Uncategorized – Page 206

you can shake your fist at any
foaming coast but her
break remains unscathed,
her scorn in
waves,
her calm in
tides,
wet snarls pacified in
moon-swept stages
depending on the time of month,
the climate or the
stage.

you are barefoot:
some pedestrian gesture of
worship.
shrine.
avoiding the shells and
ghost crabs that litter the beach
at gloaming.
you’re wild and roaming
again seeking to slice wrists
with guilt and urgency,
pretension,
steal the scissors from his girlfriend’s
pocket.
what’s it like to be a hypnotist?
take a seat.
notice your veins rock,
glisten with munition.

life’s a seething blade
and you wear yours deep in your lungs.
the ways you have learned to assuage
are more permanent in placement
if you face it when you
say it.
write it on the page.
have them sing it with
vexation.
have them say it out loud and
curse themselves.
you watched your hands become tributes
to iniquity so you ask your feet
to become your fingers
now,
nothing from your mouth
going forward.

watch your toes curl in the sand
before you start wading.
you are practicing the dying art of
self-restraint.
you are practicing
prayer, overdo
amends.
you are seeking a quiet rest
inside of yourself.

you are seeking the
sudden wreck
that laid you.

piety is not as easy as running away.

consult the oracle again.

wear what you want,
let these animals control themselves
my tiny ball of citrine says so
I put on my cat suit
and go for a walk
to catch tan in the new
big sun.   it was a long winter
of regression, needs unmet
and anchored in self by
a weighty repression,
lamps and the length of
my ire stretched, permanent,
coming undone on your pillow
where you wept in peace
until I charged back in
costumed in tank.

i’ve blown the tea lights out;
my presence is altar,
sit naked in the eyeline of the fan and
spools of smoke from bamboo incense
crown my head       I am showered,
manicured, my skirt is barely an inch of fabric
containing my pubic bone or
buttox so they’re stuck
to me like sweat hot salt
sticks dripping down my skin.
I dab some tiger’s eye oil and jasmine
on my wrists,

brush their arms with
my nails, cut through centers,
stop absentmindedly to change song
and let
their thighs press my thighs,
their forearms hit mine.
it’s the invitation I am waiting
for.    there are
ambulances wailing all over town
carrying victims of stroke
with blood rushing upward
forming an arrow,
the fletching pointing to their throat.
they feel the beat of wings
before they feel
my hands wrap their larynx
and the first thing they tell me:

you’re full of secrets.

“catcalls”

the medium between
complacency in vengeance
or photosynthesis
is God.

“transition”

“yes it is less the horror than the grace
which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone.”

“before they send that energy to the fruit, that energy is in the leaf.”

I carry tempest in my
lungs :a cold black murmur
that hooks it hums
in earthworms and writhes
to surface after rains
winding street lamps to
devour them like dirt cake.
I hit the corner as
you are walking up.

the light goes out
and somewhere near
a tire screeches drowned
by the sharp inhale
you take when
a cyclist scrapes his tire
on a criss-crossed track
and spins into a tumble
that splits his helmet
on a bumper and someone
screams: are you ok?
and rushes over.
an older man pauses,
turns to you scratching
his neck and
says: this city is full of
accident lately; is it another
retrograde? laughs absently
and stands still on
the flashing yellow.
your hands are clenched
in pockets waiting for
the red.

I am walking slowly,
wearing cotton sundress and
consenting saunter.
my hips are wide,
lips are pursed and
I am quiet, light and
diffusive but mired in
insides.
there are twelve dogs
with meat in their eye
nearby choking on their
collars.

I am wearing a blue alyssum
in my hair but
you will know me either
by my touch
if in enough of a rush and
close proximity to brush
an elbow with a thumb,
or the sudden sun I permit:
open laughter near your
chin, grabbing you
with force,
inordinate apology
for the accidental brush,
moist I’m sorry spills over
my freshly-done, pink
velvet lips as we collide
in front of everything,
wait for green or
similar direction.
there are sirens in the distance.

you?
you will know me by
my fang-toothed smile.

“morphic resonance”