They tell me it's all going to be over soon, that everything we know and love, everyone we can fathom who fits into either of those two categories, the tiny thoughts that greet you at the dawn of the waking hours to the grandest of social constructs, regardless of size, shape or architecture, will soon fall, brick by brick into the sea.


A hundred years ago, I imagine a scaly sea bass fell from the heavens into the hands of a fisherman. He saw it as a sign of something so unholy and profane, he tossed it, almost dislocating his shoulder, into the sea, mumbling "back to god, you go."



and back to god we go.



how will you greet it.

who will you be with, that's more important.



Whose eyes are you going to stare into as some named storm churns up the country side, the cities, rivers and villages, making sweet love to the stone and steel we thought would always stand, east-coast-solid in the face of holy wrath.



the whole of our world will undulate, as if dancing as we will tonight, in a new year's celebration unlike any other.



5, 4, 3, 2,

and countless, so countless,

because numbers won't exists,

nor clocks,

or clothing,

or divisions.



after it is all gone, there will be nothing to separate us from what we desire so deeply, nothing to bind us in servitude to a world that made no sense, nothing to make sense of,



and that's when we'll know freedom,



the morning after the end of the world,



when we wake up in each others arms,

quietly humming,

sleeping in a few extra minutes before we rebuild ourselves again.

I.

something within me,
maybe its my amigdala,
misses the oven-turned-gentrified clot,
that great collection of want,
of transient soles-souls.

I miss how we’re piled three stories high,
so close to each others’ mouths that we must
burrow in criss crossed, colliding tunnels
to our point b’s, our job sites,
our lovers’ houses.

maybe it is indeed part of our un-nature to do this,
to cling to one another even
as our unforgiving sungod bakes us whole,
cornish game hens on the el train,
hurdling 40 mph, to and from
our personal hovels, heavens
and bedsheets,
tethered to this place, possibly indentured,
definitely flawed,
where we revel under roofs to prove incredibleness
an virility.

II.

our eyes are not closed today.
they may not blink in unison
as mannequin lids do,
so effortlessly, plastic and mechanical,
but those, we are thankfully not.
for we are flesh,
and air, and miles of gastrointestinal turnpike, if unpinned,
would stretch from here to panama.

we are each of us
a viscous mound called
Sally, Bertram and Queen Mary.

We are the collision of milk flowing, divine,
a whirling dervish
in scalding darjeeling.
we are air,
gliding over enamel into the collective breath
to be devoured so sweetly by others,
as saintly man-scripted gelato,
dribbling down our chins in piazzas.
la dolce ******* vita.

III.

that’s the funny thing about living
in this size 2 world,
the ability to appear anywhere upon its face at a moment’s notice,
to be in front of any face when desired,
to live sans toll booth or customs desk,
to simply dust off our ability to fly
and tumble icarus-adolescent into the collision
between the two blue planes called sea and sky

I am seated, legs crossed Jackie O style,
hands quietly, and eternally resting on fatless thighs,
my god, they are so cold today.

and it appears
that i am waiting for forever, Forever, sweet Forever,
but Forever will not come.

Whether his train has departed,
I will not have known.
I will not have known the robust, mathematical eyes
that scoured the horizon from the seventh car from the rear.
I will not have known what they have seen, the halves of sheep that were black, the other halves of sheep assumed to be another thing entirely...

It falls now, on me.
Like many shredded pieces of ticker tape,
My god, it is here, singular and lovely.
god-like in its beauty,
gray and divine,
how IT falls.

yes,
you did fly out of that window.
everything that has followed,
the days and years that came,
nieces and nephews’ birthdays at your brother’s house,
the long drives in late afternoon,
your hair, finally white, blowing to the east
at the gray water’s edge as it did when it was jet black.
the valleys and peaks
of one’s life lived,

All happened,
but in your widening
aperture irises
in the three seconds it took
for you to kiss pavement
that for some reason
is as soft as your lover’s lips.

it, the only naturally graceful moment of your life,
comes from the italian defenestre,
meaning “of the window,”
meaning “you,”
dancing in midair,
either your voice
or the air whirling past your body hums that melody
from your favorite twilight zone episode,

did you come wander with me?

