4 AM

4am – NAP’s Birthday

Bruce V. Baron, 1/30/08

You seek hands.

For touch beneath furry chin

you'll tail-whip face while purr-charging heart,

seeking soft strokes beneath painted smiles.

Pushing defecating seat away from face,

you meow displeasure,

then leap at hiding hand beneath pillow,

indignantly attacking desire.

My needs are not an issue.

Lifting hand from warmth of beckoning, feathered sleep,

I lift you to chest

stroking diligently,

knowing happiness means one less scratch –

knowing happiness is,

at least,

one more stroke of my hands.

Bruce

seeker, 1/30/08

Cashmere

I need to start my day.

No. I need to get on with my day.

I started when I woke, then lay thinking of relationships. Cashmere heard my thoughts scattering from within my fluttering eyelids, and sat on my chest, pawing my face without claws.

I have been clawed before. Many times. My face has always hidden the marks nicely, but aged skin shrinks upon the scars and outlines their shapes.She paws at my scars like they were tiny pieces of cardboard on the floor, there to pounce upon like practice prey.

Perhaps I shouldn't trust her pawing, thinking it dirivitive of love.

Cashmere is a shimmery grey child. She purrs as she lactates her nails into my skin. She hurts me when she's happy. Sometimes she leaps upon my shoulders when I'm writing with my tips on keys, treating me as another ledge, curious about lights and sounds, demanding attention from my thoughts and screen.

I'm an animated, living tree, crying out in pain, looking at the back of my hand as I think to strike, then looking at her whiskered visual purr, feeling her face stroking my face, her nose nosing my nose, her comfort in positioning upon her perch.

A silent laugh slips through clenched teeth, and I resign myself to her will.

I'm beginning to understand what not reacting can bring.

Time to shower and study and head start my week, then wait for another feline to arrive from the other coast, noticing me, embracing Cashmere, and using my friendship to ease her existance. Perhaps Cashmere will more than ease my existance.

Perhaps she'll help me to understand....

Taste

She gave me her fingers to taste - jalapeno, garlic, and a taste I know only to be her. I've never tasted it elsewhere. I've never smelled it before her either.

It's just her.

Sometimes, I press my nose into her full, jet black hair, and past the shampoo and conditioner, past the soap, past the world, I smell her. Deeply.

Sometimes, my nose finds the creases where her ribs meet her shoulder, the underside - the side that gets shaved, when the hair distracts the line. My nose finds her there, her smell, her taste --- yes, my nose tells my mouth to kiss a taste to go with the smell, the smell of her.

Yes.

Or under her breasts, slightly damp, her smell tells me to taste again, then tip her tiny ocean drops with my nose, my flare, my search for scent.

Yes.

I thanked her for her finger taste, and she looked into my eyes, and smiled.

Seeker, December 11, 2007

NAP 2

seeker, Oct 13 2007


With toes flex extending her –
she launches in a laugh with hair pulled up
by strings of wind
puppeting her head back and to the sides,
twisting her body flow,
creating new flight curves –

giggling in motion.

Landing on her toe flexed
dipped dirtied
earthskined
knees –
she looks up with brown ferociousness
at any approach near her edge’s dance –

I can see but cannot touch.

Kissing the smell of me mixed with
decay -
she launches again
laughingly,
dripping her knee blood
in signature –

shadowing a smile upon her liquid mark.

Sometimes, as pretty as it seems, it's still a canyon. Yeah, maybe you can see a path, way down there somewhere, but it's a long way off, and it's not clear where it goes.

Bugwit is back, and he's dating now --- maybe four at a time.

I've done some dating in the 14 months since my break-up with she who was going to be the last in my life. Various shapes, sizes, ages .... some with thoughts, some without ....

Can consciousness be deeper than a picture of a canyon?

I just read a newspaper article on Sean Penn, who was quoted as saying that life has to be lived so that it is worthy of death.

When I took this picture of the canyon, was I standing on the edge, or behind the brush?

seeker, September 27th, 2007

Enabling

(to NAP)

September 5, 2007
Bruce V. Baron



I’ve become like sand flowing through
your hourglass grip,
sifting in front of your bottomless brown
almond eyes,
sifting through your bottomless, square
life
quickly,
your eyes floating in erupting white,
tearing to my eternal moment
as I skydive, payment for a lost
bet,
through your shapely grip,
falling,
dissipating,
becoming a myriad of
fragments,
pieces of Bruce mini’s,
genetic mirrors glistening in
the air of the personal un-square,
the exciting un-belong,
the dissolve in the air
as solution
to impossible fit – round peg – square
hole –
you know …

But, do you know
that solution means
my dissolve is in
the air you breathe?
Your sea shore breaths
breathe me even closer
to your disconnected
heart,
bring me closer
to your soul’s languid tunes,
to the windows you mean to close
and the doors you mean to shut?

