mania (august 2013)

I spent my life today

All hundred years of it

Lighting american spirits

Under the rose dusk

Of light pollution,

Rising rising

High in my own smoke dream,

Arcing my fingers deep

Deep

Deep

Into a girl with a lion heart

Taken from the chest

Of my father

The alcoholic. Take me

Heroin fiend

I will forgive

Your emptiness;

I am a ghost too

A feverish woman

Like a burning altar

An ashy memory

Only remembered in the dark

Of an evil thing

This love

Not for you

Not for me

But for this city

That you just exist within,

Lighting white sticks

Of surrender.

Don’t you recall

me

Loving you

Here

Here

Outside the 72^nd street entrance

To central park east,

With this sprinkling

Of cigarette butts

Around your feet. 

My lips touched

One of them

Or ten

I have been in this place

My body heavy

With vodka and pinot

Laughing and coughing

Laughing and coughing

Coughing and manic

Ten fingers in.

I saw god here

I bit the apple here

And knew your soul

Your night heart

Your white powder

That soaked through my lungs

Filling my veins

Blurring

Worlds to infinity

Your soul to firewood

Charring the damp soil

God to Anaheim

Hidden in the tourist shops

Fingering the trinkets. 

It felt like retribution,

Touching your lips, it felt like eden

(it felt like velvet stiff with love).

When you kissed me

For the four thousandth time

A wave washed

All the shame

From the first thousand

Loveless fuckings,

The sting of your body

Pressing me to the cement,

The scratches healing

Just to be ripped open

Again

Again

(again)

Some days

I still watch the dawn

Fill the world

With fog

Until it bursts

Into day—

It feels like you,

Filling me with nicotine

And cherry wine,

My lost body brimming
With smoke. 

cruelty, beauty, truth

I remember the dusk,
gold dust converging,angel girls
with mica smiles, slivers of shine,
with fiberglass tongues,
biting
into my sparrow soul,
leaving small pieces
that itch and sting. 

I remember a pin up woman,
wasteland lover,
smoking cigarettes
in the dark,
bringing me with touch to spill
over sand dunes
and rickety beach homes,
into your landlocked body.
become me
and I will become you. 

alcoholic—
i believe your slurs,
your empty hallowed words. 
your hands shake
like my father’s,
your lips tremble
like mine.

a love poem, august 2013

what I understand of myself
is this:

I learned to never return
to those who swallowed
my innocence
in their darkness, whole. 
and yet I return to you—
sinking in your gray vastness,
your pull of god. 

home of sirens,
you became them,
filling me
with the deepest blue
of the marianas,
crushing me
in the black water
a thousand meters
below the dying reefs,
the dead anemone. 

in summer you drag me
with the heaving breaks of tide
across the broken slipper shells,
cutting my thighs
a hundred tiny times,
and I hold for you nothing
but an enduring, archaic love.

if all I can do
in this life
is end it
within your still-full belly,
I will turn my marrow to cement
and surrender
to you, I will let you pull me
into the dream
that is death.

a first draft of catharsis, september 2013

Under the velveteen dusk

It feels like there are ghosts

Slipping under my petal thin skin

Rising like smoke

Up into my fragile rafters. 

No one knew me then,

My soul held

In mason jars—

My wet back striped

With the dirt of loss. 

I can feel

Arms snake around my waist,

My hollowness—

You cannot hold that,

An emptiness— 

A sliver silvered

By time. 

God told me

He loved you

That you were one

Made to bruise my bones

Under the burning water

That still remains no more holy

Than I was.  

Wind wore away

My crevasses and mountains

Like old sand dunes. 

I dust the earth

Wherever you lie.

And after that summer
I aged like copper,

Filled with want

For the life you took. 

I cannot say the words,

I cannot take a breath

Monstrous enough

To form letters

That make up the past;

Its sounds fill me.

They echo and jump
About me.  

No one knew me then,

My mouth full

Of silences,

My hands wet

With the dew

Of spring pansies. 

But she held me

Her hair smelling of tobacco,

Like I was made of precious stones,

And I let her. 

ss

rose-clouds lead me to you,
your white pear breath
sweeping over my skin,
your american spirit stained
lips, your lexington soul
marred with new york city—
its smoke and its loss.
I think of your pale hands
touching my waist on the second flood balcony,
a cigarette between my teeth,
my red red neck
marked up with you.

we kissed in a champagne haze,
my summer green skirt
scrunched on the cobblestones,
the purity of my white linen
slashed with black dirt-lines.
we rode back to my father
and his lackluster truth
on the first b train we could find,
your head pressing to my stomach—
all life was a fever dream,
mighty and illuminated with neon signs
and hot breath in January nights.
you broke it, my 104 degrees,
your body almost touching mine
in that punk rock paradise with Styrofoam walls. 

apartment 2B

and god, I loved you all my life,
your nike sweetness,
white marble broken,
hookah smoke enveloping
tingled with rose mint.

ineffable soul,
you could never be mine
as I was hopelessly yours,
you venus de milo swaying
in your marlboro cloud.

neptune avenue
shone gold and gray
around us,
your fingers stroking
my thin wrists,
i glow in the waves of your kiss.

you touched me,
cabernet sweet,
on emmons
on coney island,
under the white wooden coasters
where you lulled me to love.

