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.
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.
