The city reeks of decay.
Buildings crumble like
so much daily bread.
My heart swims through
the murky depths.
Glub, glub.
Struggling towards a
source of light.
Yet walking down
steamy streets I stop.
A gentle fragrance like
morning sunlight
hits, hits, hits.
Eyes flash and find…
a window box garden.
Gardenias of spring
blessing the day with
small blossoms of radiance.

The ***** of yesterday's
plans fell out, rolled down
several diamond-laced gutters.
You laughed, smiled,
said it was my fault.
Rosemary breath and
tinted windows kept
us from seeing the truth.

The truth was stolen
by a few members of
a dawn-worshiping cult,
an organization based
around shafts of light.
Unfriendly to insomniacs,
they constantly carry
alarms clocks tucked
within their pockets.

Pockets within the
hot-breathed earth
hold liquid sanity and
solidified fear.
Blind, ****-eating
worms guard these treasures
with myriad enchantments.
Unfortunately, modern science
has not allowed us
to discover these things.

Snap, crackle, pop go my synapses in
the morning light.  Or maybe that is
just my cereal.

I can’t tell in this fuckstorm of a hangover.

My eyes burn black and
the airy space behind my forehead
radiates. Twisting, melancholy.
Pulsing knives, throbbing toaster coils,
wrap me in soft, dark wool and
toss me overboard.

I will float.

This aching in my fingertips does
not translate well. When I
read the morning paper, I pray the
ink will bleed knowledge through
skin to inner vessels. Soak.

I might remember everything.

There is a boy who walks down the street,
9th street to be exact, my street to be exact.

He pushes a stack of buckets
on a little red wagon.
There is a bell that rings,
sounds like a cat collar,
jingling along.

I pass him by as I walk down this street.
I glance quick, sharp,
eyes flashing like a bird's eyes,
gleaming and metallic.
I try to find the source of
that jingling, tingling, ringling sound.

But I cannot find it.
It eludes me, it escapes me.
I look into his face, look into his eyes,
even quicker than before,
but nothing is revealed.

So instead I imagine a bundle of cats
inside this stack of buckets,
all clawing, purring, mating, scratching,
fighting their way out.
All madness, and sadness, and a little bit of badness,
but good enough to want freedom.
To want out of the bucket and
into the world.

I imagine myself walking past this boy,
knocking over the buckets,
freeing those purring, mad
cats, and laughing as they
scamper away, damp and dismayed,
but finally, finally free.

I want to say this poem with –
dripping harmonicas
and dying birds.
Please. Don’t think me rude.
I’m just the girl
who never felt friction
until your sweaty hand
touched my blue jay skin.

Most marvelous piece of luck,
I died.
We ran through fields of mirrors.
Reflecting
Reflecting.
My feathers burst into flame
and I bloomed.
Beads of light,
fractured dew.
I learned the secret feeling of music
inside your teeth bones:
just bite down.
You said.

All the knobs of
your warbling voice
sparkle and echo,
endlessly.

the sky looked like
a fish bowl
this morning

when

you told me
you were
leaving

I tried to mind,
really—
I did

but that sky.
you could swim
in it.

You told me that you were too wide-eyed for flirting at parties. I agreed. Thought of your eyes. How they reflect starlight. Depths so unfathomable that nothing shallow can survive. You breathe truth but trust nothing. I don’t understand how the two coexist.

The boy down the street celebrates “Darwin Day.” Calls himself a humanist. Proud-wearing his secularism. On his sleeve. I laugh at him. Don’t answer his knocking. Philosophy taken too far is no better than religion.

A woman buys apples and four rolls of toilet paper. Tells me: the only difference between a poet and the rest of the world is, poets tell jokes and leave out the punch line.

You take an astronomy class. Start sleeping under the stars. We sit on the balcony.  You smoke Kamel Reds from Russia. Imported. Talking of matter and halogen. You claim the moon to be a mirror. You can tell how the sun shines if you look at the moon reflecting its light.

Radioactive warehouse of
****** up memories
stacked one on top of
the other, higher and higher
Threatening to fall
Down, down, down
Crash!
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Eagle claws grasp
eggshell brains of
polyester and light
Don’t drop them!
Soaring, screeching, speaking
in tongued syllables of
animal lore, resounding
through the heavens
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Fire-ache radiating
Hot
Snapping brittle bones
with rapid fury of noisy chaos
Touch me!
Don’t touch me!
Whisper my name like
you hate the taste
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

**** me sweet
with bullets on your lips
and my lips the targets
Gleaming red in the center
of a nameless bull’s eye
in some ****-hole country town
Noplace.
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Bury me and tell
no one, leave me
underground, suffocating slowly
I will become one with
the consuming earth
Fading to ashes and food
for hungry, blind worms
Seeking, seeking, seeking
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

You mocked desire
like it sprang from mother’s lips.
A Bible verse and ten Hail Marys
(for good measure).

Even slipstreams cross paths,
but we do not and
I am rarely sorry.

Floating upwards is simple.
Feels like emerging from the womb.
I wrote you twelve songs, and
waited underneath a train.

But
Are we ever clean?

You spoke to fill spaces
that were already full.
I sat in the corner and burned my nails.
Remembered why I left.

Lost innocence is a sad fiction,
yet you cling on.
Reading fairytales while
blood still drips from your teeth.

I met an old woman on Leander Avenue
who told me, “Don’t breathe or the earth
will swallow you whole.” I
stayed very still and didn’t move.
A butterfly could have landed on my nose
but I sneezed so I may never know for sure.
After that I remembered that my generation
doesn’t have to follow their elders, so I
walked to the corner store.
I bought three candy bars that I would
never eat and tied my shoelaces on the front porch.

My neighbor watches old films. He calls them
Lumières, and sometimes invites me over.
I watch the hand-cranked film flicker
black and white over his screen.
A troupe of acrobats flip about and wave
the French flag, large women kneel and scrub
endless linens in the still river, the gardener
punishes the mischeivious boy. I smile every time
they look at the camera.

The slats in the blinds yawn widely
and seeing them, the melatonin strikes.
Flowing, forcing, endocrinal.
The wind whispers Greek words in my ear.
Helios, zoetrope, khaos.
The trees outside of my window
spell out foreign letters.
They only make sense one at a time.
I can’t spell a word but I speak and
realize I can still make a sound.
I fall asleep.

I never wake but dream
of exquisite lavender pillows doused
in holy water from the lips of a
spouting statue. A Carnevale clown waves
at me in the corner and takes off mask after
mask. Confetti rains softly from his eyelashes and he
quietly laughs into his palm. I want to hold your
hand but remember that I am just
a raindrop streaking down your car
window in a mountain spring storm. I
open my eyes.