fifty years later



you girls wear their old dresses
over sky
blue leggings
lace
and fabric that smells
of lost time

you found them
in stores
with high ceilings
and a sloppily simulated
rustic vibe

you love your
waists tastefully
cinched
and collar bones
concealed

you twirl before
the full length
mirrors and
wish oh how
you wish
you could
have been born
then instead of now

everything
was so much classier!
the women
were a different
kind of beautiful

women
who smoked
in their bathtubs
cardboard hairdos
unraveling

women
elbow deep in
baking
soda and dishsoap

soft secretive
smiles overtaking
their
faces
as they rattled
through the
medicine
cabinet
for a snack
(twice a day)

pregnant again
for
the fourth
time
yet
thin as a rail
somehow

ghosts
in their own
skin

silent but
deadly

crying manically
because of
the smoke
in their eyes

choking gently
on the powder
all over their tight
lovely complexions

dinner ready
at six
sharp as a rusty nail

fantasizing
about what it would be like
to fall in love
with another woman

scuffing their knees
and showing the raw
skin off to all
the young men
with sunlight left over
from childhood still
swimming in their
eyes

or walking home
in the rain
without an umbrella
and having that be ok

slapping their
own faces
at such trecherous
thoughts

obsessing
over how
their mothers did
it with
so much **** grace...

but yes
girls
their clothes
were simply
divine

double the time it took me to realize you
werent everything
and here i stand, jawless,
all teeth and tongue and homeless, meandering words

all for your love, the butter-sweet nature of it
the *** drizzling down my throat and wrists
hot, clenching feel of it.
you arent everything as a sun ripened nectarine isnt
everything
but you are full as it is-
of generous, pink
pulp, pressed sensually against the
midnight flesh-
you are heavy with heart, uncrunchable,
rippled heart.
you are silent in crisp morning
mouth
suspended above ground reared for chaos

suspended on
a branch that appears as an old woman’s laughter would,
thin, purposeful,
veined with childish green

your are the juice staining my lips
and escaping like poetry
dribbling down my chin.

the trumpet
cries, protests, howls

grinning, wide and toothless
all the while
wailing, weightless heart

jovial complaints
about trivial this and that

heavy and warm
against the ears

it reminds me of
fibrous, monochrome images

fat lips

and happy, bashful men
that don’t exist.

there is no magic here, only waiting,
six foot, soft haired children, with shoulders broad and lips
inflated, pining for the snow to shrivel and disappear like some giant
white-bodied beast, suffocated by the sky
waiting to fling off in all directions, sparks spiraling up from the mother flame
the ferocious dancers, lunging towards the moon
waiting for love to overwhelm, to swallow
taking their hands and hair and eyes into its warm, gaping mouth and embrace
them like a womb
for the beginning of wisdom
for the end of all things cold
gripping one anothers hands
a row of three paper people, snipped into shape
by the holy hands of circumstance

or if you want to call it god...

waiting to be lifted onto the shoulders
of some great wind and carried to the sea
weightless
and
dancing

goodmorning naked body. taut watery skin smudged against my face.
you smell like trees salted and soaked in winter.

(pitch black limbs curving across the pale sky, dripping
sweet ale into patterns on the snow, which children bundled in plastic
and cotton packed into stone, will seek out and decipher.
while old women, knee deep in furs watch mindfully from behind their ancient glass.
language of the forest gods, they will mutter, breath fogging windows and swallowing their old wiry mouths, before turning into the muddy darkness of their homes and disappearing forever)


strands of sunlight dressed up in frost, tumble drunk into the room and drape over your shoulders. i leave a trail of fingerprints across your collar bone.

i dont
care about wine or succulent dinners that take two hours to
prepare and are diamonds on the tongue
i dont care about cigarettes in the morning
blinking swollen eyelids and hair like long grass combed
by seabreath
i dont care about fabric on the walls, the colors that
warm your irises when the aging sun hits them
just right
i dont care about apartments with high ceilings and balconies
overlooking streets
that teem with noise from the underground
teem with people enjoying this
centuries version of peace

i dont care about thirty two hour weeks
and paychecks that coat life
in a thick layer of oil


i care about
cereal in coffee mugs,
smiles rested on top
and eyes whispering

i care about voices strung together
like morning dew, trembling
along a spider’s thread

i care about watching
one another
make art, in silence,

fingers spiraling down
the brittle neck of a grandfather
guitar
rainbow splatter

words with hands.

you and your friends finish the wine
and then you kiss me goodbye.
you leave and
also take all the cigarettes.

this is an awful experience
for me.
because i have become drunk
sometime between half an hour
ago and now,
i cry after you close the door
and have not
a
**** thing to
smoke or
swallow
to make the
tears worthwhile.

there is nothing worse
than crying
alone.

there is nothing
better than crying alone
with a cigarette in hand.

this is a complicated
thing to explain.