Late spring when we first saw the house,
with its back door a cave obscured
behind those breaking waves of blue
and white surge-foam of sweet blossom.

Bees, pollen and petals made it
difficult to weave a way in;
and in the drench of sun-showers
the water-falls of flowers purled.

Summer slowed the fall to trickles.
And since you’ve missed most of autumn,
let me say the wisteria
now is mostly air and grey cloud.

The few curved spatulas of pods
rattle like the wood-slat clackers
of a ghost-dispersing wind chime,
high against Himalayan grey.

we dance with spoons and spatulas
forks and whisks and tongs
we use then for their real purpose,
because we know what they're really for...
unnecessarily profane songs
that's why they're in our kitchen
that's why they're in our hands
right where they belong

I finish scooping a large serving of stir fry onto a styrofoam plate
with the two metal spatulas left on the counter for me.
I sidestep the forty something year old man who is our host
who has opened this house, his families house, to us
his extended family.
I jump over the dog and take a seat in a metal folding chair that has been set by the table
which is meant to seat 4, but is seating 9 tonight.
To my right is an old friend, the estranged stepsister of the sleeping hostess
to my left; the father of another friend who is, himself the best friend of the host
and a regular in this kitchen.
His son sits on the other side of the girl to my right
his girlfriend is across from him
and to his right is the three year old niece of  the hostess.
Her Five year old sister sits across from her.
at the end is the 14 year old daughter of the hostess
and across from me is her sister, the reason I am here.
We eye each other across the table,
trying to say something to each other
trying to reveal the sound our heartbeats make,
but our words are frozen in our throats.
They would be pierced though by flying words
and noodles
and laughs
and forks.
they would be pierced through by the energy here
by the connectedness
by everything.
If we were to say anything
it would be rendered so completely useless so quickly
that we can't.
Or so we tell ourselves
as we sit at this table
with our large, crazy, extended, adopted family
knocking elbows as we try to eat
passing around the Parmesan cheese
listening to the dogs barking at us for accidentally kicking them
as they tried to forage for food scraps under our chairs
not telling us they were there.
There is a happiness here
a buzzing
an energy
this is a family
this is a family

and I belong

The girl’s corneas expand over the small black abyss of pupil
Tides of blue and hazel rising over onyx isles
An unhinged eyelash balances precariously on its neighbor
It evaporates with her quick blink

Directly beneath her right eye
Below the mottled eggplant shadows
The corpse of a capillary drains among the freckles
Subterranean rivers of vein
Pulse under thin skin

Her nose is spherical
Etched by soft papery scars
Pores round and gazing
Culminating in a uniform valley

Lips are soft and pink and unkissed
A source for a  small steady trickle of pride
Her mother’s lips
But behind the outer façade
The seamed surface is rough with nervous nibbles
Ribboned with scars of worries and troubles

She lacks fourteen teeth
Absent since the womb
Those she has are either sickly infants or filled with grainy mystery metallics
Some entirely fabricated with spatulas of amalgam
Yellowed and cracking
Rough and worn
Spongy inner marrow screaming with pain
She hides the stony incisors from view

The hair
Curling and waving
Kissing with reptilian tongues at her cheeks
Neck
Forehead
Framing her face in brambles and cowlicks
Indecisive of its true form
Fuzzy with moisture
Unwilling to obey
The strands of a gorgon
A monstrous tangle of personality
Instantly recognizable
Her hands attempt to soothe the undulating tendrils
But they anger
As stubborn as her
Refuse treatment
She gives up
Rinses her hands
And turns away from the mirror
Sighing

