Tag: poets of wordpress

“Strength does not have to be belligerent
and loud.”

I derive so much from one word.
pull from it.
it’s the synchronicity that
binds me and
the license plate that careened into the pole
instead of me that night read
“ prisons” and
I knew instinctively how
he felt.

tonight I’ll do:
a spring equinox meditation.
brush my teeth.
cut grapefruit for the morning
and ride the waiting out.
pay homage to my Pluto
and my Pisces in the
eighth inning.
my Venus nestled in her
vindication, her frequent
illicit engagements kept dark
in that dusty
twelfth house,
but she found a clean mirror and
she is undoing her bed.

i’m becoming a panacea of my own:
memory, tincture, flowers everywhere,
the fuss of first love never leading anywhere but
here in another meditation
on the river walk.
draw my poems out of the older sutures:
undo, redress, pamper the wounds .
think about it.
send you a letter.
remember the way grief sits,
unsettled, right after dusk,
right under your chest,
right under your breath:
a blue river from your fingers.
send you that letter
with my wounds
pasted
in the margins.
reminding you to
think about it.

 

pay homage to your Venus.
she is out
casting cars into ditches
while you cautiously wait
for lights to
change.
you are holding selenite
in your pocket
but your fingers still
curve and you are still
smirking,
standing where they
are now
sitting and
wilting
in screams,
it was the way you asked
in a bit of a curtsy:
one more chance
but you snap.

and they lose their
breath just like that.

 

“prisons” or “Venus in the 12th House” or “how guys save me in their phone #8th house”

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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 surrounded
by mirrors
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 

Milo, I might hang
you.

 

“Scorpio in South Node” (how guys save me in the phone #5)

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the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter
even to grab a ginger ale from the cooler
               “it’s my favorite.”
brush you, smile at your friends
and kind of swarm them
like an imposition
starting conversations about the
ludicrous state of things always alluding
to my prescience without
saying anything
you’ll say its the smirk I
 mastered not the crowd.

but then I retreat.
but then  I linger near the
exit the rest of the night with the crumpled straw
 in my hand
and the temper on my tongue
contained,
my earlier rage not expressed
or not handled as boldly
as it deserved to be;
the proclamations
the exits

I like way you held my hand
and said my name.
       my name is artemis.

sometimes buildings just catch on fire.
you say I always crouch with a
bow in hand.
            “I’m just nervous”
and that when I am lying I look away really
fast so you can’t see the sneer spread
and you know
I fucked your friends
and you know I’ll fuck some more
and you see me on the screen
 my name is Artemis.
parting lips, combing bangs,
practicing inflection as I said
I would.

you said you’ll always remember
the way I laughed LOUD
and so sudden
    touch his shoulder
like you were the funniest man in
the room.
and I’ll always remember
the way the door frame dripped
and bled to one sorrel-orange.
no, it’s not that you said yes.
you said “ok”
kind of folding,
tempering and allowing
which is the way I like
my men to lean.

I walked across the welcome mat
throwing matches as you swept,
the windows becoming a
 carrot color and me
disappearing.

“how guys save me in their phone  #4”

 

(13 odes to CKacyrek)

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 once upon a time
I floated
through rooms.
we were ghosts
draped in human furs and
red felt flowers
to keep ourselves warm and
using illness as an anchor,
I was a grave when I wanted to be
a stove. 

you
twirled to the sound of my fluttering
 lashes: broken and
 sloppy     untimed;
the way you glanced towards me
on street corners.
I could tell by the
way you held yourself,
the books
and your heavy eye contact,
a light coat and no gloves
 and no verbal complaint
about the term addict
 being thrust upon us that
you were cold 

and you
 didn’t just act strange,
you possessed it,
            the leaves are turning,
I sniff patiently.      sip hot water with
lemon and basil.
someone sang on a makeshift stage of
upside down milk crates.
you looked sidelong, gingerly,
an afterthought that led me here.
I played with my hem and revocation,
 silence that halts
you make me feel young, I mouth
to the ground.
you returned the gesture with
a prepared grin and returned to
accompanying yourself.
the ground fell away and
I was a picked thorn;

some perspiring flower,
I knelt in a corner
stem growing from a red plastic cup,
cowering and open
knowing this crowd rocked you
in her drunk cradle.
you walked by with a glass
and no one else and
a relentless
first sight and I’m swallowed,
staggered,
swollen with ideas of our
first life.
come first light
I will be buried in drool,
wandering around squinting,
tiny eyes and barely a
 move, I watch you pass
 effortlessly
like my continual gap years.
turning to give each other one last glance
over our now bronzed shoulders,
I adjust my strap so you think about skin
 (I’m swimming in it)

 

and that chilly way we do:
show a little set of teeth and move on
in a pool of cool air and unresolved
 disorder, I keep coming back
to the idea
 of meeting
you.

i need that.
like a shark
needs blood.

