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.

Dawn stretches and yawns
in yellow, poking fingers
through vertical blind slats;
into my horizontal eyes.
Startling

like an ice cube slipping down spine,
painful and exhilarating
at the same time and maybe

I’m not ready to shove myself out.
Let me be metamorphic for awhile,

lie back in this brightness
and soak it in; let me radiate
warm throughout the morning,

cheerfully light at noon
and erode to dust in the night
so that it all may cycle again
like moon chasing sun,
serpent slurping tail
or a dog whirling circles in the dirt.

I want to swirl, right here
in comfortable cotton, nighttime
peace and the wreath that early Dawn
weaves into me.  Let me be centered
in the centrifuge: the stone in the storm.

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?

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.

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.

Like poppies blossoming on cinnamon skin,
a scent of liquidity and movement
trickles down, flowing away—a stain
pervades, hiding from the light.

Just a bite through appled flesh
and it all fades milky cold
to glisten against the shadowed
halls without a sound; falling
is not forgiven

nor is it bound in a leathery
tome affixed with flutters
of seraphim and songs
chanted to darkened walls

hollowed: the name of timeless
beauty.  Garnet drains in a pulse
breaking against the grain
within the hourglass and hands
that grasp at forever.

So alone.  And frail with thoughts
of staying that way; every footfall
never finding another stride
to syncopate beside.  Fear

is made of un-belonging, like
a lion’s anguish lolling
through his teeth, predatory sharp
but lamenting for the lamb
and desire and everything

not supposed to be acquired
by the one abandoned by faith.

Professor, I was in the hospital all night
with a morphine drip;
shaking and crying as they
poked and prodded.  Really.

The ambiguous nature of your Philosophy class
makes me dizzy—
so I decided to find the meaning of life in a Starbucks cup,
frothy foam, and the banter of friendship.

Yes, Professor, I realize that I missed out on some key terminology,
not to mention a stimulating lecture
on the importance of faith, but

isn’t faith too personal for these stark walls,
your icy dissection?
I find more meaning in the pews of the local Catholic church
even though I am a devout Protestant.
Plus, the topic of Christ as a battering ram
did come up over my second double latte.

Certainly, Professor, I understand the importance of regular attendance.
I missed out on the chance to participate in colorful discussion—

not to mention how each of my comments is torn ear to ear,
scrutinized, or shunned altogether.
This room becomes larger by the word.
I much prefer this cozy table with its international
creamer choices.

Of course, Professor, I deeply value this class:

*It fulfills the Literacy requirement for what I really want to study.

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.

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.
.

Farewell, Santiago


The waves chortle in ripples; his boat
corks from side to side, slapping the surface
with a bone-bow and starving fingertips:
both have lost their names.  But he
gurgle-speaks to the gull and whispers
ancient lore along the foam-crackled crest.
He’s hooded and hunched,
an old scalawag that never found home
anywhere that didn’t drift like him.
Sand doesn’t speak his language anymore.

But the interwoven arms of corals
can tell stories by the North Star,
times when he was agile and supple;
knee-deep in seaweed and the salt-burbled edge.
The night he slit his palm with a pocket knife
and offered life bounty to the tides
in brotherhood; one drop in,
many drops out over the years

and frayed nets, unfurled ropes.
The redemption of hope glistened in cobalt scales
and weighed at market like poison vials,
polluted inky clouds tarnishing
every coin—hardly worth the bloodletting.
Not anymore.
Dusk fans out orchid and orange blaze;
he yawns a welcome to the mako at last.

Inspired by “The Burning Giraffe” by Salvador Dali*


I am defined by what clutters my drawers:

• Aortic—a tattered matchbook with a phone number I never called
    scrawled to the inside cover as an inscription to everything
    I never wanted.  A half-empty can of butane with a missing
    cap alongside a dollar’s worth of pennies that weight a scrap
    torn from a newspaper tragedy: four killed, faulty smoke
    detectors to blame.

• Ankle—a charred picture, curled in upon itself and kept as a reminder
              of what I could become; a blackened nest as an omen of
  losing all I’ve ever known and an ointment tube, squeezed
  in the middle as a talisman against blistering tempers.

• Thigh—an empty Zippo with a scarred case, dull and pointless; a coiled
             stove element with an ashen haze that could testify that water
doesn’t douse all flames; and an oily fuse, plucked from the top
of my head to serve as a yardstick of minutes, seconds, then
nothing.

• Knee—a fine layer of charcoal dust and half of a briquette from last
            summer’s backyard barbecue when the wind kicked up to spray
red embers into the air like a meteor shower, streaking in bright
sparks and fluttering to shrieks and stop-drop-rolls along dry grass
until the itching ceased and the bubbles formed in small foamy
patches along arms and strapless backs and sun-red cheeks.

May I borrow your wing on the wind;
I’d like a different perspective, a little yesterday,
because the selection I have is too personal.
Earth-bound and clumsy, freedom is feathered
black against cotton and clairvoyance.
To rat-a-tat messages with a Morse code beak
along walls and windows
maybe even a chamber door just to send
paranoid delusions swarming into skies
filled with blue and bruise and sleek glossy
plumes beating the breeze with death
or the life of your choosing.

I long for that and all that comes tapping
in sugary sprinkles lined with silver,
turn eyes overhead at the forecast; no luck,
no rain, no superfluous visions from above
and still, I’m sprawling blind—nested too close
to be rusty at eating seeds or worms
(whichever is easier to swallow)
any suggestion as to the preparation is welcome.
Are you still there, my fire,

still bleating under floorboards
and making me sweat?  Confess all,
that I have murdered a bird, swept
under rug way too many lint ***** to justify
or whatever the crime.  May it haunt me
in pencil shavings or you in hand cramps—
both get curled up in the end
on the last page: you, me
and all that ****** squawking.
  
Can we just start over again, again, again
because I’m just not getting it right.
It looks like French curves swerving
around the Corvus, fan-tailed or not.
Please, help.  Even if it means
pecking my carrion fingers.  Please.
Let me bleed away the pulp
and alight imagination.

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.