The Final Fuck: The Parting of Legs and Ways

You said it was over.

Accepting of this.
Accepting of you.
I never could say no to
your bizarre requests.
And so, a parting of our ways
includes a parting of
my thighs.



No blood or sweat.
Just tears.

Come then say goodbye.

And as your urgency grows and
presses into my belly,
so does the notion that
I am being
fucked goodbye.

Emotions emerging from
blackened jeans
and I give you the last of me.

A wet, warm place in which to enter,
a long, hard way
to say we're through.

You never knew the way to
my heart,
taking this route over and over
like a misguided traveler.
Yet I guide you into me knowing
this will not last,
nor will we.

Plummeting into the depths of
warm stirring waves,
I am convinced you are trying to
reach my mind.
Convinced you are probing me
to know what I am
thinking.

Coming means going
and that is all I know.

I know with this fond farewell,
I am truly fucked.
Mind, body and soul.

You flip me over to take the
road less traveled,
and my gentle curves provide
the map that leads you home.

Home, to where I bleed.
Home, to where I need.

While pulling my red and raven locks,
I pretend you are pulling me
back into your life.

Pull harder and call me "bitch",
how dare I leave you.
Pull harder and say my name.
How dare I walk out that door...

Pull harder...
and leave behind a souvenir of
seed and sorrow
that you plant in this,
my rainforest.

When the door clicks in the lock,
I play in my puddle of you.
Splashing in the rain of
white ribbon on my
satiny blue bed.

I cannot see beyond the waters
that flow from my eyes,
my thighs.

And then, the realization,
I've been fucked goodbye.





©2001 by Cher Ladd-Tushiah

quiet in here

it's quiet in here.
candles flicker,
and my fingertips quicken.
quivering and
tremulous.
i watch the wax drip
down the long, hard taper.

it's quiet in here.
no one is around,
the soft hum of the
machine in my hand,
the only thing
that can satiate
my lust.
It's more than
I can stand.

it's so quiet in here, baby.
and i think of you.
with every fleeting glimpse
in my mind,
my legs part,
just a bit more than before.
Wide open, exposed,
vulnerable and wet.

so quiet, baby.
so very quiet.
my breath comes fast,
just before i do.
my breasts rise and fall,
riding the waves of
this crazy, quiet moment.
putting my own hand,
over my open mouth
in order to
stifle the cry.
shhhh.
it's so quiet, baby.
my skin shivers,
my thighs tighten and
the dam explodes,
without a sound.
a crashing waterfall.
slick reservoir.
The candle wax drips and
so do I.

it's so quiet.
so sweetly quiet.
and i drown here,
alone.
fire extinguished,
flickers and dies.
i sit in the quiet,
waiting for a moment to pass
and the encore to begin.



©2007 by Cher Ladd-Tushiah

addiction

Stay.
I need you to stay.
Please.
I know what I said.
I know what my doctor said.
When withdrawing from an opiate,
you do it slowly.
You breathe through it.
One slow inhale at a time.
And when you can't stay away from the drug,
they take it from you.
They make you go through the fever, the chills, the shakes.
They make you feel like you want to die.
I have so few vices in my life.
No secrets in my glass box.
Open book.
The author often pens a vague epilogue,
an obscure prologue,
or a dedication that no one else but
they would understand.
And if my book gets published and says,
please stay.
You'll know.
I don't know how to let go.
Not now.
Not just yet.
Possibly, not ever.






©2007 by Cher Ladd-Tushiah

why.

you have me listening
to the rolling stones
and thinking about times
we were holed up
in the snowy northeast.
with barely a blanket
between us,
barely a word spoken.
you have me listening to
old sad love songs
and wondering what
they could have possibly
done to help us hang on.
and when you wrote me
out of the blue,
the blues is all i could hear.
you disturbed my life,
an unwanted speed bump.
you disrupted my flow.
interrupted my progress.
all of this from a letter.
yet i can't stop reading it.
i can't stop listening
the rolling stones and
remember the days we
were snowbound
in each others arms.

cancer causing indifference.

I used to cross my thighs to tease,
now I dot my eyes with tears.

But I can’t get you to leave me.

Apathetic.
Sympathetic.
Empathetic.
Simply pathetic.

I can’t get you to leave me.

Poisons pumped to relieve me,
the medications, they deceive me.


Heaving.
Grieving.
Deceiving.
Never leaving.

I can’t get you to leave me.

Annuals always get to die
so why, oh why, can’t I?

Melodrama
Melancholy
Melanoma
Melting away.

