monsters

underbed shaking with heavy breathing
i sit, shaking snakes from my scalp
mirror-smiles, i practice my kissing
with the heavy air
reach beneath the cover to feel
claws of charity

monster, come play with me

comb my medusa hair and turn to sea-stone and gold
when our ragged scales touch, mythical proportions
doled out onto our plates
but we have too many plans to be content to sit and eat

giggle choked growls, and bare my teeth.

i empty my closet of fear
let it fill my souless space
bloodthirsty trouble laid asunder
i sleep still, with a nightmare's caress
the lilt of howls and emptiness
sink your teeth
in my apple-white skin, bloodshot eyes
hungry wolf smile,
be mean
and mean it.

beneath the cork tree
we lace our fingers in the cat's cradle
and hollow-eyed, fixate on scissors
to slice the strings that seperate our values
haunt me no longer.

classwork

my morality hinges on
memories of the
lilt of your plea and the
soft, popping smack of your lips parting
to piece together seductions,
mouths like puzzles.

was i just a poor little feminine void?
my shallowness to be pierced
and swallowed, quiet?

emptied, i felt the future
visions of aproned mothercomforts,
husband suppers to pull with scrub-brush hands
from enslaved oven,
i push my head in it.
you say, "less overdone next time, darling."
oh, spare me, suburbia.

we sipped lemonade in your bed
and cooled our anatomical euphoria
and i knew
one of us was going to have to put on our clothes
and just go.

junes.

the screaming heart torture-love/obsession
of firsts
raw and alive and too young to be taken seriously
love is purest when you're less pure than a child
but the world hasn't blurried you yet
i wish
i could have given you
the butterflied self-concious shyness
but i am now far too old.

i envy my sister
and her blushes over finger brushes
and how one word makes her spin
and feel
beautiful

i miss feeling beautiful

i miss the shivering praise of previously hidden skin
and june wind
and cats pouncing sheets, distracting the
loneliness i felt at all times
that you never once knew.

16, and to think i was so rude a roman
to try and knock caesar
from the throne he'd won on beginner's luck

i've never been marc antony; i was born to kneel.

and i kneel now, to the past
in reverance of it's glossy pain
and write more softly in the comfort
of having something more concrete to
believe in
than the ghost of a muse

but still, how the poetic chaos held me.

my then&now.

i'm all for returning

to those

halcyon rolled-up jeans mornings

mingled breath like dew and tea

flooding my feet while birds walk---why walk when you can fly, you're just teasing now----

with freckled eyes

i want to lick you and let the river lick me,

armchairs in icewater

we are languid and blossoming, can you see this in

a month?

2?

try 7.

the newness these old memories stir up,

butterflies! beneath trees sprouting spring branches

like liquid green puzzles distorted through my finger shading

toestoes, and breathy touching

then

to our lessons, in an hour, asleep at the wheel

penniless

with only sand and bedhead to show for our efforts

our mouths

they were jittered ghosts
and sometimes

i miss the prettiness of that

but the now....the now is love-drenched in sun-colors.
you're my big sur.

isn't it? it isn't.

this is barely a bed, just a temporary trap between whisper-thin walls
where we sleep and fuck and i cry and you snore lightly, unaware
fingers limply draped in lonely posession of what
and when i wake up there's always something missing
so i just bury deeper.

the conversation was too dark for my eyes
i'm just placeholding.

the walks were longer today, the air was static
and love was less than all of that
you carve the kindness out of me until i am hollow
and forget to rip the pages off the calendar
and so the rut is born

we kiss and you say you love me
and i shut my eyes and hold my breath
because to know me is to leave me
and then where would i live?

i nurse the baby and shake the piggy bank
there's only pennies for the future.

a-ha

held so tight
there is no distinction between where your breath becomes mine,
the melting of your body gives me a new human shape
i feel my skin take up space when your warmth hits
proof that i am matter
proof that i exist
even while your consciousness explores sleep,
your body knows i'm yours to keep.

and in your bed of arms, i realize
i don't have to write poems about being
nothing
anymore.

wind chill factor.

i feel the snow that isn't there
the biting destruction of my air

i give up i give up i give up


there is no romance anymore
no candleflowerkisses, brides carried through the door
to be laid across the lace, languid lover


the world is cold
and i'm too old
to ever believe it can be warmed up with
wedded bliss and chick-lit.


