sunday morning pancakes

I wanted to pet you
like you were something familiar

but your hip sway
and the curved planes of sinuous retreat
that mark the passage of your ecstasy
were too sweet
a distraction

instead
I fell beside you
on the bed
and learned you
the way the birds
learn to sing
and books learn
to be still

intimate without thought

you make me want
Sunday
morning
pancakes.

pocket aces

With her back to me, she nestled like a slow S against my body.

“You’ll have to trust me.”

“Ok.”

I rested my hand on top of hers and guided it to her stomach, a low plane of soft warmth that was as smooth as a river. Slowly – slowly – slowly – our hands slid under the edge of her jeans and then deeper, pressing along the delta of her pelvis, fingers curling into a greeting, a beckoning; my intent ghosted hers; hands moving in unison, we pressed inside.

Back arched, her first real breath was an escape. She moved with easy grace; I caught her free hand, capturing it against her hip, fingers entwined tight. The only skin I could taste was at the alcove of her throat and shoulder; my breath was warm and in pace with our hands. I felt her low shudder like an iceberg.

…

“You said I am an iceberg.”

“No, I said you shuddered like an iceberg.”

“Sometimes my shudder is all there is.”

passage of wings

when your breath catches
I imagine a butterfly
caught
in your throat.

and if I listen closely
perhaps
I will hear it
flu t t er
against
your
pulse

I always thought we would run out of rain before we ran out of words

My day was quiet; books read to the sound of rain and snow, writing to the soft strains of Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

But my thoughts were not always on the words in front of me.

There are times that the lines of desire drew my mind’s eye to possibilities.

And there, I found you.

A room lit only by the light reflected off snow and skin; hips, found under a thin veil of clothing.

I think of you utterly still.

A flash of teeth in the dark.

The top of shoulders, of spine; fingers parted, pressing against your stomach as a litany of kisses is pressed into your skin.

This is patience in need,

Because I don’t expect you to be still forever.

petals

Today, I have a taste for the beautiful and frail; the iron within the rose; the drop of blood when pricked by the artful thorn. No rose is so defenseless.

I would collect the petals in my hands only to say I held them, once.

the wicked angel

There is a walled garden, long overgrown; the stone fountains are silent, and green vines travel the course where water once ran. The flowers of the garden are wild, bright, and ferocious.

It is an untouched garden, a beautiful, forgotten, place, and it is here that lost angels spend their time.

Including the wicked angel, who visits the garden alone; she is a lost angel, but it was by choice.

She comes to pluck dark purple tulips and orange carnations, laughing dandelions and thorn-pricked roses, taking them all and weaving them into her hair.

Wherever she goes, she wants to leave flower petals in her wake.

Her wickedness is not born of cruelty; she spreads wickedness as others share love. She invites decadence. She inspires devilry. She dances naked outside windows, in the snow, and leaves teardrops in the drinks of the lonely. She joins silhouettes of lovers and the shadow puppets their lovemaking leaves upon the wall.

She kisses the wrist of a woman dreaming of yesterday’s regrets, runs fingers down the spine of a young man in an elevator until his shivers make him gasp.

She reminds them all what it means to be alive.

She is a lost angel, but she wants it that way. To be found, meant being caged, and then she could be wicked no more.

the importance of being patient

I’ve worked in customer support. And while my experience was in a highly technical field that required more than rote recitation of troubleshooting scripts, I understand the reasoning behind them: when the majority of the problems a call center receives can be fixed with three or four standard steps, it only makes sense to walk people through them.

So for those times I find myself unable to resolve an issue on my own (mostly in relation to Internet or cable service) and end up calling customer service, I do so with a good idea of what they will want me to do; I call prepared, and my issues are often resolved quickly.

Often. But not always.

Four months ago I purchased an Asus 1005HA netbook in preparation for my trip to Europe. It’s slim. It’s slick. It has an eight hour battery time. I love it.

Well, I love it except for the fact that it periodically refuses to boot and I have to ‘restore’ it to its factory settings. The good news is that this is easily done by holding the F9 key while the netbook boots. The bad news is that everytime I do this, it wipes out all the software I’ve installed, all the writing I’ve done, and all the pictures I’ve saved to it.

After the eighth time this happened, I called ASUS’ technical support and had the following conversation.

Me: Less than four months ago I purchased an ASUS netbook. Recently, I’ve been having issues with it refusing to boot. I’ve restored it to the factory settings, but after a few days I have the same problem again.

ASUS Customer Service: Have you installed anything on it?

Me: Yes. Firefox. Yahoo. AIM. Nothing particularly invasive.

ASUS Customer Service: It’s possible you have a virus.

Me: The netbook hasn’t been on-line since the last time it crashed. It couldn’t have caught a virus.

ASUS Customer Service: Alright. [pause as the next step is looked up] Let’s restore it to the factory settings. I need you to…

Me: …hold down F9 as it boots. I’ve done that. Eight times.

ASUS Customer Service: …
ASUS Customer Service: Oh.
ASUS Customer Service: Well, let’s do it again.

Me: A ninth time?

ASUS Customer Service: Yes.

Me: We…can. But I’m fairly sure I already know the outcome. In a few days, it will crash again. After restoring it three times and having the same problem, I thought there might be an issue. After five, I was pretty sure there was. And after eight…well, after eight times, I think the mystery has gone out of what will happen next. Barring a miracle, I have my doubts that a ninth attempt will heal whatever illness has struck down my netbook.

ASUS Customer Service: …
ASUS Customer Service: I really need you to restore it. And then if…

Me: When.

ASUS Customer Service: …if it crashes again, we can move onto an RMA.

Me: Right. [pause] You realize that every time it crashes, I lose all the work I’ve done on it?

ASUS Customer Service: …yes.

Me: And that the chances of it crashing for a ninth time are extremely high?

ASUS Customer Service: …yes.

Me: So let me get this straight. You want me to restore it and use it for the next three to five days knowing that any work I do on it will be lost when it crashes again?

ASUS Customer Service: Yes.

Me: [after about ten seconds of silence] Got it. What is the reference number for when I call back? …

ASUS: 1, D’jaevle: 0

Of course, there’s no way in hell I’m going to restore it, use it, and wait for it to crash again. I’ll leave it in it’s comatose state and call back in a few days with an excellent story about how it struggled valiantly for a few more days before succumbing for a ninth time.

So. Yes, I understand the importance of the troubleshooting steps customer service reps aref forced follow.

But the demise of common sense is just…tragic.