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. 

eos

when your eyelashes curl i forget

and then your hazel shoots straight, marble hard, stinging flashes
and pierced by this i forget again and this is understandable

and your hands are fine.

when your fingers slip slim and precise,
practiced, into spaces between night and dawn, places of hush or murmur, 

that golden ring spreads peached air upon
our now dewed, now heavy and i have no memory

and this is a day, again

windows

that sky is icewater white as

            once your hair was above, pulled, pushed, dropping rain
your rain that seethed and balmed.

            i remember our bed

and i burned and froze at afternoon, at night

blankets back to that touch

i slice a new window open and

               efficient heaters blow back against wind's push, 

devious wind's tongues hissing mosaic skin rhythms and

               i am alone in bed. 

and again i freeze and burn at afternoon, at night
blankets back to this touch

given the situation, instructions follow

corrupt, and pruning wonder with disfiguring hands, this pinching.

paroxysms strangling tender cervixes, the
secluded byways of hope, however slim, and

here fertile things possess no promise.
this is a graceless, wide bed of rage.
and with smeared, lipstick-oiled eyes,

know: these kisses are bald blinking.

sheathes open closing, quickly over brown rounds of self pity,
sheathes open closing.  open closing over turned ground, at the turned cosmos

of a robin mid-flight.  this one, the one with clipped wings clipped speech. 
clipped years of gash gardens that, unflossed to your fang and dull-knifed, 

impractical hook, he would not visit.

so:  rest.  in nightshine and upon that spot bleached pillow,

seal the doors seal the windows, and against unchanging ahead,  and
despite fixed behind, fall asleep to invented canticles.  dream.

cold anniversaries

early december
and on and on,  wondering
is it still?

oh yes.  frosty lace, cloudy lingerie
melt and puddle.  bright light, whiteness
drifts, and eyes open beneath,
under the slick shine of the black 
grand piano, the strange

new carpet just as beige as the old
but not as soft
on my knees, my shins.

later my back bleeds.
spine scraping the plastic cream and eyes open,
above are tribal masks from pier one cultures
because it doesn't matter where, or what,
they ornament: like the instrument, the man

masks of seduction, grimace.  but
smile: at the artificial flowers you planted
upon that open grave of last years, decades

early december and on and on
and this is a cold anniversary,
this is an oh yes.

the woman in black

the word bag is mean and
when i am skin and bones

there are times of that

hanging from the ceiling of your mind,

enemy, foreign, i offering coffee as
insult to your sonhood, not taking
traffic circles seriously enough.  these
times i fly side to side anchored to

knowing i am despised and strangers
say hello and call me dear and it's

because they don't know my eyes
without black rings, my mouth colorless

those fists of thought, of words, fists, jabs
from eyes and frustrated sighs and
fake smiles as walking down the sidewalk,

we don't get each other's jokes.

a phrase between us  
   

i bite your beard
you holler and wounded, i look into your eyes and
bite again.  acceso.  this time.  you scream don't   and
i look into your eyes again and wounded    barbarous i
again, bird's eye baby             no blood shows it moves

measured, as i do, pushing, incinerate in common time,
this canon      bite scream bite scream pause.

pause.    (this is the romantic round)

holler more.  work the straps if you want, tongue a riff 
sing your voice across the vertebrae, our octaves, the top
c.   sure, i'll  play it      bite    float you
above, ground hard, coda.    

we are movement in this somewhere