Why won’t you just leave me?

You are my radiation,
just a palliative fixation.

Noting
Nodding.
Noticing.
Needing.

I just need you to leave me.

The never ending purging,
the pain forever surging.

Convulsing
Conforming.
Confusion.
Cancer.

Please, Dear God, just leave me.




©2001 by Cher Ladd-Vuolo

gone again.

Say goodnight, Mother.
The child had gone to bed.
No more visions of
innocence or
delusions of your grandeur.

Say goodnight, Mother.
The lights are out and
the child is tucked in,
the blanket, a makeshift noose
around a tiny neck.

Say goodnight, Mother.
For she hears you down the hall.
The laughter from beyond
your bedroom door.
Low dulcet tones and sultry smells.

Say goodnight, Mother.
She has packed her bags.
Only a teddy and a teddy bear.
You never know what a
grown up girl will need someday.

Say goodnight, Mother.
She'll never be like you.
The bed remains unmade.
It is now yours to lie in.
The child is gone.




©2006 Cher L.V. Tushiah

The Morning of Goodbye

"Will you be there for the morning of goodbye," I had asked you.

I don't know why you ever touched me. Wrapped in the bedspread, dank and musty. Stinks of "hotel" laundry. My eyes adjust to the light. You are gone. Remnants of last night strewn about everywhere. You are undeniably present without being. Your scent hangs like a pendulum, fucking with me. Lingering.

It's choking me.

I dash to the bathroom in time to lie my face upon the cool
porcelain of a toilet that was sanitized for my comfort. I
vomit, purging you from my stomach. You had tasted better
the first time around.

What the hell was I thinking?

Gathering the pathetic paisley print spread closer around
me, I shiver, my knees still weakened from the strength of
the upheaval. I look into the mirror, wiping a piece of
spittle from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.
I examine my eyes. They stare back at me darkly, mocking me.
My hair looks like a fire out of control, disheveled and
tousled. And red. Oh so red. Matted with blood, crusted
to my forehead.

I check the gash. It has scabbed over during the night.

Has it come to this? Desperation striking so deeply that I
go back to the brutalization of you? I smile at the mirror.
It doesn't return the pleasantry. The lips of the image
there, cracked and bloodied. The cigarette burn like a
festering beauty mark upon my cheek.

Remember girl, you wanted this.

Yes. I wanted this. I wanted this bathroom with its ridiculous
conch shell and turtle pattern. I wanted the shower curtain
that doesn't match the damn russet colored tiles. I wanted
this bedspread that thousands of overly amorous couples have
came on wrapped around my body. The vile smell of stale
cigarette smoke infiltrating my swollen nose.

Yes. I wanted this.

I wanted you one last time. See, I couldn't stay away.
I'm addicted. A fiend in need. You've haunted me. All
along. You were the best lover I ever had. You knew precisely
what to do to me. Imaginative, inventive, insatiable and
intense. Oh God, yes. You had it all.

And I needed that last night. One last time.

Sure, sure I knew the price. I know that every time you
impale me, you are going to make me pay for it. I know you
are the worst sort of misogynist. I love the way you hate me.
When you are hating me its unreal. The way you throw your
abhorrence into me. The way you batter your abomination. The
way you get behind me and hone your hostility.

No one better. Never will be again.

See, I needed you. One last time. To put the ghost to sleep.
I couldn't get over the want of you. I saw your face everywhere,
heard your voice in my own. I knew you couldn't say no to your
favorite victim if I invited you here. To have me. To bleed me.

One last time.

Looking at you in the afterglow, I remember telling you I
would die for you. You laughed at me, said I just might.

I slide open the shower curtain and you stare up at me.
Your eyes glazed in that twisted pain and pleasure look you
adored so when I looked at you that way. Your eyes are
fixated upon me. Oh darling, finally. You look at me. Really
seeing me. You look so peaceful there, my love. Funny, I don't
remember your hair being so dark. Staring down the length of
your body, the rivulets of your blood leaving little
racing stripes. Matting down your chest hair. God, how I
loved to run my fingers through that hair.

Raising the revolver to my mouth, I open wide, swallowing
the muzzle just the way you like. Taking it deeply into
the brutalized depths of my throat as I climb into the tub
with you.


I feel the excitement building. So hard. So hard in my mouth. Like steel. Yes. Explode for me, love. Now. I want to be with you. You said you would never be with me forever,but you were wrong. So wrong.

Hurry baby, we need to go. It's check out time and besides, this room is hideous.

