Jeremiah 9

If my arms were larger, you could sleep in their shade, or rest in the dell between my thighs.

"It's not good to be too available", she said, the cigarette hanging out between her clenched teeth, slowly distending over her bottom lip. "Jesus. When you smoke your entire mouth looks like a vagina", I said. She laughed, and the cigarette moved slightly down. "A monster vagina with one enormous clitoris.", I said. "Attack of the monster vagina!", she cried, trying to balance the cigarette in her mouth as she chased me around the couch.

Your tears smelled of desire.

I learned to wrap myself around the stem of your body like those strings used to tie bouquets of dying flowers, and grew sick of the raspberry taste of your kisses. "I would turn my lips into peaches if it would make you stay", you said. "I just don't love you", I said, waiting for your fingers to slowly unravel from mine. The words were not smooth; they hurt around the edges, and I knew you were waiting for me to cry.

But the fall has passed; rotten wheat chafes at my mountains, my petals grow dry, and I too, have learned to forget the desire that comes with the touch of thighs.

Holiday

"Blanche Dubois always depeneded on the kindness of strangers. Well I guess I have always depended on the kindness of friends", she said, laughing.

Her laughter scared him, in a way that the scars on her thigh did not. "Papa always said I laughed like the devil", she had told him on the first date, but he had found her charming then, the diamonds had glistened against her wrists that fit into the palms of his hands, and then she quoted Shakespeare when he touched her thighs, and he thought, "This is it" in that moment, but time has a habit of shattering like glass, and we are left with the dregs of memories, the sour taste of slightly stale wine slipping down our tongues, the tightening of the larynx as the alcohol sears through our throats - I could never drink wine. I told you that on the first day, but you did not beleive me, until I was curled up on your bathroom floor, and somehow we were both in your bathtub, and I was naked. My head was in your lap, and your hands were combing my hair.

''You always had gentle fingers", she said, "They almost reminded me of a violin, and when you played my back, I felt that we were making music."

He laughed. "God, that might be the corniest thing you have ever said to me."

She laughed to, but now it was different in tone - nervous.

Laughter turns grapes into wine, and wine into vinegar.

They were drunk on the dissapointment that comes with broken love; its shards are so enticing, its scent so pure. You breathe it in like incense, and worship at the Temple of Loneliness, where Preists of Anger burn flowers long into the night, and thighs forget the feel of lover's breaths.

Breathe my child, for when the morning touches her lips to night's chest, there will be no sigh.

Kisses of Silence

"You can not draw out emotions like water", he said, his hand resting gently on my thigh.

I shrugged, moving the ashtray onto my lap in anticipation of his cigarette. He laughed.

"It's a new skirt!" I said.

"What did it cost? Ten dollars?".

I blushed.

"You know me too well." I said.

He laughed.

"No, I'm serious - it will get boring."

"You could never get boring", he said.

His kiss was too wet.

I wanted to say, "Liar", but it hard to talk when someone's tongue is in your mouth.

I thought about our first night together, when he told me I was beautiful. I had wanted to call him a liar then too, but once again, his kisses silenced me.

When we broke up, I told him I didn't want to live a life silenced by his kisses.

"But I don't understand." he said,

"Well then, I suppose for once I've silenced you with my words", I replied, refusing to look back as I turned the corner.

Cold

It is cold out, and I am sitting here pondering loneliness. No, I am sitting here feeling lonely and tired and full of laffah and too tired to write and unable to go to sleep without writing. A song plays outside my window, and I think of a poet I met once, who spoke about writing poems with his hands "unlathed"; what a beautiful word - if only I were less lazy, maybe I could use it.

I have become my own prisoner, in this house I built for myself with my own two hands, and it is so fucking cold - how can anyone write when it's so cold? How did Hawthorne not just say, "Fuck it. It's freezing." How did he produce these masterworks like "Young Good Man Brown"? I mean, Thoreau at Walden - that I can accept - he was a nancy boy whose bills were paid by his aunt - and Franklin kept warm by fucking while wearing a coonskin cap. (No, that is not a weird metaphor for "condom". It was an actual fashion statement - google it.)

It is so cold on nights like this you don't even want to sleep with anyone -you just want to pull on as many sweaters as possible. I've been told that I wear too many sweaters; that it's too much for men to work through - but if I am not worth the work of shoving through mounds of wool, I am not sure you're worth the work either.

