Pushing The Envelope Issue Two - Part Two

Law of the Lawn

 "Stop the mowing," you say.
This court retorts:
Does the grass not look splendid?
Does it not smell ripe,
as if peeled by the blade?
Oh, but the sound of mowing bothers you?
Name one thing that produces effect
without making sound while producing ir?
Even human beings follow the rule.
If silence stars your priority,
I see you live in no hut or igloo
but a house built by motorized devices.
You make many more exceptions to rule
than any rule can bear.
Shall we stop the crickets from violining
because you cannot sleep?
Perhaps we might eradicate them,
a holocaust of crickets,
for sake of your sleep, mein Fuhrer?
I sentence you to mow lawns,
not only yours, but those of the neighbors,
the neighborhood, the suburb,
the entire city, all of the state,
until you say, "To mow is to be human.
"Our green grass saves us
"from being rapists and murderers.
"The grass is our god; we shall maintain it.
"Better to rip off my ears
"than to let one blade grow past regulation length.
"Have mercy on me, lawn.
"I cursed without knowing You
"or your servants, the good and mighty mowers.
"Bless you for growing, always growing,
"forever in need of light trim,
"to show the neighbors by example
"the depth of my worship."

~Paul A. Toth~

                                                                                          William Shakespeare 

Shakespeare Sonnet 23

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I for fear of trust, forget to say,
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might:
O let my looks be then the eloquence,
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.



LISTEN


while they say “actions speak louder than words”

it seems most of my good deeds go unheard

all this time you wonder if I love you – still

or if love’s habit has replaced love’s thrill

so I’m writing you this song

and hoping it will right this wrong

impression. listen. listen.

listen to my eyes the way they look into yours

listen to my hands they way they lock onto yours

listen to my thighs the way they enfold you

listen to my arms the way they hold you

listen to my feet the way they rub against yours

listen to my tongue the way it rubs against yours

listen to my skin the way it glistens and glows

listen to my lips they way they glisten and glow

can you hear me say it now?

can you hear me say it now?

every part of me is speaking

with every bone down to its marrow

every pulsing cell through every vessel

every pore and hair upon my skin

every taut and rippling muscle

every atom of me sings!

~Roxanne Hoffman~

John’s Balcony

By Bonnie Martha Morét 

We laughed

We spoke

I sometimes cried

He often joked

Libations overflowed

Sometimes until dawn

He shared his emotions

Very openly

Never withdrawn

The balcony at his place

With a tree that hid a wry face

Our comforting assuage

Eased the burdens of life

As we stood daily on its stage

Weather

 Here, have a tie-dye

on those stripes,

just a touch of white

trash black on those

flaming Hawaiian flowers;

It’s suffering succotash,

dear, a hard-won head

ache

a purple-headed heart

ache

every blasted throb

a 9-to-5 retail job.

There is scientific interest

in your own destabilization,

clothed to the point of suffocation;

major dope addiction

dulling a literary dullard’s

pain

with stutters of sodomophobic

relief.

~Adam Henry Carriere~

  

