On The Swallow’s Tail

Wide antic eyes, Salvador, you are your brother
dead, but better. Do you rest on his grave and
tell him about 17th century moustache and
Gala, everything he misses out on.
No need, he sweeps your bones when
they need to grow.
He plants ideas and colors in Spain
where people steal your dreams.

I will give you hopeful fruit
that can be nailed to a wall,
make it my four walls please – a trapezoid leaning in
like egg yolk – protein for my absent
skill. If I had yours,
if only,
I would be she, your catastrophe theory,
feeding you death on a spoon.
I could be your nervous system, taking your wishes
from your guts.
We are not “in fact or intention”
We are surrealism
and I know this because I live inside you,
inside your brother.

My Heavy Boulder

I’m stuck in this…..nothingness.
The devil tucks me in
at night. I sleep with cannibals.

I am an apple core. Pigs food.
Where did my blood come from?
I am just a trick.
I do not exist.

My sweat is black magic.
I am invisible.
I am air particles and
part of the walls.
I am seams in the carpet.

A blue moon today
is sad sand tomorrow.
My body is borrowed,
taken by the Mexican gun
and his man.

I am abandoned.
I have abandoned this sickly,
trapped in infected placenta.
A dark traveler between
thought and matter.

The water is cold here
but I am colder.
Death is coming.
He’s tied around my shoulders.
My only friend.
My heavy boulder.

To Be Fair….

Black ink dries on hard paper,
truth has made me guilty.
Speak softly to me!
A kind message?
Sublingual peace?
Abuse me with gentleness,
please!

Death is not deep.
To be fair,
this blush,
this young sigh,
this surface, it is all false.

Clocks speak with the sun;
patterns that change me.
I am Heaven.
I am Earth.
I whisper ‘farewell’.
I trade it all for instruction,

and the day goes,
consistently, then
brings me back again,

in ruin.
Life and Death. Undivided.

I wish for a different fight.
With fire or the sea,
a fair trade,
both worthy opponents.

I can obey their rules,
succumb to each,
their own authority,

yet, I am not standing inside flames.
I am not drenched in waves of the sea.
I am wrestling with ink,
a low, clear friend,
an enemy I would save,

a hard lover keeping me freely.
I am armed in my own silence,
wrapped in God’s skin,

and the words,
all the incriminating words are
seeping in.

In A Bad Habit

The graveyard passes me; I am buried
in there, somewhere.
I never got a map.
I got sweet that sweet fragrance of sympathy
from
hands that still pulsate. But a map?
No!

Maps are cold. Indifferent. Without
reason or definition. Identical hands
to
hands laid away forever.

I had a fever for twenty years. It was
habit.
So, I wrote a note:
I am in the graveyard. There is no map.
It is cold, yet I am not.
This fever has warmed me,
blanketed me,
forever.

I hid the note in butter. An arrogant, cheap stick
wrapped in cold paper. The refrigerator
would keep the paper stale.
Then, I left. To the graveyard. It passes me.
It slides off me as if
I am butter. Melting.
In a fever.
A bad habit suddenly hitting my blood.