The Poetry
Begging Tree
The fear of the
deep keeps us in the deep
Down dark in
those terrible yawning canyons of the world
Free to be like
a bird and soar above
The insanity of
the present tense
Can’t be everything
that it once was able to mean as it
Jumped out the
window at 90 mph faster than
The speed of my
new cable modem connecting me in
Ways I never
thought or knew to be possible
To people and
places and events I don’t even begin
To understand
the nature of kind of like
My own nature
with its ins and outs and everything living
In between the
holes in my soul where darkness breaks breathes and
Steals hope
right out of me…
Sunshine breaks
upon my nails glittering in their
Imperfection
and I’m demanding answers to the crazy insanity
I’ve come to
accept as being a part of my soul
Slowly
destroyed by the wind shamelessly driving at me
By the tone of
the music deafening me into calm
Calamities have
been avoided recently avoided by the most simple of means
Stretch myself
out for air to breathe upon the sand not the earth
Because the
sands are my Garden of Eden
Nothing needs
to come closer only to go further from anything I’ve known
The heat blinds
and captures; the heat fills me with control
Over this
insanity driving against the harsh snows glaring into glaring white
Somewhere there
will be a noose and a begging tree for me
Secret Rendezvous
Heaven says
“Take me home tonight”
I’m going to
stretch out under the yawning moon
Let the night’s
candles dance windmills in my hair
As I swallow
the blinking stars and
Learn how to
prepare for the night when I can have heaven
And never again
feel cold like polished stone,
Hiding me in a
cell deep down, that chasm you refer to as a soul,
Locking me away
for the times you want to play.
I know the
rules this time around to your
Child’s game of
cops and robbers in a field.
Do you know
that I’m playing too?
I know this may
disappoint you to no end,
The way I’m
learning to bend and mold to the wind’s whims.
My little one,
fear nothing in this curse
Save my growing
ability to use your grown-up words,
As every night
I’m still going to break for you
Even those
nights when you hold me
And the
moonlight shines on the cherry
Steel crucible
I’m locked into
I’m still going
to wonder where you are
Even when your
eyes can glance to mine
While you pause
to consider our joined madness
Consider
yourself separate and alone and
Mad to the core
with a fury unleashed in set of
Two – the only
couplet you’ll even know
It’s as if I’m standing in front of the caverns again,
The New Mexico sun drenching my back,
But it’s New Mexico Avenue I’m only blocks from,
Staring into the gaping mouth opening to the underbelly of DC.
Though dark, the squeals of machinery echo to the sidewalk,
Like mournful trumpets lacking oil.
All around me, click, thunk, click, thunk,
The clatter of high-heels on steel as I descend
Into an eerie fluorescent glow,
Their harsh noise trying to ruin the moment of music.
The tile reaches forward suddenly, grasping at
The self-releasing staircase hundreds of feet underground,
Mechanical air, hot like asphalt in July,
Rushing through the cavernous way hollowed from the concrete,
The wind’s foul fingers irritating
Skin that would once soften at a simple touch,
Shoving and ripping my hair that once glided
Through his tender fingers.
There is no one here to caress anything,
Alone in the urban maze, the endless
Alphabet of streets,
squares and circles,
Trapped in a box of light,
hurtling
Through the deep,
My mind jumps the track -
I miss you.
Guilty Mind
We were the trusted, she and I ---
Never mind that we didn’t deserve it.
We took advantage of his trust, his sweetness
By sneaking and stealing, moments, each other
It didn’t matter, I suppose, the secrecy –
He never found out,
I never had to explain,
What kind of best friend
I was every time he almost caught us.
When I was young, I knew stealing was wrong,
No extra gum for my pockets from checkouts.
But what of a girl, living and breathing
Making her own choice?
No arrests to be made, no cold cell,
Only a fall from grace and my own
Guilty mind dredging up those memories while I stand
In the supermarket, years later, and he’s next to me.
The gum is daring me, “Be a man,” barks the Wrigley’s,
“Do what you should have done years ago, back before you
Refused to buy gum because it reminded you of her.”
I offer him a dazed grin to his quizzical question and ignore
the gum,
Who am I to relieve my guilt at his expense?
Twin
Figurines
In
the shadows of the armoire,
Dust
coats their features in the fine grime of time.
