poets on wordpress

there you are.

Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration,
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky,
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.

it has been a tough change in seasons:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.

then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand\
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “8th house”

April 21, 2019 0

no bra
and a weak smile,
mildly uncomfortable with
the idea of asking anything
more than how are you?
visible tan lines and big eyes,
hourglass and
a mostly untrained sex appeal,
a mostly stifled violence,
mostly mute when questioned,
always suddenly falling
silent.

how are you?

lost, giving me
directions and
grimacing at the
passing time.

“how guys save me in their phone”

August 31, 2018 0

show me how to be an angel,
sky, I think I’ve been there
before before I found
what my hands can do
when they’re not pressed together
anymore:

bring donuts for the office.
offer silence in embrace,
holding space or advice
if they say help me get through
it with action.
paint houses, mend fences.
pull the nails from my true love’s feet:

I placed them everywhere he
dances and I .
smile openly at strangers,
hold the door and inner weeping.
stop repeating anecdotes that expose the
dark recesses I’m engulfed in so I can
stop
passing this on so I can
save face, space for
longing, mystery, idleness.
it’s the surprise that I can’t take.

I invite them to dinner:
ask them to bring a favorite song,
one dish and
a defect they love.
I like strings and female wailing;
chords that are long, surfeit with
unrequited love.
I want it to sound like a heart that’s starving
for admission but will take it slowly
with a snare drum.
I apologize profusely for how bright my
apartment is these days.
I know you expected something darker,
I say,
but I prefer a blinding scripture to the days I
waded in shade and open constriction.
they understand the situation,
my indifference and malignance.
they offer me some gifts to assuage
me and I waste the night
with demands, scrutiny,
verbal inspection.
show me all the books you love.
recite your favorite lines.
I think the world is crawling with caged geniuses
that got lost along the way;
are you a lonely prodigy or
do you only appear to shine with
mine?
I need to see your insides;
palms up to show
you aren’t hiding anything.
are you the predator or prey?
do you believe in martyrs,
more importantly,
do you believe that the devil vets the saints?
I’m no killer, I promise, but I’m not the easy way.
do you believe in chance?
I once watched my fate unfold across my eyelids:
two parties coming together in black and white,
a future that was possible but someone whispered:
it is better to ruin this thing.
I believe in lessons.
I believe in dormancy.
there is no such thing as a mistake.

they show me teeth, piano, films:
Begotten.
I laugh, I’ve seen it:
I show them the drugs I bought,
my darkest cackle and matching garter.
show them a dozen ways to trample gardens
with a notepad.
do you see how I can write the future?
look, I planted bombs everywhere.
I show them demolition.
I show them scribes can craft the wicked.
I show them altars, smitten
eyes and a tongue that’s wound around
the Earth.
I show them what my insides look like:
wounds and trillion year old dirt and
I light three candles,
wear them like a rope.

have you ever let a thought just pass?
one interrupts as I dangle over his
crown.
let me down.
and I repeat to them what I meant to say
the first time we met to explain the danger
of restriction.

it is nothing,
time a longing
and I wait.

“ricochet”

August 30, 2018 0

keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.

I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow,
still,
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
I wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time, I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.
toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for ful lspring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
still heavy rain.
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers you want
that drizzle then moist
and green, some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies and you take all you can get.
sniff a tulip,
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.

I cough or sneeze
and no make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
I etch his name everywhere it fits;
where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
swallow;
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
(wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.

i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.

“beds”

August 28, 2018 0

last words
hang in the air
like a drunk ellipsis
that doesn’t know how to
let go.

you’re famished: learn to
feed yourself first
eat the savage sadness
you drive with;
your third overdrawn
valediction between you and someone
you never really knew.
swallow your pride,
swallow your words,
eat his fucking heart out.
watch it all nest,
watch it nuzzle in your silk,
flutter in your lining,
incubate and bake
into a thousand tiny worms
squeezing from the casing,
a thousand black balloon
butterflies
are bursting from your lips
and gliding through ice
gusts of wind.

watch them hover,
watch them expand, watch them
land on the cheeks
of all the boys you kissed
hello.
watch them
*pop*
into a thousand
uninvited phrases.
no
run down and cake their
faces like mud tears,
turn to stone,
stay pressed there.
watch them carefully
from your handmade stage.
you can feel the prickle,
their hair stand on end
from here.

watch your men,
girl.
they are starting to talk,
shiver,
watch you with
a closing distance .

“a thousand salutations”

August 28, 2018 0

for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
and insatiable longing,
a crippled twirl pace
around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head
or the sudden broken glass
on the porch
the

knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently,
incubated like their wild brothers
anchoring in the moisture of a soft,
hemorrhaging sarcophagus
before they soar;
destroy their cotton packages
and hatch into thin air.
when the day is finally warm
and facing them, they
tear through the tether
unbridled in
unimpeded exodus
to transform into grand ideas
and take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
scorn; now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home.

and I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,:
what does metamorphosis
feel like? my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
and stretching wide
for me to see, wide
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside; now
black each wing of
bone and
vine.

August 27, 2018 0

all day long
I vacillate between intention
and immediate withdrawal;
between discussion of habits,
intentions, expectations
and
smashing my fist into a
mirror to feel the way
it might when I finally
say something again.

August 27, 2018 0

will you still lick my wounds
if I taste like someone else’s mother?

“the cradle”

August 27, 2018 0

“And you’re still addicted to way back when instead of
coming back to life.”

—Buddy Wakefield

there once was Boulder
and the flatirons draped in
summer sun.

I always had popsicles and
chapstick on hand,
a wet coral lipgloss,
tantrums and suggestive tones
that my brother would make it through,
funerals and weddings and cherry-
stacked Shirley Temples;
a lot of murmurs
from a painful
you declaring your love for me
in the middle of the night in
the middle of my hometown
while I was drunk on my former losses
and no cocktail to hold.
then there was despondent me
taking it all in
with a wilted corsage in my hair

that I wanted to wear the next day
but couldn’t wait
so bought it three days early and

never mind the water
my date called and
without twenty four hours notice,
stood me up.

you stood in.

we attended the wedding the next day;
on the anniversary of our trip across country.
I wore a peach vintage dress and tied a
ribbon in my hair instead of
the dehydrated orchid.
you brought me a headband and a bracelet to match,
said some dulcified things about my progress
and recovery, apologies about my brother
and you hoped my mom would be ok,
a little postcard that said “Ghent”
to remind where I came from
and a note on the back to remind me
where I’ve been.
to your credit,
I never said it,
(mostly self seeking back then)
we had it.

I never appreciated much
until I moved here and was
left in a townhouse on the
edge of Lehigh
and these days,
I appreciate just a little bit of sun
through the mirror of clouds that frowns back
and the retreat of all the workers and corners
to their shelters somewhere barely safe,
a brief meditation on my mattress,
enough money for dinner and
if I’m lucky, a nap
in the middle of the day where I lay
letting the thoughts of us
running to the west and unlocking fingers
to each discover it
in our own way
wash over me
to the sound of
forgive the sudden bird chirps
mostly silent days.

and we had it
so I know it happens.

“liberation”

August 26, 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