march 17 2011

hazy eyed and sun rise, i am home. i have been up all night. i saw the first light of day in an alley near 21st and P and it was very important to me so i made brian take a photo. a distant friend tempted me with coffee and french fries and apocalyptic musings; i met him at lyon’s. joined by two others, semi-strangers. all strangers really sharing food and coffee and coffee.

“i like her, where did you find her?” one of them said

i am funny! i am liked! after lyon’s we broke into townhouse at 6am for st. paddy’s day shots. the bar empty and eerie in the half-light. not full of sweaty people & the same old faces. just barstools and the red light. someone caressed my leg and called me sweetheart as we drank maker’s mark and scurried off to our homes.

4 semi-strangers.

the man with the bandaged hand

Appearing, the giant black ghost of Christmas present,
tattered from a long stint in dumpsters full of ex chicken bones.
Gliding, he does not seem to notice his grotesquely marred hand,
slivers of bandages striving to escape the frostbitten blackness that is their home.
Flowing, he waxes poetical nonsense to any storefront soul that will listen,
synchronizing hand movements to words, an orchestra for the decaying.
Towering, suddenly feeling his presence next to me and hot words on my neck,
his hand pulsates, creating invisible ripples in air as stones do in water.
Exploding, his gallant madman’s pride: the importance of picking yourself back up
when you’ve done wrong, reassuring me when he is the one with the aura of death.
Reaching, his pockets produce an avalanche of george washingtons,
i pick them up with shaking and feeble hands.
Scared, I know he is representational of all things come and gone and to come;
he extends his bandaged hand and with gnarled fingernails forces a dollar bill into mine.

the first rain

The first rain came late the other night,
Seductive September ground lightly wet.
I run out in my flowered blue dress,
Bathing in the cathartic explosion.
The drops descend from the man in the moon,
Pollinating every silky flower of my attire.
Their whiteness brighter than the sun
Are candles lighting in my chest.
Thirsty, they lap up the sky fodder
Until my dress is plastered to my skin.
Fresh, they can now adorn any table
And surely last forever.
I then sleep so soundly and awake slowly,
White petals crisp on my linen sheets.
I look forward to a stormy winter
With such a flaming fiery vigor.

adam & eve

So unlike the stories I devour I am no blossoming flower,
Not an endlessly progressing heroine who triumphs in the end.
The tired faces on the covers of books stare up,
Imploring to be read, touched, for me to eat their golden fruits.

It is October now and there are long thin candles burning in wine bottles on my
windowsill,
Artificial spiderwebs leap from nail to nail on the wall and the heater buzzes steadily.
I no longer have a home and it is October 2009
When I realize I am completely alone.

The wax spills down slowly on the curve of the wine bottle as my love would unto you
If only I could.
I love you like Eve loved Adam and if my locks were long and wanton like hers
Surely I would wrap you in them and be your pillow.

The dishes have piled up and I slice my finger on a secret knifeblade and I cry,
I cry because I love you and I am not afraid to admit it to myself,
Yet I am so afraid of telling you something
Built up like a raincloud.

We lay together like molded wax after I have spit you into a cup of water on the desk,
Exploding like squid’s ink in the sad light of a candle.
Your crow’s feet are illuminated by the upward pressure of your contented smile,
The smile I will recall years from now when I tell someone I love them.

rat

“Do you
understand,” threatened Rat, “That I have a family to feed? My wife is out of work and customers = MONEY. Do not dare lose another or I will be forced to (EX)TERMINATE you.” His greasy, balding, giant forehead became the singular steaming plexus of hatred to the Recipient of these words, who sat rigidly upright imagining a bullet hole directly in the center of it.
“Sure thing,” the Recipient stated, leaving the ESTABLISHMENT with such a mixture of perfectly contained internal fury and external heat exhaustion he became violently ill on the pavement, the waterfall from the mouth splattering like a frying egg as it hit the asphalt of the parking lot.
Nothing made him HAPPY anymore. The bags under his eyes were storm clouds brewing in the midwest.
WORK, day #453. Rat was outside scuttling around looking for scraps of leftover food that he was to reuse for the Daily Special. His beady greedy little eyes shone extra bright when he was handling MONEY; his middle name CHEAP.
The ESTABLISHMENT was a cesspool of germs, disorder, and confusion, solely produced by the trail of FECES constantly leaking out of Rat’s mouth. With enough perfume and pathetic witticisms he always managed to veil the outpour by manipulating some sort of oral meat grinder, delivering prepackaged FAKE to the customers, who swooned and swayed for the greasy Pied Piper.
The Recipient loathed Rat and the 8×8′ hour-wire CAGE they shared. He was actually an excellent WORKER, but his mind was often elsewhere. Floating along the hills of melodies and rhythms, he was musical to the touch and moved in a smooth, fluid way that could only be compared to the beauty of a talented singer holding a long, long note at the end of a song.
The WORK day was anti-climatically done and the Recipient left the ESTABLISHMENT to meander home, the Ding-Dingaling of the exit bell already becoming an over-lapping mixed beat – Rat says BYE BYE (ding-a-ling) the Birds say CHIRP (ding-a-ling) CHIRP the Shoes say SQUEAK SQUEAK (ding-a-liiiiing).
Hailing his best hitchhiking thumb to the road as if he were conducting a symphony of cars, the Recipient waited and was soon greeted by a logging truck of epic proportions.
“Where to, son?”
“ANYWHERE,” the Recipient answered as he settled into the passenger seat. It had the strange familiarity of an old worn-in easy chair.
They began driving, making small talk. The Recipient looked out of the window and became entranced with the staggered white lines of the highway lane, little fleeting presents long deserved.

