you should know this

to me – you are just a hallucination
looking at yourself
trying to decide
if you are real

I want every ounce of your phantom
to penetrate my spirit
and break me

but I do not exist

Passion Flower

because when your gaping petals expand
just to taste the blood of Christ
every velvet ant will find his way
to your core

because when you are born on the mouth of July
you are a sedative blue tongue
and they will come to extract
you from your veins

because your short life is meant to feed
caterpillars, it is impossible
to assume that you would be
collected in the fall
for more

He Came

he sleeps twisted inside of me
hands tight on my bruised lungs
if I had a voice
with him
it would slice my own tongue
and when he moves to awake
his easy turn on my hand
burns through everything I know

one slow thrust into my dignity
and I split in two
and I don’t know
which one is me

Married To A Monster

not the kind you think of
when the word presents itself

there hasn’t been gifts
or flowers
or cakes

no declarations of love

I am veiled in quicksand
my ankles stolen
right from underneath me

A preacher speaking “blah, blah, blah, God” ….
and all that stuff

my dear family and friends
gathered around me
laughing

a single dove laying on
an altar
plugged into oxygen
plastic wrapped for perfection
suffocating

the caterer
with the smile of a thousand devils
reminds me to pay my bill

tonight we roast the dove

God Am I Trying

So I come like a box of watercolor,
surrender to water
and Iris.
You are drowned out, on a stretcher,
a small body of
life sucked out of a vacuum.

I missed your heartbeat.
Where did it go?
I found a dumpster chomping
down on fingernails
and he waited….

on 59th and State, he sat,
watching out for backlash
but I am calm.

Blood clots are normal, even when
I am flooded. We gather sand bags to stop
feelings from flowing.
Nobody fels mine grow,
like Ivy, like heavy honeysuckle
taking over a life.

He says it is for the best,
the world is watching,
I am a fuck up,
I know.
I am hard to kill.
But I’m trying.
God am I trying!

To That

inch of time spent over the sea,

dragging your dead body back
from the sharks I fed you to.

There should be enough salt
to drown in. Now that is something
you don’t hear of!
But, I have heard of Buddha,
and Ghandi,
and what great advice for the
blonde girls in white dresses,
not scratched by hands of
light drinking, or hard gunfire;
the girls untouched by
living a dead life, waking under floorboards
built by their mothers.

Your heavy photograph burns to
my tongue. I spit. I curse you out
of your newly dried grave.
I am ecstatic for your corpse,
it grows on me like tough leather.

Now for her.
I carry a monsoon to her driveway.
She is lit up. A bright pumpkin
ripened for plummet.
She dresses in honeysuckle,
and flickers like whiskey.
I haven’t thought of her name,
she is black as a canvas; a new galaxy
before energy matters.
If her heart happens to
do that, I will carve it out.

I will take it back to July in my teeth
where the desert is waiting for me,
it’s Queen.

Stuck In A Jar

If I count on the hours to happen
regularly, I’d be stuck in
a jar, afraid of measurement against
anything.

Instead, my cells vibrate against
all odds. I crack eggs, scrambling
locked brains, eating for the
sake of eating.

I have only been substantial forever.
Nothing more. Just my face,
along with legs, and hands that
move like a floppy clock.

But my name, now that is something.
Every hour that comes,
every hour that goes,
will remember my name,
just the way my cells will remember
how small I am,
like an ant stuck in a jar,
burning from the most toxic hour.

Old Memories Of Paris, Café Au Latte

Old memories of Paris, café au latte,
iron wrought on a kitchen sink
where she slimmed her figure
on a butcher block.

She dangled like a wind chime,
toes on pointe,
testing the winds and
the Gods on
Wisdom of Love.

Pretty little music box, my doll,
bathing in sunlight
through reflections of The Tower at
dawn. I asked her what she saw.

Her answer was as black as a widow
living off space between sun flower seeds.
I turned to her soul and spoke
to her in cotton,
she understood,
souls always understand what is next,
and why.
I led her to confession.

She rattled all the way,
dangling eight unworthy legs –
shooting silk like
it meant nothing,
because that is all she had ever known.

By sunset, she had dried up.
Everything that she had devoured
had taken over
and spit her spirit out.

His Name

just the beginning,
slithers off wet lips with charm.

Mockingbirds use many tongues
to sing of slick footprints
stepping in,
stepping out.

At first blush they call,
crested blue, aggressive;
wild for the North,
where dragon fruit merges with devotion;
where I found his name.

We spread together as far as Summer could take us
until we melted into sunspots at the edge of the Earth,
high desert heat drying out our love.

Later, we flew south in high, asthmatic screams;
nocturnal – fugitive.
It is never the first time.
It is never the last.

His after tastes like a razor blade,
but I am a glutton and I cannot
let go of his name.

In A Dream

Pig snouted soldiers strut
like heavy cannons,
over dry wild desert weeds

I tumble behind a boulder
maybe twelve or thirteen
I had not met the cycle yet
of Mother Earth and her Moon

The others slept in the madhouse
where echoes of screams
jumped from wall to wall

I tried to burn all of us down
once, melting us into a boiling
ooze where we could flow
together the right way

but she caught me and
I was sentenced to the garden
living off tomato bugs
and raw onion

This was when there was something
now it is this
desolate; sepia spotted trap.

I closed my eyes behind the giant rock
begging the shadow to suck
me into its safe home
It whispered that I was not ready
that my temples were froze

That’s when I heard their cries
mother and brother being
cooked alive
I opened my eyes and
the pig snouted soldier snatched
the dark hole from my face

I am awake.