we live behind palace walls

“I’m in love,”  I said, sighing into the fall-like, Paris afternoon, “I have to admit it.”

My 85 year old uncle Remy, gently stirring a pitcher of American martini he was conjuring, said, “You should marry an insignificant lawyer - if you’re going to have a cross-class love affair.”
Uncle Remy was a lawyer, of sorts, once.

“I think you’re leading the witness,” I said, looking down at my shoes.
“I’m in love with my Havaianas,” I clarified - my new, white, square-toed flip-flops.
“Besides, no one thinks in terms of class any more - and Peter and I are NOT an asymmetrical match or relationship or whatever.”

But it got me thinking. Half, or more, of what Uncle Remy says is politically incorrect. And I don’t judge him harshly..

I wrote, last week, about a guy who
(gasp) told me he found me attractive
like it was some crisis.

Hadn’t I schemed to get with Peter? (my bf).
And hadn’t he admitted that he’d schemed to get with me?

Was I ready to diagnose this guy as a walking red flag
- for a gentle admission of interest?
Because he's a big, intimidating guy?

What are the small, social rituals
we’re allowed to use - to signal desire?
Sure, buying someone a drink at a bar
- but what else? It’s a Catch-22.

Must every comment face the court of
public opinion, verbal consent protocols,
uni regulations and the behavior authorities?
Should we ban serendipity and spontaneity too?

Monday morning came and I didn’t ask to change seats
I moved my pencil back - a little.
He actually could use a bit more room than me.

I smiled a little, asked him about his weekend,
there’s no use in being unfriendly.
His name is Jacques (Jack).
.
.
Songs for this:
So Sorry by Lola Young [E]
The Hardest Part by Olivia Dean

Heavy are the thoughts of my crown—
shining like praise, sitting like gold,
but weighing like stone. A halo to some,
a shackle most days. To rule, or to ruin—
always my own.  

Strangers slip seamlessly into the crowd,
positive, negative—all charges allowed.
Their pull is soft, then suddenly loud.

And here I split a poem in two: I am a
double entendre, a meaning doubled—
a double-edged sword that cuts away
the rules, and the cut you take when
you refuse.

–––

Once formal—but now cutting ties, from
those who cut me. Knowing is freedom
dressed sharp, but dressed like an excuse.

I am the canopy stretched over my throne,
the highest branch of dreams I’ve grown.
Shade to protect, shade to conceal—
comfort by day, a curtain from light.

But get under my skin, and you’ll taste
the irony— me throwing you shade.
You’ll stand in it, unseen in my sight—
just another stranger, swallowed by night.

She’s mad, my bad
She’s shouting, I’m silent
She’s sweating, I’m dithering
She’s all over the place
       I’m all over her body
       It’s cold. She’s hot
Life is hard. I’m hard. She’s thick  
Stop talking. I can’t concentrate
Face back. I don’t wanna fight
Bend over. I don’t wanna argue
Stretch Back. I wanna sip
Push Back. I wanna pump
Ride on. I wanna come
Get off. I wanna go
“I love you”….. I hear you
“I said I love you”…. I hear you

Ecstatic in the sea breeze,
a magnanimous moment of
interloper pride ******* the day.
Uncoil—my heart, my chin,
my unglamorous abstinence
enforced by fear.
This is no lapse, but fury
and fortitude forging me
in the crucible of love.
Yet again I am up against it—
the stage of floating eyes and
overcooked feelings pawing
at my attention like
squids in a pool.
Ink and jelly in a room temperature soup
swirling and sloshing under
the authority of a rented room.
By gods, this time I’ll make it work—
plant leaves and blunderbusses
leaning against teal paint,
the sun really is on a fishhook.
Stand apart from me then and
judge the waters for what they are—
a storm too small to surface
in a sky too big to swallow.
I’m sweating in it
and the alarm clock is going off.
bleet
   bleet
      bleet
Too deep to turn back.
Too tired to go on.
This is where the end begins,
in the middle of it
with no ground at all.

~
This forbidden city
walks on water,
keeps all the undesirables at bay,
it's always a balancing act.

Oh, blighted court
of Catherine the Great,
thy friends are having a hard time,
but horsing around, no less.

Enlightened by summer drugs,
and busting out of
their tops and castles,
thongs on thy feet,
and thongs on thy bottoms,
this zenith and this nadir
come in colorful collages,
everything else is a flash of flesh.

Sped along by
frequent bloodletting,
there's a revolution in
thy teenage mind,
a looking for the hidden
and interested motives,
but no one can live
their life on the skis.

Rulership of heart is far
from recreation,
but you raised
a smile to sin,
until all we could do was
shake our heads and laugh.
~

-----------
In a lego world, anything is lego possible,
even hair on lego heads blowing off, and

being mistaken for an acorn cap,
then I think of dolls with acorn heads and
smile, at the multiplicity of ways to imagine

models of reality where whatiferies are tried,
judgment day in the old village of the ancestors,

eh, right, who we danced for, when we was kids.

We learned the way, not the why, time is too tight.
So we rebelled
at the fascist way, busted loose, ax me
do we worry, non
sensed
not since I can't remember when…

fret not, said the child who believed, because
he was told, God's got everything under control.

Jesus winked, and said winds do as they please,
within the atmosphere we breathe and be in.

Winds free wills fix artistry as trying art, umph
at tension, wills filled with mistaken angst, un let
go. Loosen wills to flow down hill, imagine canals

that drained the marshlands all fill up in disuse,
and the world's slow cycle of balance originally
intended when mankind became science wise,
appears to
hold the pattern, see the design,
find a pattern,
say truth showed you,
so the old man say go see,
rethink realization in your imagination, pattern

re-co-knowing mindform made on recognition,

all dressed up. No place to go.