Sewn, stitched above the bubbling scare,
Where children learned the world’s ways
And soldiers accepted their dismal fates.
Where one white shoulder moves from East to North,
And the two quivering fools never split –
                Their cousin never wagged incessantly like he does at parties,
He hid behind the wall like a yellow beetle, fearing the house owners may come home.
Yet what to utter in such circumstances
Where the belly falls
                And the arms divide to point at the planets.
This, now, is the end of syllables and rapture,
Intelligence and effort,
                The sacred voice that shattered mirrors
Now frozen forever in guilty shakes.
Frankly, I never possessed the stomach.
Pacifism is the hot blood rising from groin to punch the stomach
And the dry sand that erodes the throat.
And anger – that chained, wild dog thrashing, snapping its teeth with the dead sound of a slap.
And pride – the hands entwined in the chains, forming shadowed figures against the fire.
                I see myself no higher than him.
Submerged in the afterthoughts of the silent battle,
Our cocky speeches dictated in private
Now seem like pillaged playgrounds.

Nevertheless –
Time is the hands wearing away,
And unleashing the beast with fire on its tongue.

My message seems too abrasive to send
Like handwritten ransom notes
With a geriatric hand,
Gnarled and pimpled with
                Weariness
                And experience.
Our war stories
Are cards thrown down at a poker table
So initially casual
Then troubling after the fact.

People spout perspectives;
Our inputs are faucets overflowing
With the chemicals that change the mix.
Each of us contribute to the compound of strife.
What I need – what I want
Is my own element,
                Thoughts pure of your life,
For you do not fully comprehend my experience.
My wuss-**** whines that resonate
As sure as a saxophone’s wail.

My jazz demeanor, burlesque figure
Only mask the pedigree of emotions

Beneath my wiggling hips, fluttering eyelashes.
Remember: this is a woman.
From smudges to sunlight to wind to aligned stars –
                The cracked liar’s smile never eludes me
                Just as the bite still scars my neck.

Marked, experienced, wrung out, aloof –
                Live for sin, looping exponentially.


The seagulls scavenging in
The grocery store parking lot,
We know them and hate them for it.
****, drink, yell, tip your way, son.
I’ll tap my cigarette, clamber into bed
[my motives are my motivation]
Deepstep, baby, deepstep:
                Come willing because I won’t.

I am the renegade impulsively flipping cards,
Smirking across the poker table
And yelling, “Checkmate”
For no good reason.
Scattered to the winds,
My nonsense is the very ground you have to tiptoe upon,
My sense is the word on the tip of your tongue that absconded.

I am not your maker for he’s my friend.
I am not your mother for she’s my servant.
I am not your lover for you’re my witness.

This [whatever it is] is a syllable caught skipping on the record,
                                                         ­                                  And we’ll never know the rest of the word

All my friends are tortoise-shelled Merlins stalking statues
with their walking canes at dusk while
I pad behind them on all fours
as the day breaks the clouds like wet tissue.
And, Garrett, you broke the picket line –
Once the spotlight’s beam with that grin wider than yours and mine’s minds’ intangible illusions – Now the rustle of an intermission between stage and applause.
Our afternoons were spent *******
nicotine out of burning daily afflictions
between raspy exasperations and half-laughing
declarations about how we couldn’t catch a break.

I would ask you why, but it’s not my place.
It’s not yours, either.

I’ll tell you The Why about me, Garrett. I’ll tell you the right
and proper Why I had to pause and stifle
my cigarette break before my wrists broke
                before my wet-eyed babbling witnessed your last wave’s exhalation on all our friends

The Why I was 40 when I saw the shady What If [the same
                that stalked you] linger round my mother. And
                I heard your exhalation of “Mama Kara” and
                I remembered how to act.
The Why I was 13 when I begged the ambiguous How Do I out of you
                when I felt lifeless and pale within UIC's Courtyard -- all of our eyes spread white and feverish.

We can never pay for it -- too much of one thing is
Our buckled knees dragging the question to the fountain to make it drink.
Garrett – although so distant, the brush you had on me is the echo of a “Yup” and an “I know, right?”  and "Yo, lemme get a square,"
that drowns out the reverberating sound
of grief-clapping palms,
and cries, of everyone’s “Why?”

My personal déjà-vu-time memory-prompts that frame
The blurring patterns of today’s hubcap-wheels, spinning
Kaleidoscope flashbacks of bathtub playtime.

A gaggle of giggling girls babbling about
What used to matter : umbrella-popping chewing gum
With gallivanting jargon laced in crushes-hushed : boy-talk.  

Pillows : Comforters morphing, swarming like
Womb-entranced, half-cupped palms calmed
Palpitating mouths motoring off self-pitying rumble-grumbles.

How the clopping ball of opted-birr was a bent-mouth birdcall
Over-relished, over-zealous imploration : a round robin
Jumblemix of a jejune bombast for slap-sticked power.

By-and-by polysyllabic buds bloomed, baked, and wrinkled
Past-Gas’s long-gone jokes : those balmy snug-hugs guarding
Doltish vulgarity among the begrimed-glitch and old-grown-boring Jive.