Shame

I touched her electric skin in the tangerine morning,

Fingers of rose-haze coming quietly over the horizon—

I loved her then, before I knew

She was a ghost, needle marks running up

Her arms, black thread sewn over her torturous tendons. 

We staggered around the middlesex fairgrounds

And its flattened grasses, riding the tilt-a-whirl

When we could barely stand—

And I touched her skin in contempt of something,

Of who we were and who I was,

Of the child that was lost,

Taking with it my familial beliefs,   

Of our kitchen covered in shards

From my mother’s throwing plates against the wall,

Of my father’s lost job, his lost law. 

But she took me from all the bad he stood for

And all the falsity he poured forth,

When she kissed my skin

And let me kiss hers, tasting of salt, gardenias,

And victorious nectarines, soft with summer. 

New Mexico

Loving you was like capsizing into december’s cold ocean,

And it was raining, bringing the end through

With a bang and a cliché,

And I remember wondering

If this year would pass so I could forget

The whole thing, our orthodox mistake,

Where we drank black coffee and fought over

Who would get the milk, so the corn flakes were always dry,

And the little house always messy, that house

With the cobalt front door and the clay walls,

Rising up from a long expanse of flat. 

I planted the bluebells there, out in the dust

Hoping they would grow in New Mexico,

I watched the plateaus stay still and grow older,

And I met god in the dream I had for a month straight,

Where the sky turned mauve and bright yellow,

Striped and hailing down pancakes

Like in that children’s book I read to the kids I babysat

When I was sixteen, and they would laugh

When I told them that it was cloudy,

And they would ask about the chance of meatballs. 

Remembering

All that I remember from Apocalypse Now

Is the fire over the gum trees

And the doors singing about the end. 

The Lieutenant screaming

Over the camouflage helicopter’s roar

As Marlon Brando looks at shards of a reflection

In brown ripples, napalm and steel bullets

Taking over a country.

Francis Coppola was narrating the terror

Because my parents couldn’t turn it off

And Coppola told us he was in Manila

Listening to the World Series

On a wind up radio and Michael sheen

Was outside with fake blood

Caked over his body. 

The narration ends in my father’s voice who’s

Singing over Jim Morrison

In a bellowing tenor, because he wants to forget

That he was there too in Cambodia,

Washing the bloody mud off his calves in the sick river. 

Angelbreath a.k.a mania

Lord, lord, you are a fever.
my molly
my cigarettes,
unfiltered
scraping
I do not recall
the dreamland
of death
(that was what it was
not love)
and yet
you left me tearing this chain
from my neck
pressing burning milds
to my lips
carving nail marks
in my palms,
crying out in sleep
to let me go.

Rust (a very first draft)

I used to love her
In her tequila sunset
All ruddy wet blooming
Over our rose bud heaven.
Spilling over the bed
Was her golden hair
Shimmering like a wet pearl.
Below the horizon
I watch her pass person to person
On missed connections
And F train subway cars, but
Past lives defined her, mine,
Lying on my bed
Her back arching
My fingers arching
Arching into her paleness,
Salty and warm.
No one remembers her, meek,
Swimming without ripple
Towards the plastic siding
Of our backyard pool;
My mother cannot remember her name,
Her name so sweet against my tongue
Her name pressing against my throat
Her name clenched against my palm,
I will never let it go.

Glory

My Parisian dream of a woman,

Roses spill from your white coffin.  

Mort ne arrêtera jamais mon amour. 

Slash and Burn, For justin quinn

Before you left I could have sworn

You snapped your calloused fingers

And burst to flame and ember

That rose through the thick air together

To bring on darkness once the ash turned cold.   

Instead of falling into rabbit holes

With no thought of consequence,

I should have painted my apartments

Where I’d have lived alone the same shade of yellow

And spent years watching sunflowers gaze eastward

And apple trees grow heavy in October’s chill

Outside my long French windows. 

But had I wasted all that time in caution,

I would have never seen you coming forth

In your state of disarray

To hand me a half smoked cigarette

And kiss my lips to stain them dark

And murmur your breathy promises

Into the hollow of my collarbone.  

