In my red
bathtub,
my ceramic,
clawfoot
bathtub,
with a single
yellow light,
above the mirror-

I lie with you
a lover who
holds me in his
arms,
romantically

I've never met
a friend
like you
who I love
so endless-
ly

and as we lie,
the water
slowly
cooling,
our knobby
knees bobbing
in the bliss

I know there's love
for me
in you
I see it somewhere
in your
touch
even though
I'm just a friend

I love you and you
know it
and I hope one
day you'll show it
too.

Part I – 10039 330th Street West

I used to live in a haunted house.
Everything about the building felt wrong:
Creaking staircase,
Crumbling basement walls,
Dark side door,
Thin white curtain in the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

When I lived in the haunted house
I was a little girl, and I didn’t move until I started high school.
I hated my room,
I hated the dining room,
I hated the basement.
I never used the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

Bad things happened in the haunted house.
It didn’t matter what the time of day was.
Growling at night from the dining room,
Singing in the morning from the basement,
Tapping on the porch window at midday in the playroom.
Nobody checked if there was activity in the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

I know that the house was haunted
Because someone was always with me when these things happened.
My stepbrother who also heard the growling,
My stepsister who also heard the singing,
And all of us who heard the tapping.
I know that these happened
Because the house was haunted.


Part II – 13947 Gates Avenue

I used to live in a haunted house.
Everything about the building felt wrong:
My bad report cards in the recycling,
The constant panic in my stomach,
Piles of tissues on my bedroom floor,
My bedroom itself, where I constantly hid away.

When I lived in the haunted house
I was a teenager, and I didn’t move until after starting college.
I hated the living room,
I hated the kitchen,
I hated the hallway.
Most of all I hated my bedroom, where I constantly hid away.

Bad things happened in the haunted house.
It didn’t matter what the time of day was.
Whistling by the window at night from the wraparound porch,
Screaming outside during the day from the yard,
Voices whispering my name constantly from anywhere.
I was only safe in my bedroom, where I constantly hid away.

I can’t know that the house was haunted
Because nobody was with me when these things happened.
I was alone with the whistling,
I was alone with the screaming,
I was alone with the whispering.
I can’t know these happened
Because it’s my head that’s haunted.

red tile roof ...
whitewash balcony in romanesque cemicircle ,
fridge full 'f
                        1 litro bottles Alhambra cerveza --
clawfoot tub, coldwater (couture)
$1000/week:
(i could live on that)
lucky strike spirals in spanish summer,
bare feet on the railing upturned to sun beaming on pearly albayzin of granada.
afternoon mojitos with a new woman ev'ry week. (reading magazines)

spend
75 drunk nights ( reading ,   smoking ,   swilling gin )
&
typewriter whirring out pages (underwood airbus laissez-faire)
flamenco on a record player back in the house
one of those spanish girls slipping off a white dress (which falls like a soft breath of cloud down to the ground and sits there
still as death)
as she gets into the jacuzzi.
&
spend
75 high days throwing change into fountains, hand
up skirt of my carmen-du-jour.
climb drydust hills with guinness tallcans in plastic borsa
drinking dark beauties as golden orb hung in clouds keeps on grinning heatwaves.

(feelin' like maybe perhaps possibly i be free)

The lighthouse keeper and his son, one day
Were out on the rocks, by a blue-water bay

As the sea, their bare feet was laving,
They saw a mermaid, they first thought was bathing;

With long dark hair and eyes of green;
Like the mist of a loch, that sings.

She was struggling and sick, in the foamy sea
So they took her to the lighthouse, above the lea.

She begged and pleaded, to die in the sea;
But there in the lighthouse, she seemed fated to be.

A clawfoot bathtub  became her home,
And there she stayed, never to roam.

Some children taught her some words and rhymes.
To help her to pass all the weary time.

The lighthouse keeper thought she was his own,
Though from the sea, she was merely loaned.

Sometimes a midnight, would find him there
Combing her damp and tangled hair.

In her long confinement, he was the one
Kept her sane, since she could not run.

They had long discussions until daybreak,
Entirely by looks and gestures they'd make;

She taught him secrets no man had ever heard;
How she could still the sea, with inaudible word

And how she could tell by the look of the moon
If spring would come early, or winter too soon.

And how the waves, did murmur below
If the weather be rough, or the hard winds blow.

How she'd loved and lost one merman that
Had gotten too close, to a fisherman's net.

They'd had a child, by the madman's reef;
Was eaten by sharks, and how they'd grieved.

He fancied that someday, he'd like a kiss,
For kissing a mermaid, seemed like rare bliss

But something forebade him, to come that near;
So he was content, just stroking her hair.

One day he found her, dead in her tub;
Her heart had broken, all for his love.

No mermaid can tell human men of her heart,
Or else they'll spend their lives far apart,

It's a law of the sea, older than time;
So this be the end, of the mermaid rhyme.

tips of my toes
pressed own
to the chill of
ceramic, i sit,
        shoulders barely
        peaking out
        from the thin film
        of what hours ago
        were bubbles,
scared to drain
the tub because
right now,
i feel so ******* small–

small enough to
circle the drain
and slip right through
the holes
in the grate

Amidst my self-sinkin' a'droppin' down
into involuntary shunts you note:

"Pensive, pensive–
He is always so pensive.
He smokes another cigarette
and takes another bath."

Amidst crossin' o'clawfeet
in clawfoot tubs you repeat:

"Check the water for them words
you were park-wanderin' a'lookin' for
while I was out all last night
a'lookin' only for you."

And as I look,
I do only, for you.

