witness

i hear the geese

this morning and the cooing
of something much closer

the neighbor boy

screeches "Reid!  Catch!"

and then wailing

and with this blanket

wrapped around my legs

the sun has finally come up.

sunday risen.

open doors

look, i don't believe in god

so please don't pray for me.

though it makes you feel better
i would rather a cluster

of dandelions just past their

yellow, to wisp my counter top

and in their vase, 

illuminate the wishes i can make.

look, not god,

but the earth and weeds give me faith,  and 

sitting with the autumn leaves falling on

my chest, my heart.  i believe in the

rabid foxes in my back yard, and that

people will love me

like a boa constrictor loves a bunny.

don't pray for me.  just bring me bouquets
of empty spiderwebs and stalks of wild
and unwanted, fistfulls of skeletons,
fistfulls of lived, and
walk with me
through the door half closed,
into the universe.

so simple so intense **after William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
   
you and i
entwined

smiles with dark
eyes

beside the high
bed.

plain and white hindsight

it was joy, us.
beauty:  fragile, evanescent
fulfilling our own
function

(i think of williams' red wheelbarrow

and the drop of rain that glazed it,

and made the base shine, and

lovely.)

now you and i.

our touch: cavernous, small.  furtive
function.  only: feed.
and death, alive

(and i think of williams'

bird that, plain and white,
made the red clear, so
starkly.)

mis-additions

sure in her body, finally confident

in her skills, on her birthday she counts piercings and tattoos,

pounds lost and men tossed,
unhad babies, unhad marriages,

unhad dreams come true.

and fool,

she sums up her life in one word:

rejection.  and cries herself to sleep after

singing aretha at karaoke and winning trivia with bar crawlers,

after betting a blow job and winning.

forgetting she can grow tomatoes

and pull the cart when the oxen fall,
she is solitary, upstanding and finally

faithful after all:
that with her, only love will never come.

at peace & with gratitude

 

true:  the happy ending was each time we met,
and longevity was never a part of things. which I knew
and too,

wanted.  it was not a construct that included promises
though youth was back and hollering

(noise to break the windows, wake the neighbors)

pedestrian, human, obvious,  but it was not ugly,
it was not
unbeautiful. 

The Bed

Yes the bed is empty,

But the eyes are full.

Yes the bed is empty,

And the dream is crazy.

I wish I were the bed,

The dream become reality

I can read in eyes,

Like I read a book.

I can feel feeling,

I have a heart too.

If there is not if,

I will not survive.

If there is not hope,

I will die before my time.

I want to be like a bird,

Who can fly without borders.

I want to be like bees,

Who can test each flower.

If you know what I want,

The mountain will move

I like to dream, I like to hope

Because I want only to live. 

 

(Written by a friend; a gift for me)

a refrain

run with me down field, he said
I'll love you like a doll.
and when it ends, I promise you
I won't even call.

I hate that I can't smell the outdoors of you,
I can't hear you talking in your sleep, or reading
poetry aloud,  or see you shining the flashlight through my house
and I hate not touching you,
your belly,
your face.  and I hate that you intellectualize my grief.  And I hate secrets
and I hate cell phones and hallways and 7-11, I hate the pictures in my mind,
black vans and pupusas and bossa nova and I hate
tenor voices.  I hate that I understand you and all this hate

run with me down field, he said
I'll love you like a doll.
and when it ends, I promise you
I won't even call.

and I hate most of all that you came into my life a hurricane
and ended up rearranging my landscape so that every day I loved living
and you watered my dessicated lawn and then you dissipated,
and only destruction was left behind, and memories of excitement,
violence, and joy, and the something,
unspeakable but something, powerful of us.

run with me down field, he said
I'll love you like a doll.
and when it ends, I promise you
I won't even call.

Longing for Home

For Ali

--------

I don't know what it's like
to be landless because of
war,
to crawl on the ground in starvation,
bypassing the fallen figs
and drawing circles in the dust,
hoping for beetles.

I don't know what it's like
to have my brother turn in to
a little bird, following the buzzards
in their flight to sustenance in the
dead eyes awaiting in other places.

