A VALID QUESTION ENSUES UNSTITCHED
No, your clothes are cute
but a faze to me,
a poisonous recipe.
I watch out
for those kinda snacks.
My stitches are early scratches,
semi-seam lines,
uncontrollable scars.
You make honey cakes
a mummy’s thought on fatalism
practicing preservation skills
on a jelly-filled lady roll
for a woman
with no jiggle at the end of her tailbone.
How am I to fit into your bulimia?
Unzip my curves’
voluptuous secret,
petty bone right below my womb.
You silence it
with fabric of fabrications,
treaties deceitful to my gallant ancestry.
What images do you hold?
Not mine!
How am I to fit into your bulimia?
Don’t know what else to tell you—
I love pizza.
FREE STALLION
Wet pavement makes me yawn,
a cat out of slumber,
dreams rumble
whiskers
memories whisper
cold kisses my spine-time-line
broken railroad track
crossing refuge of a century turned bitter,
empty trains
belt out silent crossings,
ghosts tap-dance out a beat like:
nothing is wrong
nothing has died
no short is long
no tears have cried
swinging
head to heart
heart to hand
hand to head,
it’s a disaster,
bloodstream’s a circus freak
turning tricks,
female inherence replicating
an equestrian prayer,
a woman running, free stallion
as I like to call it, yes,
free stallion
a bottle of jack and the night is a coward
coming
going
kissing and telling
climbing into my sheets
never calling before arriving
raiding my fridge
never calling the day after
leaving socks on the dresser
sexing me when it’s good for me
hitting me when it’s best for me
apathy when the end is bleak
when night skips sheets
not my lover but just another
momentary treat
a love seat
minus 1
what innocent free stallion?
what innocence
PLUME
Raw war
too bloody for taste
tastes like born-again/death wish.
Raw war
genes of generations
momma’s vertebra no longer vertical,
scattered like shrapnel
far and wide.
Raw war
the fat needle
the bomb-ass drug,
dazed and uneducated
Sam sweeps secrets under his peruke.
Vomit
he infects me
the thinking thing
nature’s unwanted trademark
selfish, sandy,
rubbing rustily,
fuck me verbally,
slowly,
exclamation point,
the dot of misery.
The whitest plume
raw war
the fat needle,
insert here,
globalization is erect,
love floundering, outdated and discontinued.
PAX VOBISCUM
(last love song for Woody Guthrie)
You’ve been here before
here now ever last
poetic proletarian
lost
bloodshot
eyes
frostbitten against
ties that dye, red maybe
decades of you,
pauper, seed-planter,
the infamous struggle you watched,
fighting was no option
but absolute.
I dreamt I kissed you,
dust was popular,
populists a scarce disease,
the first red flag
warning discovered
you, my hero,
battling sensationalism,
the queer concept/institutionalism
the form
of America
‘n’ all them
poli-TISH-ns.
I dreamt I was the last
catching a glimpse,
your freedom fields
wind blowing agitation running wild
in your eyes frostbitten.
I could make love to your memory,
the prosaic figures of my youth
less the equivalent
of strings you have strummed,
those battles you won
this dream, merciless transcendence.
I wake caution, she sleeps too much,
national continuous slumber
I’m dwelling/dying in it.
Where have you reincarnated?
Did you birth anew?
Where are the lost songwriters
of you?
Woke up,
dreamt I was the last,
wept for my country,
she’s so confused.
It was 2003.
We’ve been here before
you and I
singing
fascism the joke,
the ha-ha of ironic unfolding.
/
History is reality is future,
Lomax was there,
he taught me F sharps,
fire-illuminated
Thomas Hart Benton paintings airbrushed into your
wrinkles
the most astonishing portrait,
patriotism as individual,
a sight not even Maxim Gorky could describe,
Communism’s true definition
I could contemplate
your meanings.
Early America
you tried to salvage,
you beauty, you,
the passion molding an infinity’s heart
before us
among us
against us
beyond us.
