And I feel this sludge
running down the long halls of my legs
a flood of viscous petrol jelly
slick sewage sick
patrolling artery walls

this metallic slide
so much molten lava
running down the mountains
of my thighs.

I'm a concrete machine
getting my mortar fix
tin woman hollow heart
methyl folate ******

Give me another hit
buffer my pain.  
Already I have diesel fuel juice
leeching out my tissues
lightning striking the brain.

It's hard to get your attention
with this leavening
pooling the blood in my feet
It's hard to say hello with
acid cuddled words.
I want to raise my arms
and touch you
but I'm too toxic I'll burn you.

This nausea has become me
this metabolic crash is
my stop-gap.
Short circuit pain
this neuropathy has hardened me
in the space between these synapses
I dream of nothing.

Doped up by the yellow stuff
Daddy sprays from the plane
I was a farmer's daughter but
the doctor says
You've got the mutant gene,
for heavy metal toxicity.

Another serotonin addict
with brains of saccharine and plastic
I might get a pink ribbon for surviving
if they call it disease,
but silently, inside

I feel this sludge
sick sewage slick
battening down the reflexes
backing up the pipes.

my body is the future body
I say.
because this deadly brigade
is eating up the human chain.

There were Chernobyl defects,
and the media loves lepers with lesions
but a blistered stillborn baby
is no face for nuclear policy

but we --we're the unsung mutant breed--
there are billions of us
mentally sick lazy *****,  
hypochondriacs
of pre-existing conditions
can't find work
not even at Walmart
for disability aid--

But when you check out,
please donate.

Drop another baby
in the cancer cup.

I try to write when I am tired
but tiny spiders descend around my desk.
Newly-hatched eight limbed-things
parasail
the silk lids over my eyes.

If only I could ride out the exhale and
go at once adrift, self-rappel
I would climb the silk suspension line
swing from thought to thought
thread the eye of the needle
pull-ey up the beanstalk.

but instead I'm left to watch these aerial yoginis
swim on a draft from the ceiling.
These spinsters with their poetic acrobatics
for whom rhythm is spun on silent trapeze--
make a play-swing
out of gravity.

The tiny spiders that descend around my desk
make me--an oaf.
a self-honoring monument
for climbing, a botched landmark to ---human ingenuity
me, a moving pedestal for dancing
me, a knotted up windsock
hunched over a heated screen,
trying to blow down metaphor, alliteration
from these tiny kites that ascend the earth.

Tiny spider, tiny spider
let down your silk tresses
draw up my mind
swing the high rafters
I want to hang upside down--
make a play-swing
out of gravity.

Yet when I pulled on the thread
to net the silken-mouthed beast,
words did not come down
like mana from heaven.

Rather, my tongue grew heavy with cotton
metaphor, alliteration,
the fabric of suspended poetry
unraveled.
Lucid improvisation fell like Icarus
to quips.

because thinking to write
and writing to think is like
pulling dead hair
from spaghetti.

Meanwhile, tiny spiders descend around my desk
parasail
and make a play-swing out of gravity.

Turn me out into the night
a rainy night.
Turn me out into the schlap of asphalt.
Let me spin my wheels.

Sometimes I kiss my own hand
to feel alive--
Other times I turn out
That chaffing concrete runway
They call a heart.

I run in the rain.

Clouds engulf the L.A. basin
Layered mold in the
tubberware
lunchbox
I left home.

Except the spores
are tufts of a woman's white hair
Clumped together in the shower drain
blocking the grates.

You cannot shoot up enough
silicon to fill
the wrinkles of a body
hollowed
You'd have to start pulling marrow
from the bone.

These craters of the basin--
****** dry to burn.
hollowed curves a body barren,
tapped out, laid fallow.
Shrouded...

White noise
White film
White foam.

She, with her fingers
in every swimming pool

She, lounging behind the smokescreen

She, big curvaceous mound
smoldering rock of an old woman

She, who can **** it in and hold it in
the atmosphere

She, lasso-ing lady with wild tendril hair
She can't always keep from billowing out
hot air.
Soon enough she'll catch a sore throat.
Soon enough she'll taste the concrete waterways.
Soon enough, she, ittle too long.

The tale of Hydra is a tale of women deflated.
This lick of fire did not blanket the city but set it ablaze.
She swallowed the heat ****** back the fire
bled and wept Armageddon-red sunsets.  

White Noise
White Film
White Foam

She, a flat, airless
mortar without bricks
tooth-picked clean.
only marrow left of bone.

When I was young
I had a body made of rubber
And elastic bands
That mother tightened
So I would sit up straight
But she grew slack with age.

When I was young
I was pliant
I had too many ballons in my ears
So mother pulled them, but I disappeared-
Tucking my head into my collar
And my hands into my armpits
To escape.

I was reminded of this yesterday,
Driving by one of those street advertisements
Car dealerships, Verizon wireless
Where they communicate to get your attention
Balloons growing
To the dance of wind inside an empty sleeve.

The ants come hunting for you
out of these mounds
Your touch I crave
But if you call me luxury
To lay in my lap
I'll trip-latch the key
Call the red army
and collapse the underground.

You come out with the ants at night
Out of the woodwork
When the work of building needs to rest
The creak of bones is loudest
So the building and the ants and you move at night.

You debated for twenty snores
before daring to shift the mound and scuttle his arm
The longer you waited to ease the bone aches
Body heat and neck vice,
The more depressed you became thinking
The whole situation masochistic.

Finally, you roll and pull-ey
Your limbs out of reach,
Pad down the stairs relishing
That quiet space opening within your head
Downstairs you re-arrange the kitchenaid
Take off your underwear and
Examine your knees in the mirror.
Your knees creak, the ants creep
And you ask yourself if you can keep building another year.