and of course it’s beautiful

In here, out there nobody sees. Pomegranate seeds shred through my teeth and we accept it. He smiles and of course it’s beautiful.
A blood moon grows 10,000 times what it was, in here. Out there, nobody knows.
I count, up to seven minutes in Heaven and wonder, in here.
Out there, nobody waits.
Everybody talks.
Everybody spits venom in the eyes of people they love.

I love him for the birds, he just doesn’t belong in here. 
This desert is mine.
I sleep on cactus beds and wait….with time.
The sun is mine. I’ll keep it in a locket for those days that get dark, in here. Out there, nobody notices.

I smile. He smiles, and of course it’s beautiful.

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.

If You Should Find Me

If you should find me with my head in the oven,
and my other head hanging from the broom closet,
and my torso flattened under tire,
and my hands in a bowl of oranges,
and my neck breaking for a man I barely know,

if you should find me like this,
please let me know what waits on the other side.

Please give my words a violent bath
in ammonia and make my skin
as fresh as a mothers’ skin should be.
Please wrap me up in plastic and place
me under heating lamps

and interrogate me before I leave.

I want my guts to spew outside of myself and
my skeleton to dry out in fresh air.

The air has become so stale in here,
I am as dry as an old loaf of bread.
I am collecting spores of green mold and nobody
knows about it

and all of the living organisms go around and around
their clocks;
the women with their perky breasts and the
men with their swollen cocks
and all of their concern with pro-creation,
while I sit here and rot in
the truth of who I am.

I Just Want To Take Her

I held her hand as we ran
through the parking lot.  The dirty snow clumped
against the sidewalk ditch and people clumped
together as they walked toward the
store.

She is youthful in ways that I do
not remember anymore. Almost as if she doesn’t
know any better, she lets me lead her
across the asphalt
to an old, decrepit truck.

An old man sits inside with the
engine running. He knows a secret and
I just want to make sure he knows
it.

The girl smiles. She is intrigued with the mystery
of where these footsteps might take her. We turn around
and skip back to the store. I just want to take her.