i'm not alone but that won't last
my bed is warm but that won't last
my bones are frost, my body masked
latticed shrouds and shadows cast


this weather has left me wanting something i can touch
that is realer than myself

i pop a pill and walk the shower-patterned ground
beneath the pillowed blank expanse, lustrous with twilight
making me--go figure--lustful
and i think to myself, i'd kill for the crash and burn of a cigarette
i'm not safe, i'm not sane, i'm not neutral
i want to be responsible for explosions.

none of these thoughts make sense, i know
and none of them have anything to do with you.

bad weather gives me bad habits.

october

hot in my head, my eyes
are flame-licked jellies wiggling escape
to form an inferno
i click the zip and unpeel my skin
for liquidcool relief
and wander the city streets,
prettiest bones to ever hit pavement


under the lights this may not be normal
but in the dark its a nightmare
skeletal sexyness, begging pleading partying
ribs shaking and breaking
in pursuit of night noise
foreign lanuage shaped whispers to
slip through the skull.


i'm blind but it doesn't stop my mind
from kaleidoscope rattling
off blood and lights and FIREFIREFIREFIRE
i see what isn't there better than the beauties
because i don't have an image to protect

bleached bones, i crawl on home
to shake a brass bed on my own
with convulsions/tremors/epiphanies/too much smoke
and when i woke
up
i found my body neatly pressed
and i buttoned the mouth
and i got dressed
drove to my job, sat at my desk
and that was the blankest i've ever been.

grownups.

i said "i'm a city girl now, i miss the trees that found homes on their own, without city planning approval."
and then i wasted paper by writing it down.

i've become a lot of things lately, a whirling of faux-philosophies and female expectations.
i'm putting down paintbrushes and picking up toys, i could be a mama maybe.

we make big promises and we fall to pieces but right now
right
now
i like to sleep naked and surrender singularity and touch my skin
pregnant with possibilty
and let my fingers be the trees
make up the oxygen i need

i'm self-sufficient for as long as you let me be
so let me be
and bury me in blankets and quilts gathered by my grandmother
meant for a wedding bed

i skipped the wedding and went straight to bed
i felt like i was getting a cold
and anyway, i'd miss the people in love on the television.

but you love me right?
i'll make you playdough cookies and care for teddy and the rest
while you're off in space and saving lives
and we can preserve tradition because
maybe that's all we're worth.

and that's ok.

the haunting.

the pillows are flat and stained and are no comfort today.
last night, i saw your arms, freckle-flecked and willow-wristed,
spun around waists, eyes aloof and denim-washed blue nothings,
and i choked on a history of arms too similar
and oracles emanating the same cool palette
and the same fidgeting strangeness and i had to ask,
why do i jump into bed with falsehoods
and let them strip me bare to nothing,
a pile of cold bones, colder trust?

i pick up yesterday's dress off the carpet,
it was so pretty before it touched the floor
and i find that cloth is hollow, like forever,
and without bodies to fill it it's a flimsy rag
and it's just garbage
i'm so sick of garbage
i have too much in common with piles of trash and morning-after dresses
to ever feel worthy of a
throne, or a hanger,
or a body that doesn't exult in another's, soft snow mountain explorer,
when i shut my eyes or turn to river cabins isolated.


i'm placeholder for the fantastic.


in the end, i'll have no name
i'll just be a former distraction
so why not start now.


i wish our mouths could touch without smudging
but i'm still waiting for you to whisper
that i'm nothing.

choo.

the train is cold today. and where are you? i'm sitting in a corner seat, pudgy-nosed window-smudging to get a view of the advertisement-smattered dark. people hurry in and out of doors, looking down, concrete floors, missteps, nothing to see here, move along. i have a backpack. i pretend its your baby and hold it with respect and indifference. the end of the line isn't really the end, and it'll take more than a loudspeaker to make me move, all olive akimbo arms and nothing better to do.

so i look around.

too many people, blank faces on interchangeable stick figures, or solid american frames with pert piggy faces. i like to stare and be stared at. do they know more about me than i do? maybe. i look around. i wonder who loves. i wonder who has a great love, i wonder who had one, i wonder who never has. what is at home? fold-out trays and crinkled napkins and rabbit-eared football, cacophonous? or pretty thing, ironing, unhappy? no, i shouldn't doubt them all. maybe one, maybe two go home to eternity and wrap themselves up in it and sleep through the night zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs so soft and fingers softer, lillies resting and tracing upper lips, languid blues. i hope so. i know what i've got ain't common, but thank god its mine. i'll keep it.

i squint. its a sunday on the subway, but i'll sit eyeless in neutrality and pass no judgement. being kind is the only thing that matters in the end anyway. i read a book.

