Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Okay.

Just smile and say “Okay”
At what point did I become
ridiculous?
My left shoe says yesterday.
My right shoe says it was earlier than that.
I don’t trust them
or I don’t hear them
because there are heavy-set gypsy women
stuck in my ears.
It’s cool.
We’re all waiting for a minute past midnight
when everything goes back to the way it was,
and everyone stops laughin’ their heads off
at something too true to be funny.


Stroll to the Convent  10-5-05
She found her virginity again
After 20 years of separation
She forgot the scent
It forgot to smile

“Life’s a bitch
get it pregnant
stuff it till its belly bursts”
she heard the old man say under his breath
oblivious to her presence

She sees her childhood
Hung up on the pawn shop wall
Run through by hooks on strings
Visual stimuli burned through her brain
And tears evaporate down her cheeks

She trips on a dead man
Still holding on to the string of a white balloon
That reads “Happy 4th Birthday!”
She digs deep in her purse for a pen with which to pop it
But finds nothing.



Arresting Jesus - May 26, 2009
In the summer
ants lodge in my brain.
Ants
exiled by the queen.

I do not hate them
because I’m pretending
to be Jesus,
crucified in the front yard

until concerned neighbors
call the police
and again
I am taken away.


Thursday, March 15, 2012

Porcelain Lady

She's the one
who wears the skin of a pretty psycho
and repeats to herself:
"We will be like rabid things
walking circles in the middle of the street."

I'm watching her cautiously
wondering if she is even aware
of the razor blade she grips
in the palm of her hand.

I'm afraid to comfort her
because she trembles
like something ready to explode.

And the foggy window that is her skin
would shatter into a thousand jagged pieces
and I'd see her every tragedy reflected from each
before they embedded themselves in my skin.

Our Lady of Mascara Tears

It ended like all things, with so many bifurcating roots at the ends of which precarious brown leaves mourn the verdant spring, its last vestiges dead and frozen beneath the snow.
It began out of primordial discord and ended with a haughty tone of sophistication.
It ends here, now, with the words that I am writing.

Fire.  That massive fire that seemed to burn through the bitter winter.  When it waned we fed it furniture we bought cheap from a junky fresh from a home invasion.  Shadows slept at our feet and we stepped over them as we danced around.
Someone hidden somewhere in the black strummed a guitar and women swayed in an inebriate trance, gazing into our inferno centerpiece as if divining its secret language.  The sky was held up by columns of smoke and through it they all appeared as phantoms.

Through that smoke, that soap-opera mist, I saw her; that actress from my nightmares.  The one I inevitably fall in love with because of the secrets she hides in her eyes.

She moved gently to the music, drunk, imbecile, yet with all the appeal of Greek tragedy.  I don't recall now who said what or what was said but we began talking and laughing.

When she left I thought I must know what terrible memories seize her mind.

I blink and I find myself, days later, at her birthday party.  She has just turned twenty-two, or so she claims.  We are playing a drinking game in the garage with her friends and when someone suggests we play truth or dare we all say "Hell yeah"

"Dare" said she, our Lady of Mascara Tears.