One Anxiety Attack at 3pm.

Headlights breaking over the ridge,
rain obscured windshield,
with the wipers squeaking
like new shoes-
uncomfortable,
uneasy on the firmament.

The grass at attention
in the cold drizzle
of fall, the leaves
freeing themselves
to fall under tires,
in gutters.

As my knuckles whiten
across the steering wheel,
white on black leather,
my chilled fingertips
frozen to the vehicle.
We are one,
this machine
breathing with my lungs
that cannot get at the air.

Gasping like an asthmatic,
great shuddering hollow breaths
like running a marathon.

Slick road beneath
my feet,
black tires
and I am attached. Making
sounds to cover the radio,
covered by the dancing of
rain on the windows,
primal guttural
calls back to my mother,
some cosmic body
I was detached from.

Ventriloquist
these sounds cannot be mine,
someone throwing them into my mouth,
a name on my tongue that I can't speak
even with my best concentration.

No, blurry-eyed so the streetlights dazzle 
like fireworks, I am driving crooked on the straight roads
home, and I am not ever sure I am going
to the right one.

The sounds filling me up
and sputtering out of me,
held up in my bones until
the cold broke them open.

In the rain the ground
releases its steam, 
soft smelling of verdant things,
and so my face opens up
to let out all the water dammed up,
all the screeches I didn't let
out at birth,
the breaking through
of something of the Natural State.

Clawing from me lungs
taking all the air they can
grasp, not enough
as the windows fog
from this-

the microcosm outburst
of the return to 
primal things,
as at red lights 
I scream at oncoming traffic,
my face buried in sweating palms.
Here, I am again
in the madness
I came from.

Ode to Those Who Work Out, Getting Buff

The organized Natural State.

The cry of Monday's industriousness,
from the weight benches flanked
with mirrors.

Sweat, the cure,
the craving of those
with bike speeds
of 10. All of the toxins
out through the pedaling feet.

To the man, 
grunting with
such an effort at those 70 pounds,
shoving the bar above his head.
There is the acrid 
smell of success.

Spritz bottles
of disinfectant,
rolling across the rubberized floor.

The bay of treadmills
beneath televisions
telling us the view of the world
as we walk in place,
getting 2.4 miles closer
to where we are now.

Like the prideful lions of lore
the men with bulging arms
stare longingly as Narcissus,
into the mirrors as they curl
and curl the silver weights.
The ungodly sounds of virility
from the lips as yes,
they become buffer.
More attractive
in the eyes
of all bystanders
(themselves).

To the women gossping with magazines
along the ellipiticals,
more credit for multitasking
in this world of never stopping.
Legs, hands, mouths flailing
with a vigor seen nowhere else.

And to the rowing machines in the
corner,
outdated with the spinning bikes.
We salute your sweaty existence.

For the souls of a Monday night
in the presence of each other's sweat
and grit and obsessive anti-germ spritzing,
I commend thee.

For industriousness does fade
with the length of the work week.

Girls

Sitting on the hood of her car, in the middle of the deserted supermarket parking lot- a box of Turkish Delight open between them.

It was much later than the legal curfew, a chilled Thursday night. A school night. A bottle of strong whiskey frisked from a parent's liquor cabinet being passed back and forth. The foreign sweet on their tongues, washed down with the faint hint of reality settling in. You couldn't see the stars, for the safety lighting of the parking lot glared down too harshly. The obscurity of a suburban world in which two girls existed getting drunk for the sake of forgetting. This had never happened before. They were good girls, not the type to party on weekends, not the type to be lured into the backseat by boys. Not the type to break curfew, even. Just the type to rewind the internal tape recorder with a little whiskey, a little cold to make the bones reset. They were not the type to spray paint the girls' bathroom mirrors black, and be suspended for it. Suspended for vigilante work to make girls realize beauty. But it was ok, it was vacation for righteous anger. It was a scratch off lotto ticket that won them 5 dollars, to be spent on a can of spray paint. It was their first box of Turkish delight, the warm hood of the car. It was time to leave, and their bodies knew it, always straining for the next best thing. Always trying to make them see, we are older, we do not belong here. The fishnet hose on Fridays, the feminist buttons pulled from thrift store coats. It was the stench of black paint rolling off the mirrors, dripping down the cheap faucets. 

So old for their 17 years, ready for boys that didn't ask for sex, ready for art galleries far away, ready for mornings in sunny apartments. And maybe it was naive, maybe it was too many suburban nights crawling onto the roof. Maybe it was the Friday football games. They wanted out, didn't know how to get there. Didn't know how to buy a bus ticket, even. They'd never tried to run away. Girls don't run away these days, for fear of demonized men, for fear of the loneliness of being female. Why did the girls at school all wear such caked-on make-up? For the boys, to get what was supposed to be wanted. 

They remembered baby dolls, dressing them in bright polyester clothes and taking them for walks. They remembered not knowing where they came from, mythical babies out of hospitals, maybe? And then they knew, because they were girls. The female sense spurring them on, and they did not know why boys didn't feel this way. Isolated. Now they knew, the boys wanted to take away the isolation, in the only way they knew. Which was, coincidentally, the wrong way. But the school girls didn't realize.

