Estrambotika

THE STUDENT      

"Why look so serious?" the bartender said
To the student. "Is there so much in your head?
You're next, so please, indulge us just a little
With your great knowledge -- but only on the fiddle,
Not the violin. Some simple sounds,
Plain words, in which our English tongue abounds,
And not the kind of stuff you fellows speak
To one another in journals. What we seek
Is merriment and pleasure, with just a dash
Of meaning -- just for taste -- not much to ask.
So dive into your treasure trove to find
A tale more of the heart than of the mind."

"All I can do is try," the student replied.
"I have an ancient tale, known far and wide
From Chaucer's Tales, that I'll bring up to date,
Modernize, so people can relate,
With greater ease and pleasure than they might,
To times of which their knowledge is but slight,
When princes ruled, and women were supposed
To bear whatever wrongs their lord proposed.

"Still, a tale's a tale, and we are we,
All one in our deep down humanity.
The tale's wearing clothes you'll recognize,
For naked beauty's only for the wise." 

Until it Hurts

Your painful pleasure
always climbs my mossy walls
and it is sweet
to make me suffer
with so much care.

can you see the leather stars
masking another metaphor?
can you see what is beneath
our abrupt black hearts?

love is bleeding
and I can drink this pain again.
look at us:
we are the same creative strangers
writing new rules, following old codes
after all these tied years.

what you owe, I owe too,
the servant is always master:
  I am you.

boundaries dissolving,
our gods dancing.
we are beyond time.
we are beyond our own misery
and damnation
because
our poetics is made of self-denial
and symbiosis.
because
we love the way
we hurt each other.