Brothers Enjoying a Macanudo

Counterpoise

In my sleep
You walk by me
In a quick pace
Leaving behind memories
Of a more tender time.
I used to pick your spirits up then;

Make you laugh
Exactly when you needed to.
You were fragile crystal

And I was the neurotic
Flirting with slapstick
Trying to keep us balanced.

In my sleep, now,
We never touch.
I sense your perfume,

Light as your step,
Fade into the darkest river.
With your head tilted down

You walk deep
Into the darkest river
I can dream.


--Boris Victor Stecko

The Making of Cain

Our thoughts remain unspoken,
Perhaps as different as night and day,
Perhaps mixing to make dawn
Or dusk, shades of gray,
Nothing good or bad to say.
The communion of bodies
Wailing and flaying
Is a memory now.
All that remains is mute
And separate.
And we are naked.


--Boris Victor Stecko

Honeymoon

Carefully she walks onto the dock
So her high heels
Avoid the built-in
Letdown of the walkway,
The spaces surrounding
The sturdy planks.

He gazes across the waterway,
A long sleeved shirt
With hands inside trouser pockets.
He feels the breeze
From the west
And his lover’s arm curled around his.

With her shoes off now,
She walks easily,
Her bare feet
Feeling the ancient dock
For the first time.
A great mist is upon them.


--Boris Victor Stecko

The Droog Makes an Appearance

The Droog makes an appearance. 

Needles

There is a point to our discomfort--
The end of this needle.

You keep it at a distance
Like a child you have scolded,
A child who has hurt you.
But feelings only last so long.

The needle that binds us
Like flesh to flesh
In a surgeon’s stitch
Is straight and piercing,
Borne out of steel intercourse.

If anyone can become immune
To this metal-in-skin,
It is us.

We feel the slide of needles,
Thin, slick needles,
Across our tendons
And in our veins.

We do not blink
Even as needles pass
Through our eyes
And out our skulls.


--Boris Victor Stecko

Odds and Ends

There was an old woman from Taylor
Who read the books of Norman Mailer.
“The Naked and the Dead”
Lay on her empty bed,
But she would rather have a sailor.

* * * * *

Lonely leaf slowly
Drifting down onto the earth
With softness and pain.

* * * * *

He sits on his perch
In yellow song and flutter,
Eyes deep and coal black.

* * * * *

Sweetheart, you don’t have a wicked bone in your body:
Accept mine.

* * * * *

She’ll die in the arms of a rich man--
As she does every night.

* * * * *


Dripping icicle:
The last diminishing dirge
Of winter’s demise.

* * * * *

The trees so full of
Nothingness, utterly bare,
Yet standing upright!

* * * * *

The red leaves pay
Homage to the bare, brisk
Structures they abandon.

* * * * *

The lake
Like a pool of tears
Waiting to be
Released.

* * * * *

The lake is as smooth
As worn away dates
On a flat gravestone.

* * * * *


A mallard swims by--
His great green head
A slingshot
Target.

* * * * *
Lonesome?
Bone some.

* * * * *
March is set afire
By the spark of sunshine
Inside bare arthritic trees.

* * * * *
The sun flickers in the water
And the universe
Bleeds into its ripples.

--Boris Victor Stecko

Raindrops

open up
like a petal

a lyric
free e e

cummingslike
a meadow

of delicious
daisy tops

dripping
raindrops

and splash
horizons

Soaked suddenly
our smooth

skins touch
and we are

relatively
young

for our
advanced ages

No offense
No offense

taken
you breathe

back
in sweet

babies’-breath
breath

no offense
taken

sweetly
you breathe.


--Boris Victor Stecko

Love's Stratagems Twenty Years Later

With apologies to Donald Justice


All their patience exhausted,
No longer do they touch hands.
Their love seems to be accosted
By time and tedium
And the other’s petty demands.
There is no happy medium.

Strong words are often needed,
Used as verbal foils
When arguments become heated.
Once lovers, they now are foes,
And neither recoils
When words turn to blows.


--Boris Victor Stecko

Eastside Incident

I pricked a boil
On her leg
Then went to bed,
Slept royal.

Woke early next morn.
Made French Toast.
Ate hers, too.
She musta been worn.

I shook her massive arms
So violently
I heard a dirge
Escape her bracelet’s charms.

On the fourth day
I lay prostrate
In front of the Lord:
My prayers began to decay.

Five days in our bed
And not a single stir
From my lover:
I knew she was dead.

Take good care of her
Mr. Coroner.
See that she’s buried
In her red fox fur.


* * * * *


It was not neglect, was it?
Nor idiocy, or a simple naïveté?

It was out of revulsion you kept her
To yourself, silent, for six days.

The frozen depths of her arctic skin
Burned you. And yes, you were hot

To kiss those blue lips,
Taste the smile of her rot.


* * * * *

The sheets are still soiled
With her last perfume,
Two weeks after the wake.

There are dead wreaths
In the living room,
Sympathy cards on the TV.

Nothing can break him
Of his blue funk, his gloom.
His thoughts revolve around

His wife in her tomb,
The tool shed, and the bones
About to be exhumed.

--Boris Victor Stecko