szarkel-blog

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The sapiosexual

“ I like it. It suits my priorities” she intoned“

a good conversation is  give and take

there are people I would driver to Patagonia with the windows up and no stereo

and there are people I wouldn’t drive to the end of the block with out turning up the radio

with  171,476 words  in the English language assembling them in a meaningful way is paramount

from a well aimed pun to a labyrinthine  paraprodokians

I fall for the flash IQ and the dollar value of a word

in conversation I am a Jane of All Trades, Mistress of the turn of phrase 

I think I’m always fighting entropy with vocabulary. 

But like a warrior trying to do battle with a boulder, 

it is indifferent to my existence as its opponent. 

[szarkel-blog]

"Brilliant together"

  When stars are alone sometimes they profligate the  skies of the planets they ensnare   

and sometimes they are the dim lights in the distance of hostage satellites  

But when stars are Binary their radiance fills galaxies with cascades of colors and graceful dances of revolution  

Capture me in your gravity.  

I long to be luminous.  

Perchance we can shine for centuries.  

[szarkel-blog]

Zeta Males of the World Unite

(dedicated to the Alphas who keep us in our place) 

Zeta Males of the World Unite!!

Not too loud we don’t want a fight

We’ve got the momentum we’ve got the pace

unless we get our glasses knocked off our face

We are out of mother’s basements we have left our trailers

We also made sure to grab our inhalers

Zeta Males of the World Unite!!We must insist but we’ll keep it polite

We will stand proud against the beta male

but not too proud we wouldn’t survive jail

We here to take what we need

just don’t hit us, we faint when we  bleed

Zeta Males of the World Unite!!

We have a lot of lit. to cite

ZETA Males off the World UNITE!!

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Word Junkie

I am addicted to conversation he said

he begged into her eyes 

waiting for her lips to provide him 

with his next fix

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You actors live in the moment he said six hours later

 We poets are quadrupeds hiding off scene 

Waiting for inspiration to cascade from your teeth 

That we may lick it with our laconic tongues 

And feed it to our loquacious brains 

With that sustenance 

 we seek to align it with our ornate and dubious words 

To create a perfect approximation of the intimacy 

only found in the ink of our pens and the clacking of our keyboards 

We do not miss our cues

 We reject the myriad for the

 Single that is sublime And unobtainable 

We are only living For our mark

[szarkel-blog]

Cohen #2 (a tribute)

 I remember it well when I first heard you tell You were singing so sad and so profane Giving me songs full of tales of wrongs' leaving me with feelings I couldn’t explain Those were times I struggled with rhymes I was writing for grades and glory And that was called art for the coffee houses in Hyde Park Probably still is for those of them left Ah, you had a way, with the things you’d say You just turned words into glory Had a way, pleading when you’d say I need you, I don't need you, I need you, I don't need you And I worshipped your depressing sound I remember you well when you called me at the Hotel You were famous, your songs were a legend. I told you again and again I was awestuck and then You told me it was important so I made the connection You strained your voice For those ones like us Who are oppressed by figures of beauty You sang and in my mind We connected by your music Ah, you had a way, with the things you’d say You just turned words into glory Had a way, pleading when you’d say I need you, I don't need you, I need you, I don't need you And I worshipped your depressing sound I don't mean to suggest That I loved you the best I can't keep track of each sad musician I remember you well calling the hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

[szarkel-blog]

Us as told by Joseph Campbell

I used to measure my salvation by your dispensation

I was congregant at the alter of your approbation

making offerings in expiation

to curry your damoclean accommodation 

but I could not control vicissitude of the situation

 and I found myself  bearing the scarification 

of your bittersweet initiation

and like many myths ours end in humiliation

and you fell from your sacaraium of deification

and I was left to conduct the supplication in woefulness and  stygian lamentation

and you bereft of the medicament adorationlearned to reside in disconsolation

[szarkel-blog]

EIHTD

She looked up from her labor and exclaimed to the universe. She waited for a reply But it was to busy moving itself at the slow speed of light And she like universe continued the task Of spinning illuminators so That when people made constellations They wouldn't realize they were using different stars.

[szarkel-blog]

Lepidoptera (a rewrite)

I keep my bedroom wall lined with  canopic jars filled with deaths head moths

and during the hours when I should be sleeping 

I hear the beating of their wingsand feel the scales landing on my eye lids

On days of desperation I spin one of the lid

sand I chase the freed  Acherontia seeking purpose or at least succor

but their flights only bring frustration and

 the taste of my weakness and woe only brings more

as their antennas move closer to taste me I realize  I only have 79 organs

[szarkel-blog]

Madison and Wabash

I wrote this as I watched a crew destroy the above el stop

I am waiting for you at the station where the trains slow down but don't stop Where placards once proclaimed places people no longer pause Where the weather warps wooden walkways and rust ruins wrought iron railings but I can not climb down for the city has stolen the stairs and you have no token to trip the tines and the turnstyle and very soon you will seek new stations and I will have become another abandoned stop.  