I don't know the ache of walking
in blood mud or the exhaustion of crying
for the old and the never young. I only
know terrible paradise, and the Hell of
not belonging there.

my puerto rican rum, pour

you smooth textured dark.
you nut sweet candy, i
sit back and sip.


this private hold,
pink peppercorns,
you caramel and spice,
start me soft and build


straight up and
rolling in my mouth 
and finish on
this smoky note.

i
drink you.

stilletos and sneakers

hey you in the skin tight skirt

what shoes you wear on your flight

will your blouse open can i reach

hey you with the loose easy smile

what shoes you wear on your flight

will you dance me up and make me

play to the movement of our wings and

come,
play again without regard

you shadow

he combs me with a light touch

soft movement back and forth,

finally pulling with his fist

each hair alives the precise circuit
running electricity

to my
 

make me beautiful

she trims me of that excess
pulls tender, tug away
rapidly clearing pale from pale

each cuticle cut a small jolt through fingers
running hot shock

to my
 

make me beautiful 

she rubs me with salt and oil and i melt and i pay

think of touch, your thumb

jamming in the sole of my foot your mouth 

back where it belongs
 

make me beautiful

Self harm

tiny little pinches
tiny little slice
skinny lines of scarlet and
clinking of the ice.  gin and tonic lull me
sloely sing me off to sleep.
bedtime is so cold now

the darkness is so deep.
blades of razor kiss me
on tender open skin
let me know my heart still beats

without the perfume of you

observation

The grass is knee deep

and it is not grass but

some weed called cow something.  I think I’m supposed to

deal with it.  The ivy beds are overgrowing the stairs,

and the ivy beds are self overgrown with some other vine. 

There are three pots by the front door,

two cracked and containing only dirt,

the third holding beige flakes and a stick

that is a dead Japanese Maple.  Welcome.

From where my left cheek is pressed,

from against the warm wood of the deck,

I have a perfect view with my right eye

of where the private investigators must have sat

all those days and nights, peeking into the windows

with night vision goggles and super-cameras,

assiduously taking notes, or

whatever it is they use and do to spy on lovers. 

Decrepit derelict garden.  You’ve done my curb appeal in,

you know.  This is your fault.  Because now,

on my stomach looking down, I can’t up myself

from the dusty, headed and toed by piles of pinecones

and pine needles and probably spiders,  maybe ticks,

an older, uglier, horizontaler, knowinger, Juliette. 

Between blinks I see

the deer ate the Hostas and who cares.  Now the stalks are stubs. 

Fitting.  And apt too:  slices in the driveway host prickly things,

and I could dig them out, probably.  Or I could dump poison.  

It’s not two months and unwanted still invades.  I am lying here. 

Waiting.   For what. The bee on the back of my knee should just

stop walking around there and sting me.  This impatience with indecisiveness,
impatience with decisions.  Maybe if I’d just close my legs

the pain would change. 

He flew away.

whisper me under your breath

Next I was called mistress.

And I envision maude, playpens, and rude joy.

Rumours of lawbreaking lovemaking, ecstatic and

True.

how boring

sitting across from a direct woman,

who was displaying appropriate shock

and sympathy,  the conversation was vibrant,

helpful.  flowing.  she asked piercing questions

and being open and appreciative,

i was free, and she’d seen it all,

so honestly i replied, to her suggestion,

“must i be a wife?”

and she threw her head back, and

our hour was suddenly up.

we were gods

now old and now forever know

this time was our creation

violent, want.  and

painting with tongues, seeing with skin,

defying definition.  now

reimagine reimagine,  this our repetition,

misted sharp.  and

pray come belly touch, come heat, come sate.

this plea too our creation

unkind need.

nature

my hungry wet hen
what am i supposed to do
i'd like to pet her

***

This haiku was written with a lover. Thank you, lover. 

oops i did it again, she said

i joined you solemnly but

remember a distinct inability to speak above a whisper

those tender vows, which was not privacy as i claimed,

but shame that i already knew

with your belly button penis and

your unbending pedantry

and your posturing as a man

of the world

you were my punishment

for years of ratso fatso

and extramarital activities

and being mostly worried about, anyhow

black sheep don't give a shit if

marriage lasts a lifetime.  the luster

of promises is worn by those deadened

in the luxurious soft walls of unbusted boxes.

sleepless shone and were

now i see you passing

and face empty unbroke,
a corner deep careening,
young moon black and this dark choke.

full sleepless.

and still now i'm kept awake.

alarm me from afar, your
disarming eyes without raze

tinted of a stranger

absent raw unrestrained.

now insomniac remembrance

of night alive day full awake.
when our body punt the scorchlight  
when we lit and then we blazed.

then we shone, and were.

charged

true.  i've wrecked up,

wracked up, i survive regrets:

(starting smoking and
that brief second marriage) but

doing that, of which i am now accused,
isn't one.