A Last Apology

-->

The moss that grows in the wake of this unwelcome night

Could never blur the memories we have, or the pictures we took.  

Blame cold, blame wonder, blame cautious footsteps in frozen air—

But in the still frost of dark, we all know the war’s at fault. 

The war stood tall to block the sun, commanding in its thorns,   

And broke our bones to shards.  We could not have stopped it. 

And in the years coming, we hope you will forgive us, or forget us,

If forgetting helps the night recede from your stained mind. 

We did not mean for this to happen here.  

All the lies we told took control,  

And the stark white of our clean night was inked with misery. 

We have as much to do to heal, to breathe again. 

Our polluted air is filled to the brim with shards of bone and the salt of tears, as is yours. 

But one day this night will pull its fingers from your matted hair. 

We are sorry they were ever there.    

Marigolds (2012)

All we were, all we could have achieved

In that August Night,

Swaying in the blackness,

Was dead matter, awash

And aglow in the flickering candles

That surrounded us,

Yellow light reaching like the holy star. 

I imagine you as who you were

Then, forever,

Your mud streaked face

And bare feet that sunk into the wet grasses. 

I remember loving you

As we looked over the Housatonic,

The waxing moon turning its still waters

Silver.  I will think of you then

Eternally, for I cannot bear

The old needles breaking your pale skin,

The black thread that wound through you,

Or the cramping as you killed all it was inside you

That I had fallen in love with

In those days.

All my life I saw you as a god,

Your blonde hair rising above you

In the hurricane gusts,

Your laughing at the cosby show

On daytime rerun TV,

And now you’re In Orlando,

Seeing the dragon coaster

From your bedroom window,

And all I know of you is what someone else conveys. 

In the night I think of our evil summer,

Of jose cuerva and white pills,

Lying on your bed in our underwear

Smoking electronic cigarettes,

Wasting whatever love neither of us could afford to give. 

maybe I was drunk

I want
fever dreams
and lucid stars
and green grass stains
on my linen knees.
forgo violence,
lust,
wild silence
breaks open
over our aching heads.
blood streaks
over my body
and on the white cotton
and my pj tees,
knuckles scarred
bloodless
raw
red throat
swollen soul
bee stings
she brings her fingers
to my lips
and pulls apart my heart.

manic (august 2012)

there their star fray of black

and burdened white

red slashes

one

by one

and i am

i am

eloise

plaza baby

with turtle

and nanny

latchkey

nuclear

too warm

for this

i crave

crave

crave

that one last

spider kiss

creeping

up my arms

to my hot

hot neck

Your fingers play roughly with my fringes,
You breathe white wine air
Into life, you pull at my sides,
I unravel into a tumble of string,
Falling gently through your sweet non-life.

In Memoriam, for Bill Mahoney

Where is the soul in rose-gold
In Watch hill, in Bridgewater? 

In you, you are held above

Us all, your daughter mourns,

I loved her

Miss Josephine of Jordan

Swinging with me

In the sunlight,

You calling for us

From the yellow house. 

You cannot die again

Remember that

And that love is the flame

That should burn

Within your sweet life,

Your four poster.

All that you were,

Your millions

And your brilliance

Cannot perish.

Never were you meant to be

A pair of ragged claws;

You do not grow old,

You do not live

With trousers rolled

Or pass along,

Transparent. 

Bill, we remember you

With the dead calm

Of loving someone for now gone. 

Christ of the Incas

Suspended, he follows me

Around the market

With his red eyes.

His palms are bleeding,

Dripping in a numb rhythm to the parched silt.

He is held up by the cross, a bowed body with bare, distended belly,

Streaked with dirt and blood and hungry fingerprints. 

He says nothing. 

I do not know

If he is an offering

Or a warning,

But his circlet of thorns,

Bramble or rose,

Has fallen to the earth

Below the sinew and bone

That hangs, full weight on the cross,

Nailed like a snake to a door. 

Nine Times Over

I

When I die

Whiskey and failure

Know I should have lived

A golden plume.

I have given all my chances,

Blessings,

all my birthday candle wishes

To you, to whom I swore

My life— that one thing,

That one bright swallow

In winter.

II

I’d like to keep this moment in me. 

This wind creeps deep in my bones,

Through my soul

Through my skin,

That porous beige.

All sin has pried my cells

O  p  e  n.

(Feel it, my dead pulse, my edges blurring) 

III

I can’t feel the fingers

That touched you

In the dead spring.

It takes you. (the fledglings

Mock me)

                                                never again

will the wind rush through me

because it is no longer me, how could it be

if you were so intertwined

in the state of my soul.

IV

It’s the shame in the ache

That the pauper

Gave heart over gold.

