every night i’d wash my face
brush my teeth and urinate
say goodnight to mom and dad
before it got very late
go right by my sister’s room
without a hitch in my walk
close my door, turn off the light
and set the alarm on my clock
i’d climb into my bed and put
a pair of earplugs in my ears
and try to disregard the sounds
which i still hear throughout the years
the bathroom was next to my room
and every night she’d visit there
she’d drop down to her knees and tie
her hair from her face to prepare
then shove her fingers down her throat
until she felt her magma foam
the ejecta of a human heart
vesuvius at home
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:38 PM UTC
"Rag and bone shop."
I keep hearing that turn of phrase as I change
my daughter.
She was born early and under
weight.
Her mother was worried.
I was horrified. My sister wasted
away for years. Gradually.
I cannot unload the skeletons it seems.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:17 PM UTC
I build an altar, parade in the streets
**** on a sugar skull, stamp on your grave.
I want to weep, but instead I write
words like skeletons that leap and click their heels
grinning with jaws of orange like choked marigolds.
I wear a warren of jade, a den of ivory, a lair of shells
to wake the dead with a dance.
Why do the catrinas resemble you as you live?
Why do the calaveras still smile and tip their
top hats mockingly at your tombstone?
Alone in the colors and candles, I row this mariposa
dipping my paddle like sugarcane in taffy
reverberating grief like a sack of chattering teeth.
From Ocotepec to Patzcuaro, masks mourn
their losses, stars are pulled from the night
islands are invaded, bones rattle like marionettes
bells seek their towers, corpses leave their caskets
crosses fly like kites, feet clap in a frenzy
mayors deliver speeches, waves stutter ponderously
souls are exhumed from tobacco smoke
yellow ribbons cascade from the deaths heads
and we all dance like madmen, the dead grieving
the living and the living grieving life.
Is this the red chaos that you gulped down, the
dagger that distended your stomach?
Who draws from the pail that draws from your well?
Your body is half water.
You will rise with the moon and pass as we all dance like madmen.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:09 PM UTC
In the end it was obvious
that you had lost control
of your powers,
that a reversal
of polarity had taken
place, that your soul
was no longer
able to keep
its compass aligned.
Master of magnetism,
manipulator of metal, seething
dynamo pendent
from an electrified
web of your own
spinning. You could attract
or repulse at will,
forge steel with a thought
or turn stone to ****
and on some nights, you would lift
your hands and orchestrate
the hiss of the northern lights.
But even a superconductor
requires stability, down
in its inner coils
so when your stomach
began to brim
with starfire and steam
and you waved your hands,
your blood bubbled
into hot little ***** of iron
filings, and ricocheted under
your skin like the remanent shreds
of lost continents.
We begged you
stop, but your hands moved
again, slow and heavy
along the curves
of your throat
and so the fields went feral
until your fingernails spewed
a red fog
and the metal ripped
from your dry flesh
trailing flame like a meteor.
Still your hands
stirred, tendons snapping
as your salt formed
at the joints, snarling
into tiny effigies
of the dead that came
before you. The same
as you. And you were left
a shrunken husk,
as paper drifting
on the thermals, gaping
dripping and brittled, scalded
bone, swollen void.
You were still there
but your eyes flashed pyrite,
and there was dust
on your breath. We spoke
of iron calcium potassium
your depleted core
sagging into itself
like an ancient mine
stripped of ore.
Then there was nothing
to talk about, save
the inexorable call.
And when it came, I hurled
the comics away and thought
perhaps mutants are real after all.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:00 PM UTC
Nothing says I’m proud to be alive like a yellow Beetle
With fresh flowers in its vase
I remember when the Honda was folded by a loaded pickup
And you emerged from the wreckage unscathed
I was never worried
That car could have been halved one hundred times
But your tiny body would have found a space to exist
And when you fell to the road I imagine
The first thing you did was ask the drunk
If he was OK
I shake my head and smile
You were covered
And there it was a week later in our driveway
Like it was beamed straight from your heart
To the asphalt candy yellow and pulsing
You were so proud to be alive
For the first month
You changed the flowers each second day
Then the next year
You replaced them once a week
And the next
Once every two weeks
Until I imagine you barely
Thought about the flowers at all
And I remember when I came home to see
You for the last time
There it was in our driveway
Its vase empty
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 2:48 PM UTC
Tel Aviv
He swears he saw the shadow of a dolphin below a wave here.
In 1993
When they first came, he knows she saw it too. Her eyes
Widened, and they shared a glance and a giggle,
Like a wreath of bubbles, like a secret vault of blue.
A feeling, a vibration, the last echo in a chain of echoes below.
After that, Tel Aviv was of the dolphins. He came back
In 2001, and in the rubble of the Dolphinarium, he waited.
But there was nothing. When she visited
She did not even ask,
As though she sensed the void. It was unspoken. Then
He ran away from her in 2007. Seeking what?
Solitude
Or dolphins,
But still the sea was silent. Even when she died.
That night, in the sand, holding his legs to his chest,
The words of his friends lost in the surf, and the buzz
Of the world, bounding from wave to wave. Still nothing.
I want to be cremated ,
She always said. I want my ashes to be poured
Into the sea.
But they bury their own, so their mother, she printed
Pictures for him to take back and burn.
I will do this he said.
He did not unpack for two months. Then it was winter. Then
New Year’s Eve. And there had been rain, and there was wind,
And it was cold, and he said **** it.
The kiosk outside
Was empty, airless, damp. He palmed a cheap lighter,
Dropped a coin, left.
And he walked down to the sea,
Into the wind, the wet, the cold. The pictures in his pocket.
