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.

You shop in Hollister,
a store targeted to popular teens,
but I stop by Hot Topic
made for fangirls, nerds, and scenes.

Inside of Hollister it is dark,
and you can't see what you're buying,
an overwhelming aroma of cologne and perfume
will make my eyes start crying.

The store is built to look like
it belongs in California-
and every piece of clothing
(and here is logic for ya)-

every piece is decorated
with surf boards and gulls and bikinis
cos everyone apparently forgot
where we live it's only 60 degrees.

The bags you take out with you
are covered with pictures of teens
with sagging bottoms and rippling muscles
and fake tans and bikinis obscene.

They play bad music
at a super fast pace,
and the girls inside
act like they own the place.

Now Hot Topic is a different story,
I feel that I must mention,
almost like an escape for losers,
a We Love Nerds convention.

Here you can get a size
that is bigger than zero,
and instead of cool surfboards
are screened with bacon and superheroes.

T-Shirts and suspenders
ties, belts, and wristbands,
with smart-aleck sayings
and merchandise for fans

of just about every
popular fandon,
like Hetalia, Doctor Who,
or even just random

things like bacon or
My Little Pony,
(I'm getting a wristband that says
"I'm a Brony")

Funny little quotes
on buttons and pins,
crazy designs
on little odds'n'ends.

They people inside
are hipsters through and through
with hanging-off-the-frame Beatles shirts
MissMayI, Doctor Who.

This is where I feel safest,
among a million people like me,
instead of that stupid Hollister store
filled up with people I have no desire to be.

She's waiting
with that lipstickless pout
her cat Léon
a "charmant" 2 bedroom apartment
and a once envied reputation
now deservedly sullied
and only getting worse.
Friends tell you she's got
rougher
sullener
dirtier.
She's waiting
at a sidewalk café
table wobbling on the cobblestones  
carafe, glasses of wine
balanced precariously  
while she argues about everything
and laughs
with old friends
new friends
and the stubborn ghosts
of those dead or gone.
You can still taste her mouth
that warmth
a hint remains in your wet
almost spongy inner cheek flesh
probe it with your tongue -
cigarettes
rosé
late afternoon sun.
Her face ever immaculate
yet always foundation-free
a lesbian's wettest dream
no make-up grazes staining
anybody's Yves Delorne pillowcases.
When you fucked
you could often hear
next door doing the same
will she still whimper
when you make love
and get up to pour herself a glass
immediately after finishing?
When you step out together
later that afternoon
will you feel as though you
have somehow
deliberately opened a door
into a dogeared postcard
or Truffaut film?
You know she's deceitful
runs to her own schedule
and clearly always had an expiry date
in mind for you two,
one she always kept
to herself -
"Those questions aren't
for asking, on verra..."
The cat has a tendency to yowl
at inappropriate moments
you wish she had a dog instead
or maybe just a goldfish
(there's enough dogshit
on the streets already).
Her apartment will still
smell of stale cigarette smoke
her perfume
and the geraniums in the window box
and she has asked that you stay
for the full two weeks
(sentimental, unable to resist
taking old lovers back in).
Will she beg you not to leave
burn your passport
in the stained enamel kitchen sink
while you take a shower?
Or will she quietly close the door
behind you as you go -
suitcase in hand
your eyes turned
pricking
away?



- - - -

How I missed, how I missed the wonder in your eyes
The smiles at our hellos, and the pouts at our goodbyes
How we kissed, how we kissed only heaven could have devised
The passion with the moon, and the beauty of sunrise

How I wish, how I wish on stars to make this bloom
The stars over your bed, and windows of your room
How we squish, how we swish the smell of your perfume
The blankets with the pillows, and the smile to resume

How it is, how it is will be left for fate to tell
The anxious of a call, and the sound of the bell
How it tis, how it tis will beyond me compel
The things I do, and do them well.
So please don’t give me hell,
Just answer your cell.

Through a garden bedecked in the finest façade
In a natural beauty of eons compiled
An assault to the senses which quickens the pulse
Yet soothing the detail, organically styled

Its borders haphazard yet clearly defined
By a frenzied assortment of pollen clad blooms
Enhancing creation with lust and a craving
With nectar, ambrosia scented perfume

The thickets and bushes, with industry cloaked
A sprawling utopia thriving therein
With bees and with butterflies drinking their fill
And drizzled in webs which the spiderfolk spin

A meandering trail through flourishing life
An encouraging push from the sun to my rear
Entrancing, the chill of the dew underfoot
Yet thrusting itself like an ice laden spear

My sight is attracted by hidden desire
To a door at the crest of a flurry of stairs
And the stone of the flight is as fire to my soles
After languishing still as the midsummer glares

The door is ajar and within comes the sound
Of a single piano, adeptly caressed
Each note sends a shiver rebounding around me
In purity soaked and perfection possessed

