two honey bees scribble
across Rupi’s milk
her tragic black paperback
blooms
on a blank kitchenette
empty plastic cup
waiting for a purpose
I tell it
“go”
but who am I to
say anything
Rupi says it all
if her grace has been missed
you should find it
gather up her past
in her shadow
and twist it
into purple origami
for me to dry
each drop
that falls because
of ways men
have touched her
the hardest part of loving her desert is
knowing that it did not come
from you
a moment like that
like this
is crucial
lightning strikes,
dry heat
radiation
takes place
of
the sweet kiss
on my cold shoulder
I find seconds
in days
that last
forever waiting
to speak
whisper even
because tragedy
has hands
that rip through
this soul
this particular soul
that sleeps
like a demon
in benediction
that opens a
bloodshot
mouth
in his direction –
even the desert would
freeze over
if it knew him
my sun starts sleepy
on this side of
ecstasy
rolling in deep
sudden
pulsating
submission
his shadow aligns
with time
that belongs to
none
stars are ever burning
love
do not forget me
out there
rain lives
and breathes
and falls asleep
the way I want to
instead
I stay
eat cactus
fry worms on black top
undress for men
I don’t want
touch
every
square
inch
like its you
For this time being, she swept dirt away from dirt and from cactus and captured the memory of a small home made of partially buried lava rock and desert rain weeds. She swept Earth away from itself, angrily debating existence. And it was comfortable.
She wanted to sit and invite a sister and a mother to laugh and admire her desert. Without a roof. Without water. Without time. She wanted to stay and wait for a summer moon to smile at her with pride, with knowing.
And night came, but the desert never becomes cold. Coyotes came to practice midnight and bury sharp hunger through the necks of jack rabbits. The universe came to cover her head and remind her of tin roofs and frail wood spines of old women that shriek with each step she steps.
How cold the desert becomes in that small house.
Elvis is alive. Fact or fiction. Electric theory travels across a nation. She meets guitars and drums and sex and drugs. She is seventeen wild in a broken city. She is chained to an old lamp-post that jolts to life at sunset. Her lungs are clogged. Smog takes over. She inhales a damp determination for life that doesn’t smell like rot.
I meet her at twenty two and Newport Beach. Carpet stained by black top walks and coffee. It’s an LA Times kind of morning. Knit tops cover immodest mannequins waving to her from window cages. He head hangs to her knees. Cracks in the sidewalk taunt her. She is guilty and broken. She doesn’t speak or mimic or cry, but she can hear intent. I give her symbols. Ice. Shadow. Flight.
She chooses to choke.
Summer leaves her. I leave her in an hourglass. Her slim smile leaks through the sand. Time is running out.
She starts talking to the desert. A language I can’t understand. Ink leaks from eyes to her young lips. She tastes words for the first time. I stop to watch. She is thick with rage. We are intense and struggling. Our muscles melt together with neurons and we know each other. We are scared.
We see doctors and pills and whiskey and we time it just right so that our bodies do not fail. And we buy reviews and our way into a new way. Oranges explode and we drink fruit rinds. And I miss her when she is not there. We discover each other but we do not know. What is truth? Where does it begin and with who? We softly debate existence and beg for an out. Shamefully we beg for an out.
And here we are. In the middle of the Earth. Gravity. Cells. DNA. Still so unsure. Still begging for an out…
until we step into his driveway at midnight. Our hearts shake. His sharp hunger examines our every layer. One hand behind our neck. We stop breathing. We are out.
those words hang stolen
weeping willow feelings
a translation
so desperate
so sudden
a panic slighted by
memories that
only sleep can
bribe from
a hidden cave
i think
i thought of you
as love
a piece of heaven
dangling over
a crimson counter-top
tempting my
sensations
a reverberation
of a gift
offered only
by the Universe
you stole
them from another
love
that flourished
in a time
that I could not exist
not for you
Inside egg shell
ostrich bones
form over
and over fire
ostrich feathers fry.
Summer twilight
under seas
dead fish float
trying out moss
5th Ave
cross streets.
It’s a like
a thumb’s up
a smile
a laugh
a new thought
a new way to say
life lives to die
concrete
it is.
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
A blank sky starts out
and just like that
like embers flicking
popping
rising
from a camp fire
a Universe is on fire
holding hands
twisting fingertips
underneath precious metals
of an Earth
for the sake of intimacy
on black heels
in a month
like August
like seductive and
sweet
she is a golden pear
dangling fresh in the night air
all men have met her
at some point
she becomes bitter
after the picking
after the tasting
after familiarity increases
maggiemaeijustsaythis 