It’s A White Night

It’s a white night
in a white gown,
lights are dancing in
black windowsills.

In an instant, I’m a crowd;
an infant fevering
for heavy music to sing.
My prison is cumulonimbus.

La la la la la.
The opera is inside of me.
Look inside, there’s
a phantom cradling a breeze.

I will become
a storm under white sheets.
Waiting to be swept up,
my weak field,
my broken wheat.

I see your
Tropic of Cancer
and how tumorous you can be
but I will be
better than the whiteness
that is surviving me.

At that time
I will sow the sound
of wind chimes
over lullabies.

Mozart will come sit with me
about your layers –
we won’t need them,
words don’t mean anything
after you have seen

how beautiful the whiteness
can be.

Little Boy

There is a leak in the Earth,
quietly letting mercy slip
out,
unnoticed.

Ashes sprout in Spring’s fresh
mouth – her lungs
blacken with ferocity,

a dark mother clouds the sky
of an innocent,
a soft snow lays silent,
begging the earth to warm;
a quick suicide.

Her arms cradle his delicate
voice, she is moon craters
and crackling fire embers,
an Earth of her own.

Heavy waves of blood crash through
a golden heart,
blue eyes sicken and he cries.

Her own waves say goodbye –
and the Earth opens one more time.

Jack The Ripper

Summer has changed. Shadows walk loudly
through the forest.
I never thought I could multiply this way, but
you help me heat the sun. Now I’m locked
in the middle of a road
that I don’t know,
your feet planted in front of my knees.

A door falls asleep. I meant it for life.
Poisoned fruit for useless tongues. Then your
taste proved me wrong.
I lay on my back
and watch the morning cry. I made the forest
lie, but you’ve been lucky.

Jack the Ripper crossed the river and hung
up my soul. Now I chase the dark for you.

How To Sleep In A Gutter When You’re Not Dead

Curl up raw, stranger. Where is your
husband’s thick pockets?
You must be one of those different
colours.

I’m dead on my feet, you’re
sleeping in the gutter. Five days
in February – we both struggle.

Half a dozen snowflakes
ring the city, one man
hangs high above the river
two blocks down –

I can’t get my gown down
when I hear the secrets –
you shiver under the ice
and I like it,

biting my bottom lip, I’m nervous
for the next move.
Who’s it to be? Me or You?
All is well and dead on this side
but you look alive –
try to get a grip around your neck, but
you slump over
the cold.

Where did he go with his large gloves?
Are you beating like a cat fish or more
like drums?
Your colour is looking frozen.
Don’t pull those tears off too early or
you won’t recognize me.

I’m sorry for you, sister, losing
in this land, but when I see your secrets,
I tremble from a cursed realm
and I am ready to fade into the big city,
9 o’clock,
locked up with something like a vacuum cleaner
and let you go.

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!

Love Letter

Amaranth, on my back, off

the edge of life.
Dangling cords fall
like snakes, I hanged them
there to dry
me out. With you,

it is cold.
I can’t say that. I miss you,
but I do not. Have you
been tempted to rip her
skin off and put mine on?

My back is off
the edge, now
life is seeping through
my toes, amaranth
dangling, a love letter

for you.

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.

I Love Her More

She has a name hanging
in a back orchard somewhere.

Cowbells are ringing. I gave it up
like an omelet to a woman married
to perfection.

I am missing limbs for limbs,
heart for heart. Who am I to promise
life to another broken life?

Her name stands on a balance beam
between two tongues, heated tongues,
a melting puddle of ownership.
Where did she come from?
Where does she belong?

Tug-of-war. I own her more.
Someone who should have been born
is hanging in a back orchard somewhere.

I let her go. I love her more.

The Other Side Of Love

Darkness is the culprit that lingers behind
each slice of sweet Nectarine.

I am late.
I’ve been here before.

The other side of love.
The place that dissects the tongues
of former lovers
and turns them into layers.

love on
anger on
love on
hate on
jealousy on
love

on poison liquid every night before we stumble to sleep
with the darkness that caresses our feet
and convinces us that we love ourselves
to much to live on the other side.

I am late.
I’ve been here before
where I could feed you Mercury
while the sun sets on us forever.

I’d caress your feet and pray to the darkness
to take you far away
from my love.

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.