Basquiat poetry
coffee grains
in my teeth
and dreams
I wake up to the walls in speech
recollect
drunken journeys
Emma the girl who
sits at your window sill
mourning the death of night's child:rain
and it is September
or either
August
I am lost in a booklet of ancient nobles
Upstairs
reading mythology
drinking
***** brewed by patients of poverty
Piano skin and noises
leak into the fire place
all alone
There is no more Time
only windows that shine
only windows that are dark
only women that lay naked on my bed and kiss me
Do not worry
I am not here
writing these
rusty poems
as I slowly push them into the sides of your eyes
Shakespeare eyeball
Ginsberg Navajo
Gas station clerk
high on
crack *******
I give her money
she gives me
a smile
a pack of
Marlboro cigarettes
that stench up the church
hiding the smells of
sad prophets
cheap wine and
oyster crackers
85 cents for off-brand large bag
Adam and Eve
clock time forget sleeve *** spoon food coffe-table
Death moving in down stairs
room
103
or was that the opiates
crawling into the tree veins roots wooden finger tips of my
body
of my
soul
of my
bulb
of my
Skeleton that is colored like you
Termites
mistook
a dying flower
for a limb of a tree
that grew sideways
too avoid the hum buzz of Vehicle Highway I-435 Kansas
Age 400 and 3
Child at birth
Man at death
oh how the seasons brew into a facade
oh how
the *****
sleeps with me
I make her coffee
3am
we smell of smoke and tired souls
pointing at the color red
as we
take lefts
and rights
into a city into bowels of streets and sighing police men and sighing homeless
I take off her clothes and
she falls apart like pedals attached by scotch tape to a rose
Nothing it Rains
Nothing it is Cold
Hello
We are the Nothings
and we
sit alone
on bar stools too high
and our knees are bruised from
praying to the bartender
to
pour
one
more
Whiskey
Yet we drank it all
and the juke box is broken
so we listen to
Homosexual men ******'

City Cough
Everybody has lung cancer
or is
walking to a 24/7 grave yard
Will I be buried with you?
I ask a mouse
climbing on my walls
to catch a roach

But he says nothing
and the roach escapes
only to reply
with
“Yes, you and I.”
my mouth gutters “And he and she.”
and the Rat complies
“And sometimes Why.”

Get another drink
April Angel casting a shadow into a lake of bass and crawdads
“Geh me ahnothur dreeenk” drunk lingo speech
***
***
***
Fill your bucket mind
with spatulas
Broken television screens
the toe nails of angels
Piano Keys

Spit into a well
Spit into the wine
500 dollars a bottles or 6,154 pesos
make a wish
make a diamond
make steak
make wool
make love

My starving father filling up on the apples of Vice

Number 3
lights a cigarette in the dark
and the shadow glimmer dance of her
Eyelashes
cheekbones and
Eye bones
and
lip bones
are projected onto the cement wall
an art show
a Ballet suicide attempt
a winter experiment on the Indians of North America

Ride a Train
Rise of Tides
Ruthless Killer
Ruthy big breasted girl in my dreams dancing about a fire that I built from
old paintings of my
Grandfather
as Kansas was spilled like hot chocolate milk

“Get up”
“and where are you”
“can't you tell it is 1am”
“why has the clock mistaken me for someone who cares”
“lover”
“where are you going”
“the river is too cold”
“you will die like Hemingway did”
“you will die”
“i will die”
“Hemingway will die”
“but not tonight”

Shakespeare.
Tapping on my window.
He gives me.
A pill.
We take a bus too New Orleans.
And visit the grave of William.

Cold coffee
Caramel popcorn
Southern Cut Marlboro
Telephone
Lampshade crooked
asking
attempting

Under my eyes
engravings of a crescent moon
from gazing up
on so many nights

Yes, it's International Women's Day,
Let's all celebrate our own day,
I didn't hear that, what did you say?
Oh, yes, I'm an f.....ing moll again,
Yes, in Oz, it's f....ing Molls' Day!
With our philosophies of molls,
Molls' non-participation protocols,
You know what great-grandma said?
"Bullies don't get!" get that in your head,
Yes, Molls' management rules, I say,
Let's celebrate International Women's Day,
Now in Oz, it's f.....ing Molls' day,
With a smile, of course, that's the way,
Smile, babes, this could be you one day!!!!

I'm not a fan of spatulas, not when the pancakes burn and their gilt edges look pretentious. Perhaps ostentatious is a better word when mahogany is used in the kitchen. I feel a lot of guilt, mostly over silly things I can't change, so sew me a quilt of pockets in which to store my regrets.

I won't say I got especially drunk, but a few nights later there was a skunk, and I'm thinking that if you had stopped to ask his name, he would have introduced himself as Alfred. However, all this talk of individuality has got me thinking of the polyester comforter in beige she sewed and how there was once that mix-up with my former Sunday school teacher and a national holiday that didn't exist. Does a bigger beard make a man a better prophet?

