david badgerow

david badgerow Apr 2016

leglock

I still don't know if
I've ever "made love"
but if I have
the first time
was definitely with you:

******* on the ***** carpet floor
of your best friend's house
in Tallahassee. we knocked
tattoos against the coffee table
both our knees red
rugburnt from scooting the length
of the living room + hallway.

we moaned into each other's mouths
as our friends passed out drunk
not seven feet away
we tried three positions & your
body told me the last one was your
favorite so we bumped bellies
pulled each other's hair
your chest on my chest
your shoulder blades
drenched in moonlight
small in my careful hands
stars camped in our eyes
you bit my
lip too hard.

I'll never forget the wet way you kissed
my salty forehead as we
climbed connected onto
the couch, but the most vivid
memories from that night
are your legs
still quivering but clenched
ankle locked together at the
***** of my back, & falling asleep
inside you because it
felt like the right thing to do.

david badgerow Mar 2016

the boys

she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin

david badgerow Mar 2016

toga party

it's Friday morning &
we're up early sitting at
the windowsill after
shuffling as one self
down the carpeted hallway
toward the miraculous
coffee kitchenette with her
knuckles belt-buckled around
my hip bones & her head
tucked into my breastplate/armpit

still in our peejays
shirtless in sweatpants
rolled to my knees &
she's wrapped in the sheets
but still vulnerable with one
bare tattooed ankle living
in my lap

we're waiting for the sun
to sing an orchard symphony
to our skin & burn last night's
clear coat off the pane
so we can laugh & pull weeds
in the garden & share a
bath bomb afternoon or maybe just
jump in the river holding hands

just as I began to wonder
about the green/white/striped
thong she let me ****** off
last night & if she replaced it
she stood up
arched her back to
stretch out the dimples there

winked at me

& then she dropped the sheet

david badgerow Feb 2016

been having these good days

lately i've been having these good days
i don't have sad wet cigarette saxophone nights anymore
i watched the sun wake up six times last week
i found a blue bucket of tulips &
gave them to a bald-headed krishna girl when
she sang to me on the sidewalk

i hired a boy to hide in the foyer
& peel a fiddle if i rouse from sleep during the night
or whistle through a harmonica
if i'm wet-eyed during breakfast
i finally got rid of all the pictures you stuck
to your side of the dusty bathroom mirror
except the blissed-out polaroid of us
perched on an old oak tree limb
like a couple of soft doves versus the turreted sunset

i deleted your number because you don't call me back anyway
i stopped mailing letters to your father's house
i haven't listened to the Plantasia record
you bought me since you left
i never feel the gray heat from your
staticky hand warming my shoulder
i forgave you for the blood in my kidneys
& old smog in my mildewed vinyl lungs

i sleep under the running green vapor light
of the moon & stars instead of the frothiest pillows
rippling on an ocean of sheets & project quilts
i finally scoured the lipstick stain from my collarbone
after what seemed like two years
i forgot how your armpits smelled
i sewed all your sundresses into a shower curtain
& i never see your delicate ribcage
peaking through the streams of hot water

i hardly ever notice the noose
you left hanging in our apartment

david badgerow Feb 2016

thereminist

maybe you were right: i never brought
home flowers or chocolate
cleverly arranged in the
shape of a heart and
i couldn't afford a day at the spa
but i'd always sit with my bare ***
on the cold bathroom tile for hours and
feed you toasted bits of cheese on ritz crackers
while you cried in the bathtub i'd
braid your hair as you
let your fingers wrinkle until
the water cooled off too much your
******* got hard and bubbles
stuck to the cut of your shoulders

because you were there when
my mom's little car died on a backroad
under the old black tree
that scratched up the sky
you pulled your pants up
over ruby knees and asked
me to fix your bra
smoked a cigarette lying upside down
across my damp chest
facing my feet and
made me make a promise
while i traced music notes into
the soft flesh of your back with
my ***** fingernails and found
the cracks in your porcelain ankles
with my tongue

you said my love for you is
something that will never make sense
and you never know what to do
with your hands when i'm kissing you
but you moaned the chorus while
i sang verses into your bellybutton
and tied a couple fingers to the
soft web of hair behind your ears
we were like two locusts
fighting in a gossamer heap

two weeks later you were dancing
in my kitchen like a daffodil drunk
on robotussin wearing only striped
peppermint legwarmers and
authentic dreamcatcher earrings
so i bought a theremin from
your favorite pawn shop
and taught you how to tickle it
and as the wind picked up
whipped your hair into a
crucial comet's tail and rustled
the caterpillar from the windowpane
back to it's home in the wormy grass
i could hear the warm whistle
it made when you played with it
alone in the bedroom

i am crying now while
driving down highway one
recalling how your nose crinkled
when you smoked crushed roaches
or the way your hair tasted in the morning
and how you used to spit a
little bit when you laughed
and i can still hear that haunted echo
even as the saltwater swells
and splashes past the rocks

that sun machine is just
a distant memory now
but it left burn marks on my skin
and the floor where we tumbled
and fought the first time
i called you beautiful

david badgerow Jan 2016

on writing (hemingway)

write at midnight. edit in the morning.
write on a mountain. edit on a beach.
write inside a dream. edit & exist in reality.
write in a fever pitch as starlight kisses your cheekbones.
edit in the cold dawn light without excuses.
write loudly with Bjork screaming into the curtains.
edit in silence.

