swig after swig
the fluid scorches my lips,
grabs my worries,
tosses them across the street
where kids watch me stagger
cuz…
sick, illogical babble
interrupts my thoughts—
staring at this fluid
swishing from
side to side
cccccccccccrashing against glass walls
the feeling
of being trapped inside a bottle
when i insist
i feel all right
A Prince should play an instrument,He should fall in love
like a rock star jumping off a piano,
and stay in love until he can’t
jump off pianos any more.
And though his bed may have
the feel of a mushy banana, the mattress
should be as firm as his jaw.
“You’re good,” she said.
I answered, “How good?”
“As good as a guitar string plucked
just right. Damn good.”
“But not good enough,” I said, “to keep my wallet
in my back pocket.”
“Aha! Is that why no one gets close to you?”
Touché.
She hopped out of bed like a cricket,
actually rubbed her left foot
against her right shin, and pointed at me,
“You’ve been here before; alive, living.”
“I see.” We’ve been at it too long, I figured,
staring at my legs, still tangled
in maroon sheets, every inch of this bed
displaying signs of what we could do in the dark.
The wise man keeps his secrets
beneath his bed, not on top.
“You were a Prince,” she said at last.
“No, no, no, Sweetie, I just like his music.”
She stared at me as if I were a letter
from an unrecognized address.
“Give me a hug,” I ordered.
When she emitted a wide-mouthed,
head-tilted laugh, I added, “Okay, so
I’d rather be loved than feared. Sue me.”
With that, she grabbed me like a cello
and began to play.
Like butterfly kisses in my valley of woe its whisper caresses the pain I hold close and into my sigh blows a breeze I am needing as I look to the sky ‘Tis then, I glimpse Eden
It’s agony, it’s ecstasy a bittersweet smart the brush of your finger-tip across my heart
It’s comforting, soothing wild, terrifying breath on a bud that lay, slowly dying
Sometimes, the scent of perfume can re-break your heart.
It is not always the absense of love
that makes me seem alone.
Often it’s been too much love
given to me by the wrong people
for the wrong reasons
that keeps me here,
gladly alone,
rather than have the life sucked
out of me by the selfish needs
of other minds and bodies.
That does not mean
that I’m not grateful.
But I am sad
not to be able to put my arms
around those who truly loved me
and give them something more
than polite indifference.
Oh, how I tried.
I think they should know
I tried.
And I choose to be alone
rather than wrapped in arms
I could never need.
As soon as I climb into the car
I fold my dark poncho
and close my prussian blue eyes against it
and the locked door.
She speaks a few guarded words,
the air from the vent ruffling
her skirt an inch above her knees.
With my left hand I slide out
the knife, unfold it under my arm
and wait for her to grow silent.
You are in horror.
So you wish to understand?
Take the page this is written on,
hold it up, the edge dry
and tight, slide it quickly across your tongue
and taste between your lips
the road unfolding
from my dreams.
It was just my way of viewing my own word paintings of the way I thought things should be.
I never meant to lie, I mean I just made a few things important enough to keep. Big enough to remember
I lied about things being scandalously hideous when they were only slightly ugly. I only changed a season here or there, maybe a word or two of a sentence
I didn’t really lie, Oh, not a bad lie. Never a lie that would break your heart if you found it in the ventricular copies you keep of my conversations
No, I didn’t lie I only remembered things differently. I only framed the good times with a little color and made them the best.
Okay, so I lied But it was such little lies and it didn’t hurt anybody and it wouldn’t have made any difference would it?
Even the walls were naked, bare
skins as white as the sheets we discarded
in favor of wearing air. I wrapped your green
eyes around my shoulders
to hide from the room’s eyes.
Covered by burgundy blinds,
they saw what I took from you, how I made you
lick the chili dogs and other women
off my lips; I licked your fears,
kissed the back of your bony knuckles
that had turned purple from being pressed
into the mattress.
I touched your arm,
felt the braille of chillbumps,
then snickered and said,
“We need some wallpaper in this room,”
and you wrapped your arms
around yourself.
