Tag: writers of wordpress

I’m a martyr
so I like my last lines to
linger     chill you;
bring you back here
to finish me.

I’m hanging over your bed at night
 like a decaying canopy
causing some coughs,
some fits of temperature,
a rotten synopsis of my
irrationalization;
my constant adieu in drama and boot heels
clicking further from you.
my lips in the rearview:
red as fresh hell,
soft like fresh pain,
your new lover is plain

wrapped in old sheets where I used to explode,
an improvised painting:
billowing carnality drawn open to reveal
a euphonious home, soldier heart;
sparked and smoldered from the start,
glossy eyes and reaching fingers and I’m
cracking at the edges when I hear
your name.
a broken backbone replete with
your ex lover’s stain,
unnatural twist,
unnatural bow towards your new lover’s
place.

unslept, unkept, unkempt bangs and sweat,
breasts heave, fall, beg for response
and your lips once returned the question mark with a
declaration, a finality,
laconic exclamation mark and charged fuzz
 nesting on my lap.
          can she feel the lake I was for you?
you, a sly river stone, sinking to the the bottom of
the nearest wet bed.
I’m dry now but
slippery like a seraphic harpoon
catching you on good days;
Saturdays in the park watching the clouds rewrite the sky
and her and I’m stuck
 to your dick,
grip you hard and lit like a cosmic albatross
shadowing you nightly.
Sunday night when you’re resting with loss,
American Spirits and a cat who can’t cut it,
I’m hovering     all week
you’re brainstorming ways to save the world at work,
and I’m in your coffee mug.
you’re choking on my suitor’s dried intentions:
guzmenias, spider plants, handful of daisies,
calendula, roses from the uninspired,
whatever I ask for.
watered down apologies, post it notes reminding me
where they will be
(forever haunting beds)
and shrinking cocks recoiling at the sight of such
rehearsed malignance.
I want my parting to be
harder than us:

a seizure in your stomach,
a rift in your lungs
where I used to rest my hands to feel the songs
you had for me
but your honeyed lips too thick with
other people’s crusted blood
 to talk about it;
about us.
a zephyr in your hair that tickles,
sticks to your crown and moans loudly;
the way I sound when I come:
a saint dying at your altar tongue.
a parade on your timeline,
the last firework,
the first thunderstorm,
the first time someone hints at
love
 and the interminable door slams
shut.

me, I’m self effacing only in lines,
only in verse.
humbled by stark correction,
a closed fist perhaps,
a silent light that sets you on fire,
drowning in self,
an ocean as well,
insides rocking
tidal laments that implode in quiet, wild
violence,
stalking the world’s line,
biding mine with letters
and blades      my time;
stifled, I’m waiting
 for that envelope
you promised
reminding me I was
right about time and
space is the price.

“space”

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”

0

the boys I rescued
 and turned to saints;
their features outlined in
filthy thoughts    I

let them touch me with
rinsed fingertips,
watch them take great pleasure
in stroking the arches of my bare feet;
my callouses holding proof
of the miles I have walked
to hug the west.
better than my own docile traces
of lust pressed against them;
my own famished touch
as I dip into my cleft and whimper
because I can’t come big enough.
that sweaty heart of male violence,
male wants,
eroticized guns,
learn the art of being
enthroned in your
sex.
those biceped tongues,
those blue black nights where I fuck to get the
battle out so they don’t
 accidentally drown a garden
they were supposed to love.


other nights I do it hard,
grip the keys and shout sometimes;
let the room fill with copper, lick myself
from the chain,
taste my own
domination;
my submission to myself and
let you understand the dangers of
eroticized pain;
the art of being bled
for your sex.

smudged lip gloss
on their bare cheeks,
hosts
my undoing.
       teach me how to love like war
my persistent
bleating
inner child,
hands out and
crawling to you,
barely fed, swallowed by
red     lonesome and
under you,
next to you,
over you,
overdone,
over the moon

but yet still a shadow
at your nightstand
waning in your rising
sun.

