what have the drunkards told you?

that you were beautiful--
different, gentle, pure
while they were busy
vacillating, you found
yourself whole among
their stormy seas, a tidal
wave bearing down upon
choppy waters where sailors
are lost and boats are sunk
ships full of diatribes and
bitterness, crippling resentment
folded into the bathus --

What have the drunkards told you?


to be less, to dissolve, to speak expressly in
salt and ***, come down from the hill, from
the towers, from the lighthouses where you
poured over the bounding main
learning to be for others lost
what have the drunkards told you?
mixed and unbecoming, double minded
and hopeful for your body


but testimony seeps out from beneath your dress
and some men are scared of lights and lamps
of flowers pressed into the walls, quiet and
unassuming, of stair steps and bookcases
without books

be the light
be the light

yesterday a seventy year old man
named Stan slid a crumpled receipt
across the teller counter and asked
me out--and James from Faricy had
his manager give me his number
on the back of a deposit slip

and I told Ryan that I was positive
he had caught me off guard, that anything
more than friends is not doable so he
thanked me for my honesty and
stopped responding.

and a whole slew of other men,
other apologies, other dancers
and sweaty palms, all lengthy,
wordy paragraphs ending in
too quiet or christ, just take
a break but -

i am falling asleep. upright, at
the bank, to the sound of cashiers
checks sliding out of the printer
an angry little girl knocking at
my door, a child from too long
ago who's never been in love
slipping in and out of a
subdued conciousness
I give up my idea of
the perfect man,
I give it up


i give it up.

Jessica said she was jumped by two men
down by McClures, they followed her down
Main Street and caught her in the alley way
behind the apartments, grabbed a fistful of her
long brown hair and pulled her to the ground--

I said you should have called me 'cause
I am two streets down from there, two minutes
walking or 30 seconds flat if I ran, and she smiles -
says I can do laundry at her new place because they're
fixin to get her a new dryer

asks me about that kid I was seeing and I tell her
he's not a thing anymore, ain't no thing
I leave out the part where I pray for him
every time I see his name pop up -- and it
does a lot.  Prayin' don't always mean good
things happen, no one ever said it did.

And we discuss other boys in light voices
yeah, I think I hurt him. and she doesn't
deny it, just sort of nods


yeah, I think i hurt them.

i was half asleep on a kitchen counter
curled up around the steak knives and
soup ladles, threaded through thick duvets

when you came and tucked yourself into me
with your burlap jacket, but I let you under the
covers--and I distinctly remember pressing my fingers
under your shirt only to feel how deathly cold you were
as if you had just come from the outside, or had risen up
from the snow drifts, opened your ribcage and let the cold
seawater fill the cab

but you were whispering something, a secret I couldn't make out
an undiscovered motive, slight of hand, slight of breath
you were lieing and I was letting you in, letting you in
beneath the weapons, beneath my skin, into my body
and you reached in for a handful of grain but I was a
barrel of cords and twine

meshed and tamped, you found the soft damp earth where
I grow and we somehow managed to make it seem ok
make it seem ok
you're out there ok
crimped and furious
a mean cuss on your lips



touching still means too
much to        me

i had this dream that they
had thrown me into a hole,
and by a feat of bravery I
had managed to escape,
out the window and through
the azalea bushes--

but I returned with a raging
hatred, an unquenchable vengeance
that manifested in red clay that
settled over the creases in my palms
and poured south in waves shaped
like old angers and great mountains
giant bison that snorted and plowed
forth--

but I was the bison and I was the clay,
greeting visitors with crushed eggs, yolk
weeping through my knuckles, the voice
of a hundred i'm sorrys creaking through
the speakers in the living room,

and i'm wiping blood from the meat in the kitchen
on my dress with the yellow fade near the hem
telling visitors yes, come in
yes, come in
when they shouldn't
and I shouldn't

but I could shake the earth, father, I'm so angry.

I could shake the earth.

earlier today during service
I was struck by a strange vision--

that I was running breathlessly
through a misty field, terribly
afraid and naked with a .69 caliber
flintlock musket bucking against my
hip, and the mud did no justice, neither
did the deep grass stains on my belly,
to hide how truly piteous and terrified
I was.

As if somehow during the battle I had lost
my company or else deserted, been stripped
and cashiered--left to my own to roam the empty
wilderness that creaked and cracked
the air that shivered in my supposed dissolution
my feet caught in the dense mire, the very ground
that used to be so resolute, firm to touch
was giving in,
swallowing me without mercy,
I had been separated from my regiment, I thought.
But only deserters would think such a thing,
I had left and was lost and

the congregation began to rise to sing
but I was still there with burning lungs
desperate to find the colonel or captain
the leader or teacher
the father or
God.