write as the clouds gather around the gibbous moon.
edit as the sun crests the hill & burns away the fog.
write inside, cozy under a blanket.
edit naked, cold on the front porch.
write asking questions.
edit demanding answers.

write blindfolded with your fingers waltzing across the qwerty.
edit bespectacled or with a monocle.
write like a mass ******. edit like a suicide.
or better yet
write like a homicide. edit like a detective.

write toward the open sky with your legs outstretched before you.
edit facing a clean white wall with your knees against your chest.
write because you are innocent. edit because you are guilty.
write during a fit of hyperventilation.
edit during mammoth exhalation.
write with complexity. edit into simplicity.

write, as Hemingway did, drunk.
edit, not sober, but hungover.
see your flaws in the sharp mirror of a headache.

write during sloppy explosion. edit during precise implosion.
write with your head in the clouds gnawing at the cumulus.
edit with your feet firmly planted in the ground.
write during violent collision.
edit during calm separation.

write with a pencil on soggy paper in a hot shower.
edit with a red pen sitting in tepid murky bathwater.
write among raucous laughter & banging skillets.
edit in secret while the kids are asleep.
write like a sadomasochist.
edit like a psychiatrist.

write while running on your tip-toes.
edit while lying flat on your back.
write in several languages with abandon.
edit beside a translator dictionary.
write as you are engulfed in fire.
edit with an extinguisher.

write with careless fluidity.
edit without assistance from amphetamine or coffee.
write with a full bladder,
standing up,
jitterbugging,
squeezing the tip of your *****
closed--urgently
squirm & trickle
your ideas onto
the porcelain page.

expanded thoughts on the misquoted author's advice.

david badgerow Jan 2016

liberating suppressed vivid stardust memories

my neighbors all say they can hear me singing
as i sink back down into my earthbound body
still tweaking my ******* with my eyebrows
arched & tongue still stuck lolling in the corner of my mouth

i'm confronted with a syrup mixture
of humiliation & guilt when they find me
in a fetal bundle in the early dawn light
bathing on the mattress ablaze with spiral light from
the window blinds

my shame is a palpable cartoon ****-cloud
of self-awareness as they
stand in awe & fear of the mysterious throbbing phenomena
attached between my hipbones

but in that moment of splendid transcendence
when my wet throat echoed the chirping song
of the radiator before they caught me
i was breathing vapor bent over a shovel violent hot chest
heaving like an attic full of abandoned possessions
liberating suppressed vivid stardust
memories & chanting ecstatically
sweaty complexion kneecaps quivering
like plastic water-bottle minnows
trapped in a meat locker releasing
stress from the bulbous pustules
collected on my face & soft jawline

liquid parts of me chased the low cirrus clouds
through long looping tunnels carved into the taut
blue january sky meadow as silver-tipped steam
hissed from the powerful glands in my armpits
i tried to regain control over my own
turbulent chaos almost crumbling

i heard sock feet stuttering in the foyer
& suddenly they appeared eating a winter peach
under the doorway trellis or with an armful
of fresh-cut flowers between the hallway of tall hedges
slack-jawed eyes vacant like so many broken windows
witnessing a spring butterfly devour a snake while i weep
into a magazine feverish with well-earned fatigue
left hand keeping a tight grip on my only future

later on i'm standing outside on a thriving carpet
of fungus as sunlight glares off my freckled
chest & the damp earth breathes aggressive moss
onto the trunks of old trees
crying bitterly because i
dug this hole in a dream of fitful sleep
my friends must always be high
because they all say
i'm bringing them down but
i'm scared one day i'll wake up
& there will be nothing left to say or
i'll have concrete where i used to see teeth

everything tonight is real
that's a lie but i'm going to continue
whispering it to myself like a mandala mantra
the sunset was almost unbearably beautiful
& i stood defiant with my back pushed against
it between hard edged pillars
of self-destruction & self-fulfillment
as it wreaked its havoc on the opposite sky
gray radio static warped through my ears
when i finally felt spiritually large enough
& my eyes clouded once again
with spontaneous emotion