Once, before all of this,
it was february and
we were midconversation on a street corner
by the liberty bell,
and your eyes wandered somewhere else,
and i asked what you were thinking,
and you casually asked, 
“what would happen if I grabbed your hand
and we ran onto that bus,
and just rode it wherever it went?”

i cleanse myself of your two-legged ills,
cool as my breath upon a thousand dry necks,
freeze, and regard
death-rattle-arias
to be found by turistas come morning.

you are not my children,
my first world, private school informed angels,
yet you were my tartan,
counterfeit and used to wrap
your pulsating lesions.

cough, and curl up, as you did in mother’s womb,
left arm, turned to sponge
absorbing the penetrations of a thousand needles.
eyes, gold-crusted as sunset on the tundra-rough plateau.

i am not your home,
take thee back upon slave ships,
to be buried and shackled somewhere else in the empire.

I.

my sleeping is condensed this spring
such that two or three hours
at most will suffice for one evening.

my body is awake,
yet the wandering back alleys
behind my irises are weary,
and on the cusp of gentrification.

I see faces where there should be none

II.

and I’ve seen the lines again,
though they come far less frequently
than when I had to reach up
to grasp the doorknob.

yet they are as vivid
and bursting with clarity
as the first summer I witnessed them.

they arrive unannounced
single-hair-thick,
rotating on invisible axes,
changing color and length
within equally slim fragments of time
too small to measure in our dimension.

one summer, i recorded how often they visited
but could find no logical frequency to their appearances.

no one has ever known of them but me,
and that woman just picked up a cigarette **** to light her own.

III.

they came again yesterday,
as always, in midafternoon
at 3 o’clock, when christ died.
and i thought, not of him,
but of the time, and how
twelve hours earlier is apparently the devil’s time
a time-piece-turned inverted cross.

IV.

so, I remembered,
how at devils’ time last night,
i was adrift,
sans-sails down brick alleys
thinking not of lines,
of gods or devils and their time,
but of those pan flute notes
and how i can’t wait to hear them again.

I. missing poster, Kensington High Street

at what point did i vanish?
i did not evaporate.
i am still a collection of matter.
of energy, essence and intangible spirit.

it is from others, i have vanished.
it is to them i am lost, intangible,
the off-screen character,
the plot point in many a story too unremarkable to be seen.

my face lies plastered across walls in the borough
in various states of life.

but i am not here,
i do not stare state portrait shallow into you,
for i do not know you.

don’t think it couldn’t be you,
or do,
and prepare to exist,
sans living.

but you may ask “where?”

“where” may not exist.
it has no post code, no roman underlayer of brick.
no parisian layer of skull,
that is not where i lay.
if i lay.

“where” may not allow me my harsh whispers,
my last finger upon the cliff

“where” may call to me
from its halcyon planes.

come home.



II. The Dell, Kensington Gardens

what better a place to vanish from,
to trace my path from,
or what it will allow.

let my scent linger?
god may allow it.
i’m told the gardens’ gates are closed
promptly at dusk each day.

there are no street lamps here.
to be locked in after sunset is something other.
something indigo and sublime,

too early in the year yet for crickets.
it was this blanket i knew last before departure.

and yet even during the day, The Dell is sealed off from the public, like vast wings of a stately home.

it is pristine, this vanishing point.
seemingly untouched by the sickness of our humanity.

its miniature waterfall bisecting the scape
like the crack in our god’s head that birthed athena.

i don’t think it will ever be revealed to me,
my loved ones or god himself if i have chosen this place
or if it chose me.




