September poems (11)

last-ness

our shadows straggle, lagging
on every brick and twig as
we chase gold down
graying streets











*

i couldn't say

how bodies gasp
how goosebumps glaze thighs
or how the mind, blind
earthworm, writhes and
crawls for rain
or how the skin explodes -
don't ask me to explain.

*

September (quiet autumn things)

With autumn, I'm a quiet thing,
the skirt of fog trailing as
engines whine alive. Go find me
among the grinning burs, restless
with some tale of me; in
cyclones of dust; my kiss
on every balmy blade of grass and
blushing leaf.
One day I'll shake the bones out of these trees.
I know that you want more from me.
But today I watch the red sun
between seams of rain clouds, curled
up in some spot of warmth,
a quiet thing with autumn - let me sleep.

*

do the sweetest thing

love me like a seed a blighted

sun can nourish too; see that

I'll bloom and bloom and 

bloom

*

09152016

girlhood's an

egg that binds

flailing baby

limbs. Ladies

emerging all air and

silk feathers, 

remember, remember, 

the grunt blunt in 

you, your hairy back, your

knuckles only sinking

on this soft beach. 

*

2010

follow the gray path

someday to where the

copper-topped clock 

ticks; sit

on a gargoyle's tongue

once your lungs have

gargled out and

dried

but this moment, like a drop

of rain, runs and runs

down hills and out

past streetlights

and the sun - go there for now. 

*

muse

Want me, explode me. Splatter my bones

on museum walls. Worship me - 

lips, rosebuds never blooming; eyes, winter

sky diamonds. Never know me, but 

speak of me, dream of me, embalm me

like the "i" in "extraordinary" - a syllable you

swallow to make it work - and call it love. 

*

last of summer

she straggles in dapples

of sun across cold fields

dragging her feet, waiting

to meet southbound 

mallards. 

*

I'm a twitch
of rage, a pinch
of anger, puckered
like a volcano, erupting
a moment or two.

*

periods (ongoing)

bent double, I birth
islands floating
red across the warm
bath water

twisting papaya
threads; a split
and gutted fruit

days like a single moaning
wave pass me, nudging

i swallow an ocean this way, gulp gulp

*

092616

yellow evening wedging
into the gloom - a lemon slice,
hints of light this heavy
autumn day

june poems (10)

this hurt
like glass i swallow
shredding my tongue
taking the words

*

big bang

imagine everything pressed tight-
hot exploding. beautiful;
violent:
that's you.

*

This beautiful sun.
This minute before 7.
Notes of hallelujah spilling from the quiet radio.
This memory of you stirring in my heart.
This love, this ache.

*

remember how slow
the world used to move every day a
drop of light caught in beads
of oil remember night's laughter black
and gold tumbling through the tall grass remember
falling?
how heavy it felt bringing me to you

*

you, a mirage that
pooled
in cracked skin, on
bonedry lips,

i lick myself to taste just
a dream of ran

*

06132016

We lock dead eyes, we
love by chance, lungs
plumped on dust. Above us,
satyrs dance.

*

the sea betrays its
deepest wish, to dissipate
and kiss the moon's smile.

*

if i'm a piece of meat

know: you can lick me dry
but the ugly story of your teeth
will be written on my bones.

*

if my heart is a flower,
it's sick
and never opens to the sun,

only daring to love
the rain on its crinkled skin
promising the sky in every dying dance

*

I go

beyond the promises of birds,
where time runs like a stream down
summer's endless throat,
remembering the scent of apples
your golden eyes and tight tongue coiled
only like a chill that recedes, here
where waves lick away my melting eyes,
I wait for you.

recess

what madness stung
the hearts of boys,
sick with playing nice,

what thirst pressed heavy
on the bone thrilled them to
break a hundred homes,
cackling in delight?

the bees are dying, boys - what madness
stings the hearts of men?

after the fact

No nightingale,
no pain transformed to beauty,
Cracked tongue lodged in this human throat,
I croak broken notes
to sing of you.

062813

my love is not a lemon
- can’t press it till it flows
my love is not a violet
my love is not a rose

my heart is not a chocolate drop
that melts on curling tongues
you may have a voice
- doesn't mean that i'm unsung.

after a dream where i couldn't say no

I was an
I-negated self:
my body the medium of
artists who
drove instruments into my legs,
fondled me like clay
then burnt me through to hold my shape
my voice driven to my gut, throat packed
with tracks - quiet laughs and
empty conversations with girls
I might have loved. and when my mouth
was visited by a fleshy worm
i kept it shut and closed my eyes
and lay me back
a statue of a lovely sleeping naked lady
or a lonely man's doll.

i had a dream where a woman demanded
"did he tell you the lie? did he tell you the worst lie?"

My growing up was no-less,
stripped to silence,
but it rattled in my belly and
rose like a gulping scream against a pillow
pressed to my face and now
I bellow! now
I wail! now I
guffaw!

some days the pebbles lying in the sun like dead fish, smoothened
down by the beating waves
will scorch the feet of those who walk on them

and one day we won't be pebbles but mountains, strong and firm and full of
echoes of words we could never say before.

Fridays

Friday nights, downtown
detonates with
the laughter of
women wobbling on heels
to fall head over
and there’s something defiant in
their hemlines high up the thigh,
skin glaring over necklines, assertion
in the tipsy stupidity of these
bodies between bodies
ricocheting. How tight
they’ve been wound up, I think,
how desperate their escape
every Friday night
like clockwork
on dynamite.

Woman Before the Rising Sun

Inspired by Woman Before the Rising Sun by Friedrich (1818-20)

The evening star is
an aphrodisiac of amour
de soi.
In its primal glow, the woman knows
her darkness, and her beauty, and
de-lights,
wings cra
cking through her marble shell, the
breaking of a spell
man-cast. She
lives. But too soon

owls roost; wisdom sleeps.
Today quits the cradle of humanity.
Morning casts its curse anew and
the woman is contorted into

expectation, a grotesque form
encased in stone, her heart

seems not

to beat. But

the woman merely sleeps.