Poetry by Ronald Oliver featured HANDICAPPED Give me a geek with a motley mug, or better yet, stupid - an obvious thug. Pock-marked faces and visible sores with sad tattoos - "Deloress I'm Yours" Blind and deaf or totally mute - an evident victim of drug abuse. Wheel-chair bound or missing a limb - deformity helps me to feel for him. Invalids only, their bodies a chart - impediments implying: Welcome Handicapped Hearts. A MAP of MY MEMORY You are a map of my memory - everywhere that I have been - the longitude and the latitude of each moment I have spent in this incremental history elaborating me - the person who is perfect to embody my beliefs. Your presence is a product of of every question that I have asked – the clarity of a cloudless night attained by light from the past. You're a voluntary chronicle of my compounding points of view, for in all of the ways you represent me I represent you too. I AM I am twilight - a luminous afterthought that questions the need for night distorting all perspective. I am sorrow - an abandoned body keening for a heartbeat to renew the rhythm of my life. I am chagrin - a naked entreaty for love or a credible facsimile of fidelity. I am shame - a disobedient secret shimmering in unpredictable rip tides of regret. I am punishment and pain and fierce desire - I am faltering fire - the genetic fear of night. I am twilight for the rest of your life. ( for "mom" ) ~~~~~ ALL THAT "HE" CONCEIVES How fortunate are we that God detains thought so that “He”, mindfully minus memory, may comprehend sensually all that “He” conceives, - increasing experientially ( fancifully, yet reverentially ) with, in and as You and Me. AUTHENTIC "HEROIN" Pussies, peckers and profits mobilize, energize, incite and often gratify the need to acquire ( but never to achieve ) tranquility - like heroin of unlimited variety placating all societies - though none have a clue that they’re making do with less than methadone - simulating satisfaction through addiction to recognition by conquest and acquisition of genitals and paper promises. Pussies?  Peckers?  Profits? Why this eternal yearning for serenity through the pursuit of substitute drugs when authentic “heroin” is ( as abundant as ) love? BEAUTY is GENTLE Your beauty is gentle - a morning mist lightly laving the sky. Your beauty is quiet – an indolent moon drawn to idle tides. Your beauty is certain - an affirmative heart thrumming with hope. Your beauty is simple – a trilling songbird's intuitive notes. Your beauty is kind – amending everyone blessed by its presence. I cherish your beauty and the beautiful soul it represents. ( for Juan David ) ESL I will be bilingual. I will learn the language of your life. I will memorize the alphabet of your body. Letter by letter you will be the only words that I need to know. I will master your grammar, dialect, and slang - all of your irregular verbs. I will celebrate every syllable of your erotic idiom until - phonetically freed - I fall to my knees speaking in tongues predating speech. EVERYWHERE ! In the stains across the curtains and the plaster on the floor, in the teardrop-dappled pillows flecked with particles of gore, in the glint of blades descending and the flushing rush of drugs, in the lightning flash of gunfire and ensuing rain of blood, in the rapture of reprisal and annulment of the past, in the final, rank eruption like the acne on my ass in the flood of sweat and semen and yellow urine gleaming in the sanguine shit still steaming IN THE SCREAMING IN THE SCREAMING I SEE YOU - I SEE YOU - I SEE YOU ! FEWER ZITS and BIGGER TITS Thicker hair and longer lashes harder nails and softer skin a larger house and faster car active bowels and vitamins higher cheekbones, lower hips a younger body minus flab brownies, burgers, double fries a rounder butt and flatter abs a brand new stove and DVD smaller pores and bigger tits louder speakers, sounder sleep sexual verve and fewer zits spotless glass and toilet bowls quality time with which to "share" slimmer thighs and fuller lips self-esteem and quarts of beer shiny shelves and stylish shoes a broader mind and narrow nose a better job and cheaper bank no static cling, designer clothes brighter whites and vibrant colors fresher breath and blinding smiles more policies and credit cards to nurture our poor inner child. _ But what is needed much more than these? Wider, thinner digital TVs. High-resolution / surround sound please, to overwhelm any sense of complicity as we watch, absorb and finally believe that buying solutions for the fear that we're fed will guarantee inundated wallets and beds! GENETIC APTITUDE If a broken bone heals stronger than before, is that true too of a broken heart? Is each remedy a testament to tenacity or just genetic aptitude steeling for the next assault stupidly beating us onward until we buckle beneath the multitude of scars? GRAVITY The earth must circle the sun - it is a matter of enchantment - every star regardless of size is compelled by physical law to sculpt a bowl of devotion into the texture of time around which lesser objects irresistibly roll until they collide and are absorbed by the lord of their orbit even as they explode - which is why I'm begging you: disenchant me - let me go. HE CRIED Daddy was a church mouse man nibbling on sanctity who, only when on stage, transcended inanity. Yet mother was sure he'd become more on the boards of a department store. Wielding beauty, "duty" and lies, she was godlessly wry and snide. _ He cried when he hit me. INTERCONTINENTAL LOVE When souls commune mere continents are dismissed by bliss - distance rendered meaningless. Hearts transmitting love know nothing of finite speed - laughing at lax beams of light, mocking their velocity. But bodies, to commune, must abide by gravity and mortal dependence upon physical proximity - to feel, to