Speak to me of the wave of longing
That broke against you,
Pressuring your forehead,
Narrowing your narrow street,
Beating on your palms,
                                         America.

Your eyes remain unclosed,
Looking-glass and sea,
For the dream with claws.

Fairy bird,
arching bird,
Sweet enchantress,
Envied by throngs.

"And you who ask about me everywhere,
By now don't you know that I am death?"

Flavia Cosma from Wormwood Wine
translated by Don Wilson with the author

On a long and simple gallows tree
a god and dollar bill I see --
and I've never felt so happy;
no, never felt so happy.
I walk around and brush the bush
and think about all the ants I mush,
just want to make a cent or two;
what else am I supposed
                to want to do?

And on the laundered sky I spot
a furious eye over a shackled lot
-- but I'm told it's just the sun
                               that blinds;
   destroying all the ants it finds.

I don't think I understand,
my god, my wallet is full
but my life ain't worth living.
God, you're like a bird in my hand:
something beautiful, always squirming.
     And I wish I could let go.

Living at hard angles,
the hemophilac in the razor blade factory
a diabetic making chocolate,
the alcoholic cooking with vanilla

A car running out of oil
in the great Mojave Desert
broke down,
while heading to Paradise, Nevada

Life at hard angles,
hard to get started
hard to get around

Rent gas water, electric insurance garbage,
car needs tires, internet phone
food
whose ever screaming the loudest
bank accounts have been known to go to zero

Cry all night

We're going to hold on to each other tight
it's all temporary
Even when you're sleeping hard
living at hard angles.

Words

We live in a wired and weird world
where meanings of our words
are paper-thin tissue and torn
tarnished and worn by wear and War.

© M.L.Emmett

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.