Cluttered
by knickknacks,
All
the world represented in gold and bronze,
Yet
one is shiny, porcelain of junk store glory,
The
other, a relic of gunshots and rapid refugees,
Her
statue of the Old World.
I
wonder if they know their history,
These
two porcelain statues,
Does
one recall dust and a dollar price tag,
The
other the care of a craftsman,
The
drone of planes overhead?
Can
the maiden on the swing know anything but eternal content,
Her
placid grin as her companion freezes with his hand,
Pushing,
pushing, pushing from behind?
Through
the marred glass, I am staring so hard at them -
Paint
seeping into the folds of her dress,
Brilliant
fuchsia fading to dull pink,
Over
a whitewashed petticoat now antiqued cream,
Even
the tiny flowers have lost their spring.
Why
are they still here,
Hidden
in this corner of the porch,
The
European figurine of proud lineage,
And
her imposter twin.
The
woman who put them here answers no questions,
Not
for them, not for their time or place,
So
they hide their memories with them,
In
the thousand folds of two endless skirts,
Shimmering
and muted alike, two by two,
Surrounded
by the clutter of my grandmother
Her
attempts to be as she was
Before
the great war,
With
gunshots, barbed wire, emptying rail cars,
But
mostly the endless procession of life turning to death,
This
was before the war, the war she almost lost
Against
herself.
Carved on ancient earth, every man’s tomb,
Shadows move as figures of a funeral procession,
Not black and white, but sepia with age,
Light glows, unreachable above the far ridge,
An alien canyon that’s coal to the base,
Its darkness points the way to the end of
What Curtis called “the vanishing race”.
They have passed into shadow, yet not vanished
From a memory etched into sepia canvas, encased
By smoked glass and chipped gold frame –
They are still real in this captured moment,
This trek across ancient lands of the Navajo.
The living shades ride on, not looking
To foreign peaks nor rays to the west.
They see only the cracked mud and dry stalks,
The desert blaze no match for deeply tanned, worn skin.
For this has been home…
The scraps of brush, cactus, and rattle of snake –
White man’s
hell.
These riders look to the freedom of desert,
I note that one rides apart, refusing to file along, proud,
Yet still, the soft clop of hoof is defeated by dust.
The men’s sable hair is twisted in severe knots,
Horses’ tails hang limp, nearly sweeping the trail,
As if to say, “The prints have been erased ---
nothing left behind.”
Six
It’s late, my nose pressed to the glass forming,
A thin circle of fog surrounding my skin -
I’m that latch-key kid,
The fluorescent lights hum silently to me, about to close.
Six o’clock, don’t you know where your mom is?
Mine’s out there in the black beyond, appearing
Full of impatient apology.
Five, six minutes of fields and farm, and I get out
At the top of the driveway, collecting the mail.
In the blinding headlights, I jump,
Big stone to big stone,
Avoiding the sandy pebbles as if a swollen brook,
The crunch of the tires behind me urging me on,
Only to hastily climb concrete stairs,
My moment in the lights over
As I hurry to get out of the way.
Inside, the house is like pitch,
No one’s been home yet to turn on the lights.
I’ve never bothered with light anyway, even now.
I just take the stairs as I always do, and the elephant parade
follows,
Thumping along on four legs, paws and whiskers colliding,
To settle into dust bunnies and boxes,
Or even the high citadel in the rafters,
A dangling calico tail the only trace.
These are my companions, their purrs the only music I knew for
years.
And my mother still seems to wonder why I like the dark so much.
Brunch with Mom
We’re waiting in line, Sunday breakfast, the two of us,
I’m old enough now, I understand
I am my mother’s daughter.
As I glance down the waiting list, to the door,
And the screaming brat of a child,
Her clichéd mom smiles, deep in conversation,
Ignoring if not encouraging the child’s antics,
Until she finally scoops her up with a smile as if to say,
This is a perfectly normal way to raise a child.
My mother was never one who hugged a lot,
Who cried, who kissed the pain away -
She told me to get a band-aid out of the drawer and get on with
it,
The cleaning or the lawn or whatever else
My crocodile tears were protesting
I didn’t want to continue.
I remember, quite small, wanting her to be
A cheerful PTA mom, my own
Private cheering squad at the basketball court.
I wanted her to make cookies and host sleepovers,
Where all my friends would agree,
My mom was the best there ever was.