I make my way forward and darkness inside
Removes me of sight as my pupils adjust
And the air is intense as a northerly breeze
And shimmers in motes cut of sunlight and dust

My eyes become clear and before me they see
Cascading and dancing a musical frieze
A picture in motion, a fairytale path
In a spectrum of tones and a myriad keys

Inspiration her name and the course she describes
Is a poem in light to beguile the mind
She speaks with her body, a wordless refrain
Of a mystery poets have clamoured to find

A pipe cuts a harmony no one could play
Distilling forever the passage of time
And though such a symphony draws at the tongue
Causality never once utters a rhyme

A pattern of shimmering images form
Behind inspiration and quickening pace
To fade with the music and ever be lost
Lest the pen of a poet can hold them in place

Most fickle of muses and teaser of tongues
To flirt with despair and to promise elation
We chase but remaining just out of out reach
Is the ghost of a girl which we call ‘Inspiration’

Father's Way: Tell me a story, Dad

What power we possess,
when the innocent demand,
at the time of cozy bed and sandman,
"Tell me a story,"

To gentle the monsters
in the closet of their heads,
grant them a peace naive that's lost after
they learn the D words, disappointment, death,
Till then, promises unfettered, the best yet to come.

The story, you, grantor, they, grantees,
Scent their dreams,
perfume their dreams,
sprinkle their safety net, blanky, rag doll:
- scent with mom's hairspray and dad's special smell,
musk, balsam, gasoline and body odor

- scent with cherrywood falsehoods to caress,
till morning's burnished glory ascends,
thru window, tenderize the cheeks of my babes,
prep them for the truths to be learned that day.

In tones most imploring,
glances fawning,
tis us, they do deceive,    
for adult arrogance demands
in God we Trust, that they,
will believe our words,
will indeed, make them rest
till new day's slow and subtle dawning

Tis the same tomfoolery that leads us
to drink repeatedly from the trough of
best laid plans and self-deception

You believed your own narrative
will be the one he scripted,
while standing day-dreaming,
sweating on subway platform,
admiring beaches and beauties
from station walls lifted,
waiting for the train
that only eventually comes,

that train, that station, whose smell reminds you
of mom's hairspray and dad's special smell,
musk, balsam and motor oil, and body odor,
a cocaine reminder of dreams yet uncrystallized,
and stories your father told, unrealized,
tho train has come, they have not

Write me a narrative, Dad,
and please advise
if tinker or tailor will be my trade,
fix my details, dear pater, par example,
pick my institution of higher learning,
my future alma mater, on my day of birth,
promise me gentility, no harm no foul, mirth,
All the days of my life.

Please advise if I shall be a
wife abuser, communist, or a damn
junkie poet/user,
word rich and pocket poor,
stealing ideas from everyone,
red blooded or blue~green,
a true believer, a born again,
an agnostic, my own truths, to disabuse

tell me father, will I die warmed,
surrounded by generations of my progeny
or in pauper's grave, a life long ward of
one true mate, in loco parentis all of my days,
a child, a dependent, of noster paternal state?

Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...


June 11, 2011
Updated on Father's Day 2013

I wrote this a few months ago on a flight across the country. Not my best, but it healed me a bit

Thinking about you doesn't get any easier and even at 30,000 feet in the air the feeling you left with me somehow manages to suffocate me, through twenty different layers of clouds and pressurized cabins. The lady sitting next to me has a sad look in her eyes. Maybe she is suffering through some kind of heartbreak herself, just like me. She orders her coffee black. I want to reach out to her and hold her hand, but it's probably too cold, and she might jerk away from my touch, the same way you did that day when you left. She smells like cheap perfume and the lies of lovers she has tried too hard to forget.
I wonder about jumping right out this plane right now. I wonder if I'd land with a splat and if a nice young man would arrive with a broom and pan, sweep me up, and discard me into the nearest trash can, like they do in the carnivals. Would I regret it the moment my feet left the edge of the plane? Would I get the same feeling in my stomach on the way down as I did when we were together? I think I'd only jump if I were holding your hand.
I wrote “I miss you” in a too big sharpie across the front of my notebook on Tuesday. Colored it in blue because there’s not enough green to feel much else when you're not around. Two hours to go and my entire life is falling down around me. (Leave me be leave me be leave me be.) I want to be the space that water fills between your toes and hidden among the things that keeps your rusty heart beating. But I can't be the oil that makes your wheels keep spinning. At best I'm the hot hot steam that keeps your hands from burning and bleeding. You don't want me and you never fell in love with me. You fell in love with words I learned to recite and looks I knew when to give and this carcinogenic smile.
Apologies don't sound as true as they should and I never really say what I mean. I'm just as fucked up as you. And these are words carved into walls of abandoned asylums and painted on canvases with blood in lieu of paint and this is the only way I know how to say that I know what you're going through and what you've been through and how sorry I am that I can't be everything you expected of me.