nerves

He said that he could feel her nerves. Not the ones required to explode off the high dive or relocate across country alone, but those little live wires pulsating and working double time in her legs, which were resting warmly over his on that dark bed of sin.
It was 6 o’clock in the evening and they had only left the house once, a minor interlude to their lazy Saturday lounging, laughing. A quiet walk to the store to purchase champagne (her suggestion) & caramel ice cream (his). Maneuvering through the isles like a sophisticated snake, he gathered items while explaining to her the best kind of cough syrup to drink if you wanted to get high. She walked behind him imagining the melodic see-saw movement his shoulder blades were making.
“I can feel your nerves.”
He looked dashing in his white shirt. Taken aback, she could do nothing but laugh and continue melting, fully clothed, into his peacefulness. But how could he, really? If this were the case, she began to suspect he was a superhuman, a witch, an illusion or a madman from some cryptic horror story, fleshy and malleable, always existing just out of reach. An extraterrestrial test of give and take. Learning to trust a lover is like trusting a religion, she thought. It’s wanting comfort from an outside source, it’s not wanting to be fooled, to be duped.
They talked of worms and parasites that infest the body, a leg spliced rectangularly open, the flap of skin unhinged exposing a party of spaghetti creatures drunk on blood sauce. He traced a rectangle on her stomach with his lips and they made love.
“I can feel your nerves.”
She looked like summer in her yellow shirt. He said it so nonchalantly and so sincerely, his trademark manner of speaking. She loved him for his tone, his word choices, his phrasing, his shy bashful genius. He fed her soul, her mind, her belly, her kittens, her drive; he always mixed the most enticing cocktail of phrases and actions, the end result never as sickly sweet as a dirty shirley, but a crisp vodka tonic. Her champagne laughter touched every wall; it was not uncomfortable or uncontrollable, only natural. He told her that her smile made him happy because she looked so content: who was fooling who?
He left as he usually did, leaving kisses all over her face and soaking her in with his mermaid eyes.
She watched him bike halfway down the block and reentered the stuffy apartment not really sure how she was existing. She flicked a slice of sleep sand out of one tear duct. Out of the other she extracted a singular teeny tiny worm which she kept under a glass cup to see what it would do.

location

i cannot concentrate on anything-
but the way the window so
simply squarely frames
something so much larger than itself–
a slice of blue abyss
pathways
the mountains (those, those i have separate qualms with. morning they welcome me like a pretty picture i will never touch, evening their colors melt into an inferno, their lined fortress of indistinguishable beauty akin to a standing army).

i like to think i am the only one who can
appreciate the way in which the birds fly,
airily, and whose heart stops in the split instant
of deafening melancholy silence
when they seem almost stationary in flight.

this sad concrete solitary station is my perch, my person.
in each minimal interaction with Them a twig of
heavy hopeless is gathered.
white feathered hopes, dare roam closer to my cage.

untitled #1

I brew in my own filth and get high off the smell of waste,
The smell of someone who knows nothing of nothing
Or Anything
At All.

Iron Pyrite, A Hollywood film set, Lights and Angles
Obtusely wrong in all the right places:
Long cold concrete school halls and
Conversations face to face in the half light.

You ask me if I could change one thing about myself
Oh what would it be?
I fumble for an answer feigning something fancy for you,
Yet what I should have said is “I wish to rest with Kings and Counselors.”

lost luster

Adored on an oaken bookshelf in the house of your youth,
I was once a prized collection of coins which your hands
Smoothed over gingerly, held close to your inspecting eyes
For my rarity was both gold and silver.

Admired on the carpeted ground of the house of your adolescence,
I was once an eclectic collection of records which your ears
Longed for on a cold night, infiltrating your very nerves and bones
For my notes were both soothing and sad.

Now, my love, you are an adult in the house of your adulthood
And I am a rusted coin and a shattered record:
My love, you are unable to feel anything at all.