When I swayed from side to side they swayed, it was so dark I couldn’t tell if they were silver, or primrose, or plum. I cannot get over moving toward her upside down in the mirror like a fly on the ceiling, his head hanging down and his tongue long and dark as an anteater’s going toward her body. He was so clearly an animal. he was an Apache creeping naked and noiseless, and when I looked at him he looked at me so directly, his eyes so dark, his stare said to me I belong here, this is mine.
You ask me if I love you,
then you suck the lips off my face
and chew on the delicacy of their maroon creases.
‘Body Shop’ lipstick, no. 12;
The taste of compact slabs of cherry.
This cheap adolescent disguise has guided you through all
your realizations.
You left it on the edge of plastic vodka glasses and blood smeared mirrors,
on the foreskins of other men
and finally on all your clichéd perfume soaked letters.
Now it is in my mouth, my throat, my stomach.
I have swallowed all those fermented mistakes.
The ones you danced into blind fumbling for an urgent exit in faded mini-skirts and tobacco coated pockets. All of the Roberts, Todds, Bryans, Scotts, Jasons, Davids… (and all the others your high tech brain has crashed out and deleted) Have all left open wounds in your soul gauged by the hollow fonts of your eyes.
But as I savor the many varied tastes of your existence, I can feel my insides frantically stitching and nursing your pubescent cuts and bruises, healing in seconds no lipstick stains in sight.
The answer to your question is “Yes, yes, I love you” Your soft mechanical hands, that at night soften like chocolate in the sunlight and melt into my thighs. Your beautiful tortured eyes, your laughter and the way you inhale your marlboro.
You swirl out of my anesthetic you turn the lens til your eyes are in focus and me, I’ve become your surgeon. The operation…your early womanhood successfully removed. You are a blank canvas, a cut jotter pad. I’ll re-write all over you I’ll scrawl my name with razor sharp arms your eyelashes bulging with years of mascara I’ll practice my handwriting on your mound of Venus and the folds of your labia; Magenta pink and bald.
You are my Frankenstein You’ll get top marks for the oral stage, the anal stage and all the other stages you no longer care to remember Because we hit the friendship stage once before…before time seperated us
With you, I’ll grow old and withered and our tree roots will be dangerously entwined, with time we will become soil once again and make love amongst the worms “Yes” will always be my answer I will always be your host, your empty vessel; A place for you to store your memories and tears.
For so many years Clive Cussler
I thought your name was Olive
All the things I was reading in books
and did not say to anyone
and could not say to anyone -
how I blushed with shame
when caught in my misconceptions,
like being seen masturbating
Now that I am older, wiser
I find everything confusing
even when I pronounce it perfectly.
A simple statement like “Void where prohibited” –
how shall I read it?
How shall I think it?
I want to take it as an imperative
and pee on the tile of the public library.
Only in your words do the winds you speak
Melt through mirrors like water and cut me so.
When you spoke to me through every spiteful, alien word
I looked up each one bleeding in the dictionary.
You gave me your image and I made it into stories and poems;
I made you into a bronze statue who balanced through the
seasons in my garden with sun, snow, dust and rain on your face
which I brushed off every night I visited.
I made your image wear different masks as
I played with it nightly and in my dreams.
I took your mask and put it on other faces which
looked as if they might know you when I’d been drinking.
I performed acts of faith
I climbed your tall spiked gate over a moat at the dead hour
of three in the morning under a moon as others marveled, for
the spikes went through my hands and I did not bleed.
I bleed now as I’m left with your broken
image standing in a frozen land of the bronze dead.
Tears cannot always fall from eyes, and some things are just too deep or quiet to be talked about, Maybe only thought about when I’m alone writing, or looking out any window.
If you love me let me go to those places within myself where I can never take you and where you must never ask to go.
So, did you always want to be a hairstylist,
or would you have been a painter or sculptor or architect instead?
I pose this, if only in my head, because it occurred to me
while spinning round in your chair, that you cut hair
like you’re making love to my skin.
I feel this from the tenderness of your hands,
the light scratches of fingernails,
the gentle way you prod when you need to turn my head.
As if you know me well enough to not want to hurt me.
As if you recognize the dangers of a loose electric shaver,
and you’d like to spare me a sting or two
wrought from a wild slice at my hairline.
You want me to love you and your nimble hands.