When a person stops to contemplate a grass blade, the whole world opens up in wonder. What good does greenery do? I'm telling you, it's not so much the greenery and more the change of scenery that's what makes a person whole. Thankfulness won't come in pieces, and God's grace is one of those intricate jigsaw puzzles spread out on a table in your heart as it gets glued with love and matted and framed with goodness.

It's not that I'm in love with my billing office, it's just that I'm thinking of someone else when I put the stamp on. And I've tried to keep my thoughts quiet, but forget wearing my heart on my sleeve, I'm a bank window with paper cutout promises. But if you ever think of me, I'm thinking you might have a deficit on your account.

Just because there's no way I left the oven on when I left the house doesn't mean I don't have the right to check.

Looking to the west I see a perfect rainbow
Tucked under and lifting a symphony of cloud
The sun beams in lay-lines from its horizon.
Yet, the scientist who explains this phenomenon
Cannot describe my feelings for such a spectacle
Cannot describe the song in me that dances
The miracle of light and spectrum.
—-
You are mighty, you are ethereal
Your many fingers rake aberrant their spatulas of light
Your beauty makes all else ghastly or at least ordinary.
The trifles of each day’s turnings are insignificant in comparison.
A conscience of orb, mist, shadow, light
The Gods derive pleasure from your presence
Else their thunderous growls bemoan your magnificence.
—-
There is no darkness just the absence of light
There is no cold just the absence of heat
There is no disbelief just the absence of your benediction.
Uncapturable, delicate, infamous portent.
In the implausible silence you are where I worship
Without beginning or ending
Yours is an ultimate mantra.

My tongue sharpened today

Angles fell off it like classroom fancies

Rationalised to a point, its first act

Was to knock out my fangs from behind.


I stumbled about the house

Slopped through the bathroom door

And foamed at the toilet seat, a

Wave broken over a rim of briny coral.


My salt winked about the walls, around the tap, between the wiped tiles

In the shower head of porous sponge

The seaweed in the pipes crawled up

And drowned me in the sickly sweet.


Downstairs smelt the same, logically the sea dumped down

Underwater fish glided past my window, all with the same

Grim face against the mirrors, aping the ocean

With me trapped inside.


I turned on the same song, fifteen times,

The sound tried to reach me with such ambition

But it floated to the top, belly up in its bubbles

Ridiculous, I scratched the date on the seafloor and entered the kitchen.


Drips everywhere, grease stalactites, from the tiles, the yawning oven, the spatulas

A Cretaceous museum where savagery is kept

In little plastic boxes, with clear peelable lids

A fresh, messy ****.


In the hall the grey light descends through slit windows

Colour settling at the bottom like grit, all the greys so tall

Give the narrow rectangle an aftertaste of dust

Just one keeper before me


It devours my key, hacking as it gobbles

But it does not anticipate my twist

I gut it from inside, it spits its meal back at me

And I swing its limp, dead frame 90 degrees.


Stepping out feels like a moonwalk, with Houston's neutral formulas

Unheeded in my ear, finally I can greet the clouds, that probably escaped,

Like me, fumes from the chimney

Pale and fading away from lack of auspicious sun.

i want the two of us shivering on a bare mattress in a ****** new york apartment
i want the two of us fighting over something stupid like what to listen to in the car
i want the two of us to go grocery shopping together
i want the two of us to make breakfast together without pants, singing into spatulas
holding hands at a concert
i want to see what you look like during summer- your hair loose and blowing in the wind, sunburns across your shoulders
i want to see what you look like in the winter- bundled in baggy sweaters and hunched shoulders
i want to see what you look like 5 years from now

Under the knife he went,
And came up decades younger,
Now he need not fright,
Fearing nothing in plain sight;

She went in with meaty love handles,
And out came a sumptuous hourglass,
So, on with the two-piece bikini,
By the poolside sipping cold tea;

Before, tens and dozens,
Mowed down by jihadist fundamentalists,
Today, tens of thousands are unaccounted for,
Their lot, with this terrible dictator;

For me, humble beginnings,
From eating with wooden spatulas,
To dining with exquisite utensils,
Designed and printed in three-dee plastic.