love poem – Page 28

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.

August 19, 2018 0

I am giant:
strong legs, flexed tonsils,
tight back from climbing your forearms
to get to your mouth. my nails are
filed and
scratching at your chest
on the way there to let your home
know what I own.
I compromise but I am
never quiet.

I’m full of bargains:
one dollar books and yesterday’s makeup,
hair knotted with century old lesions and
previous engagements so I
shave it off every chance I get.
try to forgive myself for
such large displays of
arrogance.
you want me to comfort you in
cadence and I obey it
deriving satisfaction with the way my voice
sounds as I practice inflection,
ending my prose in pointed questions
you will have to answer,
the pleasure of seeing my mask unfold
on screen i’m paralyzed in heat
so I often freeze when confronted
but in between I leave
sweet, murmured ellipses
all over your body.

but know
I’m a noose so tight you try wearing me
like a loose fitting garment
or just one hard day’s night,
I might flinch and
boy, I might hang
you.

“Scorpio in South Node, natal”

August 11, 2018 0

Part 3: the act of taming things

“Being born again and again has torn your smile into pieces.”
–Adrienne Rich

August 11, 2018 0

rafters lit with strobe lights,
smoke lines,
broken paneled reflections of
thirty years of bottled insights,
throttled insides.
the air is laced with metallic smiles,
a camaraderie that’s uninviting
and sporadic flickers
of someone else’s lighter.
I rock in the center absentmindedly.
I have no business stopping by.

you watch me with
staggered silence and
constantly,
smile wide and big and
sudden.
I’m impacted in seconds,
sides of me are split,
flowing as I stand
idle.
your smirk some
blunted rifle.

you watch me mask my panic
with ten plus years of
a bawling inner child,
unmanageable reflexes
that end in stifled violence,
milky looks and a muted
predatory hunger.
I am wearing
my best calf impression:

slow,
doe-eyed and anxious.
blue tights, black heeled boots that
scuff the floor as I
wander as I daydream in public;
rub a soft elbow,
sip a virgin seltzer tonic with
cherries and some other
light garnish.
stay as close to God as possible
watch you with marrow armor and
calculated patience and I am a spinning
blue black swirl of approachable
sainthood.
twirl somewhere nearby and deign to give you
open eyes for at least
twenty seconds at a time.

you crack a joke and
my laugh is deep,
loud,
brays right through you
like a swaying knife.

you asked for it.

“first dances”

August 11, 2018 0

The train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.

“the accident”

August 11, 2018 0

I wish I had more words for
“terrorized.”

just another verse
picking at its stitches,
grunting from the dark and
taking educated guesses at the Rorschach blot
that spreads across its skirt.
but writing with cadence,
inflection, downplaying
it with rhythm as you
try to capture the humiliation of
all the little violations
that add up to today
without one strong word
or accurate verb
to describe the way a knife
sticks for a second and you moan
the wrong way.

what sounds better to you?
I say over coffee, trying to
finish some titles.

“besieged” or “PTSD”
or simply
“raped?”

“the act of naming things”

August 11, 2018 0

grow up big
like
great, big
potted
bonsais:

warped,
admired for aesthetic,
pruned to look pained,
trimmed excessively
with some self-seeking worship;
most every limb
lacking expansion
or utility,

most every limb
kept smaller than it
should be.

“girls”

August 11, 2018 0

take me and
stuff me in a bag;

in the rapture of a girl
first kissed behind the ear,
never once being touched there before
and tell me you’ll carry me across
the whole ocean
if that’s where
I need to be today.
I’m laughing and
you say the most ridiculous
things like
(and you turn to me)

you say to me:
this will never end,
right?

“the blue book”

August 11, 2018 0

“I’m always knives-out,
a chain of razors folded
behind each gesture.
You who loves me: are you
paper? Or plywood? Or stone?”
–Christopher Morgan

I never write about blossoming but
I’m seeing inflorescence in
my dejection:
my censorious portraits
cascading and
my unpolished toes
at the edge of the kitchen
where the carpet meets the tile,
an unwashed bowl of almond butter
next to my tea,
empty half of a house,
my patient sponsor and the
tail end of my
frantic texts public mania;
an affinity for
inscripting every feeling
somewhere permanent.
begin to plan the next
black mark on my body;
a large alligator named
Milo. I’m flagrant when
offended and they
say I turn violence
inwards.

I could have been
sitting still,
saving face,
explaining through private sessions,
watercolor, the grace of
long sleep, ten am and
fresh and lucid still
immured in dream.
she mentions doing the
dishes she mentions
deep breathing

I see a bud in the daffodils
you left, a water filled horizon
that distorts my perception
of what “leverage” really means.
and the big picture,
obscured by my choice of lighting;
all fluorescent,
it’s cheaper
blinding everything overdone
with explanation and
cyclic editing,
ornate,
constant litter.

I liked some things about us:
two dirty bowls to wash
but saw clearly.
we were soaked in
soft lighting and I held
your gaze,
your torso,
your incogitant rage
that I managed between fits of
self soothing and pleading,
placating.
mouthful of bitten tongue,
some little good timing,
ready for
hi there
some little soft haunting.
for you,
always:

a toothy smile,
walk for miles,
fingers crossed for some
little soft revenge.

you?
I think about you.

August 6, 2018 0

lashes black and wet and
shaped like little
bolts.

we watched fireflies and I
licked your earlobes,
tried your fingers on
while I played with truths;
denied them.
felt your chest pressed against mine.
we clanked with ease
and I took in the scene of two people
unclothed and unseen
underneath some crescent innuendo
in your backyard
without friendship between them;
without people between them and I dared
to stare in a way that endures more than
deciduous planting.

I broke at the
not now
you spoke back
with a masculine fragility
I had never known envied,
tried on later with pants,
unplucked eyebrows
and alone.
you became all red and
graceless, I became an unwatched bull
headed to your porch,
snorting and you were
bare faced and guarded in all the ways
I have yet to learn.
I’m so obvious:

a scarlet blaze that starts with a joke,
two bodies parting,
an unreturned question that ends
with a sharp exclamation,
annihilation of something.
ends with a reminder from someone higher
to stop destroying something
to eliminate one part.
I am a wave of coercion
pulling you in and under
when I should have been
patient;
when I should have been laid in the grass
gently next to the ant hills
where you can learn my thighs,
breasts,
spine,
toes curled without injury;
when I should have been pausing to notice
there are no people between us;
when I should have been gracious,
with you and naked.

I remove the rest of my top
and close my eyes deliberately
to show you the length
of each thorn.
with my tongue pressed
against your chin,
my lips trace
your jaw I say
more softly
than before:
you know,
I have never
become divine without
first becoming storm.

“Scorpio”

August 6, 2018 0