January 2012
32 posts
1 tag
The Way I See It
I crack jokes like whips
but, you make me nervous.
So when you’re around,
my lips sputter like a dormant
volcano. Nothing comes out.
I don’t breathe fire. How much
sun does your smile carry, son?
The sky makes your eyes a resting
place. I want to be that stop-over.
I want to be as magnetic. I want to
bring the flames and the water. Maybe I’ll
bring the rain and watch...
1 tag
History Lesson
Your mouth is the perfect landscape
for an atom bomb. I would like to drop
words into that cavity of space that
would make you defy all gravity and
collapse to the ground. How many
ghosts dance above your rubble?
How old are your ruins? I will take
all my massive and all my monolith
and give you a history lesson that
will make you burn all the textbooks
you’ve read before. Reject...
1 tag
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
(titled after John Mayer’s song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32GZ3suxRn4)
The house was burning.
We were in the kitchen dancing.
You covered my eyes to the flames.
Your hands smelled like soil.
I wanted to bury my bones there.
When smoke began to seep through skin,
my lungs began to protest. You kissed my mouth shut.
I felt like an animal caught in a metal trap,
struggling to...
1 tag
A Letter to A Deadbeat Poet, A Satire (#28.2)
I thought you used to write poems.
You used to breathe fire.
The way you would come at me
with words so quick, I didn’t think
those air molecules ever stood a chance.
Your lips against my skin, my neck never
stood a chance. Summertime, you would spend days
in your room. Typing. Cursing. Screaming. Punching the wall.
Your tired hands. Your bruised knuckles.
How many years did you...
1 tag
A Reunion
And why is it that your heart throbs
whenever the name of your first love
is mentioned? Suddenly your chest
is an ocean filled with anchors. Your
knees collapse into the carpet as your
head bows against your palms. There
is beauty in submission. When you stand,
the sun setting across the span of the
window makes you feel like crying.
On the drive home, you turn the radio up
so loud...
1 tag
How to Survive Singlehood on Valentine's Day (or,...
On Valentine’s Day, go buy yourself a bag of chocolate hearts.
Eat each one slowly, suck the chocolate down your throat
until your tongue knows your teeth is sticky with sugar.
Send a letter to DOVE and thank them for the sugarhigh,
‘cause baby, sometimes your heart needs that electric rush.
Relish in your lack of self-consciousness as you walk around
without worrying about what...
1 tag
Spiderwebs
I feel sick today. The barrel of a gun at my head.
Sometimes I wonder if I can be cured of childhood.
There are ghosts that gallop behind me on horseback,
waiting for the hesitation, for the glance back.
I can’t shake them. At night, I count the cobwebs above my head.
I beg the spiders for their company. They ignore my pleas and
keep building webs to catch unsuspecting prey. I watch
...
1 tag
Golden Touch
(After “Don’t Ask Me, Dear, For That First Love Again”-Faiz Ahmad Faiz)
Don’t ask me, dear, for that first love again—
you once left lovebites across my skin
in the shape of states we never traveled to.
You would laugh, “That one looks like Wisconsin,
it looks like a mitten that has been driven over.”
My skin would glow as the sun spilled...
1 tag
Dreamland
Someone died. I killed someone.
The animal could taste fear. Was it mine, or his?
A curved blade weighed down my right hand.
I couldn’t see the blood but I knew it was there.
I pulled the knife across the fur. Howls sliced the air.
My body trembled. I didn’t know what I was doing.
When I woke up, there was no noise. I tried to
step out of myself so that I could see myself. See,
...
1 tag
The Crying Game
Because you cried already yesterday,
today’s deluge of drops shocks your skin.
It isn’t used to being touched so soon by
the same saltwater that it just absorbed.
How to describe the heaviness of emptiness?
There are moments that swallow me completely.
I feel like a ghost everybody can see. It is easy,
going through motions and dividing time into chores.
What’s hard is...
1 tag
sky of solitude
I carry a sky of solitude
beneath my skin. When
the rain falls, my body
absorbs so much water.
I thank God for the baptism,
even though I don’t believe in that,
and even though I haven’t prayed
since my mother’s heart attack.
Sometimes I wish I could confess
to all the words I have said that have
fractured my mother’s heart. I can’t
apologize enough. That...
1 tag
Breaking Down
I carry guilt in my pockets
Like damp soil, it weighs them down.
My fingernails are stained.
You tell me about all the women
you have conquered, the way their
eyes rolled back when you pulled
on their hair, how you would yank
until you saw the blood on their scalps.
You filled their mouths with dirt and
buried them beneath the floorboards.
So coolly you describe to me
their struggle,...
4 tags
Mercy, Kill
I thought I shot you in the neck.
I didn’t expect you to fight so hard,
your throat pushing out screams like children,
your legs convulsing beneath you like ocean.
My hand was shaking as I lowered my gun.
You lay squirming in the dirt, blood shooting
out of you like a fresh slaughter.
It took you a long time to die, and I didn’t have the
heart to kill you twice. The other...
1 tag
The Long and Short of It All
I grin.
I stay grin.
You laugh.
You lots of laughs.
The sun on your lips.
I could kiss that light
for days. For daze,
I dervish. So much
muscle in your mouth.
When you talk, knees buckle.
My love is the weight
of a piano being pulled
through a studio window.
I crash. I beautiful keys.
I wheels on floorboard.
I skyline view. You odes
of ocean. I drop all my
prayers in the valley
...
1 tag
Labyrinth
what shall i love first, your throat and how it holds so much laughter? or your smile that always emerges at the sight of your mother? there is a prism of light within your eyes. i wander for days in the shadows waiting to get lost in the labyrinth of time.
1 tag
Swell
I wonder how long it will take you to realize that I have already left.
