Good Reads - No Extreme Content

 
In this room the verbs slide under my
tongue, warm and slippery as icing.
My ache burns blacker the later
it gets. Grows so dark you can’t even imagine
what you knew of light. I wait for you
softly among the bones, in the pale glow
of riptides and sewing machines. Even
the lightning scars across the sky like
the fissures in my wrists. I sleep soundly
in the lake when the dreams go bad,
anything to block out the drowning,
the faces in the trees. I dreamed the moon
was a boat ferrying people to the edge
of the river. How they walked like drones
into the relative safety of my mouth.
But the clocks moaned on poles stuck inside
the earth and I screamed aloud with hunger.
Before the altar of the stove I was dancing
and demonized on the linoleum.
Yearning for your reflection in the
tea kettle, the champagne glasses,
the horrible white of the toaster.
Yearning for you behind me as I scoured
all the pots. You know how to love me,
bring me cake and leave me for days.
Our bodies twined together making
a terrible arch, a howling sort of church.
Dish soap bloating my skin and making me
smell of lemons, of dark wells
and too much wanting. How it drips
from me yet collects back into the
cage of my heart to sing.
I am always one step ahead of the dark.
The lonesome structure of my legs opened wide.

 
I'm not looking for a husband,  
but, out here on the island  
where there's a castaway's view,  
I can tell who might have  
camped the volcano with me  
to discuss the diaphanous  
beauty of secrets  
and the door left open  
to an abandoned excavation  
too succulent to pass.  
Enter here, secret:  
All you need is less.    
   
Discontentment is a door;    
wanting to laugh hard  
with someone who knows you  
without knowing you    
is also a door.    
But, I'm into entire rooms  
of star where I keep knocking  
around God's furniture    
on this planet called earth,  
forbidding myself to wander    
too close to any real poem  
I could write for fear  
of being discovered.  
   
There's a graveyard full    
of my poems; I visit    
and offer condolences    
to aborted words    
conceived in desire.    
Reflect on the parts    
of me that remain sturdy    
and faithfully married    
to the human side    
of Life. A woman    
without continents  
or coyotes scratching    
the distance  
between civilization    
and happiness;  
suburbs with Subaru's    
in the drive, homes safe    
in the 3:00 P.M. light  
living methodically.    
   
Every man and woman    
needs to decode messages    
from their god to make sure    
their dark side wasn't passed    
up for an early sleep    
with a husband or wife    
they wanted but could not Love.  
   
Loyalty to the colony    
of strays that live    
within the paintings    
and poetry of an unknown    
language few decipher,    
black compositions    
of starry lyrics    
and risen Lazarus    
are true reflections    
of the species    
and belief that I    
am constantly    
mapping a course    
of time through    
by existing simply.    
   
This altered DNA  
immortally coiled in flesh  
is something that one day  
soon I will remember  
having helped knit.  
Until then...  
A new shipment of hope  
arrived today. God sent me  
spirit guides to keep my Angels    
company through the wait;    
the long haul of packing    
all I've known for the move:    
a white wolf and horse,    
a snowy owl in case    
I choose an alternate route  
and bareback it out  
through the canyon.    
   
I'm not looking for a husband;  
I left that sixteen years ago.  
But, out here on the island  
where there's a castaway's view,  
I can tell who would have    
camped the volcano with me,  
discussed the preservation  
of a simple and secluded    
togetherness without any    
pomp and circumstance  
too succulent to let pass.  
   
Enter here, secret:    
All you need is less.  
Isolation is the core  
of my soul's blueprint...  
~

6.
My brother believes
in reincarnation
as history repeats itself,

or at least that's what he slurred
on the anti-psychotics that made him
sweat.




5.
One little man didn't know
there existed a continent
between him and a spice trade,
so the world got bigger: or at least
that's how I imagined it,
coloring brown smiling Indians
dining with prim little pilgrims
in kindergarten.

By second grade I knew
Native Americans died of diseases like small pox,
pictures in the textbook of sad weathered faces
wrapped in government-issued blankets,
but it wasn't until I read a book about a teenager
from Spokane who lived on a reservation
that I asked: Was this the greatest country
ever?

Those blankets became sinister,
and by sixth grade I was suspended
for saying genocide.





4.
In college,
they told me I was right but
the debt already had me.





3.
Do you think of entropy?

The empath and the narcissist in an eternal battle
for the human spirit. Neither wins,
only greed, only chaos,
only the idea of power itself. I can see Marie Antoinette
in Hillary's shoes, a lord named Bush
hoarding rations before the Celtic tribes
start another war and

Tesla
standing in Times Square crying
because women still wear pearls,
though he might be right about the future,

at least in some small way. At least
when he said bees are the most efficient
species because they understand
that a system only works
if everyone's the same,

and even they're dying.




2.
But pandas are my least favorite. They remind me
that choices not made can drive you
to extinction,

that the adaption is only survival
if you remain fluid.

The definition of excess:
trying to save an animal
that doesn't want to fuck
because we like
to look at it.



1.
My mind is a web:
thoughts light in a set
without coherence until they pass,
one for one,
through my brain,
from my hands or mouth. I wonder
if I remember being a star or if
someday my matter will build
a society,

what if my thoughts are thought again?

We're all changing.
To varying degrees but once I talked
all my friends into tripping on 2CB
and going trick-or-treating
and they tell the story to everyone.
They say I'm the smartest,
dumbest person they've met in their lives. They think
I'm gonna do something big
but I can feel my energy:

and it will spark,
and it will fade,
and I won't be remembered but,



0.
When my brother came down he told me all about how he saw
people from inside: and I looked like
a hole,

"Don't let anyone fall in you."

Reveries from a jerry can
Eating skittles and gazing at the stars
and throwing rocks at cars

… vision quest …

I'd write you a song about it
but I only know three chords
And I'd  get bored

Drop some blue jolly ranchers
in a fifth of gin
And let the fun begin

Is that a cat in a hat
or just a tortoise in a shell
I can't tell

Telling dirty jokes
and smoking crystal meth
Fumes on your breath

Back the fuck off
I saw what you did, there
for that Klondike bar
Get off my porch
You disgust me

 Never, Ever
  trust a poet
  who cant get pussy.
 
  were not the dried skins of animals
      pulled tight over hallowed wood,
      and prodded until,
           the rhythm found,
           made the women dance?

yes,
  what other genesis
  is necessary
    once the women dance.

every syllable studied,
   and placed exactly,
      conjures nothing
          no nothing at all,
   if not excited to spiral
       that sleeping serpent
           coiled at spine,
       that once sprung,
   makes the women dance.

before and after,
    the dichotomy,
    and the prudence
       disguised as intellect
    and the weights
    and measurements,
       of anthropology,
    will remain,
    that first moment
       in which
       the women danced.