Saturday, June 6, 2020

The Family Man


*** explicit ***

Bryson was a good family man. At least, that’s how most people saw him. He was a hard worker, and he followed all the rules: saving money for modest family vacations; paying off the 15-year mortgage in just 10 years; sending his wife to the nicest spa in their mid-sized town for Mother’s Day and giving her jewelry for their anniversary. He always looked a little too focused, like he was living life on autopilot while his thoughts were deeply anchored in the near-future. He practiced great self-discipline in most areas of his life, almost reflexively. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor, but enjoyed being around those that did. He was sharp enough to detect when their jokes were aimed at or around him and was quick to switch gears from passive to aggressive in his squelching of any attempt to make a fool of him.
One spring, early on in that marriage that he tended as carefully as his low-risk investments in cattle and oil, he was sent down to American Fork, Utah to open a new branch of the farm supply store he’d been managing in Billings since he was nineteen. He would only be there a few months, they promised him, so he went alone, leaving his then-fiancĂ© and their one-year-old, Ruth behind. He rented a furnished studio, and mostly ate take-out. The place looked like a college kid’s apartment, and smelled like it too. And in truth, he wasn’t much older than a college kid himself, but he’d built the life of a middle-aged man with his seriousness and his lack of distractions. In Utah, he felt a little unmoored from his life; he was too busy to do any grilling or to go fishing, and had only brought his motorcycle for transportation. He had left the truck in Montana with the rest of his possessions (the list of which included his girls).
On one especially hot day, after dealing with an especially slow-learning cashier all afternoon, he didn’t turn left at the top of the hill and ease down into the apartment complex’s parking lot; instead, he straightened his Harley-Davidson soft tail and rode west, far and fast. The wind whipped around his long, lean body and filled his chest with a sense of freedom again. He was awake in a way he hadn’t been in years. With this surge of adrenaline, he wanted to drink and fuck and smoke a pack of Marlboros. He laughed out loud and opened the throttle wide.
Bryson had filled all his time with work and sleep since April. It was now August and the summer’s heat was an oven. When he saw a neon sign ahead he slowed the bike and the wind’s sandy warm embrace choked him. He was lost, but with the flickering light’s promise of Budweiser, he was found.
His mood improved after the third cold glass of draft beer and he started chatting with the other cowboy-booted and Wrangler-wrapped men nearby. A couple of thirty-ish women entered, demanding attention with their laughter and their exposed skin – both in obscene abundance. By then, Bryson was on his second shot of whiskey, so when the taller, skinny one drew him into the tornado of sound he smiled and allowed himself to be caught in the current.
She was, as most of her friends would admit, somewhat obnoxious – a lot of fun to be around, but they also kind of winced when they saw her through an outsider’s eyes. She was witty and slutty and tough as nails. She was nearly covered in tattoos at a time and place when that was still a rare sight. One of her party tricks was to guess men’s height and shoe size.
After asking Bryson’s name she said, “You’re six-four, aren’t you?”
Bryson glowed a little under this flirtation, and simply nodded.
“Size….13?”
“You are goooood, ma’am.” He grinned and shook his head, then bought the two women beers. The quieter one had lovely curves and she smiled at him like she had a secret. Bryson felt like he had somehow been cast as the male lead in a movie – the action all centered on him, his reactions, his desires. He wasn’t used to this feeling, but he liked it. A lot.
The two women giggled and guzzled those beers, then bought another round for the three of them.
“Wait you’re from Montana?!” The curvy one looked at his boots, then looked at her friend. “Tell him the joke!” The skinny one lit up, then got serious.
“Ok, are you ready?” Bryson nodded slowly, not sure he would be able to follow a joke, with his mind fuzzied by alcohol and their presence.
“Ok, so there was this woman who got dumped, right? And her girlfriends wanted to take her away to forget about him, so they went on a trip to Montana because she loved cowboys. So they go to the bar and meet some guys with big ole cowboy boots and hats and the whole nine, right? And she says to the guy, ‘Wow, those are awfully big boots,’ and he says, ‘You know what they say about men with big boots…’ and the ladies all laugh and whoop and encourage her to go home with the guy. When he wakes up in the morning there’s a hundred-dollar bill and a note on the nightstand, ‘Thanks for last night. But please buy yourself some boots that fit.’”
The girls dissolved in laughter, barely able to stand. Bryson smiled thinly and took another drink. They stood closer and closer to him, touching his leg or shoulder as they talked, animated with each other and pulling him into their frenetic, physical joy. He soon forgot the tasteless joke and warmed under their attentiveness.
The skinny one stuck her finger between the curvy one’s breasts and shouted, “Cleavage!” and they both laughed again. His eyes followed her finger to the cleavage, but didn’t follow its retreat. He was drunk enough to forget not to stare a little at the perfect plumpness of the two sides and the deep crevice where they met. Their owner reached out and tipped his chin up.