III. The Dell, continued.**

the gardens that day were trapped in the faintest, yet most distinct bubble of brisk english detachment.

i walked, hand in pocket through its paths,
admiring Victoria’s memorial to her beloved,
thinking how we always view her as this austere widow.

but we forget that she too, once loved and loved so deeply.
that it so moved her, and changed her.

we forget that the divine can also be wounded, albeit not lethally, but with subtle, lingering pangs.

it was this thought that fueled my feet towards the Dell,

with its rolling, sample-sized hill,
its ageless trees with their hooked branches
in various un-regal poses.

i must have stood in admiration for five, twelve minutes before it dawned on me with the most pristine clarity:

i need to be a part of this place,
forever bound to it.
a statue in its gallery.  

this is where the trees have come from.
they are the shells of former lovers,
rooted in the deep, richness of the Dell’s soil.

we bend and undulate through centuries,
we are the dancers forever spinning,
never to rest,
for whom would want to?

Who will sail down
these laugh line Ganges rivers?
you should hope someone will.

turn to me and whisper,
declare, utter
that in the sinosphere,
they hire crying women

lest we pass, sail, transcend
within the silence we were
ushered onto this plateau with.

lest our Deity mistake the two.

scratch. stratch scratch scratch
on the back of your throat.

Two Hundred and Two Days ago
this would have been
your Angela’s Ashes spiral
into veiled, Catholic interment.

but you’re a heathen
and no criers will have been hired
no doters at your stone
come Dias de Los Muertos
as mother to grandmother,
as peasant to ****** Spanish friar.

but you have a plan.
you,
will be ground into a fine dust
and pressed into a record.

eight minutes on both sides

be not afraid,
be not a swan song.

I’ve taken a lover
and awoke 300 years
in the inner chamber,
some thirteen stories
above grinding asphalt.

in that inner chamber,
echoed a pan flute
as i walked home.
and glided
out of the tunnel once more
those seventeen or so notes,
a mystery to me
or at least the “me”
that awoke as something new.

I slept sgain.
to wake again in this land,
mirror to my native one,
in some strange reversal of migration,
somehow new to old,

and in this daylight hour i woke again,
in a bed not his, nor mine.
and now I know those seventeen notes,
their mystery now gone,

scribbled on a note and sent to him,
transatlantic,
enveloped,
enveloping,
maybe not all-encompassing,

this journey will have been merely a crutch,
a movement, or gesture,
as natural as a waving hand from a train car.
this place shall be an effigy,
a substitution.

parts of you truly believe  
that your frail structure possesses the gift of flight.

and for the rest of your days,
you will doubt what your eyes see,

every so often believing that you indeed
tried to fly out the 4th story window
and failed.

and everything subsequent is a mere, sublime transfer of energy,
consciousness and je ne sais quoi
into two disembodied hemispheres in a vat.

your earth-eyes, desired,
ground into meal.
spilt, with some smeared upon lover’s forehead,
ash wednesday, thursday, friday i’m in love.

as the Redon painting that left you shivering,
silent and naked once more as in birth.
yeux fermes,
eyes closed
yet they will stare into yours eternally.*

when you were young,
you wanted to be a cartographer
because nothing unto you had been discovered,
and you knew no wrong.

and you were as you are now,
without inhibition,
without the slightest regard for morality,
decolletage or social construct.

this was when you were a native,
without years,
without knowledge
but endowed with divinity’s
slightest, piercing eye.

the doubting,
strangely enough won't **** you.
but what will,
and very could, is nameless.

or, it does have a name.
sometimes we simply deny it,

quietly arranging our lives around it,
while it dwells
deep, beneath, dormant,

yet somehow still over our own heads,
cloud-like, but heavier still.

where is this place?
inside of the earth,
inside of me.
my security, that is
supposed to be a cognoscente

well versed on intruders,
or even worse,
those who wish
to see nothing there at all before their eyes.

My jetlag had finally bid adieu in a land,
republic and former colony the size of my thumb,
but with the strength of bulls on steroids
running through
a field of democratic china shops.

and your money's no good here.
your name,
that silly outfit from little oz.

I have no pictures of myself here.
only a porcelain-plated version in orchid hues,
dwarfed by my favorite ivory window.

from which the fall would most certainly be glorious for
5
4
3
2
seconds.

