bright!
Red lithium elixirs and strontium crowns alight!
But you should see
Saltpetre raining in the night!
(if I say your name out loud
this bloke smoking a joint will hear me)
I must be high.
There's nothing here from you.

There are no Treasure Islands
Where men are not afraid to cry
No  Generals-
With paper shells
Screaming trails
And warm glowing centers.

We are on the pirate sea.
Cannons blow and
Gut the water
Sinking as they cry.

I trace two English graves.
I turn my own dirt over.
I shift my father's ashes
Round my neck inside a silver drop.

With a charge, did this
hollow cannon from the first war ever fire?

Here lies a
Book of matches and the
Remains of a bottle rocket.
There are no strings
Glowing beams shoot out
Make a buzzing sound
Like my laughter only muffled.

Go out tonight.
Look up.
Get this one



Sailing

Daddy's Girl

my father was a gardener
from dairy farm days
with July winters
and 4 am day breaks.
he left
eventually (too charming for a barn)
to find the Pacific Northwest,
U.S. Navy,
and Steve McQueen's Hollywood.

my upstate New York
girlhood summers were
spent skipping tombstones,
(Jacob Mueller 1885)
chasing my daddy's grampa's farmhouse ghost,
hooking worms for a catfish lake,
and catching a baby skunk
we'd smuggle across state lines
in a dog carrier.
we brushed nanny goats like ponies,
fed baby pigs with blue bottles,
(like my 'baby alive' doll)
watched our lap dog chase two rabbits round the yard.
we napped on a porch together -
my love-strangle hold
on a white cat
like an angel.

when a snake showed up in my father's garden one summer
the neighbors came to investigate.
the infestation! the rats!
they would take over backyards,
eat tomatoes, and bite children
to the beat of St.Vitus' dance.
so my daddy drove it to a pasture
in our Ford station wagon-
freedom in a wooden crate
and bicentennial blanket.
.

last night
i dreamt i took a nap in an old farm's pasture-
a moonlit bed of snakes.
they rolled round my ankles,
ran over my elbows and wrists like bracelets,
through my dark tangled hair like dancing ringlets.
snakes like otters -
bounding through reeds
in under lily pads-
slinkies we rolled down stairways,
kittens tumbling in haystacks.

i stood in the grass
watched them pulse beside me.
a silent beat on some snake frequency
lullaby rattle and roll,
like the hands of a river tumble rocks to a bed,
to a child's pocket,
to her father's dresser,
and into your shoe.

dance with me.
my father was a charmer
and i am not afraid.

B.VanSchaick