The sky grew darker
The clouds grew angry
My bones grow frail
and my soul grows lonely
I spend all of my free moments painting flowers on to hospital beds
I leave halved apples in the passenger side of every car wreck I see
I am the angel of beauty, or at least camouflaging every sick situation with satin and lilac petals
No matter how many morning glories I place on your grave, you are still dead.
9 years later
and i’m still
talking
to my therapist
about you.
i should have
listened to you
when you said
you’d be
bad
for me.
but i zigged
when i should have
zagged.
and i’m sorry
you fell in love
with a ghost.
What goes on at 3:22
That I should be concerned
Does a shelf fall down – or someone die
It there something I should learn?
No planes are flying way too low
And I can’t hear the train
It’s plaintive whistle in the night
Calling out my name
What goes on at 3:22
That wakes me every time
Phone is quiet, cats are asleep
Can find no reason nor rhyme
No cars are passing in the street
In fact, it’s very still
Maybe I’m in twilight zone
And nothing true is real
What goes on at 3:22
The numbers mean nothing to me
Tho, it would be a wonderful song
If the clock said ‘a quarter to three’
I let you go so long ago
I wouldn’t wake from pain
Or, does it stay forever
Memories, without a refrain
What time is it on the face of the clock?
I’ll look, but have no doubt
What ever it is – what ever it means
One night, will work itself out.
You speak love in a different language—
smothering guttural banging of bodies.
Such a ragged fragment.
Melding of aura, melding of soul—
non-contextual in that dialect.
Tenderness, the touch, the soft moan in the nape—
simple things people do for each other.
All these are not, just not, in the vocabulary.
You say, in the act, time cracks and we crawl through
to an ecstatic dimension.
How nice this must be for you.
On the living room floor,
he curls around my body —
heavy leg thrown over mine.
Sated from our tryst,
I listen to soft snores
and wonder how I got here.
My eyes dance across the walls –
woven wood trying to pose as modern art,
an abstract yellow painting
too serious and bland for the stone fireplace,
and other Pier I chachkies
sprinkled here and there
to make a catalog come to life.
Doesn’t she know
the façade she’s crafted
doesn’t change what’s happening
inside her perfect house?
For the only possession he desires
is pinned under his thigh.
(And I the biggest fool,
for thinking that I own any part of him.)
Blackberry Gin
my baby says its just me and
him against the world, but i know
what makes his eyelashes curl,
if our nights are done
before they can begin-
you can blame it on that
blackberry gin
my baby loves his blackberry gin
so i guess i better fix one again.
when he does something wrong
its not a sin- you can blame it on
that blackberry gin.
my baby loves me best in the world-
hes the oyster and i am his pearl.
aint nothing pairs with wine like me
and him, except that good old
fashioned blackberry gin.
my baby loves his blackberry gin
so i guess i better fix one again.
when he does something wrong
its not a sin- you can blame it on
that blackberry gin.
my baby says we make quite a team,
hes the engine, and i am the steam.
if he goes off the rails now and again,
just blame it on that blackberry gin.
“There are just certain kids for whom you bring all your hope.” – Michelle Kuo
She learned hollowed bones,
the pulse of straggling creek,
became water that moved
without form.
Those were some days,
hope tied to effort
with its inevitable exhaustion.
Carry them on the river
her blood sang.
Be the current swift.
Bring everything with them,
the sediment, the fishes, the filth,
the reeds. Bring yourself
to be emptied.
To me my public library has always been a safe place,
But that feeling vanished in an instant,
When a man I’d never met,
Looked my body up and down
And claimed to know me,
His unapologetic eyes raking across my figure.
He called me by my name.
Was it coincidence?
Or stalking?
Was I overreacting?
All I knew was that
in one moment I felt confident and relaxed,
And the next I felt shaken,
Unsafe.
A single look,
Can change everything.
Pulling Weeds in the Garden
I won’t let anyone else help me
pull weeds, hundreds of polk
sprouts from a six-foot plant
I cut last autumn
before I decided to make
my garden on the spot,
before birds had a chance to eat
the magenta berries
and scatter them
far and wide.
I won’t let anyone help me
pull weeds in the garden
any more than I would let
someone help me write a poem.
It rained last night,
a gully washer in June.
I took off my shoes
in the garden
like we did when we set
tender tobacco plants,
pegged them in one by one
next to trotline cord or
baler twine,
stretched from one end
of the patch to the other.
I’m barfoot in the kitchen
at my computer,
writing words one after the other
across the page
until the lines have begun
to look like a poem.
I’ll build your porcelain altar;
A testament to fragile faith and delicate beauty.
i.
Holyheaded and gracefallen,
I wander back to a land of beasts,
Retrieving that which lays long lost there.
My violent innocence no longer takes refuge,
But has wrested brutal kingship amongst the many vile here.
That heinous capacity of inner child turned little arsonist.
A world beneath a deluge of ash and cinder,
Where glass grows petals stained,
And the hellmouth still whispers,
The very cause of vicious severing.
Whereas once I pulled the blade from tongue,
Loosened lips, led astray,
I am here now to collect myself.
Every arrogance and misery has born it’s fruit for this;
A lamblooded monster, between my scripture sanded ribs.
All the more necessary for crimson pewblooming heart.
ii.
Lazy with lovely sunlight,
We stumble into summer in a Country of Gardens again.