There is a jetty made of rubble, next to the Dolphinarium,
Where he returns to year after year. If he stands there
And listens he can hear the edge of the world, the sinking
Of bones. Behind him the city, before him the sea.
And when he takes both in for long enough
He forgets which is which.
He went there and looked
At the foam forever, blinking away spindrift, the lighter
Turning in his fingers.
And when he pulled out the pictures
And held the lighter up to them it was a new year.
His thumbs are scarred now. The pictures would not burn.
He railed against the rocks. His throat fought the wind.
With every flick the flame was choked. And the lighter broke but
He would not stop but for a moment to wipe his face.
He roared
Her name and spoke to her.
But there was no ash.
Just the city,
the sea, the wind.
And in the calm before dawn he slumped
Home, the pictures, blackened, reddened, back in
His pocket.
To be shoved away in some old drawer.
He saw his mother
Later that year and she did not ask because she did not remember.
In the summer, he watched the jetty each day, but from a distance,
And noted how the silhouettes of fishermen reached
Out to the city in the morning then back to the sea by evening, distorted
With each swell.
But he could not bring himself to stand
There. Two years in Tel Aviv and he could be no longer.
Then it is winter again, and a month before he is to leave,
And a week before New Year’s Eve.
He remembers the pictures.
He meets a woman at a party and they make love.
He sees her every night and when New Year’s Eve comes, they plan to meet.
Allenby is quiet as he steps outside, and the kiosk
Is empty.
He drifts down to the sea without thought, carried
By the current of the city.
Phone shaking in his pocket but he feels
Nothing. Then he is there, again.
His back to the city, crouched.
On the jetty, alone, the pictures in one hand, lighter in the other.
And the fire lasts for but a moment, and the sparks recede into the sea. And he brushes the remains into the dark, and turns back to the city.
Later, he will greet the woman with a rose between his teeth and Spring
In his step, and he will walk into the night with her hand
In his, and the call of the sea sounding inside.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 2:41 PM UTC
When the floodwaters withdrew, he emerged naked
and raw. He trod alone on sodden ground, *******
in air at the sight of a cloud.
Yet he went nowhere. There was no one.
Finally, the Oracle took pity
and came to him. While you walk, she said, throw
the bones of your mother behind you. So he gouged
at the earth.
With his hands. With a ***** With a plow.
But all he found was stone.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 2:13 PM UTC
“….I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me.”
She found her calling early in life. About 11. Maybe 12.
She’d been a performer all her life, in plays. But never enough.
I don’t know how or where the idea slipped into her.
The Buddha. Jesus. Yom Kippur. The Media. Her friends.
I doubt it was Kafka but all possibilities.
Hunger art is the purest form she said. And she was good at it.
At first we would watch her with our mouths agape.
Sometimes we’d even sit for a meal. Right in front of her.
Pass the salad I’d say. Dad would reach for the salt.
Her eyes ablaze like an ascetic’s. But not paying us much attention.
Only when we turned away would she turn her gaze on us.
In her prime she could go for days. Weeks even.
And make it seem like nothing more than the gap between lunch and dinner.
It was transformation that she hungered for. A lessening. A denial of self.
A thinning. Because the cleanest lines are none at all.
But we didn’t know that. We thought it was just a phase.
And kept telling ourselves that even as she sank deeper.
Into her art. Her unself. Into ether.
There was a reckoning at some point, an event horizon of sorts.
In which the harder she pushed the less was achieved.
And so she died unsatisfied.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 1:55 PM UTC
Lifting spirits will lift your spirits! Let’s
grab a goblet and have a guzzle.
I’ll toast to you my friend, and when
you’re done, pour you a double.
For those we’ve lost, we’ll spill a little
and stare down at the puddle.
Reflect on the pangs of life a moment,
commiserate about the struggle.
Then splash the liquid all about, and shout
“Barman, hustle!
If our cups didn’t runneth over before,
they better now or there’ll be trouble;
if our tankards aren’t foaming soon
our fists'll be balled and white of knuckle!”
We’ll drink chicha in Peru, and sake in Japan,
mezcal in Mexico, and palm wine in the jungle.
The bar’s our gym, it’s where we go
to train ye oulde esophageal muscle
but we’ll chug or glug or quaff anywhere,
be it farm or cave or hovel.
We live for libations, go goo-goo for grog,
and drain enough to dim the mind of any mere muggle.
The hoppy makes us sloppy; now
most of my drink lands on my stubble;
eyes are bloodshot, mouth is dry,
body wrecked like so much rubble.
You’re not faring much better…
we make quite the lively couple.
But we'll be back here tomorrow sister,
I’ll have no rebuttal!
You may be gone, but you’re alive
in me, a piece of my puzzle.
Let this ***** quench our pain
‘til off this mortal coil we shuffle.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 1:42 PM UTC
used to think that the older i’d get
the more i’d have to say
an idiom for every thing
a clever turn of phrase
a story for the travel-worn
a poem to stir the cynic
a song to sooth the furies
an oft-repeated lyric
a verse to bend the adamant
a piercing anecdotal
they’d say i was a character
as colorful as opal
they’d come from far away
to hear my pearls of wisdom
from tel aviv to mars
and outside the solar system
my native tongue irrelevant
i’d have the ears of elephants
octopi and flies alike
affected by my eloquence
antiquity’s great orators
would come to me as angels
present to me their inquiries
and wait for my appraisals
a hurricane would pause
its revolution for a while
if only for a chance to watch
me verbalize in style
but one day something in me
snapped and i understood
that all of what i thought would be
most likely never would
now I’m resigned to the alive
consigned to the dead
so most of the time i just
keep my thoughts inside my head
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 1:38 PM UTC