“Eyes are up here, bucko.” She smirked at him, then stepped in and drew his hand to her breast. She put her lips almost on his ear and said softly, “You can touch, but you can’t look…” She drew back from him slowly and smiled into his eyes for a beat, then dropped his hand and stood back. He blinked, unsure if the alcohol had tricked him into imagining that exchange or if the sensation of her gloriously firm and silky-smooth breast was really still on his palm.
They talked a little more, then the girls scampered off to the restroom. Bryson sat a moment, dazed. All he could think of was how to spend more time with those breasts. He headed back to use the restroom as well and when he stepped back out, he nearly collided with the curvy one. She looked up at him and smiled, bracing against him with a hand to his chest. He ducked down and kissed her quickly, to which she responded by grabbing a fistful of his shirt and kissing back.
“I’m married…” she smiled at him and shrugged apologetically as she headed back to their cluster of barstools. He shook his head and skimmed across the fact that he wasn’t.
“Whose bike is that?” The girls had an obsession with motorcycles; they hadn’t yet been shredded by the loss of a mutual friend to one.
“Oh, that’s mine,” said Bryson.
They clamored for who would get the first ride, but the skinny one picked up on his gravitation to her friend and stepped aside.
The warm night had pockets of cool air; slight changes in humidity were like gentle slaps of reality brushing along their dream state. The moon was bright and the city lights glowed up from the valley, blurring the foothills and illuminating the giant, jagged peaks above. They leaned into corners with her face pressed between his shoulder blades, and on straightaways she put her chin on his shoulder and let her hands roam across his lean chest and torso.
He was growing hard
which made it hard
to focus on the road,
so he slowed,
rolling to a stop on a dusty,
darker than black,
back road.
He twisted around in his seat and kissed her again and she said, “Can we go to your place?” His stomach clenched and his heart raced. He took a steadying breath, then roared the bike back to life and raced the wind back the way they’d come.
His thoughts were shouting at him through the fuzziness of beer and lust, reminding him of his other life – it seemed like a dream to him, so far removed. Or was this the dream? Either way, the two images were separated by walls of stone and pine, peak after peak of rockiness between this dream and that one. Her hands were on his chest, clutching his shirt with one fist and absently rubbing the ridges of his pectoral muscle with the other. She bit his ear and he shifted the bike into the highest gear and decided that this dream was the one to focus on for now.
His apartment was dark and he only turned on one small lamp as they tumbled to his couch. He couldn’t get her shirt off fast enough, then spent a long, satisfied moment with his face buried in her cleavage before working on the bra. She giggled indulgently, and reached for his belt, tugging him closer to her, but also attempting to disengage it.
“I’ll get that,” he murmured.
Flashes of that joke her friend told were slipping through the beer-and-lust haze, but he focused on the taste of her skin and the wealth of desire she so clearly had for him. This feeling was maybe the best feeling he’d had in years. He filled one hand with one perfect breast and nuzzled the other, teasing the hard little nipple with his tongue and slipping a hand down her pants to sample the wetness he marveled at having created. She squirmed and mewled with need for him. For him! He grew harder and more focused the more he dwelled on this feeling. He was the object of her desire. He was the champion of her fairy tale. He didn’t even really know her, but she was giving him her breasts, her pussy. He felt omnipotent. He was so vast that the world couldn’t hold him.
His fingers found the wetness he sought and he gasped with the shock of its velvety smoothness. He tore at her pants and she smiled, shimmying out of them. He plunged his face into her verdant crotch and licked almost too hard in his enthusiasm. She flinched slightly, then relaxed into him, spreading wider to give him room to work. He was like a kid in a candy store, so filled with excitement at the array of choices before him. She had reached into his boxers and begun to stroke him as he feasted on her and the joke she’d laughed so hard at earlier flickered across his mind’s stage again. Her desire for him didn’t seem to lag, so he stayed focused on his delicious task.
“I want you inside me…” she moaned.
He slid in with ease and she moved against him, kissing her own juices off his lips and groping the wiry strength of his shoulders and back. He wondered if she was used to bigger men – maybe her husband was fat and old or maybe his dick was uncomfortably big for her.
After a while he bent her over the arm of the couch and went for doggy-style, but after just a few strokes he pulled out and teased the head of his cock against her asshole. She pressed against him, invitingly. He reached forward and cupped her breast while speaking quietly into her ear.
“Are you ok with this…?” She nodded and reached back to guide him. He eased in, carefully, and groaned with the pleasure of the tight grip. He lost himself in this sensation, lost all sense of time and place. The world was a warm, dark night and he was an exploding star. At the last moment, he pulled back and plunged into her pussy, finishing in the softer, wetter happy place he had begun.
This would be a night she remembered as having caused her worst UTI ever and marked the beginnig of the long, slow ending of her marriage; he would remember it as often as possible over the course of the next 50, blandly happy years without further incident.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Raining, Snowing, Sleeting Men


