Crocheted into a chain stitch to capture the unruly;
I believe the French
translated this to make it more suitable
for movement.

Pins and knitting needles roll up inedible buns;
one, serious and severe
from its top perch—a force worthy of Lucas flicks
in oppositional pairs.

Heated cylinders of ceramic or metal
mold a shock of springs;
bringing bounce where limp boredom
once ruled.  Make it permanent
with foul activation.

Science’s compound approach: application,
timing, rinse.  Every hue known to Eve,
but beware brass;
fading and sprouting needy roots, common downfalls.

Too much of any of these renders
7-10 splits in the end—no
hope to be spared.  Maybe start entirely
over: the bowling ball might be “in” for summer, at best.
At worst, a way to break a six-to-eight week chemical habit—

Habit: nuns have it easy.

Skewer a bleak piece of meat, bruising
rhythmic hips bumped up
against Formica while stirring
slow, marinating salty—still angry
about yesterday and lemons.

It’s morning
and you’re sorry, subtly flavored
savory with a Worcestershire bite.
Nibbling juicy,
like lime flesh lolling open

to peel my onion layers
one by one to the floor;
petaled out until
just the rawness remains.
Teasing taste buds
into taut lines, forgiven rows
rolled over

tongue.  Delicious.
Peppered red and seedy-sore now,
but satisfied
that we won’t forget our manners
at the dinner table.  Folded

tee *** napkins,
folded hands and don’t
touch the silverware.  Yet.

Eat it bare or not at all.
Swallow.  Whole.
Ask for seconds,
maybe thirds
if you’re vulnerable.

And I think
from the throb in your throat,
(a tender, exposed *****)
that you’re stirring to be.

Dim, the stagnant *****-air clears;
thick velvety curtain lifts,
reveals
a not-so-grand
piano, scarred and dilapidated
under a single, cutting beam.

On the bench, the wrung-out crust
of a moth-eaten man
slumps habitually, his spine in a “C”
from the shouldered shackles
of negative meaning.  Void.

He weighs the crackled keys
with weathered fingers; arthritically
knobbled notes float into the open air
hung with single malt fumes,
contained in vacuous walls.
Each hobbled finger-stroke and hammer-fall
morphs
melts
molds into agonizing chords, aching arpeggios.
Audible heaviness.

His oddly-angled fingers
abstain from all accountability
for the throb in his injured melody,
punctuated now and again by a dead note
on that neglect-yellow keyboard.  

Longing plunks minored
on a downbeat, a song woven with
losing the blue of cloudless mornings
in her velvet passions.  The her that’s missing,
that’s gone and packed the dog
and any solace against the pervasive storms

graying his vision, his beard, his hand—
mangled with grief and apologies—his hand
ever grasping for that lost shade
and the irony of intonating the only hue
his notes will ever know.
.

There is no justice on ****-stained floors
which carry the burden of every broken
body-broken-mind-broken-hash-pipe and halo dust
atop a thin mattress soaked with God-knows-what.
Cross our toes and mutter until the next
nurse with the next Thorazine trip in a post-nasal
dripping whine stabs us in the *** again.  (Oh, baby!)
Not allowed to watch the television today
all for flipping off the government cameras
embedded behind the screens
while Barney sings “I Love You, You Love Me”
over and over and over will it ever end?
We know Barney is the Anti-Christ.  And a purple *******.

Let’s pretend to be Batman again, flapping
our hospital gowns and shrieking for no reason.
That needle might seek us out again.
We aren’t getting better days-months-years later
still on every med imaginable and some not even
scientifified yet—or whatever you Docs do
in your spare time.  Roll in money, mix more
chemical compounds that we turn into more defiance
just to get more scientifified dope.  Oops—
Big Bro knows our sullied secret now, but it’s still time for another dose.
Please pass the spoon for—umm—safe keeping.

Sure, rehab works for quitters.  None of the “we” are.
So we sit in group session and talk about Mickey Mouse,
atom bombs, flashback nightmares and melting walls.
Oh, the pretty colors.  Who said LSD wasn’t a beautiful thing?
We say we want to be Mickey Mouse, mousing through dissolving hidey-holes
in bricks of the basement while some ****-freak *******
builds another bomb.  What a nightmare!
Ha, ha: got more Thorazine from that ***** with a beard.
Maybe it’s a moustache, but we can’t tell—too blurry
anymore.  In a minute, she might blink her lips.