The shower curtain matches nothing.



©2001 Cher L.V. Tushiah

Ode to Epilepsy

Synapses misfire and
energy misappropriates its mischief.
In awe of the aura and the
smell of smoke.
Here comes the shimmy, shimmy shake.
Little twitches and
phantom itches.
Tears are trickling without
rhyme or reason.
Here comes the faint and fall.
Slap the cerebellum and
hit the hypothalamus.
shock the medulla oblongata
and cramp the cortex.
Here comes the floor, face to face.
Cannot sleep and cannot stand,
hit by a tragic truck
on the highway of my mind.
Muscles mock and then, they lock.
Here comes the long looks and startled stares.
People pause, panic and pretend not to see.
They whisper and wonder,
the repeated blunder.
I hear every word they say.
Here comes the pity party and the "oh poor dear's".
Oblong and obtuse,
the world seems so strange.
Tongues don't get swallowed
or fingers filleted.
Here comes the myths and the madness.
Coming out, waking up.
Drenched in saliva, sweat and salvation.
Need to rest, need to know,
what foreign body failed me now?
Here comes the medicines made to heal and the
reality that they never really do.



© 2005 Cher L.V. Tushiah

crossing the chasm

Crossing her chasm,
and bursting the barrier
that partitions her from
heaven and hell.
Good girl on this side of the thighs,
bad girls on the other.
Damned to damnation if you
desire the ride,
catholic countess,
time to decide.
down to the wire,
wrapped around your ankles,
pretty panties of puritan pink and
lovely lace.
the clock is ticking,
what are you thinking?
can he cross the chasm,
swallow your sweetness whole?
he is growing impatient
as he is growing,
and his enthusiasm is showing.
"what do you say, you chaste charmer?
am I in or am I out?"
biting your lower lip indecisively,
but he is pressing for your answer
while pressing into you.
tick tock goes the good catholic clock.
the battering ram in place,
ready to destroy the division
between what mother said is right
and what he says tonight.
grasp your rosary beads, splayed on the floor.
he is poised, he says pointedly
and now, madonna or whore,
the choice is yours.




© 1999 Cher Ladd-Vuolo

plastic cup in a plastic wrapper.

on the sink,
a plastic cup in a
plastic wrapper.

only the running water
is real.

touching your lips and
satiating a thirst,
caused by the heat
wafting up from a still
smoldering bed.

and it's all so surreal,
how we got here,
from there.

the plastic crinkles and
wakes me.
you take long slow swallows
from this,
a plastic cup that in
your hand,
seems more a sterling goblet.

you are so rich and relevant.

and I stand idly by,
your plastic princess
waiting to be unwrapped by you,
once more.



© 1999 Cher Ladd-Vuolo

main course

I’m waiting,
while you’re still checking
the menu.
The waitress, she waits,
while you flirt with her,
and the notion of
filet mignon.
My famine is slowly
diminishing and
the time is vastly dwindling.
I’m in love with
someone else,
other than myself.
Someone who refuses to be
my meal.

I place him on a silver platter,
as he places me
succinctly on the
copper grated curb.

He lives for someone
other than me.
I live for no particular
reason at all.

I know I can do better
than you and I know I
deserve better than this,
but I’m trusting my low
self esteem to
escort my self-deprecation
out to dinner.

They dash out hand in hand,
happy to be rid of me for the night.

And I will have to pay
the check in
the last course and
wind up
leaving without
dessert.

Deserted by another
lover,
the bearer of someone
else’s gifts.

The reddest of cherries stays atop
the whipped cream,
alone and
defeated.

Untouched and
uneaten.

Excusing myself from a table
of no content at all.
Amazed I got through dinner
without hungering
for you.



©2001 by Cher Ladd-Vuolo

the crying game

I enjoy watching her cry.

Tears that fall like a continuous rain over the contradicting curves and crevices of her face. They enchant me. All too often, I would make her cry. Over the joy of things. Over the sorrow of things. Over anything at all. Anything...

just to see her cry.


Burying my head in her naked, warm lap she would cry. Not an outward sob, but with an inward grief that you can feel if you lay your willing cheek upon her rounded belly; the delicate shudder of one who cannot gain control over her emotions, nor wants to. I would wait patiently, my face slightly lifted like a child waiting for a falling dew drop, for a wayward teardrop to fall upon my cheek. Rolling down my face, a familiar excitment grips me. As it would near my lips, my tongue would dart out to taste it, as it desires any and all of her bodily fluids that flood her so fully, she needs to release them. She would look down at me, watching me with curiousity and care. I would look up at her in ecstacy before parting her thighs and shedding my own private tears of joy upon her soft, sweet mound. She would shiver and then...

she would cry.

