Paper Heart, An introduction

PAPER HEART
World Wide Copyright 2000 by RD Armstrong

All Rights Reserved
Lummox Press
San Pedro, California, USA

I’ve always had luck with the ladies - some good, some bad, so I feel pretty knowledgeable about Affairs of the heart. When I first published Paper Heart (1997), I thought that would be it. Then, in 1999, I revised it. Now here it is the year 2000 and I’m doing it again. I guess I have to face it: this is an on-going series.

This third volume contains several new poems in addition to previously published ones. Some ap-pear in their original formats. I’ve also included three song lyrics that I wrote over a seven year period between 1978 & 1985.

I make no apology for these poems, which one reviewer referred to as being “the yin and yang of lust and guilt” while another called a “bitter-sweet collection.” All I can say, is that each poem, whether humorous or serious, is dedicated to those who brought me to love’s threshold and gave me a little shove.

RD Armstrong, my friends call me Raindog.

PAPER HEART (Vol. 3) is available from Lummox Press (see address below) for $6 (includes postage). Make check out to Lummox. You won't regret it...if you do, return the book and your money will be refunded.

FOUR FROM PAPER HEART Vol. 3

GAZE

She pierces me with her stare: two perfect puddles of ink I imagine I look like a deer caught in the headlights of a late-model destiny Go on, then hit me.
THE THING IN MY CHEST
Our passion: like Neolithic eruption volcanic epicenter birthing smoldering raw, molten energy untamed unconquered. And from that union: a portion of glass as dark as coal as smooth as silk as cold as your last off-handed remark. Now when I think of you I can scarcely breath as if the thing in my chest would cut me with it’s razor edges. It rests easy beneath my sternum, a dead spot where I let you place your beautiful / terrible gift: this gemstone of our passion this flowering obsidian chunk. You are not like some bird of prey (Yet there you seem to be) perched on a stony crag high above me waiting for a stumble in judgement to betray my location to your hungry eyes. I will pull out this artifact of our passion and fashion it into a dagger black and deadly wicked sharp and give it back to you I’m sure you can find some other place to put it.
AND
The night is unfolding around me and I am on the bridge and the lights in the bay are calling and the ripples make the lights dance and I am pleased on the bridge as the night unfolds beneath me and I speed towards Pedro and the lights dance in the blackness and life is finally making some sense and it is rare that I am pleased or satisfied on the bridge as the night unfolds inside me and the big emptiness opens its doors and pulls me inside and I remember that there's a big empty space where you used to be and I wish that I could fill that hole tonight as the night unfolds and I lose your memory again.
CLASS
“I know what makes a man happy!” Oh yeah? And what would that be? “A man wants to be treated a certain way He wants a whore in the bedroom and a mother in the kitchen.” Marie says this to me with that certainty that some children who have been blessed by the wisdom of the ages possess. She says this to me as we lay on her bed. It’s the “odd” weekend and I have made the long drive from Pedro to Montebello to try to “fall in love” with her yet one more time. She says this to me and I know she’s serious, she means it She doesn’t understand that times have changed Or maybe she doesn’t believe me As I tell her that “I just want you to be a woman wherever you are.” Marie was a firm believer in those mystic feminine “guile’s” She used them on me constantly unrelenting “You’re just denying your true nature as a man!” She would have me by the balls telingl me that she knew me better than I knew myself. So, apparently she was also going to be my mother in the bedroom, as well. I finally gave up on ever falling in love with her I already had one mother (sometimes one is enough) and I never did have much desire for whores but I wasn’t a cheapskate either I made sure that I left a good tip on the dresser.



RD Armstrong

lumoxraindog@earthlink.net
LUMMOX Press c/o PO Box 5301
San Pedro, CA 90733-5301
United States


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