rose

found you on the bdfm stairwell hanging not far from a friend

very whole very forgotten picked you up

never gave you to anyone brought you home dropped you in a glass of water

with a toothbrush that tasted like hands there were bubbles

but the number of bubbles declined quickly as you

rotted you had been smooth and round but you were now

wrinkled you had been red now brown and speckled like a faun

thought to throw you in the trash with blood and snot and paper

brought you instead to the window where you lie doomed in a cold sun

will drop your shrunken petals ten five one down the fire escape

and you will be in a place in a shape you never were before

A list I found

SWAN $50

2 -- 1/2 + 1/2

3 -- club

1 -- pineapple

1 -- watermelon

1 -- cantaloupe

Ent. Donuts

The Proposition (Pushkin)

Tried out something kind of cool with this one: transliterated this and turned the sounds into what seemed right. Here is a version of the original (didn't read it until after I wrote mine). I recommend this trick to people who want to depart from their usual styles.

The Proposition

Here, poppyseeded, tulip-rooted girl,

I've brought you something your myopic eyes can read.

No more running between pools of hot and cold water,

no nestling myself within your three houses.

The cabbage still quivers in the springtime fields;

the round jingle metal hum leads to summer;

my loyal pinto plays the existential philosopher;

and thieves scavenge like yesterday.

But, cream-filled bundt, we pair in the ranches

repeatedly, you so close to the hairs on my body.

We've built our own philosopher's farm for golems

with my bulbs and your mineral-rich tears.

Together we are the rushing of the river over the rocks,

and January cannot freeze us, we are May:

holy in the cellar stairwell, holy at the dusty crossroads,

holy rooms, holy boxes, holy honeypots.

So if I proposed a new Wednesday education

and nudged you toward a voting booth

no more could you run me with your arguments,

no more would I nestle in your three houses,

and I would pay you back for mud and seriousness

and chalk up the velvet, vulgar words you make me think.

And in your maroon chair, open this letter,

and look, and read slowly, and consent.

Eyjafjallajökull

We can't ever fly with silt in our wings,

or in our lungs, so we hold our breath

when wind mates with ash and makes clouds of dust.

Grounded again, our bones are steel,

at least, but everyone on the wrong side

of their oceans is counting and recounting the grains of salt

à la plage y la playa, everyone is finally

buying a converter, nobody's cell phone

works in this fucking country and the keyboards are confusing,

with accent marks and punctuation in

all the wrong places. And everyone really

just wants to go home but they'll have to board a ship or something

because the skies are down,

but the world is still up

and without our drones they can hear the bees humming.

Edison's Song

There is something bewitched

in the flick of a light switch.

Fingers feeling towards illumination,

and the way we'd clap, like trying

to catch fireflies, burst them to brightness

with a squish. This flicker of life

encased behind plastic and glass,

trapped, dying, a high-pitched knell

that squeals itself white:

the spins, the dims fought off again,

this every-night sacrifice

so we can see color in the dark.

Under the Arch

Hey mister, anybody ever tell you

that in a long, tall glass of water

you're the chunk of lime?

Legs like legends, unspooling,

and your concentration's blurry

and your clothes are ironed sharp,

all lines and angles and

protractions, a whole made up of fractions,

mathematical, leaning precise

in the decadent magnolia air,

in the bowed mahogany sound,

in the softness of spring

you are clear as ice, cut right

and reflecting the starlight that

no one else looks to see.

Muse, two thousand and seven

pictures of you again, and they call back your animal

smell, the softness of the flannel you wore, the softness

of your voice, I always had to lean so close to hear

that your soft hair tickled my face. Jason's wool.

Your paint-stained hands, great thumbs, the stink of your

great white feet, beached whales. the celebration

when we came to an elevator, when we came to the

ice-cream-vending-machine

(that deserves its very own line); fantastic; your manic eyes

like animals, like animals, but somehow

each day you were in clothes, buttoned right. it was like

a miracle, or maybe like a sin. You and your clumsy limbs,

the gawk of your height, golden-haired giant, monster, muse, me

moving always closer to you, me drawn always closer--

phoenix, phantasm, there's something miraculous

about the fact that your long eyelashes and mine

collided, July, our shyest sleeves kissing,

about the fact that I ate your radishes: you taught me

that anyone's learnable, even a prophet,

even the least earthly prophet.