In another life,
I built several great palaces
by two hands,
brick unto brick,
until they sat
pristine and shining,
in their halcyon
newly millenial bliss

until the caretaker took ill,
and vanished.

so my great palaces stand, still
though in disrepair,
the whitest of elephants this side of le petit trianon.

their windows adorned with spider-leg-cracks,
vines twisting and caressing the parquet in replica Halls of Mirrors.
the royal apartments long ago looted,

pipes burst,
and a river flows into a third story drawing room.

we came tumbling out of the sky
in this choreographed array of movement
and tiny thoughts,
every five seconds abandoning our bodies
to see
us.
outside of "ourselves"

and we fell as one
in a glorious, majestic flourish,
to usher in what some of you will call
the end

and others will dance.
as we did, though
wingless, flightless, bodiless,
but no less beautiful or true,
because you all have that gift
to abandon your bodies at will
to be
wingless, flightless, bodiless,
as we are now.

It is called many names by many tribes.
Its true name unpronounceable by our inferior tongues,
its perfume unknown to our noses.

We cannot hear it,
and we can only experience its body in effigy,

seen from a safe distance,
behind this yellow line
that binds tree to tree

it is called “myth” because we are man,
and woman, and child.

Unfamiliar, yet not completely unknown.
But ungoverned and lawless,

a bridge once meant to transport man,
and woman, and child

but in time became
a bridge to the other side of us,

who are often ungoverned and lawless.

We’re all here to see it come down.
Some of us can’t wait until that last stone is swept from its place forever, and some of us simply stand vigil,
like we’re about to pull the plug on our loved one on life support.

While we are at a perfectly safe distance,
it’s pretty **** strange that the workmen put us in this spot specifically.

We’re on the opposite side of the river, close to the town and anything that seems warm and appropriate.
And from here, we can see it all perfectly.
What Crane calls “The Beautiful Monolith,”
and its three crosses.
 
Some of us take pictures. Some of us even pull out rosaries.
People driving stop their cars, shut them off and simply wait.
And wait. And wait.

And then we hear a low, heavy grumble, like the sound of some giant old man waking up after a nap.
 
The bottom is the first to go,
then it moves up the long, slender legs that support the bridge.
Those famous arches warp out of shape while collapsing.
And it looks like the words painted on the bridge are moving.
Yes. They are moving, like the ticker at the bottom of a news report.
 
A beige cloud sits on top of the river, churning as more of the Beautiful Monolith falls. The bridge’s bases are still intact on opposite sides of the river.

We’re told they’ll be removed,
like unwanted tree stumps, by the day’s end.
 
The beige cloud is still writhing, fueled by turn of the century concrete.

And if we squint hard enough,
we can see through the beige cloud,
at the three wooden crosses on the opposite side of the river.
 
Now, they turn and stare at me.
The entire town, it seems.
Several hundred eyes that with no feeling to them,
just wanting answers.
They want to know why, but “why” doesn’t matter.
“How” would just leave them with more questions,
and “where” is something dangerous that should be left up to whatever forces control what is built and what is destroyed.

We walk to it in silence, passing over earthen layers of leaf and twig, never once touching dirt en transit.

Then it escapes vertically from a jungle less than ninety years old.

The Beautiful Monolith.

At one point when the jungle was young, it was an integral bridge of some great scheme of railroads but is now a cement Taj Mahal only undiluted, uninhibited youth could create.
 
Where alabaster paint found in post cards and archival footage had once been, several layers of outsider art, scratchings, bible verses and amateur-drawn genitalia are the monolith’s primer, base and top coat.
 
We walk past two crosses next to the river, one for a young man who had jumped into the three foot deep river from the monolith’s former train tracks, another carries no name but is nailed to a neighboring tree.

An unnaturally yellow tulip lies beneath this cross.
 
At the Monolith’s feet are vines with sprouts of two-or-three leaves each pointing arbitrarily in directions they can grow.

“And my, how they grow,” she whispers.
 