Want me to glance in the mirror and see
you shaping my tightly cropped hair, edging away
the damage I do by wearing my hat. And you spin me around.
You curl my ears.
You slide supple fingers under my chin, square up my sideburns.
You are the Michelangelo of hair.
You are the Rodin of tight fades.
You are the building maker who smiles when we ride the elevator.
is isolation -
one author, one premise;
the illusion of being alone
in a room filled with people
and, further,
that these people are real
and the room is not
OR
the room is real
and not the people.
At some point,
a hundred or so pages deep,
I cannot be found,
not by doorbells,
telephones, pagers, or bookmarks.
Falling asleep on the worn couch of my fancy -
that’s not so bad.
It’s rather comfy.
Some even
consider it noble.
The trouble comes
when I pretend
no one else has ever done it.
I’m not sure when
I stopped phoning her
Perhaps it was the first time
I went to the telephone
and didn’t remember
the number.
Once you’ve had it
finding it again is like looking
for a book you read years ago
that you loved so much you kept it
on a shelf and in your memories
how delightfully subconscious its impact
on your diction, your worldview
though when you said you despised a thing
you didn’t trace it back
to the exact chapter and scene, when said thing
was associated with a despicable act
all the more frustrating because
now that you have a renewed urge
for its familiar pages
finding it now, after all this time
is as difficult as remembering
your ex-lover’s phone number
the one who at first made you feel special
then shelved you like an old book.
I sit to write…but cannot think.
No words roll glibly from my pen
as it weaves across the paper,
then stands poised to write again.
No brilliant flash…no easy lines.
I’m pulling and pulling
but cannot find
the proper bridge from thought to
word.
Rhymes are easy…a mere
contrivance.
and words of themselves…just a
game
that any fool, with practice, can
play.
But each image has one poignant
name.
One word to call old feelings to
the fore.
Fueling memory’s warm rush once
more.
Find the word and you find the
heart.
And that has always been the
difference
between commonplace and art.
A little boy sat behind the stucco wall of his home
saying his home was like no place else
and his favorite baseball bat
was his best friend
Friends who liked him most cried
“Why don’t you come out and play”
Because they really dug this little boy
with his brain that could dwarf Saturn
and a heart like a good novel
The little boy said “Nope, no good
I don’t believe in love
nor friends
I think they both belong
on the edge of a razor blade”.
So this kid behind the wall
sat for years like a razor
contemplating his garden
until a stringy little yellow haired girl
said, “A fern is a fine thing
for little boys to worship
but days and days of that religion
could put dirt in your socks”.
The boy said, “What
do you know of socks?”
And she answered
“They come in pairs”.
Laughing
the boy opened up the gate
so she could enter his wall
and they kissed and kissed in a grown up way
all the while discovering simple things
as importantly simple as lips.
No interest in the lover
nor for the poet at all
you no longer see the man
who stands beyond your wall
no song to sing in harmony
no lyrics both recall
no need to understand
the boy, the poet, the man…at all
The loneliest place
I’ve ever been
was not when
I was alone
It was in a little flat
by the mountains in Interlaken, Switzerland
where I was hopelessly in love
with someone
who wasn’t in love
with me.
When I was just 16
I had a girlfriend
The most creative masochist could not
imagine the collective pain
we both experienced.
What happened to one of us
happened to the both of us.
We were one person but-
with four legs.
Sometimes, even to this very day
I dial her number by mistake
We were more than best friends we were both mirrored images of the other.
We cried rivers together, we laughed like I’ve never laughed again, we really loved each other, we were going to die together.
And I can’t even remember her last name
The years will take a piece of her from me.
A little of her will fall off of me
naturally
like flowers in Autumn.
In time,
A little of her will turn into other women.
and later,
to lines in a poem.
I’ll lose much,
But just the same,
I know I’ll always keep
the sound of her
whispering my name.
It’s kind of a clear-eyed wisdom to see what is worthless. It’s touching on someone who you know won’t turn away. It’s reaching for something That’s really worth the stretch. And it’s learning to let go when it isn’t.
Knowing what you need is more than knowing what makes you feel good right now. It’s knowing that the same thing will make you feel good again. I won’t call her.
