The octopus

All the ways I submitted to her.

All the women sit in a row. Nobody wears a wedding ring.

They silently seduce me in the coffee shop.

Their secret fantasies rise out of them. Something like the perfume of their hair carried on the air to me, but more honest. It leaks from their hands. The way she holds a small object, the length of her fingers. How hungry are they to feel, to touch? How far will she let them explore? Like a blind man because the eyes are inferior.

The one with the longest fingers does not look up from her computer. Her fingers always touching the keys. She can't help it, her fingers tips love them.

Next she plays with her hair. She takes a locke, and peeling away a single hair at a time, she gets down to her favorite. Starting near the root, she pulls it through her pinched fingers. She knows exactly the force it takes to tear it from its root. She is expert at this. The follicle is quite happy to be brought to the edge of tearing and back again.

Her serene face, her stately and kissable neck but a distraction from her pleasure seeking, self absorbed soul. A photograph of which would look like an octopus. Her greedy tentacles shoot out to catch morsels of a man's love floating down. In the instant the picture is taken, she is frozen, her startled eye set on you, embarrassed at being caught red handed.

A girl has many layers.

There is the layer of outer clothing. It repels cold and other outside forces. It is what she thinks you see when you look at her. It is the image that she perpetuates.

Manage to strip away this and there are her undergarments. Very pretty but very utilitarian. They provide a silky smooth layer between her delicate skin and her outer clothing and they keep her parts together.

Standing there in her bra and panties, she looks quite vulnerable. It's arresting, really. But there is a thread of pretense running through it all in the squeezing and pushing properties of her bra and in the lasie cloth of her underwear.

Unfasten the simple mechanism of her bra. Do not dally if it does not immediately come loose, some force may be applied, it is not as delicate as it looks. Taking off her underwear is simply a matter of pulling them down, but the elastic band may be tight, and if you have to tear them, so be it.

Look at the uglyness.

She may not be able to look you in the eye. She must be reminded of why she arches her back now, the real reason she was born with a tongue. It doesn't take much, but remember that the story of her outer layer is over now and that of her true self is beginning.

There is only the matter of her skin now, its saltiness and the taste and smell of certain regens. It doesn't all taste like it should. The acquired taste for women's flesh is the difference between a boy and his father.

You may get used to walking down the street with that bravado that playing a part in her story allows you. You may not remember being any other type of man except the kind that she fantasizes about peeling back her layers. Do not let yourself get used to it. Your trusted partner in depravity may suddenly turn to you, and with tears in her eyes, insist that you stop also loving Denise. In return to your cool response, she may strike your face. She may growl like a beast. She will hate you in that moment. Who knew that when you made love, you were really cultivatig hate?

Do not waste any time.

At the next red light, let her out of the car.

Take solace in the construction worker's steady hammer. See his muscular fore arms, see his simple ambition to avoid the sun.

Take solace in the clergy toiling in the church. Their funny habits. Their earnest prayers.

A girl has many layers.

My cold atheist heart. But don't you see the simple joys of flowers. A flower in my hand like the desperate hope of a woman in naked submission. The heart-breaking pretentions of the pretty grass and everything else like it. What it wants from me. The call goes unanswered in my cold heart.

My new car sparkling in the street. The essence of German engineering shining there in your window. The feeling of taking a corner in my new car. Makes me say yes. My license plate was made by hard criminals in prison. Their lives out of jail filled with the sonofabitch regrets of a Johnny Cash man. The unforgivabilities on their face that informed their art, evidence of the spoils of my profession.

This atheist heart of mine. Oh, I don't suppose I'll ever be forgiven. The cherubs at my feet speak the truth. Their poor old souls boiling with the same old frustration. Their high whiny voices belie the timeless feminine truth. Do you think when I die the Earth accepts my body like the body of any other? What will it think as it holds my heart in the instruments of its will? My license plate was made by hard criminals in prison.

We pass the day in the cafe.

The beautiful girl keeps the words coming.

She keeps the kisses coming,

She entertains her man.

She will look around in times of boredom

And notice this boy and that

And pass her gaze on to me,

Who will pass it to another.

We pass the days in just such games

Of give and take but never keep.

Even the old man in the corner takes part.

He takes my gaze out the window to the street

In seeming boredom, but really

In unceasing self loathing.

He will take his leave of us,

Withdraw himself from the place

Of the retired and unemployed,

And taking his loathing to the street,

He will close his eyes and remember

The sweet embrace of his dead wife.

It's what keeps him going.

But tomorrow he'll return

To the place where couples go

To be seen to snicker and smile

At the secrets they share,

The secrets they wish to never give away,

Or else come back to the cafe

In old age and realize the pain

Of passing days alone.

The chocolate neighborhood watch canvases the streets.

Your misses lounges on the couch. She thinks of firemen.

You sorry fool.

One thing we don't like at all is a speck of grace.
And grace can be found where you least expect it.
An animal ready to flee. See its eyes, its bent back.
See its ambition to get away. It will appeal for sympathy,
Don't let it fool you.

And for God's sake don't let it out of its corner.
Or It will leap through the woods with a grace that confounds you.
Its supple bones, its wonderful muscles that flex and stretch
And navigate it through the woods, in loving step with the woods.
Watch it disappear into a bush without dislodging a leaf.

But if it gives you chase, be a brute about it. Be clumsy

In your pursuit of it. If a tree stands in your way, uproot it.

When you find it set fire to the woods that hid it.
Then bring it to me on a well garnished plate, because
One thing we don't like around here is a speck of grace.

Along my usual morning bay, I came upon
A miner sifting and crouching down
At a pan as a miner should,
His mind between the gold and dirt.

“Such a morning – fine –
That I should be finding you along
My path, as I have found many men,
All equally gold-absorbed.”

He said into the pan “I am a mining man –
To keep the thing that I may find,”
And pointed to the sign that said
In withered letters, “Miners mine.”

“To see a miner so enthralled
Makes wishing to take gold from the Estate of Earth
To put it on a selling shelf among the Estate of Man a chore –
Never should I find a worthy gold.”

“Mining is the procuring game – I mine
As one may give away an elfin foot
To in return receive an eagle’s eye -
I mine to give, and get mine, too.”

“I once knew a judge - he mined the Estate of Man
For the guilty few to keep for show
Then gave as dirt back to the Earth
To purify the many others – gold.”

“I once knew a thief – he mined
The gold of others in the Estate of Man,
And gave for more, to and from
The Estate of Man – now he is in the soil”

“Men are to me but miners – infinitely –
Wind but for the gold they mine,
As a twister is something feared,
But bereft of the Earth it pulls – disappears”

The miner finally looked up from gold
To see the face of the voice that so truly spoke,
And saw but a lonely tree, and laughed
At again entertaining a sylvan guest,

And turned homeward with two ounce gold
With which to make his old house new,
And miles to go before he wakes,
And miles to go before he wakes