Blowing me through your universe
enables
my belonging,
all of my pieces,
enables
my belonging
through your cubicalled
singular
view,

enables
my belonging ---
to you.

Asking Opinions of Fresh Poems

Setting freshly oiled canvas
on a window ledge grown over
with green,
breezed over with
white puffed currents blown
by the critics of the day, invites

the smells of discovery to travel
the house’s hallways and bedrooms,
seeking its author, its audience,
and swirling swiftly through the
airy sea outside, invites

the drippings, the entrails, the
smashed remains of open air
exposure.


Bruce V. Baron
Seeker
4/4/07

Two Umbrellas

Unoccupied ecru beach,
not a shell, not a sound
beyond the hidden unfurling
of an almost still tide.

The blue unblinking sky
stares at almost nothing
cresting
onto that silent, unshelled
shore.

Two Umbrellas stand ready, billowed by
a breath between breaths,
leaving one combined shadow
pointing to
presumption.

No blanket beneath,
no empty water bottles,
no residue lotion,
just....

Just...

Always, within a scene not seen,
within sounds not heard,
nor thoughts displayed
by flash of eyes
and lift of brow,
by lips upturned
in corner quirks
and foreheads duned
in upward jerks,

nor by obvious confections
of established affections
and common derelictions,
but by chemical, atomical,
physical, microbiological
experiences
of miracles not seen...

always, we lay beneath these two umbrellas,
totally
beneath the unmarked sky
and unheard sounds of the sea,
totally
beneath the ghostly wings
of gulls screeching for
ghostly inhabitants
of unfound shells,
totally
within the soft and sandy enclaves
of an eternal moment,
of the single truth,
of love,
of full love,
of that which fills
and billows
and makes alive.

Can you see us laying there
under our umbrellas,
can you see our
love?

Bruce V. Baron
Seeker
February 14, 2005

Sitting

Flying to celebrations
in window seat,
seeing
tips of rugged brown, no green,
above unexpected mist …
hard to grasp partly hidden bulk,
hard to visualize while
shaken by unseen sky pockets:
like remembering early childhood while
navigating today’s turmoil;
like imagining sandy paths for early morning run
when only heavy fog
kisses darting eyes,
when only lapping waves and
screeching gulls are heard,
when only fearing -
contemplating -
deadly misdirection.

Better to sit and wait,
perhaps,
trying not to visualize.

Looking out again, misty ground also
brown, I think,
and carved with wavy meanderings,
perhaps roads or rivers … I
wonder
of the architect’s view -
of beginnings and
endings –
of directions…

so, seated frozen on foggy beach,
carefully self spotted,
piercingly seeking waves,
reassuringly comforted by
falling leaves nearby
(with run in fearful halt,
with misted mind in midst of thought),
how difficult to contemplate
a world away from
knees and thighs - the
sand beneath - shell devoid; the
curled sea - foggy blue; the
salt smell – solitude; the
stillness - the
emptiness.

The sun now shiny hot,
the window shutter closed,
eyelids pressing -
pressure painting colorful swirls in darkness,
anticipating landing with
mind longing
for leaping -
for celebrations,
for meetings of the unexpected,
discoveries of the old and unresolved,
leaping and longing -
knitting with wispy, sandy
strands of misty thought
scattered on sandy thighs,
weaving journey cloths
with strands of seashore mist,
longing and leaping
for movement,
to be full of
movement,

leaping to feet –
to be running once more,
jogging and feeling
wet sand bare between toes,
running and listening for
lapping and screeching,
following colorful swirls in the darkness
of closed lids,
longing and leaping
to move and run forward,

carrying a fallen leaf,
just in case –

Bruce V. Baron
Seeker
2/2/06

Good Tennis

I’m not ready to write about my
overflowing
heart,
and what is dripping
to the side
then splatter splattering
to the beat,
a flick a flickering
a choke, then lurking,
a numb, a numbing
and with a sigh,
departing.

I can only use my mouth,
my tongue,
and what escapes gets
batted
back,
a mightful forearm,
a net newly twined,
daily twined,
a one way net to catch
my mouth’s
intrusion,
which
returns to me swiftly
as a twisted version
of my
sighful splatter:

my made up words,
for meaning,
for rhythm,
return to me swiftly
with a rolled-eye grunt,
bashing me back,
with a sneering sigh,
for the sake of
protected
isolation.

Bruce V. Baron
Seeker
9/2/03