Ah, piece and quiet.  Piece of *** while ball-gagged qualifies.
Maybe we can play ping pong tomorrow,
tell more lies for the effect we desire, tap-a-pat-tap
our veins for.  Getting cranky is slow without Speed, but
give us a minute and we can accommodate those mood swings.
Just watch.  No, not the TV because Batman (“The Man”) says so.  Stupid cameras.
We’ll be on that see-saw roller coaster of binge and purge
and pills and withdrawal and manic and depression
and obsessing about the lightbulb blinking in the bathroom
since we know it’s Morse code for something.

Riding highs and lows with every-dose-every-needle-every-body
busted before we ever played ping-pong or swing set steeple chase
to see just who’s the real crazy here—us or “The Man”.
Ten Kool-Aid packages on the guy who invented pills
to “cure” addiction.  Any takers?  We didn’t think so.
Snort the sugar lines and move it along so that we can
have our turn at medical benediction:

to receive the body-of-Christ-in-a-gel-cap across our tongues and rock
side-to-downside in the ******-babble homeostasis chamber
while Doc-the-Man counts his blessing of bills in the collection basket
labeled Incoming and stamped with eagles.  We’ve seen it.

No justice and **** again.  ****** again.  And still, no checkmark on the chart
of getting better.  Maybe Doc and Ratchet-with-******-hair
are close enough to see us for what we are: hopeless/helpless.
But we can play OCD once more if we all hum along.
Why?  We forgot the **** words.  Oh, crap—no,
don’t make us leave.  Doorways are frozen places to ferment in
and it’s awfully hard to keep the candle burning
long enough to make everything right. To fix it all away.

Just for me; that’s all the “we” there ever was.

Sonoran Song


Melt with me in dry rivers
against saguaro lined trails
until night slices in slivers;
fractals of sage and coyote tails

howl against saguaros and Hohokam trails
where a fingernailed eclipse
fractures an image of sage brushed tails
in a rhythmic tune stoked on melodious lips.

A fingernail moon splinters an arid eclipse
as stars and clay erode, fading to dust
circles in hummed tunes on July-desert lips.
Pink-purple fingers stretch across dusk

until the parched night crescendos in slivers
and melts away in me, filling beds and dry rivers
with the stars and burnt clay, eroding to dust
as pink-purple fingers strum out a song in the dusk.

Hands that look sunburned
at first blush
count the silent ticks of a cognitive clock
grasping and releasing in stilted syncopation:
one-two-three-five (must avoid the four)
Did I remember to lock the front door?  Out
of bed—again—freezing feet tumble
down
     into slippers
awaiting the circular inevitability.  Again, again.  

Pad, pad, pad:
light shuffling accompanies the one-two-three-five
pounding in the head; that mind ricocheted with worry—
worry about the front door, the evil intentions of four,
insidious germs and subsequent scrubbing-scrubbing-scrubbing
in bleach and Comet.  Pad,

pad, pad to the front door.
It’s one hundred and thirty four steps, so take a baby-shuffle:
still avoiding the four.
Cold, unyielding brass ****.  Locked.

Deadbolt? Check.  Creeping black.
Chain lock?  Check.  Crawling germs.  Oh, god.

Pad, pad, pad to the kitchen.
Clorox-fume greetings in the sparkling sink
from twenty-three minutes before.  Never twenty-four.
Clorox on the cracked fingers, blistering
out that imperceptible blackness I know it’s there
blackness choking, bleeding in the bleach.

Scrub brushes, pumice, and fingernail files
wear down the nubs where the blackness may hide.
“Shh” the steaming water soothes
as it stings, scalds.  “Shh.”  Burn it all out;
conclusion so comforting.  So predictably round.

This is the last time I can do this tonight.  Pad, pad, pad
back to the bedroom.  Downey quilt beckons in lover tones,
pleading pillows nudge against that head, that infernal head
still panicking amongst the softness:
*Did I remember to lock the front door?

Inspired by “The Swing” by Laurie Lipton*


Alone allows.

I have permission to find out the plight of my Windex bottle,
cramped into a cabinet, cross-legged and scrunched
into a smaller package than I was ever intended to be.
And I can peek out if I want, spit my tongue at the cat
or let slivers of light slice my face.  I can dangle my feet,
pricking with gravitational pull: forward and backward,
high upon a rafter in my bedroom—at least where I used to keep
my bed, now pushed out into the hall
to make room for my ropes and pillows and flight.

A doorbell brings shoes with laces that tangle
and slap me around my ankles; knitting needles
that would surely find an eye socket, and a tea set
with a cracked spout and cold leaves stuck to the bottom
of cups and saucers, round as my words
or the doilies and handkerchief corners—worn to shreds
by the wringing of arthritis and go away.
Please, go away.

Alone allows.