p: 02.13.14

I see you around, your eyes hooded,
so magnificently bare and desolate,
so like a natural monument of stone.

You would become my makeshift grave on the plains of
Wyoming, your canvas hands enshrouding me;
winter-brown eyes, like iced earth.

I could carve into your frozen chest,
but would only be able to inter my little bones
in the topsoil, your rocky depths unplunged.

p: 02.13.13

jesus

I

Jesus isn't everywhere.
Tonight, he stops in Cleveland,
rents a hotel room with fuck-stained sheets
and falls asleep with the TV on.

In the next room, a paying customer
lays on his back, trying not to think of Charlene
as two hundred dollars worth of girl sucks him dry.
Her crucifix rests lightly on his balls.


II

Jesus isn't everywhere.
He drives past Nebraskan farms stretched lazily in twilight,
barns bleached bone-grey like
pubic hair of the elderly.

Behind one of these buildings, four boys
brutally twist the wings off a sparrow.
In the golden light of setting sun
Jesus weeps behind the wheel.


III

Jesus isn't everywhere.
His truck slides stealthy through Salt Lake;
he is careful not to make
eye contact with anyone.

He is almost recognized in Provo
when he stops for gas. He manages
to convince the man he isn't Jesus --
merely Jewish -- and shuffles away in a hurry.

p: 02.13.12

the party

slows, so i put on my shoes and
go for a smoke
and watch the round earth stretch open underneath
a field of gray sky
grass doing an impression of rigor mortis
crispy beneath our feet
i'm imitating awkward to those i walk with, i smile

back at the house
heavy bass pierces barriers between rooms
i know that
it's easy to forget that real people have schedules
and aren't tied to the cons of amiable commons
in other words, art students go home
the tired eyes on our hostess cause me to travel

out from the organism machine to the larger one
SCREEEEEEEEAM
as a bus passes and i realize it's the last
frustration that
is brief hope extinguished

the pavement shifts beneath my feet
walk ... maybe?
the drive is far from the horizon lights
the city's electric core
and my one rapunzel room in its network of wires

my scream rouses a quiltwoman
woven with old stories
sewn with snowy hair

she merges from a shop full
of strange ceramic figures
she is a mousey good witch
a practical glinda, but
dark like the early terrain

she stumbles over an "are you ok"
full of questions

laugh!
my desperation thaws to embarrassment
and shucks off like dead skin

she offers me a ride
to close enough to where i'm going

i babble gratitude like a stoned idiot

wait outside with
her big beautiful dog, her camel hump
think he and i could be friends
his tail thumps healthily
slathers me with mucousy slobber
i think he agrees

after clearing her seats and loading up
she steers west, towards home,
towards the city's cement nucleus

as we talk ink works stumble out of my sleeve
cover hands and skin
and the black symbols catch her gray eyes

I pronounce the word writer as archetype

and at the corner of cambie and nelson
after i gush another vigorous thanks
openly middlethawed
she tells me to walk straight, walk home
the rusty doorslam cuts off her last few words

begin to walk vauely towards home
i need to smoke
punctuate, a period of
cigarette in the dark

sing and know what i must look like

gruff half-crazy stumbling
muttering observations to the sidewalk

hazily consider Ginsberg
did he walk two-am lonely
or am i a crusted traveler
with empty headspace behind gravely words

another crazy drifter with tree roots nowhere

pass by a lamp-post
poised impressively in the middle of a parking lot
looks so damn remote
like everything in this city

insomniacs of Vancouver awake
alone
listen to thrum of electric lights

like me
i see streetlights
neon lights
headlights

they recede like most lights
can be turned off

still walking up street
in what seems an endless quest for bed
urge to scream overwhelming enough
to make me gasp like there's holes in my chest

holes that are sore sucking like
broken lips
bloody like humans, if there are any more

wonder how many sleepless would love screaming
at the sky-gray night
to make clouds part so we could at least see stars

stare at atmosphere
even through venetian blinds
slits of cloud reflect only electric light

pound the pavement like it owes me money
viciously impatient
spend it on cigarettes
take a few then give the rest away

