Solid Ground

Oddly woven
I sift through the 
fibers of this history.
Written on parchment,
faded headstones
in a valley cemetery.


I untangle the 
overgrowth 
and dig hands into
earth. 
Through the roots,
the breaking bonds 
to this world-
the white bellies
of familial ties
crackle.


In the small cove of 
roots I burrow
down. In the leaves
there is a warmth,
unreplicated 
anywhere else.

Mother

We will all become her,
the inevitability of pink
hydrangeas. She is the Ph 
in the soil.
Guiding the growth.


And it will be good,
for we've known her forever,
some split cells, we are always
part of her whole.


A lost longing for the shore,
she is there in the sand,
standing waiting for us
in our ships to come home.


And it will be bad,
the twin soul will cry
out in the dimmed lights,
being this Greek human
we are taught to love
what flaws will kill us.


This duality we 
cannot escape, 
death is no means of parting,
just a wisp of wind
in our rippling of eternity.


Washing our feet
in the bath, we remember
the humid air, the times
we were sick. The 
smell of Vick's heavy in
our drowsiness.


Forever her soft cooing,
her dove-mother speech
lingers, feathers in our hair
we can't wash out. 
Leaves pressed between 
leatherbound volumes.

Mr. Clean

I played Delilah
over the kitchen sink.
It seemed like a good
idea at the time,
as snip 
          snip
                 snip


I cut your flaxseed locks.
You looked like you had gotten
into a fight when I was done,
half your hair in angles
we swore were geometrically
impossible.


My Sampson, 
I took from you 
gnarly gold curls,
but nothing else.
Intact we sat in
dinette chairs,
our legs sticking
in the heat.


A humid silence,
your decapitated 
strands littering
the linoleum.


The next day,
we shaved your
head, it gleamed,
a strange daytime moon.
Your friends
call you Mr. Clean now. 

Fish Boy

It ran through
his veins.
Thin and blue,
flutter-pulse 
of nerves.


Blood salty
and free,
clear and 
cool. 
And the sea ran through
him.


Belonging to 
the sea, the water
forever lapping over his 
cerebrum- he is 
a thousand gold fishes,
shiny coins 
in the fountain.


Birthed in a mat
of seaweed he makes
return. 
A pilgrimage
to an origin.
A return
of the prodigal son.


Clear under his skin
runs his father,
mother. All eternity
resides in the pale
boy with fish eyes
and a soft cough.


He is born from the 
deep, dropped onto 
the shore. 

Vegas Bathroom

Standing in a Vegas 
bathroom.
Airport; crowded
in a strange array,
mirage-like.
A desert oasis
of Capitalism.


I throw water
onto my face
and wonder how 
many people
in this tacky paradise
are on meth.
It would make
the buildings crystallize
and shimmer in the heat.


I am crawling on my hands,
knees through a hot terminal 
with blinding sand.
A juxtaposition of
every country rests strangely
against the asphalt. 


Kaleidoscopic
flush to the desert
lies the capital of
Capitalism. 


I am blinking,
blinking away the
neon lights, their
spastic dances 
nauseating
as a man stands
on linoleum
(oddly humble)
amidst a flock 
of feathered showgirls.


He shouts,
oh the profane
prayer of 
Communism
in the capital
of Capitalism.

America!

Oh America-
you have no regrets
in your neon signs.
All the hopeless
desert nights 
spent wandering
the rail yards
shipyards
backyards


glimmering lawns
and swimming 
pools at dusk the infestation
of middle America
by the cronies and crooks
with their hands
raised, yelling from
the crumbling 
ledges of
strip malls
and asphalt meadows


America! What
the hell happened?
Your bad beat poetry
in running into the ground
your suits and ties
are sweaty and frumpy
and I am pushing
with every ounce of
my soul- my supermarket
soul with the 
glittering dead produce.