My computer is about to run out of batteries. I will go read a book, trying to concentrate, but won't succeed - and of course, the whole point of the laffah with labneh was to make me warm, because a friend told me sometimes eating makes people warm. I think she confused eating with sex - that's easy to do. I mean, look at Genesis: Eve eats and discovers she's naked, next thing you know she's with child. Think of all our eating sex metaphors, like "eating a woman out" and then the famous scene with Stanley giving Stella meat, and of course the rabbinics about Jews in the wilderness asking Moses, "Who will give us meat to eat?". Am I the only one who considers meat unsexy? I much prefer coffee and abandoned trees.

God, it is so cold. Just cold enough to make me long for one of your kisses, but not quite cold enough to make me want to change my mind.

Para meu amor. Bj.

I can trace your love through the scars on my body:

The place where your knife first touched my thigh: the caresses of metal, and silver kisses transformed me into your canvas, an abstract painting of red and purple splashing pale skin.

The night was long, when your teeth first scattered their marks over my neck; You guided my fingers along the grooves in my skin like as one guides the fingers of a blind man at the Western Wall.

I did not fear you then:

I was too intoxicated by the smell of my own blood, slightly salty, like the taste of your tears.

As vezes, eu choro quando eu penso de voce, mas nao tenho saudade - choro de raiva, porque o que que voce fazei na meu corpo, voce qui prometei de mi amar pra toda vida? Choro porque nao posso falar, porque voce bate minhas palavras, como voce bate minha alma - mas nao meu coracao, qui ja ta quebrado quando nacio, quando saiu de voce como uma paloma trista, que precisa tentar de voar sem asas.

Tonight (Insert Pitbull song here)

I hesitated before writing this post, and even now, as I type, am not sure I will post this, because I don't want to make this blog "personal" - while life experiences inspire my art, it tends not to be autobiographical.

Tonight however, I did want to share a few thoughts about religiosity, self-actualization, and romance: Gilad Shalit came home today. A friend of mine pointed out that this was a literal realization of the blessing, "Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who frees prisoners." I agree with my friend, however, to make this blessing relevant to my own life on a daily basis, usually interpret it metaphorically: God helps us overcome our own boundaries and limitations, thus freeing us from ourselves.

I keep on thinking of the "overcoming our own barriers" them when combined with a lecture I heard that goes as follows: According to one rabbi, if one repents, their sins are neutralized. According to another, if one repents, they are not only neutralized, but even become positive assets. The resolution of the two opinions is as follows: Depending on how you repent, you can turn mistakes in the past into positive learning experiences that make you a better person, or you can simply neutralize them and try to erase your past.

I've long been a proponent of the second type of "repentance" when it comes to romance: I don't believe in letting one relationship affect another, not just in the sense you shouldn't bring baggage from one relationship into another, but also in the sense that one just shouldn't compare, because its unhealthy. Who cares anyhow - you're with this person now, and they are what matters, not the past.

That being said, I don't believe in "erasing" past experiences, in an "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" type of way - I think without our experiences, we wouldn't be who we are - and once had a very awkward conversation about erasing memories of exes and the film "ESOSM" with an ex. Veeery awkward.

But tonight I wondered if the second type of "repentance" - the type that makes you a better person/romantic partner as a result of mistakes in the past - is not optimal, as opposed to the "nuetral" model I had set for myself (which is not to say I am starting to believe in comparing - I am still a strong opponent of that). Because tonight, for a minute, I felt that type of romantic "repentance" and it felt good, and for that I must thank God.

By the way, the reason I am sharing this is that this "moment" resulted in my previous post - a rant of insomniatic freedom.

Insomnia

To be free of you is to sit here, alone, and to not long for the warmth of your body, or the feel of your thighs. To be free of you is to know that I have chosen to lie here, wrapped in a red shawl, feeling the air breathe up my legs, not to be asleep, with you, in bed - because you always knew how to cure my insomnia.

To be free of you means to know I can handle grief like a crystal vase - clear and shatter-able - without needing to spill words onto you like honey.

You told me you dreamt you were superman, but in your dream, you could not save me. I never asked you to.

You could not save me because I could not break myself into tiny enough pieces for you to sweep, and because you were afraid of the pain.

Or maybe I was afraid. It doesn't matter.