man with blue eyes and
weather tattooed face
scowls friendly through bruises
calls himself loki and offers to share a joint

accept and
wait patiently for a
business transaction
meanwhile meet a devil, a short elevator ride
from heaven of 910

can't hallucinate myself an angel at all

later meet an Argentinean
who is awe-eyed idealistic awful
and looks at me green, tells me i'm free
i'm not so sure. i sleep indoors

in a too-nice-place, and not done
anything lately to liberate me
light another cigarette and wave him away

loki tells
he was once jailed for a fire he started
at negative 20 degrees
in a garbage can, perfectly safe
so he wouldn't freeze

get frightened when i hear things like this
i'd believe humans can be rational beings

but i should probably re-think

and do, when i leave
when i pad into the elevator amid more jazz mumbling
look up at myself in the mystery of mirror
and see

p: 02.13.11

summer sabbath

Words rise off the crowd like a stench
Then silence drips from spongy carpeted walls

Prayers scratch at brick ceilings
Melt wings in hot effort
And dull-thud back into the hum of fans

Beads of sweat greedy in the chapel oven
Sleepy eyes sinister
Flesh baking in dreary dreams of hellfire

Tight suits, taut stomachs
Damp polyester dresses in pink prints
Molt-leaden ears lapse in hearing

Restless mewls from winter babies
Rigid mothers rock and fan to cool

p: 02.13.11

what i want
is a boy with dilated pupils
and a heart of lead

s: 02.13.10

There were days when all I wanted to do was lay beside him and tangle my fingers in his chest hair; silently we watched the light change colours, as if we knew these moments would eventually be tugged out from under us by our own incompatability.

Sometimes I cried after sex, vestiges of holy guilt in my mind: darling, aren't we supposed to be together for ever? Aren't I supposed to bend with happy weariness under the weight of your children, kiss your work-soiled cheeks, be this sleepy beast of burden solely for you? But I knew even then that I was meant for a heaviness of a different kind, the bone-tired wandering of a very lonely world.

I leave no trace as I walk through, and this, now, is my joy. I begin and I end in me.

s: 02.13.09

her shoes

I will look at them and be five, eight, ten years old again, watching her dress to go to a New Year's Party, or to put on a production, or even just to go to church. I can smell Chanel 5, I can watch her Merle Norman Satin Cinnamon lipstick go on creamy smooth. I can see her smile, do up the back of my dress, sing me to sleep with soft hymns and a children's song I've never heard since.

I can see the shoes on the floor where she left them when she came in, exhausted by the sheer height of them. I can curl up beside her and get her to tell me the story of the day I was adopted, for the millionth time. I can laugh at her fear of snakes. I can hear her speak of religion and remember believing. Memories of belief are a strange and sad thing.

When did it all go awry? When did I stop running my fingers through her teased and perfectly molded hair? When did I stop being a small child padding barefoot and excited down the hall to see her?

Are there still big green caterpillars in the past? I need one right now to crawl over my skin, almost as much as I need to eat cherries in the shade of a big birch tree and watch my brothers play in a blue plastic kiddie pool.

Haunted, haunted, haunted.

s: 02.13.08

There are hours in the wee morning when I feel like there are incredible burdens lifted off of my brain, and for a few hours, if my body miraculously remains awake, I am given a fantastic view of absolute clarity before the morning comes to suck the retinas from the back of my eyes.

Sometimes I feel like I'm dizzier than I've been in years! My mind is constantly twisting around bends in the road I never even realized were there. But is that what I want? Do I really want to closet all the love I have for the well-trodden path? I'm an adventurer at heart but even I am enamoured with the familiarity of home and hearth, of good bread and soup, a home that is both there and not, as I've never known such warmth in any place I've lived. Sometimes I pine for it so badly I can taste it in my throat. I won't be able to resist the lowering of anchor at some point in my life, but the longer I can hold it back with the endorphin rush of pure NEWNESS, the better.