Bare City My job went overseas Quick like a breeze Flint is a bust There is nothing left but dust Barren left over’s of land Reminding us of things once grand The bank now owns the most I’ve no place left to host It’s how to clean up the aftermath That is the over flow of the political bath We the people have given all Michigan is at a slow crawl The auto plants are gone What’s left is wrong NAFTA is at the heart Bringing back some work would be the start Give use a beginning that is new Plant the seeds too erase the blue Copyright©2009 by Phillip A. Hubbard Sin What is meant to be will simply be what once was will be forever forgotten and what is will be a distant memory The tasted sin wishes to be tasted once more  but cares only for the flesh The moans echoes and ripples through the body of the willing Never realizing this moment will be etch into the heart but this moment alone Arching the back, pulling towards, thrust forwards, the ecstasy drives to legalize insanity A kiss, a whisper of lust breathing warm air down your neck Nibbling your lower lip as the hands of passion cascade down your chest The lessons taught was give pleasure of the night Never to receive satisfaction of knowing the next day A beautiful lie, an unforgivable sin Yet...an irresistible desire to taste that sin again To touch your skin  For your body to be pressed up against mine, forever intertwined Please...Let me taste my sin again ~Fiorella Arrunategui~ FOG      Another day of fog and rain-I don't mind it but Joe hates it. He always gets into the worst moods when it's foggy. Lately he doesn't seem to ever be in a good mood.             I guess, he's still mourning over his lost love. If you ask me the whole thing is so stupid. He met this guy over the internet sure they wrote back and forth for a month. Then they started talking on the phone for hours at a time. I wouldn't have cared but he was driving me crazy. He never closed his bedroom door when he was having phone sex with what's his name-Mike-Peter it didn't matter. He was loud and I heard and occasionally saw everything.He was such an exhibitionist.             He never met Mike face to face-never saw him-his photos could have been fakes. He wouldn't listen to me when I told him that I had met Mike on the internet before him. Mike had really bad vibes-he wrote that he hated being Gay and prayed to God every night to make him straight. And if God couldn't make him straight then he wanted God to send him the perfect man-the perfect lover. I thought why-he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't even love himself. Why should the perfect man love him? He wasn't perfect.             Oh great, I hear Joe crying those bitter tears again in his bedroom.             He never noticed or hears me when I tell him that I love him as a lover.             The fog is very thick tonight. The thickest that I have ever seen. ~Brain Damian Sabbats~ The Fetish I want the world to go away. She dances under my bedroom window every night. Some nights she’s more roused than others. I know that others can see her, and I want the rest of the world to go away. I want her to dance only for me, but I realize that’s impossible. Yet I find some comfort in the fact that they love her in a pure, non-carnal way. Unlike myself, you see. I love her so impurely that it borders on obscene. Some would say it is obscene...this love I have for her. Sadly, they would say it’s obscene only because of who I am, and what she is. There must have been a full moon the night it first began, although I’m not certain. Lying in bed, enduring yet another sleepless night, I found it odd that my bedroom was so illuminated, it seemed as if fifty invisible candles were burning. Tossing and turning, thinking and hoping. Hoping to just close my eyes and fall asleep. My memories taking me back to when I was a small child. I was such a peaceful sleeper that I would awake in the morning in the same position that I fell asleep in. Nine or ten hours of undisturbed sleep later, I would rise, with a smile on my face and full recollection of my dreams. Wonderful, colorful dreams of running through blossom-studded fields and then spreading my arms and soaring ten feet off the ground. And then there were the trees. I always dreamt of trees as a child. Climbing and more climbing. The trees of my dreams surged one hundred feet or more into the sky, and I scaled them with ease, feeling every inch of the rough bark on my bare soles. I would sometimes awaken with tiny cuts on the bottom of my feet, but I would convince myself they were caused from walking around the yard barefoot. All I was left with now were sleepless nights and yearnings. I yearned, yet did not know for what. That’s the thing that tortured me the most. For how could I fulfill my desire when I did not know what I desired? The answer came to me that freezing, end of March-night. I desired her. It was a yearning that I had to fulfill. There she was. She spoke to me without words. Danced for me without music. Reached for me without arms. Right there outside my bedroom window. The light of the moon frolicked on her limbs. Every reflected beam was like a wink across a room intended for a soon-to-be lover. The dance she danced was so slight yet so sensual. Barely moving yet it was a wild dance. She danced only for me, it seemed. Surely many other men had been attracted to her before me, I presumed. Yet in my mind, I and I alone deserved her. They all had their normal, sleep-filled lives. Perhaps most were married, in love, had children. They did not need her or want her the way I did. Therefore, she had to be mine. In the realization of my fetish, I felt so sick and abnormal. How could I lust after her? Although I had read nothing describing my adoration of her as a fetish, I wanted to wear this branding...this badge of having a fetish, around my neck for the rest of my life. Like a pyromaniac or a pedophile, I justified it. The yearning was so strong that I had to give in. I justified it by thinking that I wasn’t hurting anyone. For