talk how i think.

for my new friend, who i think would get along with leonard cohen and certainly gets along with me.

make the world happy inside your head
i promise outside, you've got friends
we have to crack to begin again
taste the light the leaks inside our brains
will you walk with me
in the purity of the breaking?

the bridges buckle under a moon so full
and we can almost taste the bay
it's just a chilled yesterday soup
to drink it might just make us brave
i'll hold your hand
if you just stay

and i'll mold your purpose out of clay.

pas bien.

i am scared when i lay next to you

that when my lids loosen, and i struggle to wakefullness with eyes untrapped

i will see you see me

for me

and you will realize

that fortune cookie was wrong---

i'm not someone special

and

i didn't deserve flowers.

poetry room is upstairs.

for naomi's boy, who loved peter.

bathtubs filled with

bubbles & beat

&indian snippets

are important

as anything else:

the faucet drips jazz

and i am sudsy prose,

letting my mutilated

childtoes play with

white soap beards

forming foaming at the tiled ridges,

liquid santa's

lapping, hidden chins.

candles are lit, yes

romantic shadows smoking on

the water

confettied with

candied ashes of the poems i HATE

or the letters i LOVE

too much to

be

REAL, like this moment is

REAL,

and the smell of wax

on

flesh--filters into my

neurons, digging

dig it?

because let's face it:

the burning

wakes me.

and all the fairy boy-a-sleeping diary entries

make my skin

itch

for

passion that

is that perfectly

animal-crazy.

thank you, allen,

namaste.

black as birds.

so.

blackbirds

sit up on blacker wires binding up communication,

scumbrilliantly twittering english mangled by rapidity

we cannot comprehend,

swooping

dropping roofies in our trailer-trash red cups

i wake up

under hands so flutter-white and lonely

it takes a soft light

a subtle morningcreepiness to cast a shadow and to know

they aren't mine,

books crashed on the floor around me

disrespect lining their spines

and memories in their skins

we're rain damaged

and the birds are nestled dry in their skies and they

gossip and laugh like they're at the market and we're

the village whores

the wall-crashing and mother-catching made me who i was

but its no longer who i am

so shut up, so shut up!

alexander's body is dead across the sea-rocks, salted

and i will attend his funeral, but i will not send flowers

we woke up

elevator-bruised

and brushed with sap

and i tasted more like you and i smelled more like you

than i've ever tasted or smelled like me

and god, i loved you so much

i wished that i could be you.

and the birds sat outside cackling trash-hungry

disagreeing and picking through plastic

and trying to outsound us

but you were dead-set on discovering the new world of my shoulder-blades

so i lay like the indian ocean

and stopped caring about blackbirds///////////////

shut

there's illness rioting within me.
disease spreads its fingers, a violent choke
are my vital signs so vital?

i could've been fooled
and
i was.

the waves of nausea clash with the narcissism
and the drugs don't make it better
the drugs are the sickness, the sickness is the drug

'baby, you're being morbid'
naw, i'm being human
i'm shivering with self-restraint, shivering with the subtle way
you hold your hands
over me
me, an untouchable

WHY THE FUCK WON'T YOU JUST TOUCH ME (?!?!?!)

the deathbed floating hands
they're just favors
they're tie-overs
its a waiting game in the waiting room
and i'm sorry
i'm sorry i'm wasting your time.

i look out the window. i don't see any leaves, come to think of it, i don't remember ever having actually looked for leaves before, but now i am, and there aren't any, and is it winter, is that why? i don't think so. prayer beads block my view. i don't remember leaves, but i especially don't remember praying, what if i had, would there still be a mess on the floor and in my veins and outside my ice-cubed window? shut the book, i'm cold. i'll be even colder to you.

you're just waiting.
tapping.
smoking.
actually, i wish you'd smoke. you just sit there, jittering.
tapping.
waiting.

never crying.
never once crying.

i'm not one of those people your mother would ever want you to cry over
even with my eyes glued shut and no one to love.

shut the book.

dry

mosquito bites line my legs, forming irritating constellations of a summer i do not want. i could wash them off with molasses, catch more flys, my body is a bug zapper? i miss a lot of things. i miss cold war american values, i miss my patriotism, i miss the moments when words made a difference, when sentences pushed through bongos, punct;uation be? fu:c!k(ed). this mango weather reminds me of the last time i treated a boy like a diary, the guts i spilled across his skin and the pens i scratched him with and how the sprinklers and the new semester rinsed it all off him and out of me and i was in a new coma for months that were shaped like millenia, but i crunched through them like carrot sticks and now i barely remember all that malnourishment.