No one sees you,
a voice provocative,
a recording/distilled ideology
crepitating gestures, pictures curling,
ages moving,
morals washing
away.
I still see you,
night time sings me
my own dust-bowl ballads
like searching scars in the dark:
In love we trust,
in time we rust,
the man
the legend
predestined prophet
words like pollen rest heavy in this amber,
it’s a metaphor
like 1934.
Dove, where have you reincarnated?
Are you laughing in disgust somewhere?
Did you birth anew?
Where are the lost leaders
of you?
Guthrie
I’m gushing
America
the “once was” story
manifestation of all destinies
turquoise nation forgave us too soon
time
half of me
pax vobiscum.
ANNA
In the dusk partial and complete, you drop in
behind the dripping melon-colored marquee.
The fault title font fronts a fruit-cup decay
with your name all over it.
Drunk in that love cup,
blood-berry strong
in that heart’s garden,
saffron kisses in heavenly 1930s night skies, as dusk
may give you away
to eternity,
to the sky,
to the garden.
Drunk in that love cup,
you imagined the sunset and fled to it,
chin up, eyes straight.
I craved that fruit today,
my birthday,
2 days before you passed away
up into the sky.
BEYOND THE PALE
No poem
or word
was good enough
for her.
She melted ingredients
cared little about
our little-hood,
she was breeding in a barren bakery
Poes and Millays,
her brow erupted
spectacular shock
breaking the horizon behind.
Her face
orange rusty pear
hair strangely tamed
frozen fire in mid-explosion
eyes tunnelled in
gaping endearment
reaching out
magnetized to our immunity
the spider captured our imaginations
in the web of her allowances
for the most part
crying at the notion
owning individuality
a crucifying possession.
She never took never
for an answer, did she?
I questioned her rigid speaking,
hated her for academic archaism, with a spring in
her step
she read
A Wrinkle in Time
our minds captivated
in elusive difference
daydreaming
this crack-house public school
had a prizewinning ghost
erected from the basements
to scare us
into loving her
and face a public disability
known to us as constructive criticism.
She found me annoying
overly ambitious
a stumbling linguist,
cerebral writing
came un-ruled and wild
swerving from my pen
misspelled
misused,
she fell for
my slapdash liberty
reckless loyalty to love poem-fodder.
No one
listened
the way she did
above all the others,
my spoiled life to her,
beyond the pale.
Her wisdom predicated
a hungry soul
bound to keep me
from an easy choice,
a fool’s choice
“acting career.”
Yes, the Paraclete
raised me with loving arms
sobbing fingers
afraid the written me
was a future nonentity.
She never forgave me
for punishing her persistence,
an unspoken failure
most notable
at the last moment
of her last year there,
no bittersweet utter
“I’m so proud of you”
“I’ll miss you”
as she slipped through
cracked unpainted hallways,
through 3 generations of apprentices
left half empty
to color in a life’s work
half done,
the ironic beauty
demure banana posture walking
out the doors
my school my heart
battered haunted by her mystification,
the most painful daze.
I never did what she dreamt.
She’s a butterfly now
or maybe a moth, yes,
hopelessly stuck to my subconscious light
batting wings grey and brown,
flagging me down.
Remember the hard times, she would say.
What I taught you, she would whisper.
Sometimes I see her
walking past my house
smiling talking of sunsets and such things,
deeply involved, unaware
as I drive by
unseen.
The crusted-over scar
peels a little.
She makes the pink poke through.
Freeze frame.
Her punishment lives on
driving on,
taking me nowhere.
DEAR S.
There you lay in the hospital coiled up in pink sheets.
I dreaded coming here for weeks now
to face you and your new friend, Death.
You both stare waiting for me to commit to my grief and let you go,
but I can’t let you go.
I hate that you smiled, ever.
