Deep White

Demons sleep in the deep white,
a place to rest while
laundry drowns without ultimatum,
while dismembered chickens
swell in heat – sticking to
bits of parsley that grew this year.

People expire faster than milk.
If it isn’t there taste, it’s their
noises or gestures
or lack of reflection.

Kids are running off to school,
I leave the bread in the toaster.
One more day, slice open the demon,
crawl inside

guilt grows off walls
shames eats at intestines
all the people go, go, go
off to let me sleep in the deep
white.

The Devil Out At Night

Set me down,
behind full mountain
tops, make me burn
yellow and purple
hues, while
cold moons take
honesty away.

Turn on false Gods
who paint streets in
neon, let the devil out
to play.
Soak up the sweet aroma
of tonight’s subtle game.

Let it strip you
of your innocent skin…
And let the games begin.

Cosmos

Lift my head from soft evil;
a black chest I know
to well,

arms that swing sharp blades around my throat.

We meet where day begins,
after black out thick ends…

smoke smothers from my pores –

I remember the Cosmos,
shooting up the stars,
crawling out of his damp position

and lift,
            lift,
                lifting off.

Waiting For Death

Or calling her ripe name,
begging for skin to be twisted,

inch-by-inch,
I bribe her with my back
to the sun, my skin is enough,

too delicate for these loose brains
and fast nerves,
but trustworthy.

I whistle her black song through my veins.
I burn like tar, like tomorrow
might choke on sensation –

and push!!

She smells like wet dawn,
tastes like molasses. Deep in my throat she turns

over. Heaven is everywhere.

Apollo

Peel my eyelids away from my face
help me focus, help me see
reach into my center
kiss my galaxy

I spin madly away from this life
gnawing on dead space
his fingers spread deep
white laced with heaven,

I swirl toward angels and hell
all at once
He is Apollo –
Both God and Demon of love

I puff on his glass , inhale his acid
He takes me to paradise
with wings
covered in black ice

When he yanks me back to this truth
I fall to my knees and pray
I want him to stop
but beg him to stay

He smiles
then rolls his fog down my throat
God gave me my heart
but this Demon has my soul

The Bone Yard

I fold my dirty body next to the sun as it falls to sleep across a boneyard.

Our Daughters sleep in there, clinging on to life and on to death.
They strip down to breast and bone for swine,
gnawing on their own skeletons for some Great Man to tame them.

They play in ash playgrounds, burnt down by thieving snakes of virginity.
Our hands can do nothing.
Our Book does nothing.

Our Sons are bound, shackled by veins to elusion.
They strain, barefoot in the desert where demons build their muscles on doubt and hesitation.
Fear is a great interruption to the infant shadows that remain young nuisances
until trepidation grips its claws around their hollow shoulders and carry them away.

And, as the boneyard grows next to me. I lay, with burnt wings, in a chill that never dies.

When It Snows In The Desert…

there is no grace. Each flake is a poisoned needle
jabbing in my skin.

Every sting of winter is a piece of
her blue eyes,

and
his blue lips barely parted in a box.
I imagine his last breath and
wonder if it felt like Winter,
if it felt like the cold prick of
hell jabbed into his veins.

Winter has chained me to the past.
What is lost weighs more than everything
Winter has ever given.  I imagine her singing,
and if she sounds like Summer.

I know that I am here now, and I can never go back,
but still, I wonder,
when it snows in the desert.

And Poison

Oh God! I am not hollow!!

All this time I have been lacking parts,
I have not. My bones and intestines
and muscles
and heart are curled in stainless steel.

These inside pieces are flexing against metal,
but I have been watching while
little and big hands tick around the clock.

It is morning, my crusty eyes meet the sun.
My hand brings water and poison to
meet my tongue,
then suddenly night grips me and we dim,
in warm embrace we rest.

I am with baggage and a stamp, on my way
to mirror a bride,
or a student,
or just “myself”,

without a key,
or a book,
or a groom.

It is morning and my crusty eyes meet the
birds swimming in last night’s weather.
My hand burns from last night’s torture
and brings poison to my tongue,
then suddenly, night wraps its
pretty, long legs around me and we rest.

Where have I been recently?
Where do I want to go?
To a mirror, without a groom?
To a classroom, without a book?
To my “self”, without a key?

It is morning and my crusty eyes greet me.
My hands sting with reality as I rub last night
out. I have unrestricted bones and muscle,
and poison,
and poison,
and poison.