 

“pool”

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ooh

I am here during the dance of wolves:
pitch black,
some hooded room of knives.
talk of betrayal,
and me blindfolded
without warning.

the past
come slowly dragged:
it’s
weighty and pressured,
almost settled at this depth
in acceptance of its rot,
its forfeit but we are
curious about causes.
so there’s a forced decompression
and chipping sides and
losing even more aesthetic,
a film developing as its
exposed to air
 like a sunken ship
exhumed solely for gawking,
touching, petting for its
tectonic power, I am a compressed rage
expanding into tower,
the tallest feline in the room
and I demand method
and production.
I am big like sun rays,
just as far, true,
 but warm.

my cancer in the 12th.
 my house
guarded by a tiny scorpion
so no one knows how
to step and
what else?
you want to ask to hear
the most assured yes:
this is 6.

not previously numbered.
you are an arithmomaniac
because you count your worth
in things and people and
to hoard both things
you need numbers.
lead a couple lambs
to slaughter.
have him drink directly from
your ceremonial wine glass
left most days hidden.
clear but for the black writing
and polka dots:
“not every witch is
from Salem” and he makes a joke
says because we’re not in
 Salem
and you say,
I’m not from

Salem and you’re halfway
to the spider now.


“6.” or “full moon dinner party in cancer”

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what does all of this
mean to you?
she waves her hand
to no one. 

you say it’s important,
ask me to tell it in
“linear order”
but how can I get away with
things telling stories like
that? and besides,
I have survived time
and cage and aged
in linear order.
my proof
    (flex a ripped tricep)
is endless strength,
brimming veins
that have learned how to
vibrate, hum, cluck,
even whistle when your girl
walks by me       I’m
a snake

through her core
and now all you see is a doe
gored in your forest and
I got to eat the whole orchard
I asked for.
are you lost or
just quiet, just hiding
from the butcher inside
it?
 you know I’m dense,

ice cold, flush with
forked tongue ready to puncture
someone,     i’m lush;
maintaining a sense of
dam and containment
even in my most berating
fits of temper or panic,
I manage to remain
frozen these days
like a cracking lake
you say I am
sharp and

bitter.
but underneath my skin,
that blue-lace casing,
a carnise river:
little tributaries to
the turning of the world
in linear delivery.
and you say
full of rage     and I say
ok, just wait,

you and I are from
the same place
and I start to pace
the block once more. 

III.

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sitting on the edge of the bay
 on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
 an Everclear Slurpee
and some sort of philosophy
about the closing of the day;
 the way it moved
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
everywhere.
the tide crept back
and I heard you cough,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then your hand on my thigh
and then nothing at all. 

pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if  you don’t
repeat the
 story. 

do not repeat the story

“how to be a river”

or

sit in it.

“how to be a lake”


and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it.   for me, I say:
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?

I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.

“warnings”

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I have two constant insatiable needs:
clarity and validation and I
usually get neither.

my only true constant is my suffering;
that is how I relate to others.
my suffering is a secret comfort
because it allows connection.
we only know feelings by comparison;
yours, mine, ours.
this defines humanity–
our perpetual hunger,
our perpetual processing
 about the matter,
our reaching hands,
and the inevitable suffering
 that follows.

 

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Express the value of life
in lines and
daubed charcoal.
Add the girl’s lids and tinted lashes,
fixed eyebrows,
nose,
lace collar under
overblown cloak.
Hair tucked beneath hood,
chin tucked to neck,
subtract her gloom;
then what would she do?
Harder to draw,
harder to draw something
in.
Highlight her cheekbones in rouge.
Add breath to an otherwise
achromatic lover.

Add her troubled partner in the backdrop:
blue-gray with a hint of black at the corners,
small silhouette of a rainstorm
receding over the edge of the horizon.
Add some balance to a ruminating giant.
Find and add
her absent brother.
Subtract her moans.
Erase her nose.
It’s too bull flare.
No one will take her like that.
Thin the clavicle.
Thin the waist.
Add some plum to the lips.
Add a remark.
“This will not do.”

Grab the Hi-Polymer.
Try to capture the gleam
of mistakes on her face:
birthmarks, pencil marks, oil sheen,
eraser flakes,
lines that are furrows or scars or
warrior wrinkles,
ruddy blotches on the thighs,
dry skin on the feet,
swan’s neck,
bucked teeth,
knife marks and a
revised smile.
Never trust a man with an
airbrush and a promise
the clouds whisper. 

She is flawless.
Precise.
Analogized you.
Contrast to your optimism;
your bubble of assurance
that is dominating,
that denies a compact or an inventory
and drawn in shady undertones
to hide complicated desires.
Proof of hidden bruise
shoved deep inside the confines
of gusto and canvass
come to life in the luster of pencil dust
and uncomplicated process,
 stretched wide
for the world to admire.
A deflated mirror.

She still has all her freckles
and you are noticing
a few things
about yourself.

 

“the artist”

 

 

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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.

 

I.

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