You let me into your heart, and house with crumbling
walls and caving ceilings,
you let me make fun of your laugh and be mean with admiring intentions,
you let me cry in selfishness when you broke the news,
and offered no tears to partner with,
you let me share the stars in the sky and your eyes
and the days crashed and the waves passed,
you let me love you for a second before you
handed me the knife and requested a turning favor,
you let me be your mother,
hate you for being so young,
miss you before you were gone.
Now I see that door.
I’m blood in a hallway like a vein
strung from your death grip.
All veins lead to your heart
and I’m pumping hard.
I could tumble over my remorse for not coming sooner
and fall right into your hands.
You’re quiet now,
white and gold.
Yes, I remember this body
but not the face.
That halo still sits above your bed and that head like an elevator shaft.
Angels sit selfishly awaiting your skyscraper-arrival.
I will not return you to whoever gave you to me,
I can’t.
So you will leave truly alone,
your bier built into my chest like ancient stone.
The floors are clean,
the curtains drawn.
I’ll say goodbye without saying it.
Who’s gonna take that toe ring you danced all night on?
Who’s gonna keep your writings and sob over their forecast?
Who’s gonna smell your absence in your clothes and burn them,
those jeans we played mischief in?
Give them to the army surplus store (I couldn’t do your figure justice).
Who’s gonna blow wishes with my fallen eye-lashes?
Who’s gonna come that close to my face, ever?
Who’ll take my breath away just by breathing?
Who’ll silence me just by being?
Dear S., dance with me in the dark of your familiar.
Let’s touch swan-like for a last time, in this hour,
wrap necks and
coo (your favorite word).
I’ll say it
without saying it.
VIBRATION
Our love spilt,
hate left the stain.
Touch march.
I’m holding an anarchist’s stance at the rally of your neglect.
I’m standing on the front line of the protest,
I’m picketing with signs high in front of your think tank.
You’re gonna have to run me down,
to really run away.
My blood slogans will not go unanswered this time.
The message pulls focus:
yes, the meaning is clear—
I’m chaining myself to our memories,
&nb
sp; you don’t need a key to release me.
Riot gear shields you from my kisses like
tear gas makes your cheekbones run interference and
my voice screams for a crowd of thousands in a singular note.
Scar tissue should be outlawed.
Battle marks are for the brokenhearted.
This
is the woman’s right to choose.
You split up my soul-vibration like packaged meat,
for every public eye to have a piece and eat.
You served me up
cold and raw.
My headlines have become the wallpaper inside
your burning house
where I watch you penetrate a desert of my ashes,
one mole at a time.
Correct this death penalty,
I demand it.
Drop your weapons—
pick up my hip attachment.
Screw it,
on.
I’m suing for a-sexual harassment.
MOTHS
I consider myself flexible in awkward positions.
Not a home wrecker,
but I do knock.
And you and I are pals.
The kind that
open up to each other but keep mouths
at a safe distance.
But I cannot amend all tongues.
I walk the dubious centerfold of your eye-line, friend.
I carry my purse on the same side you walk next to me
to avoid hand.
To avoid saying anything small.
We are the shredded fuse,
the rebound wires commencing,
badly rerouted and iniquitous. We are the failed test of the emergency buddy system.
Chums.
I am a derelict without furniture or life signs,
painting your posture from distance that
can fit inside the palm of your land.
Though we share ice cream instead of pipe dreams,
I know
you’d never be lover to another poet
because you are one.
And the fear of being served a reflection
in the way that you have served some,
is a glass house you are not ready to escape from.
I’ll keep liking mint, while you go for chocolate. Conundrums
I can’t seem to get away from.
You are just another sheep
jumping the fence in my nightmares.
Counting out numerical complacency,
a platonic answer with a nod-off.
Like a million hairs you’ve grown near your mouth
plowed down, rough and sore
my beard too wants to be a little roughed and worn, but
the time is not now, if not ever.
Not before, during, or after
her, your lover, another, or the next chapter.
So let’s just say,
let’s just stay