Greed! Greed! Greed!

The hammer cracks down his back
like a gavel. Spilling his metal guts-
shrapnel of silvery money
lighting up a boy's face
with consumerist gluttony.

At dream's end he is made whole again.
Returning in one piece on the straw floor.

The day is made
to fatten to grunt to situate the mud
with this drooling nose.
These devilish feet propping
my pink-tumored body,
my poor head, it thinks
and thinks and thinks...

What incantations
at midnight
will rise above
my sizzling blood,
churning in a witch’s mix-
a cauldron full-up
with animal carcasses?
With severed eyes and tongues
to curse and rot the world?

It is no more comforting
appearing in the morning,
crackling in a pan!
The corpulent preacher
muttering the Lord's Prayer
over my greasy, meaty slivers.
Brewing me
in stomach acids
alongside eggs, and a cup of orange juice.

These eulogies will not do.

What of my ancestors?
When demons stole their shape,
herding them towards a cliff?

What of the powdered whore,
who's cheeks appear with the pinks
behind my jeweled nose ring?

What are these pearls doing here?
Are they food?
Am I to snort them?

I already feel cultish.
When they picture just my face,
I feel it impaled upon their imaginations.

Wings-
the mocking things.
Behold!
Me leading the flock
on the air of the impossible,
migrating lies around mens' heads!

Why do I not possess the lullaby of sheep?

There there.
There there now pig.
For here you are,
On a chaise longue-
the poet's song.
Let your heavy head rest,
Remembering:

        A woman pours love, sweeter than perfume,
        on the feet of her son.
        The smallest of his holy toes bring him the most joy,
        all the way home.

For My Sister

Doll face, what does it matter
if you're ugly as hell?
If you’re short or you’re fat
Or your face is full of pimples?
Why the hell should it matter?

Sweetness, who gives a damn
If you tie your laces upside down?
And your left hand smudges the words on the page?
If you break down crying at the sight of rotting road kill?
Who is anyone to laugh at you?
Who is anyone to tell you who you are?

I am sick and tired of seeing your red-rimmed eyes
I am sick and tired of seeing what they do to you
I hate to see you hurt and I crave the very best for you
I want you to be happy in all the ways you can
Let go of it all and crawl on the ceiling, weightless

Darling, people are messed right up
And we've all got cuts and stitches and oozing wounds
But don't let the bruised and beaten up punks
the privileged warriors, the wait-listed mental patients,
the scummy lost wanderers, the vengeful aching souls,
Tell you it matters if you're ugly as hell
Please please please
Understand you are so much more than a shell
than an exoskeleton of a soul
You are a glorious, bruised and beaten up,
Ugly, pimpled masterpiece,
And it's a shame that they don't see it

Rob had an oak tree face, eyes a meld
of gray and sky-before-a-rain-storm
sort of blue, burlap sack jowls
shook when he hacked up his lungs
and sagged
like Betty's droopy mouth--the 16 year-old hound
who never left my neighbor's front porch

"Bernie, Bernie, my, my Bernie," Ack Ack Ahem
"Phew 'scuse me!"
"That's alright," I said
"Bernie, when I first came here I tell ya people
ask me the color of the walls, I'd tell 'em cancer, the
floors tiled with cancer, ceiling lamps glowing
fluorescent cancer, the mural you see when you first
come in--in it I saw the dad, the mom with cancer, the
little boy in his sailor suit had cancer, there was cancer
down his fishing line, in the water, and inside the fish
he'd catch and eat, the young girl had cancer and she
blew cancerous tunes out her cancer flute, the cafe
food tasted like cancer, the spinach, the mashed
potatoes, the steak, those tiny  apple juice cups they
give you...but it all comes back, you'll see..."

Carl was wheeled in, asleep, with wires and tubes
up and down his arms
"Why Carl looks like a 73 year-old bionic man!
He's gonna interfere with the radio frequency,
we won't be able to hear the ball game anymore!"