Maybe I don’t want to feel so very
heavily
staggeringly
much
anymore.
And maybe I deserve a break.
Everyone does, right?
Maybe I’m riding the waves of all the emotions that drive through me,
like a weather pattern with no pattern.
I am their hostage, their unwilling passenger.
I ride along and hold on for dear life.
I bask in the sunny days and feel sure I am holding the reins at last,
but then the storm front gathers just off screen – I feel it coming sometimes,
and fold in on myself in defense against its battering forces,
but more often I am blindsided by the sheer onslaught of anguish or desire or despair.
Years of practice and introspection have led me to the only peace I can find in those times –
to remind myself that every emotion is temporary.
But when I’m buried under 8 tons of heartbreak-filled dirt and rocks,
it’s really hard to remember that little ray of hope.
But that is when I have given the reins to someone else,
voluntarily surrendered the ownership of my own heart.
I don’t know how else to love –
all in, so fully open and welcoming that I am easily torn to shreds by my own out-of-control imagination.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Closed

I stand at the door to you
my words spilling out
and piling up so high
I am unable to see past them.
If I knock,
you will answer reluctantly,
so I will not knock.
I will choke on my words
so that when you open the door
I will have nothing to say to you.

Monday, May 18, 2020

Impression

The heaviness of a world sinks into my chest
I peer up at the dim light,
far away at the top of this hole.
There is a list,
somwhere along the root-and-soil crumbled walls,
a list of reasons to climb out.
But it's dark
and I can't find where it starts.
I hear distant voices,
indistinct words -
life going on
life not needing me
life of those I've disappointed and failed.
They are on the list,
and many others,
but the list just feels heavy now, too.
It is so dark and soft down here.
I'll just stay a while.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Velocity

You gently roll along,
undulating like a sea of grass,
a Kansas prairie under a wide blue sky.
I skitter along,
a perfectly smooth, flat rock
tossed with the flick of an expert wrist
out across the surface of the water.

Our paths cross in a mismatched frequency,
as your heart beats easily, slowly, sturdily
and mine zips along
ready to feel the next new surge of endorphins
far faster than you are wired to deliver them.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

National Poetry Month - Day 2

Over and over and over - you

Loving you was a labor
The pain came in spikes,
receding in heavy waves
The joy was mostly of my own making,
and rocked me gently
with a false sense of security.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Dinner dreaming

Three beautiful men from Chile
who came to Mexico to open a restaurant. Walking poetry -
fluid movements,
fluent tongues -
so many languages flow
from their beautiful minds
and bridge the space between theirs
and our minds.
Ponytails, beards, soft voices,
and the depth of a rich, balanced soul...

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Melodious Thunks

There's a melancholy
to their melodies
that speaks a little too directly
to my own soul.
So sometimes my chest gets heavy
in an urgent way and I have to escape their beauty.




Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Threeway My Way


**EXPLICIT**

I want to step close and speak quietly
My breath hot on your neck, tickling your ear
I say, what about him? I think he would join us.
Your grip on my wrist tightens, your breath quickens.
I smile in response and drag my teeth across your earlobe.
Your voice low and husky, you say, go ask...
My fingers skim across your stubbled neck as I move away from you, pressing through the crowd toward him.
You watch me touch his shoulder
You stop breathing as I lean in to make my case.
You fight the urge to run away,
to at least look away.
You catch his eye as he follows my gesture
His smile makes your heart gallop
He slips an arm around my waist and propels me back across the crowded space and you stand.
He smiles and tosses his head toward the exit
We are all in a dream, floating through the hallways, the elevator, fumbling with the card and the door and the lights then each other
He kisses you first then takes off my shirt while you revel in the memory of his mouth on yours
He fills his palm with my breast while reaching for more of your awe-filled kisses
I should feel like an intruder, but I don't -
Watching your hunger for him fuels my desire for you
And I want you to touch him
He pulls away from you and kisses me deeply
I taste you on his lips and moan a little, peeling away from him to taste you myself
You grin in wonder and kiss me hard
I unbuckle your belt and place his hand on your waistband
He kneels before you and slowly unbuttons your fly
You press your face into my cleavage and release my bra hook
I feel you moan into my chest as he takes you into his mouth
Your grip on me tightens
And your breathing becomes shallow
Your eyes slide across mine on your way to closing them
And I know that you know how much I love you
You brace yourself and surrender completely to the pleasure of his mouth and tongue and the rough hands that are so gentle with you

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Sea Sadness

The octopus and I
curl in hues of blues -
or is that just my soul?