The sea swells around statues of sand like it was sucking the marrow from its bones.
Remember when we first moved to this house?
I don’t think we slept for days. My eyes burned with sunrise.
Your skin was flushed with streaks of gold. Every single day,
squalls of seagulls told us how hungry they were. They also
...
1 tag
Lucky Me
This morning I drove
on slicked down roads.
Even though I know
how reckless my hands
are with the wheel and
the daring with which my
foot kisses the accelerator,
I turned radio dials constantly,
drank my coffee whilst looking for birds,
and tailed a car for moving too slowly.
I didn’t get into an accident
even though I drove through
two red lights and a Stop sign
...
1 tag
Before and After
Before his death, the closet was just another room to store things, and your son was yet another prayer on the lips of your heart. After the burial, you walk into the dark room that contained his last breaths and sit down. You ask, why didn’t he speak to me? Why didn’t he know that my doors were always open to him? Until, silence and sobs. You cover the carpet with your entire self,...
1 tag
Elegy
I think about all the time even when I am doing something that’s supposed to occupy my mind. You, you occupy my mind the way soldiers continue to occupy Palestine. At night when you come to me, my body jerks like a dog being electrocuted. My skin quivers like an earthquake. I can hear your voice like winter winds within the throats of my ears. You tell me to let go. I thought I already...
1 tag
Homage
If the sky could dream, the stars would spell out her hunger, her “Forgive me for what you think I am, but cannot be- yours, Blue.” There was a year spent in togetherness. Remember that meadow of memories? We built buildings of beauty that arched brilliantly beneath the trembling twilight. Those curves of your grin, my eyes found the arches of your smile, until the moon would get...
1 tag
Ballistics
Take the bullets but leave the bodies on the white bedsheets that bloom with blood, as if a painting is occuring right before your eyes and the painter is holding a gun instead of a brush.
1 tag
Ghostwriter
Today makes me harbor honesty like a grudge. My heart is throwing down anchors within my body, so much heavy. My laughter is hiding in a pool of wallow. When I looked for my smile, it was idling against the doorway of my past. There are knives jammed beneath every door I try to open. The scratching sound against the floorboards makes me retreat. I like to hide in my head most days. My conscience...
1 tag
If I was the ocean,
I would drown your longing below my body of birds, screaming stars, paralyzed planes, and final prayers. I would parade your confessions on a carousel of constellations. Your mother would accept your apologies and your father would forgive your shortcomings. I would glorify the gorgeous beneath your shouderblades, how much weight you carried there. All those whispers belonging to people whose...
1 tag
revisiting the ruins
“There is no breakthrough without breakdown” -Mindy Nettifee
You try to shake childhood off your body
the way dogs shake their fur after rain.
But your skin is stubborn, and your heart
doesn’t like change, so you remain stuck
in the bed of your seven-year-old self,
hands still trembling over your ears
as your parents sling words like blades.
Downstairs, your mother...
1 tag
Breaking News
The rain tells me to embrace the darkness
as it whips around the car like a duststorm.
When I turn the radio up, the announcer
informs me of an eight car pile-up just one mile down.
I pull over for the screech of the ambulance.
The police cars scream past.
When the medics start to set out flares,
I wonder if God is looking down and admiring the candles.
Drivers and passengers get out...
1 tag
Pushing Back
I cut the moon into quarters, son. I make the sun my shadow, son. Don’t even think about praying. Rain? She’s the first one to fall when I call. She lays it all out, even leaves her neck naked, in case I’m still holding the noose. I make the world my playground. Bullies are my way of saying thanks for all the days I spent skipping school just so I wouldn’t have to eat...
1 tag
What Love Is: A List
a perpetual sunset. slivers of sky that collapse with color within the muscle of your memory. a car cruising down the highway of your mind- windows down, music up, moonlight on blast, dashboard lit, your lover’s face in shadow. the weight of water- what is that you once said? “bring me back to god.” wasn’t the sky of stars i left against your chest enough to make you stay. ...
1 tag
Because
Because it is the anniversary, I wear her necklace against my skin. I try not to look at the clock. I won’t do that countdown, this year will be different. Except, the booming sound between my ears. The howling of my heart. The sobbing in the car. I drive to the grocery store parking lot. I drive past my old high school. I see my tenth grade self smoking by the dumpster. My body aches to...
1 tag
Watch the Sky
smoothe the solar system out. relax with the red giants. collapse constellations into cruise control. let’s slow this time machine to neutral. we’ll stun the stars into stumbling towards the soil beneath our soles. we’ll descend to the center of the earth, and i’ll place your photo on it’s mantle when our body temperature starts to rise, we’ll watch the sky...
1 tag
Opening
She says,”I can’t wait for your opening” and I pause before telling her “In Poetry, it’s called a Reading.” But maybe that’s my problem. So I shut up and stare. Come to my Opening. I will be the one beneath the bright lights with ears that are receptive and a smile that drawls across my cheekbones. Let me remind you of your favorite thing. I will bring you...
1 tag
Everything is Everything
You hide your knives beneath the bed. When the floorboards groan, I hear the blades sharpening their tongues and making splinters. When you talk, I like to watch the way your teeth dance with your gums. Did your smile always hold so much summer spell? When the sun sinks behind the neighbor’s fence, we crawl onto the roof to watch the sky bruise. Like a rotting peach, it leaves colours...
1 tag
Ode to the Cities
Every morning here there is rain. I wake up to weeping windows, thrashing trees, a somber sky. When I leave England, it is chilly but thankfully, there is no rain. The plane takes off and I find myself staring for hours at the masses of land and water lying open beneath the plane’s belly. I wander and wonder and forget to eat the food at my fingers. Without leaving my seat I find myself...