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A Tawdry Affair

Okay so here one I wrote about the line between food and sex.   I thought it would be nice to right a non depressing poem. We meet when I am alone often sad or feeling small Her hum beckons me surer than a sirens call cautiously I approach making not a peep this moment is for us the others are asleep In a gentle buzzing voice she says coquettously loud come to me my lover, don't be coy, don't be proud Stand before my openess and bathe in light feel no shame my love we are protected by the night graze into my shelves, open fast my drawers penetrate my freezer, fling open my doors grasp firmly on my handle and stroke my seal think only of your selfish gratfication not of a meal unscrew my caps, take off my lids sample my sweetness a pleasure not for kids take delight in my crispers loving all within live in this moment, enjoy the voluptousness of sin finger my melons, make love to my cake for I am here to give and you are here to take have an orgy wih my grapes, you can fondle the whole bunch stick you fingers in my pie, you can lick and you can munch Relish in relishes, my condiments are yours to enjoy thrust your hands deep inside my jars you naughty naughty boy you can keep digging into me until you are satisifed remember I am here for you others will be denied so when you have cried enough you can take no more you can leave without a word, just gentely close my door carefully wash the dishes and sweep up the crumbs when we are through and they will never no our trist, it will be a secret for two so ravange me my lover and open my containers drink from my cups but with each wasted moment I grow warmer, so it's time for you to eat up.  

[szarkel-blog]

Middle Aged Erotic Prose

I don’t want the coupling and copulating of newly aroused bodies on a magical first date

I don’t want “special” intimacy due to some holiday or occasion real or imagined

I want to make love to you in the sheets we slept in last night

I want you to give into me because it has been a while and you are not too annoyed with me right now.

I want you to leave your shirt on. 

 I already know your curves and you’ll be cold soon

Finally when we are done i want you to ask me what I am thinking

and I will lie their empty headed and amazed that this has happened again. 

[szarkel-blog]

The low end of the dial

I was listening to the lower number station, where they play the songs that the stations with lower numbers play.

And our song came on

I wondered if you knew we had a song

A song that began like us and ended like us and all the words and notes in-between were us

While I pondered songs and us a new song started on the lowered numbered station that played the songs that lowered numbered stations played

And I knew that that song was someone's song that began like them and ended like them and all the words and notes in-between were them.

And that song ended like every someone's song, that they played on the lowered numbered station that plays the songs that lowered numbered stations played.

!��♱

[szarkel-blog]

The Second the earth stood still (for the members of brusin')

The words came bubbling to his throat like booze after hour six of an all night bender but he couldn't choke them down anymore I love you he said and he watched the words fall into her ear and then like and engine that lost it's spark the world stopped Birds and planes hung in the air like precarious mobiles fish froze in place neither sinking nor floating and all the cars in the world traffic jammed without a single note and the words formed in her lips and fell into his ears and world started again like a Saturday morning lawn mower and the birds and planes flew and the fish swam and the cars of the world drove blarringly on. and the earth continued to spin as it has done for centuriesReply Reply to All Forward More

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Conversations real and/or Imagined

She rehearsed her lines in the mirror and straightened her clothes as the fog dissipated

Decisive she thought

She felt she had to project decisiveness in order to accomplish the task at hand

He had glanced at her a little too long and by her estimation it had crossed the line

From side-long into the dreaded furtive.

Therefore, decisive actions was required to deal with the situation.

When she approached him it was straight one

To do so any other way in his current condition might be misconstrued as demure, or slyly demure, or

the horror,  seductive

“Listen here”, she commanded she immediately forgot about her practiced mirror smoothness

“I’ve come here to put a stop to this projection of yours”

He looked at her with a mix of confusion and hope, but the hope was quickly overwhelmed by the

Confusion “this fantasy of your stops now”  she emphasized

“Your visionsof night long conversations, and park picnics, and strolls by bodies of water are over”

he gulped her accuracy was uncanny, and he wondered how she had read him so easily

She seized upon his pause “My uncanny accuracy is because you are easy to read. “  Her delivery of this

revelation was a model of precision she continued  

“You are of the lovelorn type, and as an object of your affection

I will be built up and built up

until I collapsed under the weight of my imagined perfection.  

Therefore, I am doing both of us this favor of  ending it now before you shoddily attempt to start it.

In a  year or two when you are done writing  your bad poetry about this you will realize I was correct.  

So to clarify I need you to listen carefully, we are a not in love and we are never going to be in love”  the

thought of having him repeat it entered her mind but it seemed  unnecessary.

He nodded, he hadn’t had the time to compose a proper poemexplaining his point of  view

so he felt that he had no other recourse.

Feeling she had achieved her objection she departed as she arrived.

That night as they both laid in their separate but shared solitude they both thought the same thing

“that went better than I imagined”

[szarkel-blog]

Reality

When you took me to your place

I wondered what is happening

When you took me upstairs

I wondered what is happening

When you took me to your bedroom

I wondered what is happening

When you closed the door

I wondered what is happening

When you turned the music up loud

I wondered what is happening

When you took off your jacket

I wondered what is happening

When you sat upon your floor

I wondered what is happening

When we talked about life

I wondered what is happening

When you turned the music off

I wondered what is happening

When you put your jacket on

I wondered what is happening

When you opened your door

I wondered what is happening

When we went down the stairs

I wondered what is happening

When we got into your car

I wondered what is happening

When I boarded that train

I knew what was happening

[szarkel-blog]

On the Male Side

A few of the men in my line practice a delusional version of carpentry

I have read it in my grandfather,

felt it in myself, and

encouraged it in my son

it is the idea that the meaning and sound of words

can be used like an allen key on pressed wood

the problem is, is that what we build often

has left overs, doesn't move very well, and collapses under pressure

But we are often oh so very proud of our accomplishment

we in reality neither create utility or design

but a place to store unwanted bric a brac

so that others may nod at our accomplishment