Then she would smile charmingly and be perfect –
Though it’s not cruel to say she never was.
I’ve gotten older, my mother isn’t perfect,
She still answers hurt with firm instruction,
Tears with logic, but I can look
At her and know it all makes sense,
That in the end, banishing the easy way out
Was the hardest choice for her,
The best for me.
A Quest
It’s 2 AM. The pedal approaches
the floor, one, two, three, endless lights blink into the night. Yellow, green,
red, it all means the same: I should be in bed by now. No reason, just whim,
just whimsy, and it hits, wham, kind of like whiskey, nothing makes sense but
everything really does, a drunken madness. I’m not drunk - I’m just lost on the
road I travel everyday, the same 13.5 miles back and forth. Above, beyond the
blinking lights, the pink and orange glow of night in America races by through
my sunroof. It’s night in those places called “uncivilized” where they sit
beneath a million visible stars and ask the real questions, without a cell
phone to monitor stocks and bonds and babysitters of future doctors and
lawyers, but I’ve got dreams in my head of them anyway. Fights are fought with
sticks and stones, and the minor injuries are frequent but old age kills most.
Here, the orange and pink clouds choke the sleepers. Cancer, leukemia, disease,
the mystery appearances of skin, no, not a human shade, and so quick to go
under the knife for the big maybe… maybe we’ll bleed to death from a tiny nip
or missed slice, right there on the table, cold air swooshing in at a steady,
precise rhythm. Out beneath that same sky, awake and free, I’m breathing, full
of air, full of movement. Wind on my face, rush of the street in my ears, the
tires are the only connection I feel with the earth. Slide here, slide around
this and that and come to a halt at oblivion.
Escape Attempt
I wear lilies in her inky hair as I glide along,
A candle in my fingers, wax dripping along my broken nails,
My feet are bare but I can’t feel the earth, cold, packed -
I just sweep down the path, a stream over rock.
This isn’t proper and I can’t quite forget that,
My heart thudding in mockery of my silent steps,
Even the candle’s whispering flickers make me jump,
As the boughs clatter and scrape together, a threat
To send me alone into the inky night.
The moon makes its debut from behind the clouds,
In a rush to bare witness to this intrigue,
But I wish it had stayed where it was and there was simply
No one to watch.
Though I burn my fingers trying to protect it, the flame goes
out,
I am plunged into the lonesome dark, and miss the moon as,
Icy fingers of wind give a sudden shock to my flaming cheeks.
The world stops with me, and shivers in the cold,
But I lick my lips and press on, the same desire that drove me
From her cozy bed urging.
I come to it and sits upon it,
This boulder in the middle of the wood and waits,
The designated spot at the designated time, my prayer out of a
designated life,
Until the hours go down and the sun arrives with a message:
There is no knight coming to take me away.
Liar
The cat did it I swear -
A piece of string gone awry,
Until that gentle beast sprang forth and attacked
Leaving lines
of perfect symmetry.
There he sits innocent beneath a breath of sun,
While you insist I haven’t been home in days.
It might have been the thorns then,
With their nasty little fingers shredding the olive rich --
I ran too fast and my fake smile caught up with me.
And I sit pretty with not a callus to be seen,
While you insist I haven’t left the city in days.
The oven caught me off my guard -
I didn’t know to move quickly.
In shock I left my arm there to scald with never a word,
And your eyes glance at the blood beneath my nails,
Insisting I haven’t cooked in days.
I tripped and fell on gravel,
Cast headlong in my clumsiness,
I scraped and slid my way into
these shredded scars,
Which your eyes see as neat spindles of red –
And insist gravel would bruise and scrape,
Not slash neatly, as if I’m counting the days.
Ice-skates, a slip on the ice brought out that raw rich red -
I don’t have the balance for that so I crashed,
And exploded across the frozen sky.
But the deep blue above reflects your eyes as you sigh,
And insist, it’s just another summer day.
Souvenir
Sweetness and sourness whisper like silk
Against flesh bruised and battered
By a stale scent of cancer stick --
A self-motivated sickness in the head,
Buried under 50 tons of gravel,
Concrete and steel glass beams,
Constructions of the mind, holding on tighter
Than brand new brakes
I’ll never use like so much waste…
Wasted times, wasted breath, spent sucking
Imperfections of people, of myself –
That person I should trust and simply don’t
She’s a souvenir of a mind trip,
Directions to a person I once knew
Before she took flight from the barrel of a gun,
That gun she held pressed tight to her
Chest, wrist flat, flat lined –
The squeal of silence echoing in the night.
