Pasted here are 6 of my 'love lost' poems, "If It Seems Too Good To Be True", "Love In An Elevator", "Plotting Her Escape","Wake-up Call", "When To Worry" and "The World Is My Ashtray" to be considered for publication in (A Brilliant) Record Magazine.

My poems and stories have been published in print publications such as The Boston Poet and Spare Change, as well as the anthology "Out of the Blue Writers Unite" and my work is soon to be featured online with COAP Press.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Erik Tate


IF IT SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

From which Erica Jong novel did you step?

Morning you rise with kissably fresh breath already,
your skin sweet as Tiffany's perfume before even showering.

It's a source of amazement that your vagina insides
can taste like cherry and butterscotch interchangeably.

A four-star chef with agile wrist motion,
you don't even want any help in the kitchen!

You give great manicures - very gentle with the cuticles,
tell me to soak my feet while you change into your
navy blue nightie with no underpants easy access.

Free spirit, uninhibited you climax four times to my one,
your leg knocking mirror off bedroom wall.

But you must get up sometime,

rush from the condo after a phone call
from your "personal trainer",
speed away in your green Saturn
coveted by every man in New Jersey,

leaving me to contemplate my great fortune
in sharing your bed.


LOVE IN AN ELEVATOR

Even before you told me your dream,

how we were at the Aerosmith concert
and I was going into convulsions,

paramedics working over me
while you stood thinking

I was ruining the concert for you,

even before you told me this,
I knew how you felt about me.

You didn't need to reitterate it
with a second
(or third) telling.


PLOTTING HER ESCAPE

the time that we playfully
wrestled

on the bed

and I maneuvered on top of her,
straddling her,
pinning her wrists to the bed,

it wasn't a game anymore

and as she struggled to get free
but couldn't,

she said with some surprise,
"You are stronger than I am,"

got a look in her eyes

like she was storing this
piece of information away

for future reference.

WAKE-UP CALL

She said she had to get out now,
before we both drowned

and it scared me; I'd never
heard her talk about our relationship
in those terms before.

When she hung up
I put the receiver on the cradle
in the floor, next to the mattress
and turned over on my back.

I couldn't sleep.

It was the first time I'd
truly been awake
in days.

WHEN TO WORRY

When she broke up with me,
she was very business-like,

and when I asked her how she could
be so detached,

she said that she had
broken up with me in her mind
over a month before, and had

taken the month to
get used to the idea.

When I asked her why she hadn't
said something sooner
before it had gone that far,

she said she hadn't wanted to
worry me,

that I had other things on
my mind.


THE WORLD IS MY ASHTRAY

So of course I ash on gas station pavement
beside no smoking sign,

ash on apolstery of my new Mitsubishi
while admiring your immaculate Chevy Impala,

ash on pavement outside shops at Faneul Hall,
discard my butt there and watch you scramble to pick it up,
scared we’ll be picked up by the cops for littering,

you pressing the butt neatly into your Starbucks cup
and searching for a trashcan.

I ash on the floor of Christopher’s Restaurant
with wild belly laughs, the two of us,
tripping off barstool and slapping your thigh.

Throw my butt down in mock angriness
just to watch you dive under the bar and retreive it.

Ash on my hopes when I fall drunk on your neck,
feeling you against my lips

Ash on my sentimentality
when you call me from your cell phone,
tell me you are
sleeping with another man already.

Erik Tate

My hands turn green & scaly &
they're reptile hands to match my
reptile brain/ Pasadena where I dwell sinks

into a swamp/ I'm there among snakes & fish,
gators & birds black with oil, dead & dying/ my
reptile soul feels the injustice/ British Petroleum is

a giant monster, bigger than a dinosaur, with
tremendous, razor teeth dripping oil & blood & the
spirits of the Southern states that

lie as corpses with all the rotting animals on
the shores of the dead Gulf of Mexico, &
the rest of the U.S.A. embraces her 3rd World

status with horror, & the American people not
dead are reptiles like me, wallowing in our dead
swamp & chewing on the bones/ Jesoo

descends rapturously, looks around &
shrieks with horror, "Daddy, let me come
home!" but God observes us with such loathing &

disgust, He goes mad, & BP takes advantage by
charging Him double for a tank of gas/ Jesoo now realizes
he can't go home again, because he's homeless/ he

tries to take his Daddy to the madhouse but
is aware that we're already there/ God tries to wade through
a puddle of oil but is pulled down by quicksand, &

Jesoo knows the quicker the better, because
it's not fair for God to live through the deplorable
abomination of His creation/ God is sucked

under, & Jesoo says, "Good riddance!" then
Jesoo puts himself on the cross because there's nobody
left to do it for him/ he wants to scream,

"Daddy, why hast thou forsaken me!" but
what's the sense when God is moldering in His
grave/ proof that

there is no sense/ now as
always, & there is no
Jesoo or HIS DADDY!/ they

aren't dead because they never lived/ they're
nothing!
NOTHING ...

!



My nose drips its virtue on
my pillow case as I breathe out
my ear, making my breath wax foul/

dustmites creep from the down down of
my pillow/ they eat my nose with diseased digust/ I
am now flatface, a pugugly without a pug/ I

try to accept my condition/ I shrug/ my
face is now a cherry pie/ We should all accept
our piece of the pie, says Emerson/ but flatface is

the entire pie, dripping cherry juice on
my crust, making me soggy & obtuse/ I eat a mouthful of
my face, & the cherry juice is blood, dripping

over my face & nose hole/ my nose hole goes
down into the sewer of my brain being ripped out in
chunks by an eagle, that

goes mad knowing he's eating
the filth in my brain, which
has never known such pain

"Never again!" I scream. "Never again!"as
the eagle swoops like a plane &
rips off another chunk of brain/ I'm

now a halfass with
half a mind, &
the half supposed to work is in a bind/

"How unkind!" I bellow like
they skewer on a spit &
put into the fire, a victim of desire for

a piece of cotton candy I
devour/ I
want her/ I

need her/ I
covet her, &
SHE KILLS ME ...

!

Sitting outside the Novel Cafe with
pretty Therese who
won't give me the long, sensual hug she


gave me weeks ago when I first met her at
the Novel Cafe/ of course I should consider
my cold & my dripping nose/ perhaps


that turns her off to my intimacy, &
I discover she has three children, the
oldest of whom is 29 yrs old, &


when I fist met her at the Novel Cafe, I
thought she was no more than 2l, but
in truth she's in her 40s, but of course she


will not tell me, but no longer can I
be her granddad/ I learn that she was a
well-to-do housewife, & even an admirer of


George W Bush, the
Anti-Christ, but lost it all on
drugs to end up on the streets of skidrow L.A. &


a series of misadventures that took her to
AA for the rich is Brentwood, where
she was rejected for being penniless, &


now she lives in the streets, where
she slept the lst night I met her, in front of
the Japan Town Library a few blocks from


skidrow, but in the arms of Jesoo free
of fear in the land of cutthroats &
madmen, knowing if she took her eyes off


Jesoo that she'd sink into the water like
Peter, so with her eyes on Jesoo & not on my
dripping nose, I get a


1/4 hug at most, & I
head off for my Pasadena room to
wash my face & beard &


sleep with a snotrag beneath my
nose, thinking of Therese &
lost love ...


!



Fritz Hamilton