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

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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)

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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.