Monday, December 28, 2009

A hood of vapor sipping wine

Pause at this ledge, clutching white entrails,
cursing brother back in a womb, who comes
through so much delay to locate me,
sitting at luxurious table with legs crossed
like awful scissors, to pound the earth in its mercy
between ribs, to let him in through root, stone,

to pause at this ledge with his pulse in my hand
discovering the outerside of outside-ways.

To pause in his frame, with my person, an owl
overlooking our efforts from a fork
in married pines. To pause
in his person with my frame, encountering
only the hot faint edge of him,

past sand, far past root, past stone,
into the volcanic sacs with hands
like white grapes, paused at the ledge
of his demon neon, clutching a veiny wig,
from the center of that beautiful humanoid,
watching the owls of all and subtlest colors
digest.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

BLACK MAILBAG TUESDAY

You boil a lobster
as quickly as possible,
red & black miniskirt,
knife to its neck-hinge,
body-claws sunk
in the hard water,
legs lovely
as an ice-creamed
vanilla swirl.
You smile unsteady.
I'm going down to the subway
with a flamethrower.
Take the thick bands
from the largest pinchers;
melt the butter, let red & black
melt onto floor, pole-eyed dead
armor-clink onto plate.
I'm going down to the subway
with a trashbag full of band-aids.

You put your name into the machine.
The machine puts its name into you.
You remove your favorite shoes.
You will never remove this not-you
that is a section of the first & final you.
Step off the smaller weight-scale,
onto the runway larger.
This is as close as we can get a system
to collapsing outward into infinity.
I'm going down to the subway
with a grenade launcher
full of burnt red roses.
You put your not-life back into nature.
Nature puts its not-death into
you. You're alive & can't be.
I'm going down to the neon subway
in my grey-soaked underwear.

You pour the steaming water from silver
on the dry blossoms, and they expand
in the time it takes to give you a long
dragging kiss against the cutting board.
I'm going down to the subway station
with a laughing flame-thrower.
Time passing will never feel
this way again. Images will never hit
so soft & plain, but will hit harder.
The long wooden spoon
moves a sausage in butter; a bluejay
perches on a flowered sill beside
the channeling sink. I'm going down
to the subway with my bluest clothes on
grass-fire.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

JUNA

That woman, she's in pain in her floppy
headscarf, she's carrying it for us all.

That woman I will know before my birth,
always staring at me through a bloody beak,
always waiting for a wordless answer
to come in words.

That poor mail-carrier. That output of harmless
weapons upon the world. Her perfect inability
to understand a single newspaper headline.

When younger she wore leather dresses,
swore constantly at the money-changers,
she wore a hemline far above her hemline
whenever she was young. Always
at the end of the night eyes
muffled in a hot washcloth, never
to stare again above the sink.

She changed form as an old butterfly;
she turned herself
into a far white solar system,
into a swallowed sextoy,
into a green wasp,
into an array
of imagined hells, into the sound
of ten thousand ants clamoring
in a yellow apple, and the saints uncaptured,
far behind the stainglass,
jellyfished on bare rock, using their suicide methods.

Oh, Juna, February will see
insaner you, left conversationless at last
for me, perched around the corner
from my bitter wine and bitterest coffee.