V

You taught me

In the murky nothingness

I have a feeble somethingness.

You can touch me

(I have a body)

But perhaps you leave with the rest. 

VI

In the end

I will go as well. 

You will be safe still against my breast,

From swirl of eddies

And crag of  slimy death.

VII

Yes

You are the dark at the end

Of my tunnel mind.

Gold plated steel,

You are peeling away,

But you stick to me like you are shiny and new,

Like every ribbon in your hair

Is not only tied to you. 

VIII

Don’t be afraid to die,

How else may you seep

Body and mind

Into a blooming newness?

Imagine to begin

In pale emptiness and

Lack of consciousness. 

When the supernova of my mind

Fizzles out into shorting wire

I will join you in the ground.

IX

Salvage something sweet

For me,

Breathe all dregs of life

Into me

So I may                                 carry

                                                            you

                                                on

Berry Picking

-->

Rain’s been heavy lately, the farmhand drawls. 

We slosh through mud in wellies

Under the crooked apple trees,

Their arms outstretched in snarls,

To find the strawberries we’re picking today

Into our five-pint baskets

We’ll have emptied halfway home

And stained our Toyota pink. 

I could be here alone, maybe, or anywhere else

Where I wouldn’t have to smile and pretend to love

All this “togetherness” my mother’s been forcing

Down our throats since dad left.   

She says we’re trying to be a family

And families pick fruit

And laugh together. 

She laughs and says how much fun

It is to get dirty, here where the trees

Will be apple-ridden soon.  

But no one mentions that we could have spent our time,

Saying empty goodbyes,

And leaving to pursue our separate lives. 

My mother sinks her teeth into the seeded flesh

And grins, her teeth covered in the pink blood

She adores so much.  See?  She says,

Wasn’t that lovely? 

Bad Reasons to Die (March, 2013)

You were a fever dream,

My hot cheek,

Lapping on my waters,

J’adore ton embrasse, et je t’accompagnerai

Into the swallows nest,

The abalone hotel, paradise

In trailers and pink flamingos,

Shining needles in my skin

And your lipstick smeared over

My fat stomach, grown large. 

This is the year of the influenza,

My bitter tongue touching your depths,

My ragged nails digging into the lace

Of your luxurious soul,

Your satin black skin,

Your stench of Budweiser. 

Heil du, heil du,

Tearing apart my pale back,

My erotic sorrow.

Our child cannot wake, our joan,

Her pale body, small in childhood,

Submerged in the claw foot bathtub,

Her gold hair rising around her like a medusa. 

I cannot say her name, I fear

I may awake the God in me that starved to death

From my plastic silverware lies,

My food stamp childhood. 

But no one in my home knows poverty, now,

My golden faucets, my Loubutins,

My sick, sick woman, all sinew, bone,
And soul that
Bleeds into her body,
Her sweet laughter bare
As the blue china plates before her. 

I am charred, my throat raw,

My knuckles scarred,

I remember our making love

On floor-lain mattresses,

And drinking white wine at Josie Woods,

And all those non-confrontational memories well, 

But my swelling stomach in pictures

Makes me retch, I gag at the past,

It is acrid like you,

Her thin blood pours over the eternal whiteness of the bed. 

Alcoholics (February 2013)

My father brought me there, Hastings street,

Manhattan beach, their ornate gold house of emptiness.  

The woman there, her feet cannot touch what mine do,

The grimy tile or the dead frog

Bumping up against the plastic mosaic siding
Of her pool.  She stands sloshing with cognac

And all dregs left of his rotting love-stores.
And his lies, like blue stars, blended to the night

Of my ruin years, smudging the cigarette ends
Buried by the poppies, the shattered ceramic plates

In the trash bin outside, and the glass stuck in my skin
To a hum of black smoke and bloody liquor

Soaking into my skin
A stench of loss.

Long Lake (April 2013)

-->

I fell in love with a ghost, with your

Making love to someone else

And keeping scraps of me in your head,

While I still remember your trembling

Under my sunflower duvet cover,

Warming your hands under flannel,

Brushing dust from my armchair

After long summers on the screened in porch

That hummed with the smell

Of pine needles, old wood, and mothballs

That were hung from the rafters in my old butterfly socks. 

Bridgton, Maine and our Christmas tree farm

Lining the driveway were we sat owl-watching,

Was where I drank from a wine glass

Your waking words, a tonic of rum. 

In this year I would like to return

And touch the hoverings of you still drifting

Around my world war two cot of a bunk bed

And watch my past settle on the still water

And sink just to tangle in the lily pad stems

Where I cannot reach any parts of it,

Out past the loons

That dunk their slick heads

Looking for sunfish in sand nests.