My Sunday dress, a former ivory table cloth of mother’s imagination is consumed by the jungle.

It is not tarnished, but given life. An existence it would not have known under mother’s elbows rained upon by her cigarette’s ashes. It is ‘colored-in’ life, like these are some vanilla pages of little nephew's coloring book.

I try to tell him, but he does not understand, and says that I shouldn't talk about things being “colored' because it makes me sound like a racist.

I laugh, plucking leaves from the tree bearing the unnamed cross and rub them across the Flat of my torso, leaving green streaks across the former tablecloth.
 
He whispers into my ear about taking me to the top of the Monolith. I nod and attempt to rest my chin on his shoulder, but he starts swiftly up the hill.

He tells me to “lose the prissy mary-jane’s” on my feet saying it would be easier to climb without them.
 
I do this, and my bare feet touch the leaves and twigs. The feeling is *******, but in real life, I don’t even know this word exists. We climb, resting halfway on an embankment in one of the Monolith’s Roman arches. The second half of the climb is slightly more difficult, but we reach the top.
 
The tracks are gone, replaced by a coating of gravel, rocks and beer bottles. And then I see it, the reason why the Monolith is beautiful. Two states converge on this spot where I stand, my tablecloth dress begins to take flight as I spread my wings. His mismatched eyes look at me with something close to amusement as he takes out a bright yellow acetate stencil.
 
The cupola of Animal Mansion pokes out from the jungle like my ***** right ****** in this former table cloth.  
 
A thin veil of red paint meets my waist. He gasps and his eyes widen, allowing me to see every individual real life pixel of his unmatched eyes, the hazel left, and the kelly-green right.
 
He mutters some kind of apology I cannot understand.
 
I respond by slipping off the tablecloth. They bounce slightly. You know which ones I speak of…
 
His eyes remain wide as he comes closer to me, telling me that I have to put my clothes back on. In his hands is the crumpled , grass stained, table cloth dress.
 
I ask if this is what he wants. He manages to say “yes” but apparently…not under these circumstances…or at least not on the Beautiful Monolith. I drop to my knees, and am able to unbuckle his belt before he pulls me up by my forearms.
 
My tears make it hard to see what is happening now…I feel my arms pushing him back from me, and then the sound of rocks tumbling out of place.

He is over the ledge now, flying through the portion of damaged railing where no fence stands. His mismatched eyes, the left hazel and right kelly-green stare warmly into mine.

In his hands is the crumpled, grass stained, tablecloth dress.
This, is see perfectly.

and then we were us,
with ten fingers,
equal toes, two kidneys
and our souls,
so blessed and tan
from their sojourn
through eternity.

but you may not recognize "me,"
from underneath my burqa, my crinoline,
my mantilla,
my zoot suit or naval uniform.

my hair shorn-sheep-short,
or be it 10-foot-Marie-Antoinette-tall,
there, still, do I lie,

where once we passed, there again I will be,
and with hushed whispers will my lips part,
as they have for generations,
"how have you been? I missed you."

it dwells deep in my soul,
thirty meters down
where the canary does sing,
sweet nothing, sing.

don't let it stop.

please don't let it stop.

but when it does, that's when you run.
and you don't look back.

thigh to calf,
to foot,
to toe.

you make it to that elevator,

and you get out.
soot covered and white eyed,
so very white.

and you go home,
to that little girl who loves you,
and you smudge that gingham table cloth.

don't let it stop singing.
you can't afford to.

I stand,
tender and wild
at the water's edge.

I'm told,
as waves punch my knees,
that it's a great day
for a viking funeral.

Water's at my waist,
salt-wind pulling at me,
the soft veil covers me,
my face, hair
and extremities so cold and unevenly tanned.

I'm told,
that I look as if I'm waiting
for some fisherman husband to come home from see.
Maybe I am.

And then my mouth is full of saltwater,
as are my eyes,
my face,
hair,
grains of sand carried by the atlantic
travel the lifelines of both my palms

when I lift my chin above the wave,
I'll have wrinkles,
and a mortgage.