Naked and on all fours in our bedroom, I would admonish her for the things she had, or had not done. I would not focus on her lush, large and pendulous breasts, with their berry colored nipples, dangling eagerly before me. I would not see the swell of her ass as it rises before me, still autographed with my signature handprint from the games we had played a night earlier. I would not see her smoothly shaven wetness, for I was busy looking for wetness elsewhere. And, as if on cue, she gives to me the nourishment and nurturing I need. Her eyes would meet mine. Brown as a paper bag, drab eyes. Nothing special about those eyes, should you happen upon them on a crowded subway, but oh, those eyes. All I live for are in those eyes. Just as quickly as she would lay them upon me, she would turn them away, closing off her soul to me. I would scold her for casting what I love best about her upon me. Though inside of me, I screamed, I cried for more. However, the rules were set and permission was not granted. She took liberty anyway, as she always did, knowing that punishment would follow and...

she would cry.

She didn't cry for herself or for any one thing I inflicted upon her. I would be fooling myself if I truly believed that. She cries for me. Cries, because she knows that in each of her tears, there are words of love embedded. Cries, because she knows it makes me feel more human when I see her become so vulnerable. Cries, because she knows it arouses me. Cries, because more than anything, her whim, her will, is to please me. She would lay between my legs, taking what is left of my libido between her lips, suckling softly. I would feign sleep. She would nudge me innocently, a fingertip slowly making its way up the length of my thigh, urging me from my repose. My response was, purposefully, none. She would soon roll away, turn her back to me and eventually, in frustration, in need...

she would cry.

The muffled, muted sound of her first sob, more than enough to arouse me. I would lean over, a pawn in this game, and pretend not to know why it is she cries. A soft kiss placed on the back of her neck. A fingertip running along the crack of her heart-shaped ass, lingering there, ready to delve deeper the moment I feel her body arc in my direction. Compliant was she, as I would roll her back in my direction and taste the salty sweetness of her teardrops. With every droplet, she would now own me. She knows this. Kissing her eyes, she would press her lids tightly together to bring more of her warm fluid to my lips. She would think sad thoughts, to keep the momentum alive and the river of tears flowing into my parched mouth. I would kiss my way down her body, lingering long over her breasts, knowing that a lake of tears often nestles in the valley between these peaks. I would continue on my journey, for it was now my turn to rest my weary head between her trembling thighs. Probing her sweet pink flesh and finding a wetness with that familiar taste, the taste of her teardrops, only with a thicker consistancy. And as I would throttle her clit with my over-zealous tongue, slapping at it relentlessly as I do to her beautiful ass...

she would cry.

On days when we would only linger in bed, talking, I would ask her why she cries. She tells me, she does it for love. To make me happy. To make her wet. To make the happiness and the sorrow all come together at one time. No matter how many times I ask her, in so many different ways, her answer is forever the same.

She cries for me.



©2000 by Cher Ladd-Vuolo

trainspotting

long was the ride to you,
the bustling by of
my city,
melting into yours.
slowly, with the shimmey
shake of a train
that would rather be
way off track,
rumbling closer to
the beat of a
heart.

and i never got off that train.

in spirit, i ride it,
daily...
wondering if it will ever
lead me closer to that
moment.
the first moment.
the moment you lifted my
glasses,
and lifted my eyes.
lifted my lips
to yours.

the train crossing my track.

time and again,
i remember the rain
that night.
cold, cold connecticut
rain and the
harbor turned to
ice.
dramatic gonging of a
tolling bell,
warning away those who
dare to cross in the path
of a train taking me
home once more.
home to you.

and never would i have chosen
a round trip ticket...

had I only known.




©2000 by Cher Ladd-Vuolo

the things in the closet.

Clutter.

My skeletons make for nothing but clutter. I
have so many skeletons in my closet, that
you might mistake it for a cemetery. The
bones buried there are generally hard, and
I have touched each one individually,
fingered each one languidly. There is no
flesh to be found in this fantasy, so sorry
Mr. Idol. I have been a slave, a pristine
daughter, a virgin and a goddess. I have
played a bitch, the four legged variety, and
howled on command. I have been a
cheerleader in bed, though I never was
good enough to make it onto the team in high school.

Bones. Nothing but bones.