Crying crying
are the child-wolves
in their pens
from their anxiety perches
in the complex subsidies
of condos and 
shitty window sills


Oh the long lost frontier
I am dreaming of!
It is lost, and we will
move west in a perpetual 
sickness unto our own health
to find the last and final shreds
of our humanity.
Crawling with our mouths full
of gym socks
we are humiliated,
America! Weep
for your brothers,
the sisters in rags
and the mothers
stuck with broken ovens
and burnt hands.


America! I am
lost in your collapse
beneath your
heart of hearts I am suffocating
in the styrofoam peanuts
of your lungs I am drowning.


America, oh darling
you are dying in me.
I reach for the cosmos
my fingers brushing
suburbs in
a gangrene gesture
of disillusion.

Surrealist

The faces passing by
blur into surrealist
manifestos,
written in their
demure splotches
I am searching constantly,
all these blank slates.


Passing in 35s
and 40s, I am lost
in panic searching.
Their souls
are splattered,
I am reenacting
Pollack on my 
lawn. 


Standing with a garden
hose upon the green blades
I will name one by one
as they whir in pastels
dimmed by a mist.
And forever these faces
move in shiftless forms,
features melted
as my hands burn
like plastic in the sun.
Wax crayons pool 
in the back compartments
of the shining bullets.


Such a rapidity
we'll get sick standing by,
throwing up in the grass
like drunken wards,
as the nameless one pass,
passing forever
into oblivion
as defined by 
colors. Swirling
into the kitchen drain.


I stand making
technicolor lines
in the yard.

A Slaying

And I will walk up
to you and kiss you
on the mouth.
Steal your secrets
and stitch them
together in my mind.
I will know you so
fully from one 
moment of electric
static.


It will betray you,
my mouth,
this chance and surprise.
You will waver,
a hesitation manifested in
trembling hands, sweaty palms
as I find my way
inside of you.


I make our souls collide
in a way which 
defies sparks, and more
resembles a summer rainstorm.
Your knees quake 
and I am pale, pale
in this moment.


Time is unaware,
as I take from you
all you tried too hard
to protect.
You masked your
heart of hearts,
but my fingers
reach into your
ribcage, make
it sing. 


My teeth knock against
yours, crooked, 
a row of leaning houses.
I will be your tenant.
I already am.
Forever was, I slept in
your spine, curled
as a vertebrae 
in illusion.


As I stand 
with my face to yours,
our features mirrored,
so Greek as we stand 
making one person.
I take with my lips
a piece of your soul,
give you mine.


In this time
we are eternal,
no stars can
hold us,
as I slay you.

Wildflowers

Your wild body
broke apart into
a firework of wildflowers.
Your heart exploded
in the ultraviolet,
your soul,
21 grams of
unbridled freedom
flew unending.


I gather these
bright hued petals
into a bouquet fit
for the beats,
so sporadic in 
your unzipping death.

Lobster Boat Woes

The lowing of
lobster boats lives
in my soul,
my body heavy
with nets.
Mended ropes and
lines I throw 
perpetually to the sea.


Dashed across the rocks
the seagulls settle,
nests of white 
in the grey hollow cliffs.
I take to heart
their shrieking,
a cacophonous harmony
to the mournful lost boats
living in my chest.


The lobster have
all swam away,
they left the rocks
for open sea
their pinchers 
unrubberbanded
in attempts to be free.


My heart breaks open
and escapes my mouth
to manifest, not in some
humanity cry,
but the sea's natural 
movement.


From my throat
the lobster boats
sing,
their misty prows
cutting through
the harbor.

Ivy-Coated Wormholes

I held your hands
in a garden of ivy,
snaking languid 
across the halls.


Pointed to the passing
planes against blue
as my heart trembled
in a vibrato way.
A confidence I 
was unawares existed.


Your head turned
to watch the metal
arc across the heavens,
I trailed it with
my own cosmic tears,
spread like stars
at night.


The ground shifted,
the grass grew,
around our ankles
as we stood,
time no object.
A wormhole in space
and we were sucked 
into a timeless vacuum.


I mailed you a letter,
you wore suspenders.
Our hair was always perfect.


But the jet broke
the sound barrier,
speeding away,
your head dipped.
My hand fell.
And the ivy 
whistled in the
breeze.