Tag: poem

 

i’ve been out to lunch since we got here.
it’s another change in seasons,
spring and everyone is out to
brunch celebrating
 maternal lessons,

begotten lies, or if they’re more
 triumphant; forgotten
spite.    spring hats,
spring sandals,
spring grief,
sometimes things just go away
like missing pieces:
backs of earrings in the hotel room
at your youngest cousin’s wedding,
origami florets you sprinkled at your mother’s ankles
when you were just learning how to fix
 the pancakes to give appreciation;
diplomas, expired passports, birth certificates,
various certifications,
everything a lover gave you,
hand me downs, or cute owl
 pajama sets that were xmas gifts
callously discarded in the great
 throw everything the fuck away fest.
      I have nothing left.
anything that reminds you of your
lineage: scrapbooks and family
heirlooms, voicemails from your dead
brother pleading for you to
come back, the ashes swinging from
your neck, the letter from
your dad,

they don’t really mean much.
you’re here and you can prove it if they ask
with this giant gaping hole in the center of
everything
that you at last had the guts to crack;
the diamond she stole,
all winter blooms,
the time you had left,
grand ideas slipping out of your ears like ripples of
eureka!
plopping on your floor for the ants to devour
before they ever land.
you should have tried harder.

because love is boundless I can’t possess it;
it consumes me with its humility,
strangles like history,
swallows like tidal waves of
unyielding southern humidity,
and  I can’t escape it.
feelings for the flesh that steal me are so
 palpable, like ghosts, I’m moaning
exorcism! and synonyms for
 hurry up.
the climax is the body’s clever parapraxis,
and love?
I want this thing gone

so I can be empty with my tea
 and good ideas,
alone.
I knit a sweater full of verses I’ve never heard,
wrap it tightly for the winter.
wear the world like vapor,
my fortune cookie says
and something adds:

my dear girl, you are so lonely
 you have created all of this
          (the world just falls from my shoulders)
you are mourning events,
people, places & things that never existed
                      (cut it open, pull it out)
wipe those ruby red eyes
     and take a look around
                (before it disintegrates)
but my house is a burning building
so I better bounce.

I had one fawn over me
but he fell in the giant yawn
 I stomped in the yard
and like my bright wishes,
he’s also passing me by
carrying something I don’t get
because it’s real and it’s found
he is holding it and I am
     eyes shut tight   catarina
thinking about it
again when someone grabs  
my arm.

“how to forget everything day 67”

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“don’t be afraid to be this luminous
to be so bright so empty
the bullets pass right through you
thinking they have found the sky
as you reach down press

a hand in this blood-warm body
like a word being nailed to its meaning

& lives.”

 

–Ocean Vuong, Ode To Masturbation

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you are God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing yourself and
binded by conviction.

you are wrapping yourself
in your lovers’
unhinging,
your lovers’ veins,
your lovers’ disdain
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow
and you’ll be around
come never.

you are distant.
you are giant.
you are waving your hands
in the air and calling it
time magic.

oh, you are quiet in your cave,
becoming whatever you say
you are.
becoming whatever you say.

be careful what you say.

“the magician”

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I went from being a frozen tundra:
algid, wide and growing fields of ground to cover with
no visible tracks to follow

unless the wind was kind and left
the prints
but it wasn’t often.
taciturn but for some
icy speech and bleak; 
caustic prose in
squalling breezes that freeze
and stick to your cheeks,
harden               bite your tongue
in frostbit chomps so it takes a while before we completely cut those
meek coughs off
just as they start.
before they form into spit,
white noise, handwritten
cards,
I sprout into a raging sun:

precocious and blazing
hot, I become
a long bending desert to
warm you up:
fields of sand to cover,
infinite high noon run,
no moon to come,
hollowing the others with
deprivation,
 promising mirages,
a wide and weaving
ever-longing
desiccation,
sudden sidewinders and a
slow and draining
drip that never hits and
dehydration,
never an inch of rain and you
find every trap I laid.

I start by slaughtering your brothers
in front of you to see
 if you can stand it.

“sekhmet”

0

 

“if whatever you think comes true,
don’t let it go to your head,
and don’t forget to be humble.”

–waka poem

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I have a piece of paper and

a dozen dead things;
red and wilting in
their vase
to remind me
life is fluid
so I
better keep moving

but it doesn’t really
 help
anything.

“with sympathy”

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what is it that harms you most                and is insidious?

my persistent altruism
cloaked in gold,
I am
walked on like a golden
road.
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First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
–The applicant, Sylvia plath
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I was so broke
and depressed.   sometimes I forget
that. it was the depression that was pinning me
to my apartment, keeping me locked there
keeping me imprisoned.
not my insecurity but a numbness that had me
making more terminable plans
with bathtubs
bu some small joy always carried me:

Alize,
always and

a used and discarded turquoise shelf
I found when I was out.
I hung it loosely on the wall,
 without commitment and the wood
became immediately blackened by my incense cones.
the corners splintered and were
 dripping rosary,
 rarely dusted and topped with pictures
of my deceased:
Nana, Papa, Anselm Hollo,
other clients, friends I knew
in childhood and
unknown cousins,
guinea pigs,
first dog Pepper,
my first dead brother
or third dead uncle.
always drink or suicide,
something tragic when it comes
to my family but
I’m still here and
 brave, I think.
in a few different ways
but I want cleansing

so I tear it from wall,
I’m stripping the floral siding
with my fingernails,
peeling the paint back to white
 to present to you
a dusted start.
I wear black skirts with lace
lining for the cats,
rain boots when I go out,
drawn shades with a smirk,
and nothing when you come
about.

6.

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