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[23 Jul 2008|10:17pm] |
Awake in the World
Ah! There's blood
in the soup, I can tell
by the poultice at the head
of the table. There's blood
in the soup, stop drinking it,
the salt will suck your flesh
of its virtue, the iron will overtake
you like the stars.
There's blood in the soup,
in my spoon, spit it
out and it boils.
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[18 Jul 2008|06:14pm] |
And You Laughed
I want to be your body’s bend,
the lathe lifting your spine
into the urgent arch of a lithe
flower’s wilt, I want to orchestrate the ticking
of countless nectar-drunk bugs
against the windowpane of your ribs, twisting
their rhythmic flitter onto the winding wheel
in your belly; soon I’ll inherit the tincture
of white monarchs made of tissue, bless
your mouth with its medication
and the healing honey of my thighs,
then I’ll eat from the pollen baskets
behind your knees, draw from the dew
pocketed in your palms’ reservoirs
and at last, imbibe your inhibitions,
soaking you in the shower
of a mellifluous sunrise.
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[18 Jul 2008|12:39am] |
The List Moves On
I’m waiting incessantly on track
when the train snakes and screams
into the station and I run broken
from you, slipping on the rotten wood
and gritting my teeth
as the clotheslines and towering black ash
whip by, fraternizing with the omnipotent,
umbilical telephone cord that lies
down between us and frantically zips back
into space, past your hungry hands ardently
swinging my hips, beyond an avalanche
of sugared, crepe paper prom dresses, skipping
the bees hum bumping through the cotton clover
and the initial ink blot, racing away
before the paper line went slack
with the help of a gauzy golden flame
atop the gory, gloried rocks at night.
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| laurel, we're getting married. |
[09 Jul 2008|10:25pm] |
today, my mother's gown: a glove
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[09 Jul 2008|11:47am] |
A New Pocket
At 4am, I'm scratching at the crossword puzzle,
cross-legged in bed, pressing
my sooty prints into the soft paper,
already done masturbating, stoned
and watching the late shows, stupidly,
when the door opens across the room
and no one just stands there,
with the heavy perfume of blood on her thighs
and the plumage of stains
pummel the page-- I should
have known then, that pondering it
would summon the silt, as i licked
the tip of the pen in a flick, as quick
as the angels my mother saves, howling,
as sure as the basil leaves collect
on the cutting-board as I turn to stir the stew--
certainly, I should have known, then,
it is an imperative paradox,
being alone, as simply as that, singing
a sweet thing to the whole town
on the faithful drive home, like the gas tank
was cranked full, like I was still a lonely girl.
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[08 Jul 2008|12:32pm] |
Bent
There he was, avast,
sweeping in a sea of salty-sweet
sweat, emerging from the blasts
of gaudy sparklers, growing from
the dewy tips of elephantine leaves and
escaping the impassable palm frond to find me, fly:
damsel and dragon together, to heat the soulfire
of his tantric hara-kiri, to undo
the slow burn of time.
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[07 Jul 2008|10:38pm] |
Going Somewhere
I prefer to cry
by the side of the road, curbed
alone and pitied strictly
by strangers; I made a run for it,
down the biggest hill I knew, ponytail
slapping my shoulderblades, along
all the burned lawns and pealing screams
of children mauling eachother in their backyards,
past obnoxiously ornamented little lawns
and sprawling gardens of scattered phlox,
by the gnarled trees with knots
like mouths and drooping ivy
that shuddered and reached for me
as I stepped around fields of mold
seeping across dog shit
in front of my first love’s ugly house, then into
the breeze of honeysuckle and slow drivers
who looked on suburbanly as I began trickling
through their sprinklers, everyone's,
all the neighbors', and tripped athirst
headlong into the spray.
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[07 Jul 2008|10:37pm] |
The Infestation
Sometimes it’s not about
how it feels to be there,
it’s what it’s like
to remember--- precisely
why I am smearing fresh verse
on this glossy bank statement,
wondering if the good photographer
is in her own photographs,
ever found in frame or flesh, the same way
I circled the block, petrified
by the small bump
that wrecked the car,
the large leaf obscured by fog,
suddenly with its tiny, slivered paws
and peppercorn eyes,
how I screamed in my throat,
through the thought the woodland sprite
would raise up, as if it was alright
the tremor was so small, the pain
so quick, atleast the pygmy beast
might be remembered for something,
just as the luminescent vesper
thieves inhabit my dreams, night
after night after waking in day.
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[07 Jul 2008|04:01pm] |
I remember the first death:
the small fly
on the yellow macaroni slide,
I was seven.
I strained my body
to avoid it, to avoid pain,
always preserve life.
I wrote a eulogy, an apology
maybe, in my green journal,
I probably cried, I was so
guilty, I couldn’t stand it,
that was possibly my first day
as an artist.
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| right now, tired, sorry |
[07 Jul 2008|01:14pm] |
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maybe i'm just wide open, but sorting through all the pain and wonderment of every poem i've ever written is just blowing me apart. it's too much, to relive the years condensed into the forms of my perception, it stings.
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| always |
[06 Jul 2008|08:49pm] |
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| if crying won't do |
[01 Jul 2008|05:25pm] |
Immediately! or This Poem Could Go On for Years
We were stung sorely again,
for the first time, the ache
resounding backwards in history, hurtling
towards every holy, flourishing month.
A bee bit today, again after ten years,
after I had siphoned irresistible juices
from a watermelon rind
with my lips, right on the wrist.
It hurt like puberty, the acquiescence of body,
with each stalky, plump hemorrhage groaning,
every painful hair stood up when I swatted
and pinched the venomous arsenal,
just how they tell you not to,
so that a fine, red point glistened
its awful seedling beneath my skin.
The pain, strangely, ran long into my elbow,
up through the marrow, ran bubbling its bile
into the soft nicks of my heart,
and the pangs prickled
like a pack of wild dogs, rancid, clipping
my ankles impaired and digging blisters
in elegy of fear. It extended persistently
into the death-box of friends,
pushed its critical, criminal filth
towards our hopeful ways, it raped
the ultimate, untimely hegira.
I want to know how many poems
do you write about a miscarriage, how many
crying faces, how many laughs
remedy the gash, suture the unthinkable, invincible
mortal wound? I want to know how
do you fill the indented, echoing void,
how do you, withered, rise up
to reap new life? How does
the impotent honeybee
crawl away to die?
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[28 Jun 2008|01:15pm] |
Boy
Oh, god, tell me you aren’t waiting
for me to understand a thing
so secret and powerful about you.
Because I get it, really I do,
I get it-- I know quite well
what I’m worth and it’s much
much more than you’ve got.
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[26 Jun 2008|09:38am] |
Disrespect
She was dust in the sunlight,
no-- she was cinders, smoke fractals,
a dead black fly
with the ease of flight.
She was the only spineless person
I ever loved.
She smiled wistfully
beneath the wide brim of her eye-lashes
and I was arrested;
I forgave her for drowning
the worms in my heart,
forgave her loud quacking
about non-sex in public,
forgave, even, when she did not
forgive me-- I had to.
I left her, obviously,
when the tenacity of truth overtook me,
when I saw she could catch me, too,
just as flame begets flame, despair
into disrepair, in a flagrant burst
of fire aloft.
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