i read once in the newspaper making love is like riding a bike: you never forget
except i never learned?

i used to be a lot of everything. now i sit crossing my bones and shut my nose and pretend i am drowning in an eastern sea, surrounded by flowers, a sacrifice. i pretend i'm religious. i pretend that 2 in the afternoon signifies a march of heroism and not a seat on a pile of underappreciated leather and wire, fingers for clickers and re-runs until the microwave dings.

i pretend i face the same issues as ginsberg and that i'm better at writing about them.

there's a hushing outside and an animal dying and i? i'm concerned with the lack primetime sexual indiscretions. i call the cable company, crawl outside, taste the grass, dizzy, memorializing the time when you were my country and my amendment rights and my buddha and my promise ring and my planet and my god, and the pebbles you kicked in my face and the buzzzzz you didn't answer. cable box puts me on hold. you never answered your god-forsaken phone.

its funny, how i used to like the wasteland. i'm going to plant it full of pansies.

=

HIKING, SOMETIMES

but of course i sleep in mountains,
shadow-tripping through my dreams of
orphans, and only children.

i am one of them.

my skin itches,
a riotous flea-bitten map,
my rosebud tits spilling out
into teacups that
the ragamuffins pull to their
wind-rustled mouths,
ill-bred pinky fingers unraised,
clenched.

my flesh feeds them.

i rock tumble into foreign laps,
being petted: a pet-
my trail-needy nature
electrocuted, fenced, and underfed
until my apathy gives and i am
rewarded
with western conveniences.

i am an amusement for you.

but of course mountains sleep in me,
crumble into pebbles and broken schemes
of whores, and addicts.

i am one of them .

Future Tramping

scribbled after 'camping'. next time, no tent. just arms.

TRAMPING

we could be happy.

of course, fences would have to be

broken into mementoes of

when we were

at odds;

the classic rock station would

fizzle and pop, like cola,

but

it would keep on;

and we'd have to

share our bed with dogs and

our plates with cats

but

we could certainly be happy,

as happy as

America

will allow

two young, jaded kids to----

NO.

you and i will NOT be happy,

not in this

white-collar accumulation of

post-its and crisp linens and

refrigerator magnets:

i'll suffocate

you'll hide

and we'll both end up

sleeping with cadavers of

the other,

necrophilia

branding our marital bedsheets.....

marital bedsheets?

more like a shroud.

steal me, unwedded, in the ocean

halcyon moments of

homelessness

electrifying our human vessels--

the homes we can build! in:

each other,

in caves,

in trees,

in the road--

make happyness

make sound

make a you

make a me

make an idea

that will drive us into

each other's homes

that we'll build beneath

our threadbare clothes.

we could be happy! if:

fences were no obstacle

and we unrolled our sleeping bags

on the alien beach that

some faker "owns"

and made the music

of undulating water and bodies

and were able to share this vision of 'bed'

with the world, so overanalyzed and capitalized---

yes, you and i could be very, very happy.

Listen Benched

at the listen bench, on many seperate occasions, for everyone and everything.

REGARDING TALKS ON TRANSIENCE
the air here is temporary and gives me the shivers;
my breasts, golden goose-bumped buddhas
sleeping under your hands's shadows

the trees wither
often
the gods quiver
often

and my breaths come out cold
alone in the mountain cities we used to go
to

the pillowed sweet pea
softens
the lonely ghost prints
soften---------------

WHERE DID WE GO?!?!

i throw away my shoes
to nestle into my karma
sweep away my eyelids
and forsake diana

i'm a singular
temple
you're an arson in my
temple

the river water shakes--
the Messiah says he's sorry
and re-words my biography
but---

i'm still left with little to believe.

the april light is shining
and you know what i'm finding?
i'm going to die sooner than later, electric with purpose---
no long life for me, years of self-important contentment and a
grave:
forgettable.







REGARDING THE BODY, THE MIRROR

my destination: met.

my spine is RUSTED,
a real coward of an
anatomical tower,
barely balanced,
bending to the most BASIC BREEZES;

spanish moss grows out of my orange-pulp
scalp,
a product of my GENERAL
and SEXUAL
inactivity---

i've survived.

there's nothing for me to give
other than what is to be lost.

virginity
encircles my rotting waist,
INTEMPERATE,
engulfed in new age cloistered loneliness:
1 bowl of rice
3 chants
a day
THEN:
to bed.

i become a WAILING
monastery of
broken fingers
and
severed tongues;
BARREN;
woven blankets cover and dismiss
my spoiled androgyny:

the monks don't even
LOOK AT ME.