But the girls on the hood of the sedan knew it was not the way to fix the holes in their souls, it would never be the answer. The vintage magazines they found in the attic long ago as girls, the figures of women in bathing suits. Hourglass with tiny waist. Was this how womanhood went? No, no. Womanhood was not tiny waist. It was too much hips, too much waist, too much feet. It was trying to curl your hair and burning all your fingertips. 

One sitting girl had a scarf tied around her head, much like driving scarves women wear in convertibles. Her skirt falling around her knees. The other, brown hair fluttering in the autumn wind, ratty tennis shoes gripping the slick car. They were not pretty girls- not the girls with full lips or busts that escaped their shirts. No, just slightly comely. Not homely. Not the girls boys looked at, even the ugly boys with bad nails who took girls in their cars up to point for horrible things in the big backseat. They were not backseat girls.

They were the ones who knew to get out. The clever girls with pearly teeth who knew, a smile gets you everywhere. It got them bubblegum when they were six, ice cream at twelve, and now good grades on presentations they did not care for. The presentations they thought were one step to getting out. But maybe not now, not after the paint. Life was quickly separating- before vandalism, and after. They were two worlds now, the past swiftly departing from the present. Quickly departing into whiskey on school nights. The confusion of female, of teenaged. A point staged to make vocal that girls were pretty things without make-up. But no, no. Things were never so simple as one can of paint. Not so simple as a bottle and some some sweets. They debated going back into the brightly lit supermarket for cookies and mouth wash. No need to go home smelling of bars and clubs. A strong need to drown the bubbling stomach acid with those half-baked supermarket cookies. The good kind, soft all over. The girls though everything was ok that, soft all over. Girls could still be beautiful, politics still effective. Boys could be better, softer like that. 

Cookies to weigh them back down to this world, gravity a force not strong enough by itself anymore. Few things can stop girls with raw spirits. But they would wait. Wait out the suspension storm, ignore the looks in the halls. Perhaps they would be heroes, probably still unnoticed. Nobody would ever know what they meant by the black dripping paint. They would be too far away by that time. Gravity lost effect everyday. They were departing from this life, the suburban aesthetic. The parking lot dropping away beneath them. 

Girls with an excess of soul do not stay put too long, they know better. The wandering in their spirit leads them to far better places. Better than 1 am Thursday whiskey with contemplated cookies. Better than trying to rip your fishnets to be a punk. Better than sitting on the hood of a car. And so this was being left behind like heavy clothing in the spring. So they are leaving, swiftly into women with power. 

Women with perfectly rounded nails and strong opinions. No need to stay. And so this world fell away with a an empty car and a half eaten box of Turkish delight.

Graduate

Left on our knees,
we stumbled a little,
fell into the graduation parties.
The drinking parties afterwards
in darkened basements,
out of the trunks of cars.

We were suddenly pushed,
expelled into the world
we had not signed up for.
The tassels
were switched and all turned 
upside down.

Bills with our names,
summer jobs to 
make our own new
ends meet.
A college we were
promised,
but with a cost.
Shining new education,
and all we had to do was
grasp high enough,
run the farthest.

With stars in our eyes
we ran to the finish line
only to find ourselves shut out.
Only to see 
the future in a 
pinhole way,
looking through the
boxes-with-holes
so as not to be blinded
by the eclipse
of our old lives.

So the bottles built up.
The nights getting shorter,
and the chill setting on.
This, the promise of our new
life drawing nearer
or being retracted?

I couldn't care to tell.
Losing the ties
that had kept myself grounded.
Drifting we all became
astronauts,
but our missions were
getting cancelled.

And REAL LIFE
kept coming
with bills and 
disillusions
and the graduation 
parties seemed too long ago.

Homage to George

II. 
Homage to His Excellency

Mr. Washington
crossing the Delaware,
ice upon his coat hem,
and fever upon his cheeks.

Mr. Washington,
the people would have
thrown themselves at your
feet,
you symbol of Freedom.
Would have declared you King.
And you would have refused.

Figurehead for infant
Republic, man of 
intense glory and faith.
Newly born citizens
protected in your grasp,
never in the shadow of
your stature.

For even Napoleon
mourned your death.

America wept her first
tears, bitter and righteous.

Parades and the out-pouring of
love, respect never seen.
The world aware of an acute
aching,
the loss of the great
president of the infant nation.

Losing its father,
America mourned,
but grew stronger.
Grew with loss,
and became 
much more
than he left.

President,
His Excellency,
George Washington.
America, indebted to
your love forever.

Two-UnParties

And crossing the Delaware
for this?
For naught?
For internet fights
with spiteful words
and caustic 
updates.

For his words,
don't you dare
get divided, America.
Don't make yourselves
factions,
don't breed ignorance.

And Washington,
I am sorry
to write,
we are two bodies,
twins with contempt
for one another. 

There are losers
and winners,
never should have been-
divided by a carpeted
aisle. 
The thin ice,
thin line and I want
to reach across
and shake hands.

Sorry, Hamilton,
Madison.
Sorry Franklin.

"Party" it is no longer,
no balloons and confetti,
just sore losers
and lies on the televisions.

