one time I came to in my kitchen
holding a knife over my wrist and
a phone with an unsent text
to a girlfriend
asking for help,
telling her where I was at.
these things haunt you
when you do the dishes
sometimes.
“squall”
Dear xxx,
I hope you’re happy
soon.
“How to free yourself”
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and the resolve so you’re
palms out begging for it
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
you are God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing yourself and
wrapping lovers in
protection.
what white eyes you have
even in blackness,
even in malice you take
the time to care:
line their wrists in violet,
mugwort, alyssum.
crown them in tourmaline,
rose quartz and apophyllite.
it’s your gift we’re after
hear them clap.
become the madness for
them; deliver asylum and
I love you.
it is always me on the hearth
learning chants and you
tall, wickless and
unburned beside me
so I can’t see unless I
set myself on fire
and you remember the
bind you’re in.
what it’s all about.
I already said:
it’s the titles you should
be looking at.
“this unfolds reversing” or “in pyre”
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”
- Big picture: I don’t belong anywhere.
- Small picture: Buy bed.
January 5, 2014 and we
have arrived in
North Philadelphia.
“hypothymia”
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.
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”
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”
but i’m a martyr for this,
I crave repercussion;
even self-abnegation
needs an audience
or else it’s just plain masochism
lonely and acerbic
without the gentle recompense,
the moist poultice,
the final amends:
the touch of her
sadist’s fingertips
after she laid her.
all cathedrals use pain as payment
and my crucifixion,
while self inflicted,
is just as spilling
brook and baneful.
my bloodletters will wash
the splashes from my feet,
take their time
with each laceration;
stitch
my gashes
into temples.
“Lilith”
daturamoon.com 