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Bipolar Order

Half of my genes came from the man
who was knitted from the wool of symptoms
detailed on page 123 of the DSM-V.
He was so much more than that,
it should go without saying,
but there is so much to say -
his words were often an endless stream
of slow-paced inner musings
spoken at whatever audience he'd secured (trapped) -
his dissection of the various methods of securing an object to a flatbed
or the only approved approach to changing one's oil;
on a good day,
it might be the intricate outline
of his plans to start another business -
from a dating hotline
to firewood (chopped/delivered)
to a prescient but unactualized taxi alternative.
My words -
an endless stream of teenage drama
and delight -
(Who's dating whom?
What to wear to the dance?
Will he call?)
never aimed at him,
meant for anyone else -
crunched under foot
and stripped of their ebullience
by his arrival.

And then I let the other half of my genes
(perfect and whole in every way)
be the bridge between us
a relief for us all,
except her, perhaps.
We always have enough to say
to fill every moment
of the time we carve out
for each other
through the week,
from across town or,
for most of my adulthood,
across the country.
Our connection didn't tether him,
only us before, after, always.
And then
he dove out of existence
on 1/23.
The page is still in the book,
but his story has ended.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Missing Peace

It was Tuesday
and I missed you
while the tulips bloomed.
I missed you on Wednesday
until the bath water went cold.
On Thursday I looked for you
and you weren't there.
I missed you on Friday
so much that I couldn't go home -
so I ordered gin-and-tonics
until I ended up at the strip club
where I looked for your face
in the bottom of a bottle.
On Saturday I woke up with a hangover
eclipsed by the aching of my heart.
On Sunday I went to church
and prayed for your return -
I knelt until my knees bled,
and begged until my throat rasped.
On Monday I awoke panting
you were nowhere
you were nowhere
you are gone

Friday, December 27, 2019

Amateur

I finally popped this pole-and-platform-shoe riddled cherry -

We made it rain,
while they made it poor...
I probably wasn't drunk enough,
but still haven't found my way back to sober.
There were so many beautiful bodies -
shapes and sizes -
tiny, tall -
Folding bills into their cleavage,
smiling into their eyes.
I thought of you -
conjured
images of us...

I'll have to tell you about it sometime.

Monday, December 23, 2019

Good/Grief

There are no words to make it better.
No words I can hear or speak
that will fill the gnawing emptiness
where you used to be.
Gone are the moments
that used to overflow with
your laughter and lessons and -
         you are gone and
it will never be the same.
It's over and

what reason is there to continue?

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Presence

I pile treasures at your feet
attempting to anchor you to a patch of earth adjacent to my roaming roots.
Stay,
I say.
Stay,
I weep.
Be near me -
not always
(I understand that's not feasible
in the surging tides
of this busy world)
but constantly, regularly
be near me.
You calm me, steady me.
You guide me onward;
I follow docilely,
obediently -
hungrily.

Monday, December 16, 2019

Parenthetical Aside

Being loved by her would change a man, I think.
His body wouldn't even keep the same form
as it stretched to contain 
the abundance of adoration.
He would see the world differently,
as he adjusted to the reality that in this other life,
this side-pocket of joy,
that he was the sun and the moon and the stars.
His stride would lengthen, quicken - 
become fully jaunty.
He would be worshipped -
with her mouth, her hands, her words.
He would float above
viewing the whole of his existence from a new angle, 
with her love as the filter 
through which he saw himself and everything around him.
But only if he let himself.

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Hypothetical

If even fucking your wife
leaves you feeling shame-filled
and dirty, 
what would be so different?

Friday, December 6, 2019

One love, two loves, red love, blue love

Maybe they are all here
to save me from myself.
I think too hard
and talk too much;
I love in plunges and sweeps -
deep and wide.
I want to pull them all into my world-size embrace
and be adored back with the fervor I radiate.
Am I chasing my own shadow
away from the sunset,
racing away from the perfect ending,
or any ending, at all?
I want to turn back the clock
and live more of this life -
really savor the juicy parts,
the beauty-filled,
luscious parts.
I want to marinate in desires
both those sought and those found.
And through it all,
there is one.