"Sometimes – sometimes I am so in love with you, it's surrealism.
My heart's breaking from the weight, from my romanticism,
a castaway'd castawayer a'makin' memoirs in the morning.
I'm a beach-combing romantic; I'll fall out of love by the morning."

Ponderin' a'wanderin' takes me back to the Fall with leaves, fallen too;
to our breaking point, pointing skywards in the off-season kite flying season.
I kiss the wind washing over my face and curse all the dumb, **** reasons
that I never did kiss you; I never meant to kiss you. I do only, for you.

*"Pensive, dear pensive,
you do this for me:
Go ponderin' for months–
O' sonderin' on o'er me."

unnamed emotion
slips: over my head
like tepid bathwater
in a clawfoot tub

coil into dimly lit
memories;vintage motifs
where the glamour
is all but tarnished

lips once stained smoothred
are cracked;withered
not fit for a kiss nor a
memoir of the evening

submerged beneath heavylight
weight of regrets?no.
lack of: a detached nostalgia
featuring no judgement, only

the autumn wisps of when you felt anything at all.

every emotion has its shadow enrolled
in an ad on the six o'clock news

Science of virility, once
quackery, now proven,
Rhinohorn substitutes and such,

mere hints of unspoken rites in clawfoot tubs
at sunset.

Relieving, reliving
recall the pain

products pitched at every pain.

A pill, a plan for any pain,

for each

and ever y
dis comfort or dread.

Oft fear's the trigger
symptom,
fear of one name or another;
we gotta pill
f'that, phobiabout it.

tell y'pusher y'got it, step by step,
somnambulism. Doctor, Doctor

Am bein' sorta vague, y' see, a need
how to', tuts t'see

Doc say, on TV, 'tween the lines,
pull
PTSD , he say,
we can all do that now,
better 'n carpal tunnel in the eighties

Hey, opi-oid whistlin, fishin, re
min-iscing

Back in the day, we wusht f' nut'in' t'do,

now, me 'n' them voices in m' head,

do nuthin', ala time, jest watch.

Meditate, cogitate, take thought, fret not,
nothin' t'do but wait. Seeds gotta grow.

Snow is melting in patient drips, the theory
is that water's where idle words wait,
and as the axis ice recedes,

those idle words return to the cycle and
rain phrases worthy of heed, in theory,
the secrets frozen since God knows when.

Cognitive troubling knowns
have been loosed, to flow, and shift to
spirit once mormorphing back to
fluidity on a speck o'the highest dust of the earth,

growing an anti-bubble, a water balloon
rain drop,
remembering everything. Imagine that.

Water remembers everything. I heard. Somewhere.
That's another the or y.
Ys are odd alone.

There are thoughts not even mathmaticians
think they can know,
within mortal realitification
as mortal minded men imagining
times and time and half a time mean anything constant,
any fixed weight worth, wor-th,

methinks we know less of worth than those who sell.

Don'cha hate a false balance?
what scale, Libre, eh, Claws of Scorpio, y'know,

how many words to or from God does it take to
tip the scale of

Just is?

What ruler is here that
we might use right, to measure
what'samatter?

Is life broken? Is ignorance killing truth?
Is there no way where there seems no way?
Who wants to know?

Trow ye not,
We could do better, we could
pay. We sapiens aspiens augmentatious
could
buy the golden
rule,
tried in fire, drossless,
at our own expense, in a sense.

We can stand up under knowing good and evil,
inside out, leaning into good as good can be,
living edge-wise balanced. Being
confident, doubleminded, sapient sapient augmentedus being,
paying life attention
for all we are worth. Okeh. That's all I had to say.

the water in the
Clawfoot bathtub
is red and full of blood
and petals cut like knives
in the water

it’s sunny
light filters through the curtains
filters through blood draining

floral bedspread
and okra on a paper plate
cabernet
the wooden floor creaks
enter you

the dusk in the living room
bounces off walls

this is the house I built
this is forever

crumbling walls
and flames
*welcome home

This city has torn me to pieces
and scattered the unwanted bits
through these cobblestone streets.
Through 3 a.m. deserted corridors
and starless skies,
through the litter and muck
along the banks of its timeless raging river.

A haunting memory
is left behind a locked bathroom door
in a new friends apartment on Lyon St.
across from the empty museum.
The rumors of attempted suicide
still linger in the air.

The shell of a young man
is found in the basement
of a crumbling house on Veto St.
Swept beneath the rug
under a pile of beer bottles
and empty fifths.

A scarred outer layer of skin
is found in the drain
of a ***** clawfoot bathtub,
in a dark studio apartment
on the corner of Douglas and National.
Along with a well read copy
of Bukowski’s Women
and a bowl of maggot infested rice.

A heart,
freezer burned and half thawed,
is found on the counter
in a split level apartment
on Lydia St.,
just before the hill.

As for the rest of me,
that I’ll leave for us to find.
Maybe somewhere on the back roads
from there to here,
in the hazy twilight
fit for discovery.

as I come into someone else’s own, I agree to meet my brother at a clawfoot tub I hope is still there.  I fill a bucket with water and leave it with my wife for good luck.  I walk from the house in mild weather and become plain to you.  I pass the mud my father’s eye goes without.  I tire.  I come to in my brother’s arms and his badge has left a mark on my cheek.  sleep is like a slug I can’t overtake and then it is my tongue or in its privacy.  brother roughs me into the tub headfirst so I can hear the highway.  he preaches and they were followed by two sets of footprints until the footprints had to rest else they’d be too fat to die.  these parts you're money or hush money.