Union Square

All trampled in

footsteps, chess boards, agonized

phone calls, cigarettes, harassed by

Greenpeace, cornrows, dreadlocks,

little children singing these are a few of

my favorite things: sunglasses and high heels,

iced coffees, marketing, we're going marketing here,

plastic flash shopping bags cash flow,

man on a horse peering over us, me and you,

new bride bursting in strawberries

and cream, shotgun wedding,

ravished Union Square.

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

After the earthquake I think that Orion

readjusted his belt; it seemed to hang lower

on his waist. I mean, it might have been the change

of seasons, an adolescence. But

the tropics seemed nearer, warmer, and

my tongue wanted to unhook his stars,

and I wanted to see the world unbuckle.

I wanted to see the sky exposed

and shaking. I wanted his bow and his arrows,

unslung, vulnerable. I wanted the tides

to tug him down, down, until

he would topple and fall.

John the Baptist

Unknowing, unknowable boy,

and me with my wheelchair clairvoyance,

I try sometimes to penetrate

the seven veils that separate

us. Your eyes are the color of something inedible.

You play the teeth, torque the locks with your

knuckles, big and precise and white;

you are a shadow preaching

within tobacco fog again. Your eyes

are the color of something inedible.

If I licked them they would taste like chlorine.

You are covered, too, in a blue tarp

that has been collecting leaves since September.

You have been collecting leaves since September.

Mannahatta

My great borough, Manhattan,

city of profitable bargaining, city of economy,

city of the flow of money, city of business,

city of hard work and pay earned, city of opportunity,

city of converging lives, city of many disconnected bubbles,

city of soap-bubbles, city that gleams rainbow,

city that shines in the greatest compromise between commerce and art,

city greater than everything put together, the hub of the human universe,

city of neighborhoods, demanding, curious, incurious,

maintained, maintained, scrubbed and rebuilt, scarred by ubiquitous entropy,

I am yours, city, I am yours, I will always be yours.

Windchill

The cold breath of the wall at my back,

and you're the only one I ever wanted as a doorstop,

hiding the chinks in my coat.

The Whisperers

Are you attracted to those with quiet voices,

soft speakers that make you lean

closer to hear their words? Their breath

beside your ear, they will not amp it up

because they know you want to listen: those,

do they bring the iron in your blood

up to the surface, creating bumps,

creating tingles, blushing thumbnails?

Do the stentorians push you away

with the gusts their lungs create?

Do you crawl on bleeding palms to reach

these whisperers, unconsciously self-confident,

shyness turned to charisma, like

a closed rose you know will open in the sun,

or even, naively, under a reading lamp?

Venus of Willendorf

She dangles

from your pine branch,

porous thighs generously slabbed,

her eyes germinated, her braids, her hands

small and forgotten and grasping.

You never touch her in anger,

but anyway her fat

would act

as a cocoon.

Soon

her shrine will crumble from decadence,

weighted down by gold, by lard:

spitted, rapidly charred,

her hoard

will melt and resolidify into wax,

her skin cracked.

Easily, reverently, she will be

ignited.

Black Irish

Your limbs are choppy: elbows that stutter,

and nervous, Morse-tap knees. They spell

our names in Ogham, incomprehensible.

And your eyes have been rinsed out again.

I should have guessed. You have mislaid

your ragged-winged umbrella, your mascara,

again, and I think again you lost your rings.

Crow, rasp your resined bow so that my down

jumps on edge, my teeth raze my words and then

we intersect again. This macadam, it begs

our cataracted soles, the starless scrape

of our cab's brake, our fingerprints, partings.

Sometimes, when I want to say something that I care a lot about, it's hard to physically shape the words and push them out of my larynx and oral cavity. It's like my body wants to shelter them, kind of like they are an egg that I want to lay but its shell isn't on yet. My body will only let the words out if the shell is on the egg, that is, if the words are protected by misdirection and not saying exactly what I mean. Because that protects the emotions inside, which are the yolk. I don't know, but it's hard for me to say things when I really mean them.