I'm dizzy now. Sometimes my body allows me wakefulness for a time far extending any reach of regularity, but I start to pay for it at the end. It's just that sometimes bed seems like the least viable option, especially when my brain spins off into equations and what-ifs that perform infinite loops in the processor of my brain, me all the while fumbling for some kind of reset button.

Sometimes I feel like my personality is splitting out into tiny slivers that are embedding themselves in a completely darkened sky, and thusly spread thin I become distant and ineffective, like stars. I hate to think that I may not have influence, which is really an odd thing considering I never particularly use my influence to any productive end. If anything, my influence is used mostly just to reassure myself that I still have that influence. I clutch it like a sword or a blanket, depending upon the day.

p: 02.13.07

i've studiously plucked out all of my eyelashes
and studied this loneliness until my fingers bled,
discovered i'm all broken capillaries
and sucked-back bile

s: 02.13.06

Nobody is ever awake when I'm the most awake.

These are the times when my mind is most beautiful and agile; late at night is when I pull my roots out of the ground and go for walks around my brain. This is when I welcome the most elaborate and fantastical explanations on being alive; this is when the rad times happen. And rarely anyone to share it with! Even those I choose to keep company with can't keep their eyes open until the time when mine become the wide-green reflections of self. I'm sad that people miss out! I want to share these things that I've got tumbling around. At the same time, though, I'm glad of solitude. My flights of fancy have most people beat by pure oddity, and I have the tendency to get downright silly at times. Unfortunately, I enjoy my silly self and lack any desire to get down to the "serious business" of conducting life as we know it.

I rarely get bogged down in details, which I believe is both a negative and a positive things about me. Both conclusions can be reached by equal evidence, and therefore I feel balanced (almost justified!) in my irresponsibility at times! It's terrible really; don't I want to be a steadfast girl who gets places on time and isn't a obstinate revolutionary? Actually, that's the wrong question to ask, I'm almost one hundred percent sure of the path I would take in that instance. Like I said, I'm inclined to these wild imaginings; I've been fantasizing a lot lately about being a sexy French suffragette or perhaps a sultry Spanish socialist; it's a bit counterintuitive to the stereotypical image, mind, but if you're beautiful you're beautiful, is it not so? (n'est-ce pas?)

p: 02.13.05

last night i was a
four thousand year old tree dying slowly

i watched your young bones sleep
with patient greed

p: 02.13.04

&these every day's like
the last except
maybe the last day wasn't
in up to your ears

&these days i'm just
treading water waiting for somethin'
to cave

&these days are like you said
just catch phrases waiting to be
connected to melodies and i

i used to be
the one to wanna
plug the terminals together
but these days
i'm a higher power than

p: 02.13.03

if you would remember me
when you tell your secrets
it would be enough, i think

p: 02.13.02

o, the strangeness!

i feel o, so bowled over
o
is that o
it was

o, o, o

where was i
o, where have i been
oooooooooooooooooooover
ooooooooooooooooooover
oooooooooooooooooooover there

o o o o
i was fan-tastic
free as a
free as a
o o o over
o o over there

she's seen
the birds fly
over there

p: 02.13.01

and oh
and oh
what my mother put in me
to love what they say

and how that sucking green poisons
this way that i think
how the covet spits
into every sweet thing i possess

and those claws
acrylic nails painted in bright
still scream scratches on my skin
kissed with the blood of vulnerable

(in my room you don't remember
in that place where memory hiccups and you
found ignore)

and now and then i black my eyelashes
like i'm going to war against and for you
finding a place where that counsel still fits

that suckers can be won with a sweet smile
that the crystal of tears can woo anyone
that the clicking sound of heels is a dream and a nightmare

remember the teachings over hairspray and faith
and layers and layers of makeup as brick
to hide the heart of a lionness

s: 02.12.03

are segregated bathrooms born of the fact that a woman squatting to piss is a very awkward animal?

p: 02.12.02

the tongues of cliche
have occupied the space of my pen
for long enough that i can notice the spit
that wets the paper
as it's licked time and time again

p: 02.12.01

denial's a river of sounds
made to soothe
a raw core of disgust

deny like a babbling brook or buffoon
the melting sovereignty
of the nation built on beauty like this