I laughed
Carl swatted at Rob, still half asleep

"Now what was I sayin'?"
"How's your dinner tonight, Rob?" I asked
"Oh! Five-star Bernie, Linda dropped off a whole
pot roast, sweet potato fries, and peas under cooked
just the way I like 'em."
"That was very nice of her."

I took a bite of mine--

cancer, with a hint of romesco

It's freezing in your bedroom
And I just wanna dream this bright day
straight into its darker face
I'm all wrapped up in your limbs
But I'm still shaking
You've got your hands on my thighs
I wish I could feel the warm
blood that drips all down the insides of them
But I'm ignoring every
sign that you slip in through my lips
You're pleading for my
attention at the climax of your affection
You keep digging your
nails into my shoulder blades
I know what you're thinking
Maybe a little pain will bring
my eyes up to meet yours
But I'm still looking down at your hips
And I could feel you starting to melt
Into the empty stream of my apathy
You're whispering every poetic word
you ever thought you heard straight
into my ear drums
I'm still not listening
An other night home alone
Lying next to each other
But hardly together
I shut the lights out an hour ago
But your skins still crawling
You're nestling me in the bend of your elbows
But I'm just trying to sleep
I wanna pray to your eyelashes every night
Like you do to mine
But I just don't believe in you
I don't believe in anything
And I'll still kneel for you
But that doesn't mean anything
It's all still so much nothing

You are my favorite room to cry in
and I see your face in every “If Found,
Please Return” sign I pass.
This one’s for you.
I draft up posters that say
I lost a boy, you know the type, the one
with the eyes like two-way mirrors
that you can see
into but not through,

the one with salsa music in
his bloodstream,
the one with the arms always wrapped around
someone who is not me.
Sometimes I close my eyes and I sing
you the song about how the world
never stops turning
while you dance four hundred miles
away pressed against
the meter of another heart.

A different beat.
I’d send you an invitation to my party
but I think your address has changed
and I’m too afraid to ask.
I ask our friends instead.

I have forgotten how to write you poems
that do not read like eulogies
to something long dead.

Did you know that;
that in Hello Poetry,
Which is the world we inhabit;
There is so much jealousy
that people and their poetry
Are sidelined and scorned
Cos they don’t toe the line of the gentry
The poets then are conned
Into believing they are worthless
While the gentry who think they own this place
Do not realize that they are the useless
For such poets will always find their space
For Dawn had disappeared
Due to their insufferable suffering
And the squares have reappeared
Cause of their own believing
To face the politics of Hello poetry
And its own unique gentry

I.

Wild fevered summer cat

crouched in night forest

leaf-rustle, ear-swivel

golden eye-gleam, nostril flare

smell trail, chase drumming

hot blood of jugular pulse on tongue



II.

Barest winter, bones spare

as naked trees knock

hungry ghost at door

I crouch, invite you in (“I am not yours”)

eyes warn, my sofa, my fire

recline like buddha, one golden orb

fixed on me



III.

Cat-mind drifts back

ten thousand years

desert goes for days

sun-blaze on fur, sandpaper tongue

drink from Tigris, cool forgiving



Mate with five heated slit-eyed beauties

consider symbiosis, my ancestors

pile grain into a barn too slow to catch mice

while naked two-legged kittens

play with your children.



Humans will worship yet bury you alive—

our dead won’t be lonely

The mice in the barn will find

Master of Night

that no death nor game is too cruel for you



IV.

Now, fates joined

after your hunt, before mine

yawn and blink at the sun

bury my face in electric fur

you drape a lazy velvet paw

over me purrs reverberate



All is right in this universal chase

sun-selves,  shadow-selves

predator and prey

for life love

and death

Head full,
Pencil still

Images flying,
Pen dazed

Whispers screaming,
Voice mute

Face strong,
Eyes tearing

Stories telling,
Books shut.