Category: poetry

normally
I just open the door
and walk right in
but this time I decide
I should be invited.
founded on repetition as the old adage
of classical conditioning,
some things work best in saturation,
a vacuum
and unrevealed to the participants.
this is an examination of ethics.
no, an examination of motive.
same thing, the query being:
is it stronger when stated?
as the querant believes,
it is stronger with want
regardless of
palpable confirmation.
want is hope in modern language
and the most consensual
exchange of felt.

either way,  it is
best to have some controls.
I arrive, same fashion,
dramatically.
you have been out in
the snow with your friends
and enjoying the view
of the constellations above
when you hear the twig snap.
you will see their yellow eyes to
your right as you react
and you will be alone
suddenly like that compelled
to walk right in
before you see me cloaked,
walk right out.
you say I am the coldest, darkest
thing you’ve ever met but
my two dogs are
licking your frozen cheek
as you lie beneath my feet,
a sturdy boot on top
of your face, me baring down
without much weight but
pressure of depth.
but you seem colder than that.

you are face down
becoming the tracks.
I am taller than you expected,
yes?

2.

0

I can go forever:
have been, have gone
without, truly starved.
no period of separation
or isolation
has scurried me along.
 suffering long episodes of
 devotion, then a swift
disaffiliation
from the practice,
whatever bondage I wear,
I wear loosely.
even the devil’s arms
don’t fit me
and I was molded intricately
and set to last,
a stone sarcophagus to contain her.
a product of thinking too much
 is obsession. 

 it is best if
 you have a moving target
or several
 so you don’t fixate on one tree
 for too long;
 inevitably,
 the squirrel running up
or the dog running beside
 will shake you.
today it is two robins
dancing in a pool of dust.
my eyes are adjusting to the
brightness of the bush behind
them, and the basketball hoop glinting
past that to the grass as they
kick up dirt.
 I think of all the signs I missed
in life. how many times I thought
the word God then a robin
would meet me,
or to be so uncertain of something
to have an opposum walk out
and stop you in your tracks.
it’s the perseverative ring
it is pertinent,
I am both feared
and adored.

i’m sitting on a park bench
 trying to prove I can do this
 having done this before.
 sitting for as long as I can
and I am also
watching the construction
men in front of my house.
from this angle, I can see them.
not wanting to walk by the  hole
or the giant crane. or exchange a
hello,
not wanting to be around them,
move past them again.
see how long I can do this.
watch them.
sit. I get up to move to a different
bench.
see how long I can wait for.
I am doing this for practice.
even if I have to get up and move
to another bench.
sit and move to another bench.
how long can I do it.

I am doing this for practice.
a park outside of my house
this whole
time.
grass,
unmuzzled terriers,
the nods and my inquisition
face wrapped in mask
so my mouth can rest a more
natural slack-jawed state
as I watch the two labradors
lick each other and give
the owner a wave.
I’ve always tucked my neck in
turtlenecks and coats.

I turn and look at the trucks
pulling forward. two large
open-bed ones for the concrete they
are ripping up. my entire
street unearthed
to relay pipes and
they are lining the inside with wooden
planks and I know they are
working through lunch
because I saw one
 grab their cooler and walk towards
my place and yesterday
they worked through lunch too.
not leaving. from seven am,
the chainsaw woke me,
to three when they bid their
toodle–oos to each other
and quite bellowing.
one even singing on and off
all day. 
I said on Tuesday
to the new moon and my altar,
an ace:
 I want this done as fast
as possible.

It is thursday.
they have not taken a lunch
since and
I’m gonna sit here and watch
them.

“the bench”

0

I am up by dawn, or close
to it, again.
thinking this is what true love
is doing; proving habit,
demanding morning study.
this has happened before and
every time it happens,
it is strengthened so much so
that what has woken me is
an old phrase you said to me.
I could hear you fumbling with it;
an act of reflection while in stalemate.
how long can obstinacy maintain the
buoyancy of flight?
I am learning to stay fresh and put
and you are summarizing yourself
with an inaccuracy that doesn’t
need me yet.

I heard you rereading it one morning
to yourself, no doubt
questioning your word choice
as I stretch, be careful what you
say.
but I know what you meant.
and I know what you like.

there are rules to this though.

“the act of naming things”

0

information is power so
I ask the time and place
and day and I hold
back some ecstatic clapping
for the willfully delivered
 emblem that I now braid back
into me.
I feel most secure in holding
someone by their neck and
forward and possibly in
creeks of ice asking
are you pious, son?

but never believing,
I strum my chords at night,
fanatical.
once missing, now
draped in beads of
declamation, afloat.
I’m white like creeks of ice
you lay your head upon and
cough the yes, I am devout.
I become the pew for them.
I become the papacy.

you become the tether tight
laid across my city bench,
suddenly engrossed in rosary
again.
as I begin to watch the men
dig holes into my
ground like clocks to measure
the dagger of a willful
mind devoted to one outcome,
you press your hands into
the ice to feel water
rise up.

“the pupil”

0

sometime late January
you spent the night with a woman
watching the moon grow.
come take me in my own abattoir,
my thesaurus.
I unrolled my tongue
ready for our first kiss
 and out spilled
someone else’s lung.
how did these things
ever get here?
I wonder aloud.

I had created a dalliant
stockyard in my bed
 to occupy us:
red-hot,
full of other people.
you were outside in a corduroy jacket
counting her freckles
as I was slicing the outside of
someone’s arm
to crawl inside
for warmth.
wait for us to duel it out
 in the morning
biting the inside of my cheek
 to taste victory
 and she was on top of you,
crowning.
well.

well,
I had been waiting to show you
self immolation and I know
some fun phrases like
vous aimez l’intensité.
you had been waiting with kerosene
and some promises to hold
 my pretty ashes
hostage; replete
with scathe,
a few words.

