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."

White Duvet

My body spread cold open awaiting mental autopsy in bed
my skull is pure white like snow
my mind is self-conscious like road blocks
my face is deep like the drop from my window to the ground
my arms are long like summermy legs are winter
my voicebox is broken, my throat lined with run-on sentences and incorrect grammar
my hearbeat is quiet, has nothing to say right now but looks around the room, embarrassed.
"I love the way your hair looks like that" (like what?)"From side to side, rolling its eyes."

Where is your profile
Your profile with arms of missing photos, teepees, missing names
And holding protection And safe-deposit boxes of falling moments, taken times,
skin against mine when a drink can’t hide
It takes only one time to hold you
A strobe flash captures my face
Feelings are caughtI taste the night in white lined paper
Glow-stick stigmasBlack and white
We draw on faces No more paint
They have to go some time, there’s class
The men in American wifebeaters,
Sopping up whiskey with the kitchen sponge and thinking of you

Mass

Sitting in the cold pew repeating hollow words as the woman in red looks around to make sure all is in place.
Kneel, stand, Kneel, stand
Kneel-
Because I am a sinner, that is what they tell me.
The faces look ahead but never behind, because they can't turn their faces from the Lord.
Sex-
Don't think of that....
Cross your legs.....
"lift up your hearts"
Hypocrisy-
Don't think of that....
"He died for our sins"
I didn't ask him to.....
I am sitting in this guilt factory unable to breath,
because the incense clouds billow to the front row.
"Sleep in heavenly peace," as the woman in front of me cries and looks at a photo of a girl who is not present beside her, stuck in a keychain of dirty pink suede.
I believe in the ground under my feet, the dirt and earth and whatever is responsible,
But I can't feel that in these walls of brick.
And what of the atheists at Christmas, who sit alone at home, perhaps phoning each other
as if part of a secret meeting as organized as the Holy Episcopal Church?
LET US PROCLAIM THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
I sit silenced as my family steps over me to receive the body of Christ,
Stand, Kneel, stand, Kneel.
My knees are bruised.
If the Virgin Mary slept around would they love her still?
Would she have her own statue, at the front of the nave, beneath the domes and under the altar?
Round young virgin, mother and child- ....
Yet I am unsure, breathing heavily, as the hymn books open.
I am doomed to the edge of hell as the undecided are, to follow behind Virgil and meet those caught in the fires.
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Deliver me from evil, I am a sinner, that is what they tell me
Time and again, they make me say "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you."
"Lord I am not worthy to receive you"
"Lord, when will I be worthy to receive you? What exactly are the qualifications?"
"Lord I will never be worthy to receive you, will I?"
"Lord am I worthless?"
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.
The priest and the altar boys walk down the aisle and the people look eagerly to see when he passes so that they may leave,
bolting like fiddler crabs before the last words of "Angels we Have Heard on High" have barely passed from their lips,
traces of the Eucharist still lingering on their breath.

One Night in the Room in New Cross

Teetering over clamped teeth landscapes painted by Van Gogh

He sits in the wicker chair his back turned to me looking out the window saying,

"What does it matter anyway, there's still rain slide gutters gutted misery."

Feeding pigeons salt and free will as if they could take what you gave them and fly with it

go home and die from it.

I don't need to purchase the paper it's Sunday,

And what kind of feeling are you trying to give me by clamping on my shoulders?

Vertebrae will only feel it if they volunteer.

One glance out the window was too long and I saw the woman making something in the kitchen,

and I don't think I should have seen her through the yellow window,

while the dog is making racket because he doesn't know where he is

or why his tail is wagging like that.

One siren pierces the night, one red tower calls for attention and gets none,

because she's a pinprick of sanity in an otherwise passionate sky.

And the thought of leaving has me like the clutch of a predator so strong

it can drag me through the water till I can no longer breathe.

All the decked-out souls are streaming from a crack in the ground
and as they slide slide slide out of dry rock
the jagged edges catch their flaws and strain out leftover thoughts like a colander.
Then I went from stand, to sit, to stand, to lay, to sleep.
I want to be in the words you read, the air you breathe, the ground you cover,
and the life you lead.
There's no fear with you.
You make the apocalypse look like cardboard.
You make the clouds look self-conscious
You've inhaled me and exhaled a poem
and now it's written all over my face.

Cicada wings echoes echoes in bathroom stalls and walks to parks
and in parked cars.
And heartbeat loud and uncomfortable in chest, hurting ribs, hunting lungs, and bullying sternum.
A single wood reed shoved down your throat, "now breathe in."
Now open mouth-
now sound comes out.
Curl stomach inward, make the shape.
Correct vibrations, correct intake.
Mellow tone, nervous note
now more secure, now holding own.
Hollow stomach, hollow instrument,
now your song, now your song.