“the martyr”

0

one dangling finger pointing
to her skin to remind you
how she feels
at night;
smooth like soft-shelled
murder.

“the photograph”

 

 

0

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”

 

8.

 

0

i’m draped in wide fluorescent lighting,
slightly mollifying.

I come to myself
and collapse
on top of the thing playing
footstool
before he stretches out his back like a
bored house cat
and licks the cream from an inner thigh.
my unpolished toes curl
in revulsion.

chairs squeak;
someone coughs and adjusts the lights,
I blot my mouth and cheeks with an
 embroidered handkerchief that’s initials
aren’t mine.
find my heels.
pull my blouse over my tender chest,
try not to look in any mirrors
on the way out
and notice the exit sign

shimmering,
 more red
than usual.

“how we meet”

0

I should walk out
big as Venus,
arms uncrossed,
if I was ever honest.

my arms are wrapped
in a purple peacoat and
my hair is curled with an iron to
add ebullience to errands.
suddenly gather every strand with
self importance in
 tiny felt bundles.
that week I had even painted my nails a
 bright color; a conversation starter,
 but I’m
truly as vapid as possible.
            remain as sunny as possible.
insipid and careful,
rip it all out later
privately
as if beauty even matters
when I’m on the floor in tangles
trying to untangle
words I can’t commit to;
making the motions of crying   stopping
to cough politely
to no one in the room.

I listen to AM radio today.
grasp the magnitude of crooners’ legacies,
of death reverberating against each window,
understand how most lives are wasted shirking
the embarrassment of a simple
I love you
when we could have said nothing,
just hugged more or looked at
each other. .
but I put distance between myself  
and those I run to.

i’ve been dying  drying to drown
 myself again
 in three consecutive hours of
smuggled moonshine and
 a quick spin around the block,
no seatbelt,
knees up and the airbag on
climbing that ladder to the sun,
 project my inner warmth all over pedestrians
 in middling dust
and they’ll say

                 oo I feel like I was gently touched.

or locked in a necklace that bruises my clavicle when
I’m not careful
 and I suddenly have to
run from it all.
I want to be fetal in silver and sapphire
grabbing his charred pinky to hold on,
hugging his hard heart and I still can’t call home
 with any urgency and there are
people always seeking me.

storm clouds form on the side-view,
settle and condense.
the glass is  dotted with a thousand tiny reflections
of  survivor’s guilt
anthropomorphized.
this decade feels like elastic chaos,
one overwrought vignette that stretches
continentally and I can’t
get a break and the light rain
 from a gray cloud
can’t flood this whole thing.
did God intend to rip this from my insides
this way?     I hurdle myself
headfirst into a  mirror
in an effort to memorialize
fresh heart all over the closest floor
without a towel or a
polite giggle
or a posed frown.
no monologue or saccharine coat
or any real motive
except it was true:
i wanted teeth too.

lit a cigarette and choked.
take another drag,
i’m composed.
watch the smoke cut designs into the ceiling.
you liked this    don’t forget the feeling
of the first inhale;
the first time you rolled the stick
between your fingers
your thumb smelled like
the kitchen window.

the first time you saw your brother
 smoke behind the garage
and he sneered;
you had spray painted your name into it first.
before you learned to paint the worms,
he taught you how to shake the can.
he taught you how to tag the shed.
he taught you how to lie to dad
about the missing colors.
he taught you how to
curl up into a ball and drift
back into your insides
whenever you hear the rattle
like baby’s teeth
being tossed left to right
inside the
 bottle.

“anniversary”

 

5

I wore black every day
just in case.
the train was fifteen minutes
 late and I was
one month
and counting.

“the accident”

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.

5.

0

 

as if I am even hurting anything;
some embittered tremulous
thing shaking her fist at the
moon and praying for a tidal
wave.

you notice the notch in my veins
before you even notice
 the rain.

“flood”

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