in my lust for her, she would not be hurt. She could feel no physical or psychological pain, you see. So there I lay. Every shimmy and quiver she made compelled the moonlight to blink off my window. I could hear the wind whispering, but it sounded as if she was moaning. I wished it were true, and therefore, it was. One thing I knew for sure was that the yearning was mutual. In my mind, at least, she wanted me just as much as I wanted her. I didn’t fall asleep that night until the sun began to rise and night turned into day. Once the sun began to twinkle onto her limbs, she seemed like a child to me. Off-limits to my sick fetish. I would not, and could not, subject her to my compulsion in the daylight. She would have to be my night lover only, for my desire waned once the sun ascended into the sky. A few evenings later, and hours before our imminent consummation, my breathing became deep and almost guttural. Pacing around, and long, ice-cold showers that numbed my fingertips and toes could not put an end to my arousal. Nightfall could not come fast enough. If given the option, I would have gladly forsaken the sun forever, if only the twilight would arrive immediately. Mother nature was my cohort that night. Although according to the calendar, spring officially began days before, it was a bitterly cold end of March evening that entered the record books. This hopefully ensured virtually empty sidewalks and streets. I wore a dark-blue cashmere pullover with nothing underneath, and a pair of overly-worn, soft as felt, button-fly jeans. My fingers quivered so much that it took me more than ten minutes to fasten all the buttons. I theorized that this was the least amount of clothing I could get away with, given the temperature, without seeming downright loony if spotted on the street by a passerby. Making my way down the corridor of my building toward the door leading outside at 3:15 A.M., I didn’t even know what I would do, exactly, once I got to her. Like a mother reaching out to hold her newborn baby, still covered in greasy vernix, or a fly committing suicide in a bowl of scrumptious syrup, I just knew that my actions would come naturally. Without thought, planning or consequence, and definitely with the promise of pure bliss. Once outside, I immediately spotted her. Her long, naked branches resembled the limbs of an unusually lanky, angelic looking young girl, undoubtedly destined to become a fashion model. I took a quick glance upwards and to my right to look at my bedroom window. Until then, I had only pined over her through that glass pane, thirty feet above. A quick roll of my eyes, left, then right, established the fact that the sidewalk was devoid of people. As I approached, a short and frigid burst of wind bent one of her lower limbs downward and I was instantly overwhelmed with desire, as it was apparent that she was eagerly reaching down towards me. I rubbed the back of my right hand gently across the lower part of her trunk. Her bark was gorgeously caramel-colored and rough. How on earth, I asked myself, could any man, including myself, ever have been turned on by moist, smooth flesh, or warm, wet kisses? At this second, a human woman’s warm, soft flesh seemed as repulsive as the bloody side of a freshly stripped piece of animal skin, and human female lips, like two plump, pink maggots. Her dark, hard roughness added a welcome sensation to my mushy cold skin. In one smooth downward motion, my hand turned around so that my palm was now caressing her. After several seconds, my left hand came up and wrapped around her waist, which was slim and couldn’t have been more than seventy centimeters around. Holding on tight, I pulled myself close to her and pressed my chest into her lovely brown bark. The delicate fibers of the cashmere locked into the jagged furrows of her body. I could not detach myself from her even if I wanted to, it seemed, for each and every minuscule curl of goat wool had latched itself onto her tiny jutted bark imperfections. In my newly twisted psyche, she was a warm-blooded, breathing, panting being. I turned my head and pressed my left cheek into her. Like a child making bark rubbings with tracing paper and pencil, I pressed long and hard until I was sure an impression was made onto my flesh. Our embrace lasted five to six minutes and it was enough to seal our love. My lover is a Honey Locust. Deciduous by nature, our affair began that cold, end of March night, when she was still in her bare stage. As I made my way back to the entrance of my building that night, I became quite giddy with the thought of what striking beauty she would present to me in the warmth of spring, when her light green buds would burst forth and tease me with every night-time rustle, seemingly whispering my name. I was sure it would be— and it was—intoxicating. ~Gina Delorenzo~ Off The Cuff If I told you that                                          I would love you forever Would you believe me? Would you believe all the stories of my wild                                     encounters with women & men I will not deny them-                         take me as you find me Will you want me as much as I want you? In the cold nights & every night remember me (Laughs) I AM YOUR DREAM ~Brian Damian Sabbats~ HEAL  Little girl from Africa Was only three years old. Hide and seek in the sunshine, her heart was made of gold. She didn’t know they would come. Little girl from Africa was just a baby girl. She wore pretty dainty frocks, she chose not to have any curls. Little girl from Africa She always ran and played. Smiled with her family, beans and grain in the shade. She didn’t know they would come. Little girl from Africa was seized by three men. Each took their turn, pushed hard inside her gem. Little girl from Africa Didn’t know they would come. Soldiers used themselves and weapons, she screamed even after they were done. Little girl from Africa they asked her mother “how does your daughter feel?” The mother replied with tears, “she is learning on how to heal.” ~Maria Chisolm~