I'll be on the street.
clothed in a trench coat, trousers and my propriety,

when i'll be told
that I look as if I'm waiting.

Maybe I am.

stay in their houses and caves,
scratching feverishly at the indelible print
affixed to their torsos,
praying to this god of theirs,
to absolve them of so many sins.

but god has no ears,
no eyes,
nor a mouth.
for these are primitive human afflictions,
affects for us,
who need these
tools to function.

we cannot be condemned to hell,
for we cannot truly comprehend it,
a place of judgement,
for that too is of our own hands.

yet the haunted
know full well
that god is in its personal hell
scratching feverishly at the indelible print.

and then i am left,
at the upmarket stretch of sand
straddling this most unremarkable state,
quietly flicking my thumb against the blue lighter.

but it's too windy, at the water's edge
in an unremarkable state,
where no one recognizes me,
that bagpipes start playing

the wind acts against my fingers,
they are too delicate, too feminine,
no callousness ever affixed to these,
my ten silken extremities.

my
or your only wish
is to embody every last note
utterance and warble
of the aria

to be unencumbered by body,
mind,
to be only spirit.
to be.

to the furthest reaches
to the softly lit closing scene.

the one you've always dreamt of,
that haunts every bone protruding from your form

and it hasn't even happened yet.
and when it does,
you dance, billy elliot graceful in tube socks frayed
across the living room,
maria callas gone shaking the plaster off the walls,

and you're left,
mouth open
eyes too
right closes,
left too.

There are many instances,
those I have not been proud of,
when I have scoured the colonies collecting tiny, ornate cigar boxes
to house the bodies of dead, miniature emperors of the
Imperial realm beneath my floorboards.

Cheap pine does tend to hide many things,
for it is god-like, this Empire.
its beauty: arresting and unearthly.

I discovered it as all great historical finds come to us,
on an unremarkable, and unplanned afternoon.

I felt not unlike an ancestral WASP,
stumbling upon the new world, or at the very least, new to me.
how presumptuous, to think that this great majestic thing beneath my feet is my junior.

Surely, then, I am the discovery,
bringing my primitive ways,
attire, tribe and desires
to the Imperial Court.

From them, I learned secrets,
a pantheon of miniature gods,
and thousands of years worth of minute literature and culture.
all of it in lovely,
resplendant whispers only the miniature can voice.

From me,
they simply learned of our endless,
tireless wars in futility.
From me,
they took ill and died in a quiet,
unassuming plague,
the sickness of our humanity.

We **** beauty,
at all times, and at all places.
We **** what we touch, and hold closest to us,
our bodies made solely of trillions of happy daggers,
primed and sharpened
for the great, sweeping massacre that resides in us all.

when i was ripe. when i was ripe. under your wing.
thirteen and this jacket's too **** big.
the feathers of your wing tickle my childbearing hips.
is it sin because i like it?
or because i cannot bear child?

only in my mind did i birth one.
we called her a name i can't remember.
she was in my care for a week.
and we watched sitcoms and ate macaroni and cheese in little blue bowls.
i wasn't there when she left.

but my childbearing hips were. 

oh. will you make me a bird too?
will you make me a bird too? 


it kind of makes me sick, in the stomach and ovaries.
when you don't look at me while you fly.
you just look down. at my childbearing hips.
that's all.

i just wanted to know if you got your fingers ***** when you tore your baby out of me.

there lie many fishes in the sea. 

that's not a real word, boy. 

TAKE IT BACK!

and my lips as bright as janice's. 

and my cheeks swollen like hers' too. 


oh, this up-do, it just hurts so bad. 

that i wish what i felt could be real. 

that it wouldn't end just when the wig is torn off.
by daddy-gone-bourbon.


and do you want to be a pretty little thang?

OH. 
I'LL MAKE YOU A PURTY LITTLE THANG. 

tear you a NEW one. 

and rip you open 

Like the burlap sack your mama was...

then we'll see how well the aqua net works on your
up.do.



He didn't die for you, boy. 

