Hot For War

I’m not so angry after all
this time, he smells like honey, hot roasting in the damp evening. 
His carpet moves like the sea. I might be breathing, but he’s not. 
His blood is worn out in deep veins, his secret time is up. 
I am not angry this time, he positions himself for love and I watch,
jammed with battle fever, I am hot for war. 
A soldier holds no fear, and there is no time to speak.
He engraves himself with yesterday and I wear him next to my heart.
I am not angry after all
this time. His blood dries up and my ache fades. 
We are both permanent in a temporary place. 

Ether

Magnolia’s rattle to the North,
an odor I’ve never known
before now.
I have no lover to scoop
eyes from for warmth,
no body or bones
to mix together and boil for
nourishment.

Silence is a tough fog,
golden; triumphant;
whispers like a noose.
She is a smooth, naked
flamingo waiting in the Ocean.

We will travel together, like apples
ripening throughout the season.
We will be sisters
by blood,
by grace,
by moonlight.

And all the stories I tell you
now will be flat
as skin, my words will prune up
and the golden knife of silence will
slice the truth out.

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.

Time Travel

Boiling over, I am scraped off the bottom,
the block I belong on,
57th street where the crows sing.
Time travels around the city
-back and forth-
like it doesn’t matter
swooping through me each time.

I swing like a pendulum inside
my brain talks so fast
future and past, but all I see is the street
with a man parked under
his life.
I can’t tell if he’s dead or alive.

He might be another.
From somewhere I haven’t met
with guns and
drugs
and sex crawling up the walls
I’d kill him to tell it all

but he can’t.
His mouth stopped with his heart
a long time ago.
Time comes back again
and I am standing in the kitchen

wine pouring from the window sill,
put a pie out to dry
sugar, there’s no room for you and I
still want to be here.
The clock is purring like a new motor
ticking backward

and I’m watching my mother.
In X-ray, I can see right through her.
I see her fear and her
weak little shoulders – I am a caged, feral animal
ready for the world
My muscles grow stronger and stronger
I spit on the caged bars and twist them from
existence

now I’m standing in the corner
face to face with death in all its honour
a coffin, a casket full of
skeletons of the past
that merge my cells together
maybe we never were two
time splits here into thick poles

North and South I spend my dreams
in Antarctica
reaching for the coldest depth
I can find
freezing myself in time
where nothing happens,
nothing changes,

I’ve let life tick its last time by.

The End

Pink tissue shivers
– pins and needles –

poisonous seeds
grow like mushrooms

in stolen wombs.

Mozart marches
like I’m a
masterpiece

black and white
piano keys

I’m nothing less

than spoiled by
venomous seeds
that started me!

Sad Forest Of Dread

Sad forest of dread, your morning crowds me
with loud hatred
and the whole world crawls in my head.
They sit on my couch, spilling coffee and
lies. Gross laughter – snorting
at sticky children.

I have said that I am not a city
to muck around, but they watch me
like my ancient bricks are
Italian art,

my legs,
my hands,
my lips become earthquakes

I am the black silence, awkwardly shaking
against the wall while a baby
crunches tomatoes against my skull,
and this flimsy morning is
scalding me with people

carrying invitations to disease.
I want to be free of
this nausea
and take some of their trade,
but I cannot.

My skin has been nourished by neglect
and poverty, I’ve been
eating grass roots and building castles
for worms,

and if you follow my example, you might be the
wisest, and the loneliest,
to ever sit in this sad, sad forest
of dread.

I Was Born To A Gray World

I was born to a gray world.
Void of sunlight.
Barricaded by ice.
Hunters have come for me. I watched them
gobble up
sisters, a brother,
and the woman who birthed me.

I stayed, under rocks, under dirt,
for sixteen years. I washed myself
in sin,
couldn’t come clean.
Stained with nights that smothered me
in the devils
chest hairs.

My hair grew to the length of
a woman. Sweeping me
out from
the dirt, standing me on
one foot,
then two.

Then, my breasts grew,
not much larger,
but wiser!

For some time, I lived out
dull
nightmares.
Screaming in sleep.
Silent during the dull day.
Grinding coffee beans
with quiet grips of rage.

I sliced each strand of woman from
my head,
became a man. I cut tears out of my arms
till I forgot how to
cry,
smashed my head heavy till
I forgot
everything else…

except that the world is gray.

My hair has grown back out
to the size of a woman
and my breasts haven’t grown
anything but heavy,
in a heavy body,
in a heavy gray body.

Haunted

Midnight visits with feeble jaws,
while my teeth grind on white
horror –
my head has awaken, my body
has not.

A house is clouded with
my ghosts. Beautiful,
disgusting!
Numbing my legs with
a chainsaw gaze, I am barely breathing
again.

Her pale hands reach out
to
my frozen plan. I am barren, dry of
thought, palpitating.

The daylight brings demons enough, but
I cannot
escape the night.
It comes as expected. Never without
ugly dread
and
cold sweats. Always.
Always
soaked with paralysis, drenched
with the past.

My Monsters

The monsters are awake,
lurking around
upstairs.  They hide out in the most
trimmed places;
stomping through the garden of adequacy, bathing
their filth in competency.

They awake me from agitated
sleep, speeding my attention away from the immune
hard-wood floor to
the bed of pins and needles they have
prepared.

The doctor says I have a choice.
I chose capsules.
(That was not the correct choice, they say)
I agree. The capsules do
not keep the monsters
away
or help me Rest In Peace – a
choice the doctor says is not a choice.

I am left with a capsule and the monsters,
swallowing the capsules with a pitcher of
beer – attempting a “submerge and die”, but they
have wicked
enamel on their
sharp little fangs and the capsule
is made of gel.

My monsters sink in their teeth and
shred open the pill
releasing the promised relief – One monster snatches a
handful and a thousand more follow, till
all the magical comfort
is stolen.

I can’t say I blame them – they
have an addiction. If these capsules do
what the doctor has promised, I would want a
piece of it, too.