July 3^rd, 2010 -4:10pm EST

There in the brittle stupidity of the instant decision.

You kiss lizards?

Inner beauty when they shed their skin?

Just to frame it a little bit, I was walking upright, swaying from side to side in a pleasant climate. I could hear the ocean, in the same vein as if listened for your heartbeat. The forest around me opened up to my footsteps. I breathed the same air as the hiding critters, the slinking lynx, the burrowed rodents, the lofty observant birds; and yes that yellow-tailed and black-spotted lizard.

On a hot rock, stone still, basking in the cool evening, a worried reptile watched me with its tongue.

I made a show of it, and my open palms traced slowly the outline of patience. I gazed its eye, its piercing lizard eye.

Calling out,

--Hear you well, whom so solemnly dwells? Practiced in the art of conversation? To you I make target the case of my concern. Respond you, not?

The lizard exhaled, a slight hiss from the scaly nostrils. The upper lip curled and its teeth, white at the tip, and black at the gum brandished.

--Set upon that rock, you make no effort to abate me. Waiting for what; you reptile, for the entire act unfolded in the opening scene?

The creature did stir, shifting and lulling on to one side, with its white belly exposed, it drew its eyes to the near afoot sharp sticks and pleading with its body sigh, closed one putrid eye.

--Fail to entice me, and fault to oblige me; you mistake me, misalign me, and a while mis-timed me. If also this ploy pretense to surprise me, what next in the sequence designed to arrive for me?

The lizard swept back to its feet with a strength and grace. Arching its back and swiveling its head, it coiled its tail and resigned to take a staggered defensive stance.

--What of it, what have you, where with all what takes and surrenders you to this reactionary stall?

Susceptible to the preconceived inevitable? In so much as to make certain a mask is constructed in place of a sincere face.

The creature made a slighted howl. A sludging curdled gurgle from the back of its throat. Hot breath from the bowels of this, harangued arrangement of bones and slime.

--Forgo forgiveness, in place of forged trust, mirrored in creation and experience, puckering smathers of lips, fang, and forked tongue, arrest my conscience, drawing close, cut callouses and bleed fresh blood from the small cruel blisters where the trouble rubs. I regret my apologies.

With that I swirl in and grasp the creature, recoiling in my firm grip and hissing madly. I put our eyes to the same line, and smiling, plant a long wet kiss, our festering mouths mingle in the stagnant mist of our stifled speech.

The little bit of me relevant to the situation boils up and escapes my lips. I drop the reptile and it scampers hurt and wounded and wild with repressed fury, and malnourished expression.

I cough up phlegm, thick and viscuous, swooshing in my mouth. I grin and swallow it down.

Yes, I once kissed a lizard.