I have a lover. We are monogamous. He thinks he knows everything about me, my life and my sexual escapades. He loves that I have tasted other women. He is encouraged that I am prone to spontaneous roleplay. He feigns embarrassment when I start to dance erotically on a busy street. Later, he will fuck me, telling me how hot I looked doing what supposedly brought him so much shame. It is part of the hypocrisy that is so distinctly male. Don't wear red lipstick, baby...that's for whores. Yet every model he downloads online licks the tip of her own nipple through distinctly red lips. I like you without makeup, baby. You don't need to wear such a short skirt, baby.

Translation: I don't want other men looking at you, the way I look at their women.

Back to my closet.

I have had well over three hundred lovers. He knows about fifty or so. We have had the "so how many have you had" talk that all lovers are prone to now and then. He feels cheap and sleazy with regard to the eleven he has tagged in his tender twenty-six years. I have accumulated two hundred in one single year. 1985. What an amazing year. If it had a pulse, I fucked it. Man, woman, beast. It didn't matter. If I could have combined the efforts of each one of these species into one huge fuckfest, I would have.

I cringe writing these words.

One person in my life knows about my closet. He is my ex-husband, and a large part of that closet. He has rummaged through it, and been horrified by it for the most part. Out of love, once upon a time, he closed and barricaded the door, so that nothing accidentally spilled out at inopportune times. Once we divorced, however, he ripped the door open and laid the contents on the table, much to the delight of his lawyers. Bones everywhere, with no meat on them for the sharks. You can't penalize someone for having a past, except in our legal system. According to some, justice is blind. This is not so when your bones are on the table and custody of your kids are given to one of the skeletons. The hypocrisy once again. So I fucked a lot. Sue me.

He did. He won.

I am amazed at how I have accumulated these bones without dying of the diseases that come, when they come. I made it through the STD era. I made it through the AIDS era. I was not entirely unscathed. I had two abortions. Those tiny skeletons are buried in another part of the closet. One I refuse to open, one I refuse to remember. The bones of their fathers are buried in there as well. One father I didn't know. The only time we spoke was at his arraignment. He was my rapist, though, I consider him nothing more than just another lover. I was with him longer that night than most of my one night stands. It shames me to know that while he was violent and demanding, to me he was nothing more than a roleplay gone awry. He cut my "cunt" open with a beer bottle and left me on the side of a road to bleed.

I've had lovers do more damage to me with their words.

The other father of a set of baby bones was a lover I coveted. He was a vampire, metaphorically. He sucked me dry in every fashion someone can suck the life from a person. He drained my blood, because he was kinky. He drained my emotions, because he was an emotional cripple himself. He drained me financially, because he was a leech. He drained me physically, because he fucked me until I would laugh and cry simultaneously. I told him I was pregnant about nine months into our lust-fest. He told me to purge myself of the "bag of cells" within me.

It was the first time I ever considered killing myself.

I did a quick inventory of my closet around that time. There was no room for my own bones in there. I couldn't make them fit if I tried to. I opted not to kill myself, but the progeny within and with it, my relationship with its sire. I wrote a poem about it, and he read it matter of factly. He laid it down alongside his crypt and fucked me non-chalantly. He smelled like stale cigarettes to me. It disgusted me, and I gathered my things and left him. The image never left me. He is married now to a rotund little girl he met online and who enjoys playing Holly Homemaker with him, while he skulks the nightclubs of N.Y.C. looking for a new freak to replace me. He calls once in awhile. At least I know I am not easily replicated. I hear the lock on my closet door rattle. I hang up the phone before the door bursts open.

I have a lover now who thinks he knows me.

When we make love, I would swear it was my first time. I am in love with him, but he is not in love with me. He likes me to tell him about the things, the people, I have done in my life. I keep the count under fifty. I repeat stories over and over again that I have told him before, lest he think I have many new ones still in the library. He doesn't like me to use the phrase "make love", but is aghast when I suggest we fuck. He keeps me intrigued continuously, because he is like having several men in one. Or, perhaps he keeps me intrigued because I am now in my mid-thirties. Opportunities to screw younger men don't come along consistently now the way they once did. He doesn't give head, but doesn't mind me doing it to him several times a week. In fear of losing this thing I have found, I pretend to be satiated by that. Sometimes, I pretend that I don't think he is selfish. Sometimes I want to push his head down there and demand it. Sometimes, I want to tell him that I have had the tongues of three men on my clit simultaneously. I'm not brave enough to tell him this story.

Sometimes, I wish my closet door would burst open and save me the trouble.



©2001 by Cher Ladd-Vuolo