carried with her
a weapon: her keys in hand,
a disarming speech pattern
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.
I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
someone else’s house.
(how do you get away with that?)
I just never finish the story,
she said and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
glistening in her iris.
“How guys save me in their phone #12”
good profile.
have never seen her hair
she was
wearing a platinum blonde wig
when I met her and
then a brown one and then
a head scarf,
floral, purple, I
remember.
bangs peeking out but
the rest an
all black everything
including dress,
boots and nails,
eyes lined like soot
tracing the chimney top,
and she was a
studious observer,
a witch.
told me she “burned a sigil”
for this and then she
licked her lips
(think about me)
touched her nails to her tongue
(listen to me)
ran her wet nails down
her neck
(wait for me)
and I’ve just been waiting.
“How guys save me in their phone #11”
nice figure and
sharp glances.
obsessed with her wrinkles when
passing window.
thirty three years old and can’t seem to
thwart her own self persecution.
but an alpha.
told me to sit down on the bed.
told me to lay face down on the bed.
told me to consent.
said she liked ass play
and pegging and
doing things in pieces.
“how guys save me in their phone #10”
the first thing I showed him was the callous
here look
and he licked it with his tongue
without questioning my need to
grip things so tightly
I’ve succumb to carpal tunnel,
arthritis, delusions of
grandeur and infancy.
“has anyone ever talked to you about splitting?”
is what the doctor said to me once
after observing me mumbling to myself
in my room.
sometimes i like to shoplift.
“Who is Catarina?”
sometimes I like to fuck the men with wives.
“Catarina is the girl who does bad things. I am Sarah. I am the good girl who does good things.”
sometimes I like to hunt.
“splitting is a phenomenon in which you sort of leave your body to allow another persona to take over.”
sometimes I like to punish bad boys.
“like possession?”
sometimes I like to peek at Christmas presents.
“no, more like split personality.”
sometimes I watch the mirror dance in candlelight
and wait for her to come
I break men
like the swell that rises over bridges
engulfing islands with her mouth,
I break men with turns of
tides.
“the journal”
it’s Friday and we are
processing hard truths
before we seek the auspiciousness
of everything; before we rest,
pay altar on Sunday
like
:
sometimes some things
just aren’t meant for you.
it’s true, the blur,
life is rushing and swamps
with it’s shades of
blue; azure
(you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you,
every feeling to decide
what to bathe your magic
tips in tonight.
with or without your
undivided presence,
your inquisitive fantasy,
the moon moves.
time heals all those
unsewn wounds and you embrace
things now with reticence,
but you’re open to the aphorism,
to the temperance,
to the tombstone epitaph
you made him carve across
your eyelids that night
on Jupiter:
I remember everything.
everything you grow to love,
you lose.
“xxx”
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.
rainstorm.
unscheduled and I had been
comfortable in shifting drought.
avoiding the wasps
hidden in the grass
with my clumsy, calloused toes
seasoned from walking too far
and too hard in unpadded sandals
when the first sign of spring hits,
and my sky blue sundress seems a
sudden hindrance:
flimsy, strap always falling down and
blows up in breezes
so I have to keep watching the way I
carry myself around men.
I crouch and the hem crawls to
expose my left thigh and the
garter you gave me:
not the daisies I wanted,
a ring of bruises
in the shape of your open mouth
still fresh with conquest;
lasting impact of
your parting breath that
said nothing and now
just hangs there and hurts
when I shower.
wait
I’m counting cicada shells
under the picnic table;
a gesture of presence.
someone told me to stop everything
and I needed a year to pass.
I scrubbed away the last of your fingernail
but I have to ride those
bite marks out.
blinked once and a ripple in the sky
burst; liberated and aimless,
she shows just one day’s worth
of self-containment uncondensed,
without tension, falling naked
she’s black and soft and
seamless surfeit with mild
violence, crackling and
completely cageless.
my feet are covered in mud
before I even notice the shadow
wash over my bangs.
wait.
drenched in flood my head
is dark red because you liked
“subtlety”
and I liked demonstrative movement;
a hint of auburn wasn’t enough to show
blood with just a little bush
so I adorn myself with ritual:
hair dye and cleanses,
little thorns,
little kills to draw your
attention. my knees hurt and
all those cicadas are dead
so I stand to lift my face to the thunder;
a small gesture of inflorescence.
Wait.
open my arms purposefully
like petals of a rose exhaling
in relief for the drink
her master brings.
parched from the work my dry words had done
undoing
as they roamed free all over
your front yard.
God makes pacts with penitents
and you barely have a face that isn’t
my reflection so I’m itching to be clean and
fresh and start
again.
stretch my neck with pride to
to catch her drops on tongue,
bold with my repentance
and ready to wash away
the phantom jaws that bait me.
but suddenly charged,
the gray sky remembered
she held lightning.
and suddenly illuminated,
I remembered
I am
the dark thing
inside of me.
“prayer”
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”
* i am inviolable. (done)
*how to be a goddess: write it.
*how to be a warrior: continue on with life (editing).
*how to be a secret: write it.
*be a maze: write it.
*be a question mark: write it.
* become a smile.
“Pallas in Gemini” or “Using Charts”
daturamoon.com 