Grandma read her doctor's orders aloud
over a fresh cigarette.
Hummed a nameless hymn
of white clouds
as she recited the litany
of prescribed don't do's:
  
heavy lighting,
bending over,
long periods of standing.
  
This is how you convince
your grandchildren to clean your house
on the first day of Christmas vacation.
  
Grandma's hands are too full
to hold brooms and dusters anyway.
They are too busy balancing prayers
born between the flickering knees
Of her dust orange lighter.
And her patron saint has four legs.
All of which can be found
tattooed across the chest
of a Marlboro carton.
  
Grandma is a religious woman.
So she prays religiously.
Says the body is a temple
and hers is an old testament book
of nicotine sacrifices.
A fiery copper skin
of crop circle veins.
Each wrinkle a story.
Each story ending in flames.
For 5 decades
she has been burning.
And I am too old
to pretend the ash is invisible.
Too young to watch it
cuddle the curves
of her lips
and call it anything
but sacrilege.


And this is why I need
to vacuum the rugs.

******! dali,
the clock's
sliding off
the wall...
again.

piccasso,
you *******
you blest
me with
three *******...
but nothing to
hold it all

van gogh,
whose
going to
clean up
all that straw
and blood.

and
munch,
do you
wonder
that
i
scream!!!

If only poets could also be perfumers, imagine
the wonders they could bottle (as I am no poet,
forgive this concoction, but I couldn't resist).
It smells like our love, give it a whiff.

Those top notes you smell? Scales of butterfly wings
and paper, new guitar strings and pollia
berry. You can catch a slight odor of your
much-hated fish fins (I swore you were a child of the ocean).

It gets deeper at the heart, excuse my pun and
irony (your heart turned out more shallow than my
bathroom sink).

Here tequila meets *****, the night bleeds into
day. An orchid on the verge of rot, a mouthful
of condensed milk and tears to kiss away the
growing, gaping ****.

Only near the end notes does this spell truly
break (so forgive the “midnight” reference I put in the formula).
When you smell the crushed angel wings and
blood-soaked, shattered
chandelier, a paprika heart beating wildly,
remember the smell of bruises and nightmares.

I trust you need no recipe to recreate
this masterpiece but not in the same proportion,
bottle, ways; I refuse to be your donor of raw
human juices.

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
use only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

explore and excavate forms,
churn the ether

within you is the sleeping artist,
tap yourself awake,
yet be silent,
be intimate,
with the unconscious plateaus
with in you

be intimate
with the making
and the doing,
the fertility
of creating

you will require silence
to allow for reflection,
communication

Childbirth is noisy, messy,
Birthing art is different

understand your language,
mine it, taste it,
it is your play dough

avoid the chronic,
habit is slavery

collaborate for
there in nothing new
under the sun,
but the constant rediscovery
of the old
in new forms
when ideas are exchanged,
every partnership is a solo

Experience anew,
Each time,
Say:
This is my first time,
This is my first work

I do not need your validation.
I validate myself
and in doing so,
who else
comes along
for the ride
on our tide?

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

Be Fertile and Radiate