“fidelity”

0

 

myself I receded
into the carpet maybe.
I don’t know what I did
some days. I was  hard pressed
to prove I could be
both a dehydrated kind
of  thirsty and
objective
in my pursuits
but both my hard-wired
illusion and my precocity,
my seduction were
suddenly a bit
of a crucifix
needing some tempering,
some rectifying,
maybe a mirror.
I began to practice my
southern accent,
my Irish accent,
my English accent,
my New Orleans accent.
“Fine,” was all I could
muster. and I tried not to look
at any age lines.

I went forward
with an earnest attempt
to gain access to the mind
of someone else.
I remember just staring at birds
for minutes at a time
with no other thought
but a swirl of energy
 swarm me.
and how I could once hear a
woman chewing potato chips
across a coffee shop.
it was a million
little things like that
where I stopped
and realized I could
probably walk through
walls if I was careful.

“the lullaby”

0

there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
 where I fit completely.
sometimes i flit about town
 with my paper point tongue
 and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly
and rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled
as a representation of a symptom
of superstition.

 

when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys on
the table.
when I say I’m superstitious,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it begins to grow legs
and walk out so I can
see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick
dust. I begin to line the
tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names.

“1/1/2017”

0

first, I was not born with
a lot of fear and it confuses
others to find I shake
constantly. not literally
shake but fidget and
have to twiddle at all times.
this is
a tic. a tic is
characterized by involuntary
movement; a repercussion of
some hidden mechanism
to cope, neurological or, sincerely,
born from nothing
but exists within a person
regardless.
second,
I once saw the death of a man
I loved, but the face was blurry.
I just had a vision,
sharp, flash,
watching him fall through
a hole in a patch of ice
and disappear forever.
this was before.
before I knew who led who
across the lake.
before I could pull apart
threads and follow
them home.
before I could name things,
or rather, before
I could commit.
I won’t name the
color of his eyes
or hair. and I won’t tell
you anymore than
years ago,
 a friend dubbed me a title and
told me that I
give until I am robbed
and can give no more.

I did not know this man yet.

the year is 2016,
but the very end,
December and this is before
the dream of the cabin,
and the letters to,
let’s say “A”
and do the naming of them
alphabetically by chronological order
so as not to confuse anyone.
this was when  the unfurling began:
 every device I had for protection,
dissolving like the bounds
between, I can only say,
us and them.
this is before I knew that
this period of time
would bare great significance in
my development so I took
it too lightly. oh sure i enjoyed the
laughing and pacing and watching
my face melt into the mirror,
standing under streetlights for minutes
waiting for them to burst,
the three hour marches through snow
muttering, I just wish my notes
were neater, like it would all come
back now when he pressed
“record.” funny how
blackouts work.  I began a slow
fall into what textbooks
have described as
“a sustained mild
manic psychotic episode”
or possibly,
“a sustained dissociative fugue (of sorts)”
“spontaneous psychosis nos (trigger not known)”
                   the election of Donald trump
and what others say is
a
“kundalini awakening,
but rushed” as in
my crown burst open and
a snake jumped out
before I could process opening
my throat.
what others say is a
“nervous breakdown
from the pressure of grad school,
a demanding low paying job, and too
much time volunteering in harsh
climate or communities” or
a “sustained fantasy life
come to life via magic”
a “witch learning her craft”
a “possession by demons”
a “possession by ghosts”
a “possession of angels”
a “woman deemed saint by past sainthood”
a “possession by various channels”
an “alien abduction come back”
an “electronics gaining sentience
and communicating via music
via Spotify”
a “active fantasy life enlivened
due to self induce isolation”
a “nightly visitation”

I say
be careful what you
say.  

“switched places”

0

you’ve been watching
jaguars move but otherwise
blind as fuck and 
petting foxes in a field
of green when you should
have been in motion.
you’ve been
 memorizing motion
without comitting to the
movement, atrophied:
the way you arm falls
asleep beneath your sullen
face as you wist away the days,
and the way your hands
grip anything within a one mile
radius forming little claws.
you are crippled
with entropy; an uncertainness
of order, a muddled prescription
of chant and everything that
leaves so willfully
must richochet again.
what’s the little joke about
choice?

I’ve been draping myself in
arms and
storm so you can see
as I traipse across
the forest floor
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know,
sweetheart,
that you may be a masochist
but we know that
you are game.

my name is Arachne,
nice to finally meet you.

you are writhing
game in snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground like
prey which leads
us back to witch, we said
be careful what you
 say. you said
my name is artemis
but you also said 

“arachne”

0

we are here,
that little lie about choice.
the way you can’t seem to keep
the gloves  on and your knees hurt
from walking to the center of south
philly and back and
(I didn’t touch anything but I didn’t wear a mask)
and the way your tongue forked,
when you began to share the
story of your violence.
what’s been done to me
now done to them,
you begin the ritual
of candle setting.
it’s half pure ire
and directed intent.
say their names aloud:
Oya, Sekhmet, Lilith, Hecate.

I am Artemis. 

they say be careful what you say.
you say I am very good
with a word,
a sword, and
un boligrafo
to show you’re trying.
I heed each warning and name
them again

  1. when the first thing comes true, the second follows swiftly.

that little lie about
choice.
we are here at four candles,
name them again,
 love,
namely,
what’s missing:
(let’s review)
anything palpable.

  1. be careful what you say.

love–a thirst.
will–a birthright.
take justice–not vengeance,
but perception and the gentle
 folding of my hands in my lap
as things begin to be done to
them..
time–something I can’t wrap
my head around.

  1. love is a choice.

and choice. that little lie about
“choice.” write it again without blinking
and what then do you see?

  1. love.
    will.
    take.
    time.

 

“the choice”

0

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