BALLAD # 2: 

“The Life of Constant Night”

Cultural Context:

Later while partly naked the terrorist notices that the Buxom escort, posing as a high-class courtesan, has no tattoos, which in his culture means that they can both be buried in the same cemetery. Yet, she makes small talk about wanting a tattoo of a dragonfly. And he wonders if that’s her brand presented by those who might own her. Or is she just a Russian hippy. And it comes up that dragonflies eat their males after copulating.  But I’m a Jew, not an insect he says.

She eats her mate!

She bellows,

Welcome Danger! 

She makes us all strange bedfellows.

“There are no atheists in fox holes near the front”, so they say.

But I was one. 

“I need no G-d to die happy today.”

Or to love! Or, do with my hands- what most attempt with only vain words. 

Or paper figures in a mounted gyrating flesh circus.

I lost once in the long bottle,

What a priest usually achieves in a prayer; full throttle. Never saw, only heard.

The Good God headed the boldness of my word.

Almighty Vodka is my Greek Deity! 

Always more inviting than the priests anyway.

Safer also to have children around. To work and play!

I believe I was a child around you. 

Once or twice in a long past, long gone day. 

It was short-lived. Adulthood was swiftly found.

To have met you in Penza. Before you lost something in transit. The first time around.

Years ago! I might have made your journey more, hospitable ok?

Based on what the latest lies. 

That you say, it all sounds unpleasant.

“Would haves” are everyone’s favorites. Regrettable?

Everyone is alive with regret in this shit of a City today.

There is no could have!

Only the will to do! Imagining the before times. 

Your lies and your truths both eviscerate me! 

I lack words and thus form rhymes.

They vivisect my disjoint.

The only thing I know how do well in a kitchen,

Is cook well and then fuck you at knifepoint.

Albeit, simply. My love for you is made twofold.

You are voluptuous. Striking be near, ever hard, ever bold.

A bit stunning, your total fear of darkness,

You’re hot and then you’re quite cold.

For my love, or my own belly I can do much, 

I liked your arms around my neck, 

I liked your grab of meat inside my jeans, 

I need your clutch. 

Your fun. Your fold. You and I, it seem to have lived a life of night!

We’ve slept out in the exposure cold, fallen asleep on outbound trains, 

The story you painted! 

It was told as it was used to get me bought and then sold. Am I right?

I’ve slept where I was offered, you’ve slept once there here and too,

I’ve stolen bread, you’ve stolen bread.

We both know very well the Manhattan finer things, well at last you do.

I’ve lied to protect myself. 

You lie supine and lateral and rewind, you fine dine and call sign. 

“You text in novels, she says, you can woo too?

“I’ll steal bread. I’ll steal the moon.  The universe for you!” 

If I had such reach with my plain speech,

If I can afford one, this is America! I should probably own two!

To feed the very stars with words of action and of promise and also of rope.

“Man I own less than four feet of your noose, but you are hanging on a mere thread, dying from your hope.”

The things I’ve done in past lives are made plain by 6 am in Brighton.

We hold hands sometimes, we stumble, we bottle tip, we bottle lighten. 

We all fall down!

When I was the man with Grey Mask, I used to kill for you! I’ve killed over a thousand men!

White, black, red, yellow and brown!

“The things you say!”

We are twenty minutes from the coming of the new day, the rabbit hole residing; 

You cling to me like glue, but you mold me like clay.

I lie, I wish to always lie, as if begotten battle cry, we try, to get old and never die with you.

“One day man, one day.“

My past lives melt, like midnight wax. Like Mason words, like the blue moon too.

I lose myself, I give myself, I bind my fate, and it’s true Jew.

The blue moon above us drowns out the sobs of my very old soul.

You lie, and I cry, and the circle sounds. Ringtones, bells and things made un-whole.

Sobs, of the stroll, good price for another dead soul,

The Russian Gobnick ghetto thug roll! The body count is getting higher as you see into my goal.

We lie on the beach, and midnight star wax drips from me, pleasure bleeds to you.

Not two fucks of clue. About the things we just might do.

I drip on her, she likes it. 

“The pain! The basic happy feel of pain.” 

The sealing of desire,

What they did to us respectively? Ya Tibya Leblue.

Between my legs, I grab your mane.

“What’s it all for?”

I’ll drip wax on the back, You’ll pour.

“But if it’s true I am a married woman, a desired girlfriend and have other fourteen lovers; then use me; “Make me for one night more, your tragic story whore“.

“You almost killed us over nothing”, I say.

“You almost kissed me over nothing,” she replies. It’s not yet but almost day.

A dove goes by, it decorates the Brooklyn sky.

There are blacks and blues eviscerated, there is no middle way. I cry.

Well we killed us! But don’t make that dirty moment linger. It was the wine, it was the mood, it was the; Je ne sais!

“Don’t get French with me my dear!”

“Dragon flies are temporary creatures, they mate, they kill, and they do not ever stay.“

Temperamental predator at best, what is it that you really hide. Where blind side your sword, your blade your knife;

“I bore my neck to monsters, and those monsters took my life.”

They surely know to prey on glorious pests,

Fastest insect in the world they say; but they eat each other. They are deadly. They are blessed.

Whereas I’d like to think you only eat your enemies, the knife point fucking, the dripping wax the rest of it, the salsa dancing; this isn’t Russia, we are west of it.

“I’m a dirty minded man, but I respect you and I love you as if I were your non-blood brother.”

“Sounds incestuous for monsters to be dating.”

“We’re blood ritual mating, we’re cold war postulating, we’re exodus deliberating, it’s dawn. We did this to each other.”

“I have never feared death. For I’m mostly dead already.”

“Try and fuck me til I break!”

“Dead men don’t use Black Amex cards,” she says, “dead men don’t buy sushi, lamb or steak! You’re not what I signed up for, you’re not like Americans at all. You’re crazy, you’re a big mistake to take.”

“Ha!”

“Don’t mock a man who thinks himself bewitched with love!”

Love is vast! In itself a pure annoyance mixed with the universe, a called solution. A backhand is still a backhand even with a white glove.

“He is steely in his constitution.”

“I’m also half-mad. It’s possibly true.”

Do not confine his gestures to his fire or his eyes as they shine a wild night made new,

“Make me prove it! My work. To identify the mountain. And then I will seek to move it.”

That is the objective anyway, enamored me.

For if I for one-second falter, push me off the very ledge, let death come freely!”

“What kind of name is Wal-ter? You pushed us over the ledge last week, in plain speak.

I am triumphant, let me have you! Let me have it all.

Potentially I fear, you might die for me this year,

Blackhearts defying logic, your fist to the brick of a wall. 

That night! Remember that night was the edge.

Kiss me hard, don’t look away from this now,

“You’ve pushed us dragon flying off the ledge.“

Written in September 2011 in Newyorkgrad

Written as “The DragonFly Poem #2”

Performed in a Private show