at least I give you transparency.

even when I’m moping, I’m dancing
in songs of satin
rippling with sob and shimmering
deep    bright with
the sky’s opacity.
I am combusting: a
flood of recourse and  
you are
drowning, immersed
in capillaries bursting  with crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.

you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
 memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and someone else is full of warnings
gutting rabbits
in the garden.
                             each night I go to God and ask
                                    for favor.
                              in the morning, I remember
                                       one line.  

I hand them back their most
prized possession:
a page, one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp and you
told me you were

STARVING.

“aquarium”

0

“writing poetry is my way of celebrating with the world that
i did not commit suicide the night before.”

–alice walker

0

January 5, 2014 and we
have arrived in
 North Philadelphia.

“hypothymia”

0

 

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.

1.

0

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”

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