America: Part 2
America I’ve worked for you since I was fourteen.
I have no savings account to show for it.
America you gave me a plastic credit card and on it the sun is
setting,
Or is it rising… America, you tell me.
America can you stop the bill collectors?
You made me afraid to open my mail once, can you do it again?
America can I tell the bill collector that I’m afraid of the guy
at post office,
The guy that puts the white powder in my mail?
America can you stop our kids from buying white power on the
streets?
I’ve seen that white powder on my daddy’s nose and it’s not
pretty.
America you never made me feel good about myself.
You want me to go on a diet so I can be a size four.
America, you make sizes so small, they need two zeros.
Your obesity is astounding.
America another diet is not the answer.
There would be no need to purge if only you would learn to cease
the binging.
America why can’t you get it right the first time?
America I look around and wish the British had won and I don’t
care if it’s not patriotic.
America sometimes I want you to fuck the Constitution,
I want you to get down on your knees, grab that second amendment
and swallow lead.
America your “equality” is bullshit and you know it.
America I know you hate me every once in a while, but
You are not as beautiful as you think.
The marching army of plastic surgeons doesn’t scare me.
I don’t care if the white coat mafia out numbers the pediatricians,
It’s just sad that your plastic smile comes first.
America your bleached teeth need to get out of my way, because
I’m going to be a star.
America you’ve told every kid on my block he’s going to be a
millionaire.
America the $30,000 watch is ticking.
America did you know in China the streets are paved in their
rising gold?
Number one is slipping, I’m warning you,
To your east the united are prospering and the green money is
falling into the sewer.
America you were founded on a lack of respect,
How did you think the world would ever give you any?
America your imports are more popular than you.
America your people are dying.
You made yourself on the cowboy’s rampage,
The cowboy has lost the west.
America I’m looking at you right here, right now,
I’m not afraid to say I don’t like the face in the mirror.
America I’m obsessed with that damn face in the mirror,
I spend an hour everyday staring and picking and poking and
covering.
I spend more hours than that covered in food and I’m always
hungry.
Hidden
Walking in Times Square,
fresh out of Carnegie Hall, and my steps echo hollow on the pavement though I’m
not alone and my eyes know it. It’s after midnight and every step I take is
another dream of Kerouac, all those fools, for whom “alarm clocks fell on their
heads every day for the next decade”. The neon of the city is astounding and I
wonder if I’ve stumbled right on into the daylight… Did 1955 glow in the
streets like this? I can see all of them, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, drunk
on each other and life in the Times Square of strip clubs and sex shops,
laughing as they clutch each other in the middle of the road, giving the cabbie
the finger. As the man beside me takes in the view, I can hear the drunken
catcalls of the party boys determined to continue the merriment right to the
sheets. I wish I were there to hang out the windows with them and trust to the
raindrops to be my angels. But it’s walking back to the train station for me,
panic in the dark, and I feel foolish because I get lost. I can feel them
watching me, scared of the dark, stupid DC girl doesn’t understand the big bad
subway, but maybe they would be proud of me --- I don’t trust the cops.
A
Quarrel of Love
Ginsberg, you say love
makes the weight on our shoulders crushing.
Well, tonight I’m
knocking on your crumbling casket,
I want to have a chat.
Love, you say, love?
It makes it hard for me
to breathe,
Sometimes I trip over my
myself,
But I can’t say it makes
my shoulders sag under the burden.
Ginsberg, look around
these lonely streets ---
Surely you understand hate, oppression?
I know it’s quite
original of you to say love
Is what holds us down,
not hate, not the usual faces in the lineup.
Ginsberg, this little
tête-à-tête of ours is coming to a point –
I say to you, apathy is
the damnation of us all.
Rage is never as fiery as
when met with nothing,
Love, never quite as
determined to make itself known as when ignored.
What is more dangerous
than someone with nothing
To lose, nothing to pull
their heart strings?
We all need love, not to
burden us,
but to lift us from the
apathetic,
To make our lives worth a
damn.
I’m going home now, and
I’m leaving you here,
Behind the wrought-iron
gate, among the stones,
I’m going to let you
ponder love –
I’m going home to it.