REGARDING WHAT IS

the blue babies beat their
weathered wings and CRASH
into the ocean
with all other casualties of
navy and mutiny

the sea anemonae BLOOM,
freaky condolences
adorning liquid tombs:
resting places
of memories,
of kings.

WHO'D HAVE KNOWN
that when i washed out of the womb
i'd live to be
17---
and die then too?

above the coffee table swings a NOOSE,
but i know to finish ME
would be to finish memories of YOU---
so i don't.

i marry a banker
and pull the shades
and fix dinner
and immerse in the NEVER-ENOUGH
and GIVE UP.


REGARDING RELIGION? NO, NOT QUITE

it's a birdcage
swinging in the sick-salty
wind,
aroma of the
DEAD and DYING
flying
through the bars and my fingers
and your mouth
and the uncut grass:

THE BIRD ISN'T SINGING.

it's just staring

and i'm just sitting---
we're a voiceless pair
and i can't share
my smoke-rings with you
because you gave up nicotine years ago,
and found religion---

so i stay quiet.

my messiah lives
in blue-ridge mountain ideas,
swimming
escaping
not on altars,
constructed of
cliche histories and corpses of
believers---

but i still believe you.

so i'll sleep in weeds
and fritter time
shut my mouth
shut my eyes
and wait it out.

When I Wake Up and There is No Ceiling, That is Best.

its all just a big spill.


BUTTERFLY NAPS


i fell asleep
outside in a blue light
sticky watermelon haze of
a tide, rising up to my neck
and smoke snaking out of my
nostrils,
a sickly sweet drowning/waking
drowning/waking, drowning/waking
in which my clothes
slipped off
and were washed away
and i was left to wake/sleep
eat/&/breathe
nothing
except myself, very raw.

in the latticed hammock
my dreams were fevered,
lonely, and bent on aspyhxiation
but i kept my hand close to my eyes
and sweet-talked the phantom of
my summer,
with promises of
conjugal electrocution when
the weather was warm,
and invitations to dinner
in cooler evenings--
"this strawberry punch is
divine!"

and when my lids loosened
and i was aware of the cold
breeze exploring my knees and
filling my skirt like a ringing bell,
i found my body--
a little browner,
a little leaner,
a little less virginal--
and i wrapped my arms around it
and awaited an apology.

but none came.

The China Poems.

Seemingly unrelated. But in my head, they are too similar to say.

I. The New Savanna

this morning, i
executed my new saturday tradition of smoking in the
bathroom and
filling the tub up with
water and soap
and never climbing in,
just flicking my ashes into it
insted of letting them singe
my skin
and i thought of you
and where you might be sleeping
and what you might be thinking
and wondered how you could be capable of either.

my toes curled on the tiles
and i picked at them
with my left hand,
not burdened with a joint,
and the curve of my body shimmered
back in watery reflection,
my nuidty a rubber gold
like a quiet lioness
and i felt the hunger to
hunt you
and feed my cubs
but i just stirred the bubbles and debris
with my toes instead.

my mind is a muddy blur now
so i crack open a window
and taste sun, breeze, earth, smoke, and spit
and then i sit
back on the tiles
and watch them squirm
newly liquid
and i growl at them
asking the room, the floor, the smoke, myself:
why did you stop loving me?
why did i have to make you leave?

i'm a lioness, but i have no pride.


II. Alexander's Hammock

everyday i look up through
the clouds made of canaries
and move as if through laughing gardens
cutting an iris at its knees
and i clasp at the loitering fog
to make their beds into my pillows
and i say a feminine prayer,
will you sleep with me there?
i picked our wedding quilt
off of the cherry tree
sleep with me here
i've played musical flower beds
i promise i'm not scared.

grass bends and buckles
forming playhouses for pygmies
i topple them with my thumbs
and i feed them to the breeze
there's water in the ocean
running through my skin and up the trees into their bellies,
bees mak a hungry buzzing
and i know it's time to eat
graze the picnic blanket with your lashes
and i'll join you at the feed
i'll bake your bread and suckle honey
if you promise not to leave.

there's a forest in your
bedroom
there are forces in my
bedroom
let's make a fort out of our
bedroom
and have spiderweb dreams.

pour your milk and eat your cookies
then come curl up next to me.