Worryspit
I’m not your antique mother
I’m no New York southern bell
and I don’t dance any cajun rhythm
I’m not your shadow sister
or any kind of sickening unpopped blood blister,
pain-in-your-foot,
or wrinkle in your eyelid
I’m not some crow’s foot
evaporated into yellow mist
and I won’t enlist in your navy,
the discipline ain’t my bag
I don’t make your breasts sag
and you’re no kind of ball gag,
lover,
we don’t belong in any magazine
I’ll die when I want
and there is nothing
you can say that changes my body
Nni of the Dinosaurs
What do you call yourself?
I call myself a prophet for love
and I’d love to tell your future;
you’re future’s looking bright, my love.
Where were you last night, my dear?
Cuddled up with a blanket,
covered up with a basket of wicker?
Your fear’s growing thicker and thicker
and I swear it’s smeared on your shirt
You just can’t see it and you probably never will
but it matches the holes in your jeans,
and I don’t mean to frighten
but you look frail and I just want to comfort
You can’t avoid me forever
Who sews the patches to your jacket,
and when they prick your skin
do you just laugh it off,
pretend like your back is a map?
Your spine is a mountain range,
your rib cage a passing phase
like the earth’s getting better
and your body’s the universe
your body’s the universe
your body’s the universe
In a past life I ran with dinosaurs
I carried a spear and some water,
but I’d never seen anything
like the fire I discovered
in your hair and in your teeth,
and underneath your fingernails
were more wonders unfound,
more songs without sound,
more sinister snowflakes
bouncing off the ground
And I never found a rex like you,
never could connect with you,
never went neck and neck with you
And our eyes never met,
and our feet never got wet
And still they were fettered
but I’ve never felt better and better
and I won’t let you get away so easy.
A Grey-Skied Autumn Viewed Through a Pale-Blue Lens
Autumn is the time to accessorize.
It’s the time for scarves
and sweaters
and cute smiles
and warm hands to hold.
It’s the hunt for pelt
to cover you in the wintertime
and make you feel less alone, while
the dead leaves and stray snow flakes fall around you;
while the trees and rain leave you
stranded in the cold.
Autumn looks lovely in the city
while you and a lover stroll down the walk-way,
holding hands and drinking coffee
and commenting on how cute
or how darling
the autumn-couples look together.
Autumn looks lovely in the country
while you both sit on your porch
with a dog at your feet
and a swing in your tree;
the one in your front yard.
Autumn is the preparatory season
in which you gather your rations
and a significant other
to tide you over ’till the sun comes up
and reaches down
to hold your hand again.
A Brief Nostalgia, or a Silent Mourning
and the scent of stale cigarette smoke
that brought me back to that old building.
I guess it was the books
and this old jacket
and departed love
and this music that brought me back there;
to the place that hides my youth
behind red walls now painted blue.
And I guess it was the paint on my clothes,
mostly fluorescent pink,
and the fact that Aisha still never remembers me.
I guess it was Ambre last night
and Eric today
and sadness all over
that reminds me
how nothing ever lasts
and nothing really gets better.
Dreaming 9/23
A thin vase, or perhaps an urn,
you draped yourself accross your bed,
likewise to a fire consuming my sight.
You bore your fangs in that smile
you smile when our energies align,
and so I touched your leg.
The denim felt like silk
only because it touched your skin.
You skin must feel like home,
I thought.
You grabbed my collar and I floated
closer toward you, toward your freckles,
toward your fangs.
Your nails tore my shirt and the rest
fell to pieces in the air,
shreds floating, surrounding us like
delicate stars.
Suddenly they combusted, flaming
as real stars do,
and they disappeared
as real stars could.
Your muscles barely twitched as you pulled me down.
You laid me at your breast,
cradled me there,
kept me like the lovers we aren’t.
Your fingers and nails
fluffed my hair and
grazed my scalp.
There was nothing like the way
your body felt on mine;
I found privilage in the spaces
where your exposed skin touched my cheek.
Almost without notice,
but with sleight and determination,
your unoccupied hand cupped the nap
of my neck and slithered down
an inch or so.
At once your nails pierced my flesh,
and your fingers slid through,
and soon your entire hand.
You crept your claws down my spine,
separating my muscle,
groping
each
individual
vertebrae.
You teased me with a smile,
weaving the nerves betwixt your joints
so that they grazed the webbing in your hand,
just barely.
But I did not cry out in pain, oh no,
I merely smiled
and shooked and shivered
and rested upon your breast,
becoming one with you,
my graceful urn-girl.
Untitled #5
I took a baseball bat
to every god damned car
in Kalamazoo. I screamed,
“This is for the revolution!
“This is for the revolution!”
But I know in my heart,
or the back of my mind,
that there will be no revolution–
just tiny fits of rage,
spasms of insight,
small deluges of inspiration.
But when the windshields break,
I scatter the glass like seeds, sewn to grow
ice sculptures and love,
and giant towers that will loom
above our heads.
The latter are unhelpful
weeds.
So I root them out,
not with a spade, but
a molotov coctail.
Untitled #4
It happened today
I worked up the guts
finally.
In the flash before
I closed my eyes I noticed
the lights stretching like the worn
out mothers, cradling their children
close to their breasts, screaming
at the scene of my arrival;
stretching like the tears
coating their red cheeks.
In the dark I could hear
the shrieking industrial demons,
spouting their mating calls and
berating my interuption.
I disturbed their ritual dancing.
They were halted.
I heard men sing to their gods,
into their phones,
into the air.
They asked how
and why and where
and I think they could have saved my soul,
realizing its mortality.
In the din I could feel
stone on my skin, rust
staining my rags, my
thin riches draining through
the rip in my scalp.
My heart palpitated, my lungs
all but deflated,
and far after it was far too late
to apologize for permanant damages
I smiled.
Sprawled out and tracks running
down my arms, my spine
I stared at myself.
I stared in myself.
And as a closing thought,
final words, only they were images,
I imagined myself there,
dead-center of the Cork street intersection,
Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Untitled #3
They swept in, dust
clots, menacing, maniacal.
You, she, I,
we stood in line and held
eachother’s arms, and
the creature’s breath brushed
our folicles–
outlined the muscles in our stomachs.
Their eyes flashed wicked
and ours glossed over,
fearful perhaps.
The monsters loomed above
and b e l l o w e d and wailed
and the breath turned
from sexual,
sultry, to
demolishing, but we stood.
together.
And as the first tear ran down my face
such did the rain coat my skin.
And we were victorious.
Upside down. 