Butterflies

Warm butterflies

Half-manic in pink hands,

That’s you.

Warm butterflies,

Soft and fragile and

Able to fly like I can’t.

To catch the breeze

And drift away to battlefields of wildflowers.

Hey,

Warm butterflies,

I’ll make the space for you—

Climb on in, shake out your yellow hair,

And drunkenly laugh.

You’re warm and smell like flowers.

Radio

My voice on the radio

These grainy bits of last days

Blend together-

A fine and ashy sand,

Made of the worn down smiles

Of the worn out.

My voice on the radio

I’ve forgotten yours,

Once so sweet to me,

Now a sort of uneasy

After-questionable-sushi feeling.

I’m rubbing off my eye makeup

Slowly into the night—

The effect, a raccoon-eyed sex goddess

In a man’s button down flannel—

Listening to my own voice tremble and falter

Like a drunkard on steps

Haphazard on these beautiful English words

Of my own choosing,

Listening to my own voice crack and

Lose rhythm and breath

With the shimmer of a cracked and dusty diamond.

I’ve never wanted a cigarette worse,

But it’s a good night for denied gratification.

The trucks speed by, full of groceries

For the rich,

The drivers, the poor

The immigrants and post-op transsexuals

The students and the East London husbands

Who beat their wives and steal the odd television,

Yawning their ascent into morning.

An uneasy and gray morning,

In a snowless December,

Suddenly comes

My voice on the radio

Spilling out my darkest secrets.

Rolling billowing waves of my emotional

Entrails

Rushing over the drivers of the grocery trucks,

Catching in egg crates and milk cartons,

And turning sour fruit ripe.

Sonnet Electronica

She's hunched over a screen

tracing a thousand dot trajectory.

A headphoned brunette music queen

in finger flying waving fury.

You're like a little mouse.

Not meek, but small. Quiet. Beige.

But not beige like a suburban house.

Tan and hinted russet. Heart encaged.

A frame that purses lips

and is drunk off one glass red,

kind and timid woven strips

of colored passion- and dread.

No, I haven't seen any watermelons here.

But it's okay that you can't steer.

De Sade

There are Americans singing

In the kitchen downstairs.

I’m eating cold chicken and staring at the bed-

I don’t remember changing the sheets,

But I’m glad I did.

Jose Cuervo is winking at me

Tipping his hat

“Hola, Senorita” he says.

I just ignore him.

I’ve been thinking about cause-and-effect.

I think it’s more circular than linear.

Fate is kind of a wobbly concept.

The Americans singing have started in on Stairway to Heaven.

God help us all.

I’m glad I’m not down there. Face a veneer of sisterhood,

Arms crossed in discomfort.

Friendly people bother me. They’re too easy,

And usually easily discarded of.

I like the tough sinewy ones,

The arguers, the abusers.

My first love was a sadist, I think.

I fell in love the first time he pushed my embrace away.

When I think back, I always smile.

I’ve been thinking about the smell of black coffee

And cleaning supplies,

And the first kiss I ever had,

From a boy under five feet tall,

On the Fourth of July.

He slobbered all over me then I cried.

Gloucester Arms

Two pints in and I guess I’m attracted to you after all
in some unusual way.

Not enough to be yours
But enough to experience the flutter
Of taking your hand in mine and enjoying
The warmth of the contact
Like hands stretched over a burning bin.

It’s nice to know that I have a voice
As I tipsily stumble over all the hurt and beauty of this world—
And you listen, and that’s enough for me.

Both of us from the same land,
And from different lands too.

And it’s so nice to feel the magnetic pull of- not happiness, i wouldn't call it that-

but a slow and steady leaking of christmas light warmth from my stomach

to my heart.

Two pints in and there's a smile from my face
Riddled with the cracks of a short but long life
Full of feelings
A big ladle of feelings
In a spoonful of matzoh ball soup kind of place.
Not home, but good enough. My legs are home.
My heart, my chest, my hands, my nose.

So this one’s for you,
Kind child. 1989 was a good year.
Today, a better day than most.

365 Bruises

To be worn like badges

Over my poet’s heart:

Bruises.

Blue, green, yellow and purple,

Like a flag at half-mast.

I tell the doctors I fell down the stairs.

And they sigh, and roll their eyes,

And hand me an ice pack and I’m off again.

They know, and I know,

That these bruises

Were given me

Like gifts, wrapped with love and care

Into fists and belts and paddles

Into words and eyes and tears

And kisses salty-sweet, and sticky pink palms,

And warm on a cold face.

But I tell the doctors I fell down the stairs again.

I wear them like a slip under my dress.

I cherish them.

365 bruises, one a day or more,

And everybody knows

I like it.

Packing Up.

In the back of an attic mind

Bookshelves and uncracked spines

And dusty bottles of claret

And boxes of old records

There is a single-beacon projector

Shoot shooting up

Recalling

A feeling, November two years ago.

And I want to describe it but there aren’t words,

Though there’s a chill in the air and the lights were bright

On the Boston commons and I cried

But I wasn’t sure I was sad.

There were teenaged gangs in the background,

Fucking around in the dark

And laughing over cigarette smoke-

I can still feel the night like a rueful carousel.

I can still feel the night like the traces of scars,

Cuts healed over. Bruises fading.

I want to describe it but there aren’t words,

I can smell it but cannot taste it fully

Like sweet rose hookah smoke.

And in my head

Someone is singing

About better to stop loving now.

I’m not sure I agree.