Colors like
gang affiliations,
Do I flash my
party name
and get killed
with word fights?

Aung San Suu Kyi

This will begin a short series on world-changing people in order to get a decent poem to submit to a contest. Enjoy my fumbling attempts to pay homage to important people.

I.  
To Aung San Suu Kyi

Amid the flowering trees
of Burma, 
mythical to the West-
Compounded,
a woman of discreet
power.
A spirit outside 
the walls,
in the hearts
of those protesting
for the sacred.

To vote,
the fight America
waged to begin the 
Revolution-
now taken into the
knobby hands
of woman draped in
white flower offerings-
a soft calm call
for peace.
Quiet,
quiet she speaks like the
birdsong.

Meditation on the power
of the people,
her heart in beating in the 
chest of the Burmese.
Waves across all seas,
she shakes the earth
with words on freedom.
To choose,
for the good of her followers.

Democracy,
the wind of her words,
the flutter of her pulse.
The goal that drives
the thrum of Burma's
masses. From her home,
confined in gild like
a palace peacock,
but never silent.

Still fighting with
a burn unparalleled.
Her voice uplifted
by the glorious winds of change.

Squall

Winded plains,

grasses bent

under grey winds.

Cathedrals

of cumulus,

nimbus.

The like,

in tall spires,

horses thundering

over the mountains.

The swift feet

of heaven

over the lowlands

of America.

Preceding,

the gunpowder flashes

and smoky edged sky.

Preceding, 

the slash of 

rain kissing

the summer-packed dirt.

The monstrous clouded

pillars from the rage

of the longing seas,

off the Pacific the

soul roamed,

the great groveling

voice of Zeus.

Let go,

the earth cleaned

over, under the

symphonic tuning

of God-

the infinite percussion

of water on the earth.

[This is for Karl, because he asked nicely.]

From the Sea

long, long
ago.
People rose from
the seas,
cloaked in mist
and lopsided pearls.

Hair streaming salty,
in pairs,
some surfaced.
Single, many washed up.
Groups would swim in.

From where,
shipwreck
or lore no one could
tell,

their bodies were sacred.
Crowned with flowers
and brought
back to longhouses
across the coasts,
danced around
and blessed.

These sea bodies
of women,
watery men
with thin waists.

Silver dripping
from their ears,
shells in their hair.
No fins,
no webbed toes,
fingers long and lean.

Fishermen told stories
of the glittering bodies
in the bays.
Upon the shore,
met with blankets
and song.

Not long,
so near-
they were gone.

None of the myths washed up 
none of the silver bodies
dripping with pearls. 

No more ceremonies,
no greetings to give.
No coastal longhouses
to celebrate their arrival.

Never written into
the books,
the sea dwellers
vanished.

Baggage

There was so much,
heavy-handed
and handed over.

And in denying
the walls,
the floors,
we lived without
the boundaries.

Denied the 
brown paper parcels
weighing 
pounds on the doorstep.
We denied the rocks
in our chest
making gravel
with our heart valves.

From chairs,
on the beds
we shouted
blindly
and wholly

"I HAVE NEVER BEEN!"

"I'LL NEVER BE AGAIN!"

To silence the 
bleat of our heart,
all gravelly deep
"You are,
you will be,
always have been"

Passed down by the stars
and weathered hands
of babushkas,

You are.
You are.
Existing.

"THAT IS NOT A SOFA!"

"YOU ARE NOT A BOY!"

Rainy afternoons spent
in shouting matches
over what needn't be.

Denied, denied,
all through our
lives,
afternoons
of booming voices.

All the totems,
treaties,
traditions pressed
into our hands
by the moon 
and the sun.

We would shout

"NO NO NO!"

No,
this was not my body.

No,
these were not my walls.

No,
these stones in my veins
were not mine.

Fish Story

I fell,
hook and line.
But you forogt the sinker.
Silvery filament
along the water
puckered with tension.

So I breached
the surface world
like glossy koi
eating from a foreigner's
hand, as they are wont
to do.

Your pronged hook
in my lip I emerged
glistening,
onto the shores
with punk piercing
and your line in my hand.

I fell like Stonehenge
never will,
as people never should.
Some Rubber band
unbanded,
some glued twines
coming undone.

And this was the beginning
of unravelment,
the taste of metal
lying flat against my tongue.

The pulls of reels
and strands were undone,
DNA coming apart
like zippers,
a breaking sound not far behind.

All of the old stars
an dead universes holding
me together
gave out in a super nova,
and I lit up the sky
in fireworks across
the plains.

Your hands on my skin
made it shrivel,
compact.
The returning to
the size of smallness
we were born unto.

Falling and breaking
the glass bones
all 206 brittle
threads of my body,
into your arms.

The throwing back of
sharks to die in bloodies water
having their fins removed.
My limbs lopped off
unassuming,

because I fell for the glint
of something better.

Tossed back to
sink and know
I am no Venus di Milo
rising from the sea.
But was reeled
instead, hooked.

You heard the sound
of ribs shattering
of lungs punctured
and decided
to abort,
throw back
and forget.

The sea a vast tangle
of glittering lines.