Mila Anhielo

Hey everyone! I was introduced to a young poet not too long ago, whose work I absolutely adore. I wanted to share with everyone. You guys may enjoy her sorrowful honesty and realism. I am particularly fond of her ability to capture the feeling of a moment, whether it be on a beach, in a broken down building, sitting next to a telephone. She has a beautiful talent. Here are a few pieces that I really enjoyed and more can be found at http://milasfindings.com/apps/wordpress/.

 

In Here
by Mila Anhielo

Rubble and loose concrete prick the bottom of my bare feet
just as I push down on the barrel of a syringe
to fill the needle’s shaft
to fill my skin.
My attention shifts like a kaleidescope, to a man who looks homeless,
who drags a couch from the 1960′s into a corner
to fill space.
I sit on it, next to him, and he
tells me to watch my back here.

Here, people come and they leave, they keep their hands busy
with things they acquired when they were sober. Books and credit cards,
cell phones and lighters.

There are dust spattered drawers that hold bags of needles, but
they are clean and accounted for, which helps me sleep better
as soon as the blinds get folded shut
to metaphorically “close shop”
and the kitten whose ribs are visible returns to a pile of unwashed laundry
to rest.

I gaze into poorly painted eyes on a statue of the Virgin Mary
surrounded by candles that ooze hot wax down to their surface, her face is lit
and I imagine if she could, she would walk me home, so I
lift myself from the 1960′s couch, and walk toward the doorway.

Outside the sunlight is meek but I stand underneath it to get warm.
I squint at the people wih meat on their bones
like health is a commodity I can’t afford.
They smile at me, console my aching temples, my shaky fingertips, I turn
to walk in their direction,
where the light bends at an intersection
if I cross now, I might blend in.

I hear Lou Reed’s voice from the speakers of an old parked Cadillac.
The lyrics, “well I guess that I just don’t know”
remind me of smoking tiny bits of cheap heroin in my best friend’s closet,
cigarette fliters inbetween our sparkly fingernails and smoke falling into
freshly dyed pink hair, gossiping in cut-up punk rock t-shirts, her room
decorated with Andy Warhol reproduction prints, my blue lipstick on a rolled up dollar bill.

I turn around, walk toward the porch, short breaths before I
turn the knob, to go sit back on
the 1960′s couch.

-Mila Anhielo-

COPYRIGHT MILA’S FINDINGS 4/30/2012

 

Bakersfield Blues

By: Mila Anhielo

Air conditioning out of order

The signs are all in Spanish

So I had to translate.

Bob Dylan on the car stereo

Aged air polluted my relaxed lungs,

No cigarettes in over an hour.

Heat made the lingerie sweat black ringlets

Underneath my jeans, in-between bone marrow

And I checked on the sheet of acid in the backseat

As if it was a smiling baby.

You were angry at me; you cursed affirmations on a pale street

You said my platform boots were gaudy – and

In the light, you could see the sequins melting.

I told you I hated this weather, just take me home.

The cement cracked all around you that day.

I was sixteen, inhaled courage, while you screamed:

I’m sick of your differences.

You didn’t go to college, you sold weed out of a UPS truck.

And after we broke up, you went to China for a while

Because I wouldn’t be caught dead in red.

If time was not linear, and we hung there like stars,

Would you have grown out of this phase before jail time?

Or would you have gone home to your mother

Like you always talked about?

And tell me, old friend,

Would your eyes still be green?

If you had stopped loving me

At sixteen

-Mila Anhielo-

Bennie and I

Brought white blossoms,
He did, on curved gravel
roads that stood well.

I couldn’t hear him.
I was riding Bennie, my pale habit.
My powder pastry mixing with me
like toxic nasal drip. I picked up my feet,
Bennie lifted me up, up, up.
We were deep in azure film,
scraping the sky for nothing.

He stayed with His ignorant box of diamonds,
level grounded,
staunchly fixed on my weightless finger.

Benny pulled me.
We floated to the tops of stars.
We floated to the top of dark.
We floated too far,

into the “too dark”.
Bennie was lost.
My ghost!
My shadow, swallowed
by infinity.

That’s when the buried corners came,
with hard-boned smiles and
broken teeth,
thin skinny, barely protection!
They came hard. Shattering moon windows,
bursting starlight.
They came for me!

I tried to scream but I was dry.
They picked at me.
They grabbed.
They reached through me,
straight through my green guts,
where Bennie was.
Hiding.

They shook,
shook,
shook,
trying to shake me off him.
They scrambled everything inside me.

Then, I fell.
Out of the stars. Out of the dark.
Back to the dirt where He was waiting
with a quiet ring, bent knee.
I did not know him.
I could not know him.
The buried corners
didn’t shake him out, but
they took my brain and
put the dark in its place.

Now, while my days sleep elsewhere,
He waits.