Randall I. Charles

“California Dreamin’"

Cali was a cute little surfer girl from Santa Ana.
She was about this tall, had a sweet laugh, great smile,
deliriously long sun-bleached hair,
and a nice, tight little IM.

We liked to pretend we were in love.

She used to send me photos
of herself in the Victoria’s Secrets dressing room
at the mall with her iPhone
while she was sitting in Physics class.

“There’s more where that came from,”
she would wink.

She took me for a drive one night—
just her, her iPhone, and I.
We ended up out on the beach where
she lay me out beside her on a blanket, flipped me open,
and began texting with a warm, seductive voice
into my ear.

I thought I was roaming.

“Touch me—here,” she teased.
And forwarded me a photo of the inside of her thigh.

I was all thumbs.

I moved my hand slowly up the inside of her LCD.
She giggled as I started caressing her Instagram application.

“Do you love me?” She purred.

“I thought we were pretending.” I replied.”
― Charles

“Rapture"

Does beauty sleep alone—
that all her leaves have fallen in the night?
Her trees shivering quietly within their newfound nakedness,
and yet not so immodest is the wind as it caresses
the starkness of her limbs now bare.

Clouds churn in the half-light.
Rolling barrels of thick, black smoke spinning silently on the horizon.
Like oil upon water; they delicately contort the dawn
with the soft and wistful mutiny of their unspoken revelations.

The sun begrudgingly awakens,
his pride subdued by the currents of reckless circumstance.
Therefore,  not but a shadow of its self, he clambers listlessly into the sky
treading the waters of his own light.

And the streets scurry with ocher—
The umberlings of motherless children chased along by the wind.
The air—though indifferent, is sweet with their laughter,
and I am haunted by the inflection, as her soul gathers in the twilight
of my shadow.”
― Charles