He didn't die for you. 


clean yourself up, it's your birthday, after all.

and then it puts away the ***** pictures. 

and it settles it's "pretty little self" into bed...
limping.
oh it's legs are so broken. 

its marfan limbs tremble. 


but i can't do nothing no one else done.

i just wanted to know if it was a real word.

No. 1

the swan song came out of her throat at some velocity. 

too quick for child-ears to hear,
in the room with all the toys, upstairs. 


if only you could hear it though. 

the way we taste it. 


and here, in the basement-corner turned sanctum.

do we let out a pagan ******* roar. 

with Mother Veiled-in-Sepia

and she's got her beautiful thirty-year old baby in arm. 

he's so peaceful. even during his sleep. 
even when his words meander your bible belt. 
moving downward. 
and you take them with water and bourbon as your own. 


still, 
we lie still.
fearing any movement will set off deafening alarms. 

oh WHY CAN'T YOU HEAR THEM?

they're SINGING JUST FOR YOU.
i'll help you when they all leave for home. 

get in their cars.
and travel the turnpike. 


we'll put all the leftovers in tupperware. 

clean the dishes. 

sweep the kitchen floor. 


and hum. the swan song. 

hum it til it becomes late. 

then we'll have to belt it out. 


No. 2**

nothing had made me kneel catholic, 

thin-legged on the pad, 

come three years now.
but those weren't my knees.


that, was before the tornado
 passed the toll booth, 

come into the valley. 


I wonder, if it kneels-catholic. 


That,
was at 1:43, 
and the roadster ambled towards America's waistline, 

to my left was a stark yellow of Mother's halo. 

To my right was the austere, wistful glower
of Daddy gone Thunder.

Out of nowhere, 

the roadster goes upwards.

The waistline shrinks and expands, 

Silent scream, 
and then nothing. 

It's 1:43, 
and the butterflies are awake.

In thousands and thousands of years,
our successors, who or whatever they are,
won’t just find our bones.
They’re going to find our living rooms,
our I-pods, coffee mugs,
suitcases, post-it notes.
The quiet little things that become our lives,

and they’ll look at each other, our successors,
and they’ll think: ‘how charming…how primitive they lived.
This is what they wore on their feet,
and this is the thing they used to listen to music
with before they had the microchips implanted.”
But it makes me think.
This is exactly what we say now
…about the Greeks, the Mesopotamians,
the Incas, Mayas,
all the ****-cloth wearers.

We talk about them
like they were exempt
from unremarkable daily existences,
that their run-of-the mill equivalences’ to Tuesdays
were filled with human sacrifices,
complex rituals and **** like that.
We never talk about how they must have felt exactly like we do now…
We never talk about how they could have easily felt alone in a crowd,
or how they could have felt unrequited love.

They’re always talked about like they were better or worse than we are.
But I think we’re really just exactly the same as them.

When I was born,
Mother named me “Novina,”
and I was to be both
the prayer and the answer.
I was to be both god and servant.

When the pebbles started flying,
no one told me to hide,
to cover myself or to wrap
my own arms around my chest,
with my head tucked in so that I resembled
a balled up sacred vessel.

I stood, in the backyard,
with the simple man from next door
who still lived with his mother,
who was still the prayer, but could
never be an answer.
He towered over me,
smiling Mona-Lisa-stupid
in the face of civil war.

When the Jackel-monkey rode in,
on his lowrider chariot, he laughed
and made the simple man dance,
and dance,
and then sleep.
Eyes open,
crying Mother Mary tears as
he fell redwood-heavy before me.

and I whispered “Madre de hijos,”
but that's not a prayer, jackel-monkey said.

And you know prayers? I spit back,
my baby teeth and his flying pebbles
meeting in the middle,
before the pebble flew past the tooth,
to me,
into me,
and into the cinder block behind me.

He rode away on a dark horse,
and I yelled after him, my diamond eyes-turned-dangling pendulums in 2 quarter time,
“judge me and die. Judge me and die. I am Novina whom Mother loves.”