fish

It's like manufactured good times,
it's smiles bought from vending machines lined up
like dentures in a medicine cabinet of wannabe-youth grandparents.
They travel in a pack from place to place,
"what a good time" they say, slapping their gums at the waiters who carry the silver platters
of those clingy, used-smile dentures,
that come out on Friday nights.
They swim in a school of fish, not trying to escape but instead racing towards the net,
heavy rope falilng on their silvery scaled sequin slithering dresses.
Big-gummed fish gaping for hooks
for quick hook-ups when the next morning they'll be thrown off the boat
until the next "catch of the day."

summer thunderstorm

Still warm humidity,
prepared leaves
humming bark and suspended roots,
quick feet and slow breeze.
Still, still air running between all negative space.
Protective watching grey duvet clouds
embracing earth.
First drop of rain on pavement, confident and bold, till others follow.
Startled eyelash catching another.
Sweat in pores, jeans stuck to skin.
First frizzy hair, crinkled like broken twanging guitar string.
Warm shaker of water-patters,
low drone bass hum thunder, father figure of weather.
Fickle, thin nervous lightening branching in too many directions,
Shaking ground and high-pitched water through guzzling thirsty gutter.
Streaming maze, cooperative lines down window pane.
Mess of room, sheltered domestic objects,
outside, ancient heavy storm.

You are
clear cool skin with sand-papered perfect smooth angles.
You are soft, you are hard you are cut from some unknown unreal unbelievable material.
You are yellow-skinned under flourescent lights,
you are skin pulled over creation,
you are love embodied.
You are gliding you are ending you are breathing, sighing, gving, taking, feeling.
You are lips and finger prints.
You are soft defenseless blonde hair
and high proud cheekbones.
You are crooked feet and long legs, wrapped around mine,
like roots, like roses clinging to fences that are always there.
You are honest eyes, eyebrows that stop short of long,
open ended over open eyes.
You are off-white jacket and cold zipper.
You are square, reliable,
but fragile, sweet and lean.
You are smiling, happy staccato joy,
and avalanched deep emotion.
You are beautiful, free, open, available, writing, living,
endless wonder.

Hidden Agenda

Oh shit.
What
was I supposed to do today.
I wish I had my book
with scrawls and spirals and squares and holes
and metal rings that hold my week together
because I'm too weak to remember.
The back of my hand works just as well
your back, a finger, a face
a tongue pulled out with 1-inch margins
STAY INSIDE THE LINES.
Or get in line.
Everyone is in line to get,
their answer book,
anxious to get the answers to
"what was I supposed to do this week?"
Turning in line to one another before they get to the front,
lips leaving ghost-light trails of red
because they're talking too fast,
about "what was I supposed to do today."
"I don't know, turn around...
stare ahead...
that's right.
That's what you're supposed to do today."

I feel two toes against the wall
but no connection to what's on the other side
white paint can travel lines but
when it hits the light it bends, has nothing
else but can
eat
away
at what is in skin
I took an envelope and wrote my name on it
hoped it would come back with what I meant to say.
But when it came back it was just paper
wet wood pressed with the thoughts of the factory workers as they left home,
punched in, pressed on,
and the letter had no chance.
I tried again above my blanket at night
while I hear the cold outside
and wondered who was breathing so loudly
until I touched
my stomach
and found it was me.

Raisin

You're like a stem on a raisin. Surprising and unpleasant and sudden but part of something soft and vulnerable. They left you to dry in the sun and expect you to still perform. You stick to the others because you're afraid to be alone.

A Timely Death

I look at you and all I see is an hourglass

Each grain of sand in your skin that you show.

I kiss you and taste the face of a clock in pass,

Its rhythmic hands move over my body, one fast, one slow-

One less minuteOne more dayOne more second that asks me to stay

One less chime and I wind you up,

Your little tick tricks me to think it's enough.

They say, "Well you know you fell for a time bomb, you know that you chose a hard road."

I laugh at them, pity them as I say, "You would too, if you knew how it felt to explode."