The Magnetic Unwanted

Your eyes are the same.
Your arms are the same.
Your nose, mouth, and clothes are the same.
Your walk is the same
as you walk on a course to collide with me
my mind, my unexpected memory of a heartful
of you, my dear:
I have left you now, far
far behind me.
I long ago forgot you (once)
a subtle cessation of conveyance
of love to an absent memory.
Your voice is deeper now
you’re more grown up I think
you look happy. You look strong.
I wonder how long its been since you thought of me naked
vulnerable with love beneath you
breathing, breathing
hot shallow breaths into your eyes and lungs.
You ate
each one.
You gave each back,
lifegiver
to a life long since abandoned.
You were mother’s milk to me,
dripping richly from the teats of existence herself
and she weaned me.
She ripped me from her breast
not unkind but harsh nonetheless
I found you outgrown. I found you unbest.
I’ve passed you by now
with no word and no sigh
the sidewalk bears us by
and bye and bye
you will no longer meet my eye.

The Bus Ride

Damn, I need a drink.

Sticky-hot tongue pressed against 

the dry roof of my mouth.

Cold plastic bus chair adhering to

bare flesh on my arms and back.

I’m thinking of the communist in my postmodern literature class.

He sips iced gin nonchalantly through a straw

in a plastic water bottle

beneath the naive eyes of an unsuspecting professor.

Long, black, sinuous limbs spring from a vibrant,

sturdy trunk, terminating in capable looking fingers.

They press around his frosted gin/water bottle. 

A gentle, firm grip…

Damn, I need a drink.

Last night, saw him in a seedy bar.

A long, chestnut colored wig:

the curls ripple electrically around his shoulders.

His lips are shining robustly, 

red and sumptuous.

I smelled perfume rising from his glitter-powdered breasts

and I was drawn face first 

into the silk dunes whispering across his skin. 

His pointed shoes cause every leg muscle to self-proclaim

ecstatically

she danced for me.

And there he was in my memory

taking notes on Derrida

sipping gin in postmodern literature class

holding the bottle like a large, straining member…

…and damn, I need a drink, 

a drink from a bottle of gin. 

Dive head first among the ice and spirit 

evaporate into the muggy atmosphere and rush,

return to cling again to the cool plastic bottle 

sweating down till I am a melted puddle at its base,

the communist’s ebony fingers tracing circles through my flesh.

His/her fingers tracing circles through my flesh…

The windows on the bus are plastic and do not open.

But I see the shadow of my face

blend with the shapes outside—

the buildings and cars, strangers’ faces—

we drive by.

A gust of hot breeze through the opening doors

peppered with the fragrances of hot metal and exhaust,

of concrete and newspaper and sweaty bodies,

hot, burnished hair crowning their heads.

The soap and rose water smell

of the Sunday school lady stepping onto the bus.

Her hair is twisted cleanly 

off her cleanly pressed, white blouse. 

She is a pale china doll with a demure brown skirt;

sensible brown pumps full of neat nyloned feet.

Her humbly manicured nails wink

from pink, curling fingers around 

a metal ring swinging from the ceiling.

She points her chin out the front window.

She half-hoods her lids over her eyes. 

Damn, I need…

I let out a husky breath full of the communist 

will it up through her nostrils.

There he will dangle in her olfactory 

I inhaling myself up her nylons 

and pooling in the soggy apex where her legs meet.

Dirty, salty sweet.

I trickle down her leg and re-solidify in my seat.

Damn…

I’m thinking of the communist and the Sunday school lady

twisting, swirling together in my brain,

dancing metallically on my tongue.

I push them out into a fog on the window

suck them back in and gulp them down, warming

my already burning stomach. 

She has gotten off the bus.

He was never on the bus. 

I am on the bus.

The seedy bar where I watch the strange girls—

the strange communists—dance 

creeps stoically up on the left.

Stop. 

Stop, please. 

Heat from the bus engine radiates

pushing my skirt against my thigh:

I am crossing in front, 

got to get across the street.

The noise, the grey and white swallow the bus

the street 

the people outside. 

“You look like you need a drink.”

I look up at the bartender who is leaning

against my low wooden table at the corner of the stage. 

His mouth is moving, chewing, chewing.

Saliva rolling, bubbling, chewing nicotine gum.

A smirking, chapped-lipped mouth.

Freckles on his nose.

I need a cigarette.

Breathe in the smoke of the place.

To Life and Longer

There is a spring somewhere beneath your bed
I’m sure. From your window I smell the fresh water
rushing forth to nourish the world
and entice creatures like me.
I am a deer
I fleetly leapt from the ground to here.
I forage on all fours to find your spring.
I submerge myself and drink,
drown happily, so happily
a bliss beneath the place where you sleep forever and ever
and perhaps I’ll inhabit your dreams.

How Can I Help Her to Shout and Rejoice?

SHE is a herald

shrieking in the rafters

shattering the stained glass

walls imprisoning God’s grace,

brittle though they may have been.

A joyous battle cry!

A dread phonic forge!

O Harpy! O Angel!

Beating, beating!

the drums of my ears

the walls of my mind.

O Temptress! O Savior!

Scratching, shredding!

the curtain from my eyes

the parchment on my heart.

Wake and wake and wake!

Shake the shackles and break the pews

pounding the dammed things

beneath blood soaked feet,

dancing, dancing!

In the riot, In the orgy

—evisceration. 

In death the bowls of the Body loose us.

Our Bed a Spot of Life

Sleeping next to you I breathe your breath.
Am I dizzied with carbon dioxide?
Or have I been snared by the promise in your
gravitational pull?
I orbit around you and revolve,
my source of life
in a cold, airless abyss.
The lashes of your closed lids
entice me to the paths
my lips would take, tenderly brushing your cheeks.
The water betwixt our tangled limbs
overflows from my soul
throbbing with repose in your embrace:
I melt beyond my earthly
container and mingle with you,
inseparable and home,
expanding until I am permeated
and assimilate you into my being.
We dream
in and throughout one another.

Consumerism

I watched as the flesh yeilded 
scabbard-like
to the repeated thrusting of a bloody sword
and I hated.
I hated the Man 
composing the law which ravages humanity;
I hated the woman
all eagerness to please and fading into non-entity;
I hated myself
who joined my voice with those in the horde,
despairing that my whimpered protests 
were lost in the squall.

Ruminations on Giving Up Hope

Each Day passes away
as I pass away.
A cycle of sleeping and waking:
always sleeping and never resting,
relentlessly shaken from sleep
never fully awakened.
Even the wraith of me fades.
What a hardy shade!
It dwindles to a lone atom,
ever dying yet not to be extinguished.

I Know Your Head Aches

Scream, cry, prick yourself and moan…
You’ll never get home…
now lick your wounds.
… always alone, you’ll never get home.

Off on a shadowed island unattached and bound
ever on and into nothing.
You are nothing where you are
your self and alone.
You, the cause, are not the solution.
You, the lonely, are not a home.
So flee on, and as fleeing
descend into void.