I don't miss you tonight. I miss my pink sheets, and the smell of a man's sweat on my pillows - but I don't miss you. I don't even miss your body.

When you told me you wanted us to be alone, in Central Park, that day, I thought to myself, "Oh. So he wants to fuck me". I took your hand and told you it would be ok. I am sorry, because that was the only time I lied to you, I think.

At least I did not lie to you with my body: I took you into my bed when I wanted, as I wanted. I did not use words like "love" - words that rolled so easily off your tongue.

"Do you love me, or are you just addicted to my body?" I asked. I was not angry; merely curious. You told me you saw no difference, but I did: Love is not sex, despite what they teach you in kindergarten - and you, for some odd reason, had sex ed in kindergarten.

But I have never grown addicted to a man's kisses - or a woman's either, for that matter. Like a conoisseur sipping fine wine, I know when the bottle has reached its dregs.

My one regret is that you were not as delicious as I had hoped; your lips were not as sweet, your hands ungentle.

Does it make me evil, to dissect the interaction of our bodies like a scientist deconstructing an experiment gone wrong, as if you were a cell of bacteria?

But I think I wanted you then. Maybe I even loved you, in moments when I was afraid.

Maybe - because who can tell, at the point where sex meets desire, where hormones meet soul?

I guess it's time to open a new bottle.

Jeremiah 8

Flowers are ephemeral.

A scholar told this to a little prince, on a planet that will remain unmarked by the astronomer's lens, as your hands will remain unmarked by my thighs.

You wilted before I could smell the incense of your breasts, or feel the softness of your petals, before I could kiss your lips that always seemed shaped like bell-flowers - dainty and unafraid.

It was I who feared the breaths that came between us, like a shadow, until there was only sunlight, and the stillness of your body.

I have forgotten how to mourn - they tried to teach me once, in kindergarten. They told me I was meant to cry, but my eyes have grown drier than the deserts in which we planned hikes we will never take.

My mother tells me that I need "closure", but how does one close something that was never opened; the bud did not become a flower, and slowly you morphed into corny metaphors.

Have I morphed into a man?

Have I grown thorns?

Jeremiah Chapter 7

The house is quiet now. Once we fled through her corridors, our hands clinging together like vines that have grown to fear the sun. Their grapes wither like the flesh of old women, who sit by the city gates and hark their thighs, remembering the days when men cried for their flesh the way the High Priest cries on the day of atonement, his fingers gently caressing the white lamb. Only the beggars take them, old men whose lice-filled heads have grown accustomed to making pillows out of the brown rocks that line the city streets.

But we will be different, you and I. When our fingers have forgotten each other's touch, we will lie peacefully in the mountains, feeling the prickle of dried grass on our backs, letting the pine-scented air caress our faces, until she too, fades into a loveless bed.

Jeremiah Chapter 6

The cumin rests gently on her thighs; its specks are like freckles.

I smell the cinnamon on her neck, the oregano in between her breasts,

I trace the basil that she rubbed on her belly with my fingers,

and kiss the coriander that spots her back like leaves' shadows.

The night will announce itself in creases of white linen that mark our arms like time;

when the sheet has folded itself into a carpet beneath us, we will know that the sun

has started to climb above the mountains, as we once climbed together, you and I -

before the swords had sown thickets of brown thorns into the earth that was once a green blanket beneath us.

When the sun breathes into us tomorrow, will you be afraid to cry?

Take 2

I decided to edit my Jeremiah Chapter 2 exercise - mostly by cutting lines. I probably will still tinker around with it more - I'd like to turn it into something more formal.

You stagger in like a whore, feet shuffled bare, heels held in your hand,

white slip slipping off your shoulder.

You trod on wisteria leaves on your way to the kitchen;

your hair has grown wild like the lotus-plants and pomegranate trees

that have taken over the garden.

Once, I called you the red-haired whore of the vineyard; I insulted the mothers of the men

who dared to dance in between your thighs.

Tonight, I watch you in silence,

knowing the day will come when you will pine,

not for my body, but for the sound of my voice

gently berating your cunt that slithers like a snake between the legs of men,

for the words I hurl at you like knives - for the wounds,

fresher than pineapples that farmers bring to morning markets,

redder than the pomegranate seeds that I crush between my fingers,

watching their juice bleed down my palms, like your blood once bled

down my thighs.