stroke, to hold, to hug, to simply stand beside - to confirm a truth as old as blood - that togetherness fortifies. _ So I bow before the law that allows our souls to be linked by less than a breath, but my earth-bound body longs to be touched by an ethereal love it knows nothing of. The LOURDES of DARKNESS Yea, though I walk through the alley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, neither crystal nor meth. Indeed they are my destiny as the insistent night blesses me - propelling my pilgrimage to the Lourdes of darkness . . . But behold: the doorway of deliverance and my redeemer now dickers ( miracles are no longer free ) - yet to replenish my diminishing faith there is no sacrifice that I will not make - thy rod and thy staff MUST comfort me! Thus I kneel and pray to be saved, and with his merciful grace feel salvation slip between my supplicant lips and soon . . . soon - soon - the rapture begins: the merciful flood of relief / belief that courses through me / around me - surrounds me - absolution / evolution / resolution to the here after of sacred songs and holy thongs. MORE : . . . behind, beneath and beyond all that is, orgies of immutable energy create and animate - radiating gravitons that are, were, will again be you, me, air, everything everywhere - expressing the one of us expanding with experience - mind, body, spirit, substance - advancing, evolving, resolving the mystery of life - a rock, Iran, tranquility, strife, a storm, a steer, a star, apparently unrelated yet incontrovertible manifestations of immortal intellect / fictive love - mutating conscious energy ( that from no thing comes every thing ) into more . . . PAPER CUTS Unpremeditated incidental injury like paper cuts - bad luck - superficial wounds stinging disproportionately yet over and over and over and over again until a vein is struck unleashing torrents of blood a flood expediting the inevitable scar that, regardless of reparations, may be forgiven even forgotten but never again be pristine skin. PROVOCATEUR Hella fine Ricardo hot off the barrio - you're one provocateur when hangin' in my 'hood. Your fried Asian eyes and Mediterranean skin, your "Like totally dude" grammar with a Latin accent simply knock me to my knees. You're the United Nations and I'm a saboteur - get ready to explode! PUNGENT FUNK I will not shower. I will not shave or even brush my teeth today. Why lose this dusky Sicilian taste - this acrid spice of inner space - this pungent funk upon my fingers which now lingers on my keyboard and my bed, my body and my pets - smells not here for years - especially cigarettes? However, you can come at any time and leave your fragrant butts behind. RELATIONSHIP RHETORIC I am oh so popular when I chat online - a cyber-celebrity, naughty or divine. Depending on who I am “talking” to - a hip hop hotty or poetically inclined - a feminist here, a debutante there - a broker, a hunk, a mom or a queer. Log on now and read my mind - I promise to be whoever you need. ( The curious thing is how much I bring the best of me to anonymity. Like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie's dress, when I step into the Web I step into my best. ) I am glamorous, amorous, brilliant, sympathetic! Welcome to the future of relationship rhetoric. SUCKER FOR a SONNET I adore a pretty poem - florid words softly celebrating hibernating hearts love-stung wide-aware ( like autumn-lulled lungs inhaling fresh arctic air ). I’m a sucker for a sonnet - fourteen lines of iambic pentameter strictly rhymed commemorating gentle souls careening out of control with fierce desire. Hell - I used to be that kind of writer. THIS YOUNG CONUNDRUM Brooks infuse the rivers that amend the single sea beckoned by the moon to appropriate the beach remanding soil on which clouds confer moisture lifted by endless winds and an insistent sun that nurtures every element of this young conundrum whose resolution is immutable yet dependent upon the product of probabilities ( evolving collective sensibilities ) which infuse, amend, beckon, appropriate, remand, confer, lift or nurture each hour every minute this second. WHO WILL MOOR ME ? Prozac and Elavil Zoloft and Desyrel Endep and Paxil will - my beautiful pharmaceuticals - only your dear intervention deters the indigenous sea that pounds unrelentingly upon this chemical beach where children appear to play that is in truth a shallow shore of felicity which soon I sense will need new ingredients to guard against the tireless tide intent upon consuming it and my evolving resolve to not give a shit. WITHOUT YOU I want to be drunk or stumbling stoned - silently nodding on white heroin - or better still, morphine will create a space where past and future have no place - the back path of being / synthetic reality - ageless, genderless, no sexuality - beyond hurting myself or anyone else - a neutral zone / a deconstructed home. _ But there is little doubt that I will do without - too flat on the floor to actually score / too full of fear to rise from here - will simply roll over and go back to sleep, a sleep so deep it will last for years. View my guestbook Dedicated to Anderson Ballesteros ( Brother / Child / Muse / Sicario ) "Ardent Assassin"/ Anderson Poetry - selected by Peter Howard as one of the 50 Best Poetry Sites on the Web - HERE This page is updated regularly. A Revolving ARCHIVE of my Poetry is HERE I am honored to be nominated for 2005 Poet of the Year and recognized for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry ( 2004 / Silver ) by The International Society of Poets, the recipient of the 2003 & 2004 Editor's Choice Award from the International Library of Poetry and to be a featured Link on the Web sites of Starlite Poetry , PoetryBox , Poetry.net , PgsforPoets Hidden Agendas , Creative-Poems Peter Howard and Panic! . © 2007 Ronald Oliver