| (more poems about whores) |
[19 Sep 2008|08:40am] |
1. Baby was born round downtown in St Cloud. Her dad wasn’t around and her mom ain’t so proud. In a hospital riddled with death and disease Baby got born to live life on her knees. In hospital room number seventeen-ten The man on the TV says, “Baby, amen.” 2. She sewed up her tongue and her teeth at thirteen and embroidered a heart where her mouth should have been. The first pill at fourteen – the first fuck a year on in a car in a street round the back of St John’s. She slides in the spike, takes a deep breath, and then the man blurring before her says, “Baby, amen.” 3. The parties get heartless and then they get heavy with carnival barkers and cops at the ready. The main attraction is Baby with lungs full of dust Swallowing swords for a needleful of rust. Coming home in the morning with dirt on her knees “Baby, amen,” says the man on TV. 4. As the room’s getting dimmer she’s sipping paint thinner while beside her the strippers all paint their thighs silver. Crucified by addiction, betrayed by a kiss, she takes cash on the nails that protrude from her wrists. “The good lord above said that faith never falters. Baby, amen,” says the man at the altar. 5. Baby went to heaven in a little rowboat with the morals of her betters barely keeping it afloat. The bruises on her throat are like thorns around her heart. Well it doesn’t matter much: she was a hooker and a tart. The sheet covers her face in the tiny bathroom. “Baby, amen,” says the man in the moon.
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| self-portrait |
[03 Aug 2007|07:49pm] |
Here I am
These are my hands,
the best i know how, and now
this is my spine, I stand
as tall as my arms will reach out
Here is my smile,
the line in my brow
curious, self-aware, here is my silence
a calming green stare-
my eyes, my nose
Here is my messy blonde hair
Do you miss me? It shows
Here is my laugh in the sun.
And in the silver-moon glow,
Here I am in my dreams
these are my fingers, my hands;
This is me.
I am unhinged and complacent
as I turn in my sleep,
These are my thoughts,
a greenish-blue sea
Here are the clothes I am in, here
is my skin, my freckles, my mouth
These are my words,
my voice in a crowd.
These are my wide-open hands, my closed lips
I'm real,
You can feel
my heart beat
Here are my palms, my fingertips
This is me.
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[31 Jul 2007|06:39pm] |
i tried to fall asleep but instead we had to properly
intertwine and name after letters each cluster of ropes,
which embodied my undecipherable fevers through a system
of spirals and allegories.
by dawn i saw the last contours of what appeared to be
my frivolous afternoon migraine and it seeped cleverly
into the wall and curtains because it was bone coloured,
and morning light tends to flush white rooms the same
shade of soaked recycled paper.
The rest of the day proceeded in periodical convulsions.
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[30 Jul 2007|09:16pm] |
baby's still snorting visual coke,
playing cat's cradle, playing pretend with a radio ghost.
still hanging pictures of past heroics onto bedroom floors
singing, "cities were built for bombings"
i'm playing both the teapot and the kettle
while we settle on longings saying,
"that's just how the sea sways"
or just touching on ways to make you stay
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[23 Jul 2007|01:59pm] |
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Anton Chekov said that any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day to day living that wears you out. I can watch my father grab my mother by the neck without looking up from my lunch, watch my brother's marriage crumble apart without flinching, be used and walked all over and trampled on, that doesn't get to me. I go through each day, robotically, immune, I try not let things get to me. It's the quiet moments, the nights at two in the morning when the clock ticks too loud, when I can feel the minute hands move, seconds disappear in my life and the lives I'll never have, the way the sun doesn't shine for days, a dogeared page, my favorite song, that's what gets me. The nights I can't breathe, when I feel everything I've swallowed rise and press against my ribcage, everything aching to get out, the telephone calls I'll never make, that's what gets me. Face in palms, sweaty palms, stirring and pacing and stirring throughout the night in an apartment that will never be a home, when I don't sleep for days, forget to eat, it wears me out. Mundane moments, the repetition of everything, the cycles that will never be broken, every word ever spoken and my heavy head full of things I'll never say, they are the things I call a crisis, the things that follow me around, the ghosts that live inside my heart. Poets have been saying it for years: loneliness, sadness, desperation, these are the things that make you realize who you are, what you're made of, who you aren't, what you are comprised of. Tragedy is glorified, people cling to their hopelessness. The sadness, the grief, the things we feel in the quietness, they make us feel vulnerable, pure, innocent. We repeat the motions, fall deeper, hold on to our tragedies. People come together for a crisis, but the day to day living, you are alone. I live between the quiet and the loud, between moments of hallelujah when I realize I have found someone I can call home and between the days when language is foreign and I am godless. I try my best to keep living, despite the feelings I can't shake, my lack of direction, my lack of self. I try not to notice that everything is crumbling around me, the paint is chipping, the sidewalk cracking. I try to ignore the manifestation of destructiveness, the absence of normalcy, the sins I create. I try not to think when it is silent. I refuse to ask the questions that matter, for I am afraid. I'm afraid of the cycle, the relapse back into the languid. I try, struggle, fight while falling, to ignore everything that I have done that I can't forgive myself for, the unsteady ground before me, the untangible that haunts me. I live day to day, try to keep fighting, and hope I have enough energy to face the quiet nights that follow, that I can't keep from coming in. Crisises are the things that I must face, the day to day living I can't ignore.
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| x-posted |
[07 Jul 2007|12:53am] |
i'm sorry the rocks melted and left you lukewarm.
thoughts of me are of no consequence, don't forget
i'm already gone. humility had me in its mouth
but after a few long days, i am ready to be free
of supposed virtues. a roomful of whipped puppies
with tails between their legs, hissing house-cats;
even with your claws extended, you are still too small
to cause the damage that you want. lick your wounds.
having rested and recovered, i don't want to sit around
discussing the reasons why i'm not standing.
i have these scars, but i'll outgrow them again,
beyond the day your fury dies. i may not win, but
you'll never see me kneeling before defeat.
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| x-posted to my journal |
[26 Jun 2007|05:19pm] |
midday and i wasn't in the mood but his head
between my legs changed my mind instantly. the way
my taste makes him transform into a mammal, drawn to heat
the way we ache when we try to become one, but fail.
honesty can be translated directly into fangs
piercing my own tongue when i bit it for silence and courage.
i poison myself daily, from the inside out. and to cleanse,
these long drives and closed lips, trying to drown out the buzz.
how easy it is to dip into another's life
and take only what you catches your eye.
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| In memory of Christopher McCandless |
[24 Jun 2007|12:54am] |
Just a butterfly chasing dreams to the edge.
You challenged each state but thirsted for more,
So you let your thumb lead you to the deepest woods
Walked across the frozen river and into the rot.
Baby, please don’t be so brave.
The moose was small, but I bet the fall was hard
When your fire tore through him. And all that
Wasted, rotting meat, nature’s warning
and all your sweat. You were ready to turn around
and come home, but the snow had melted;
the current was strong and for once, you were afraid.
I was three years old when you started to die
But a rift in time let me stroke your anxious hands.
The Alaskan bush is not the movies, and 24 years
Is not yet a man. My ghost sat with you and we shivered,
Wrote on the inner walls of the musty abandoned bus.
You begged, but no help came. Your mother’s sweater
Did not keep you from starving. And you joined the rot.
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| a shropshire lad. |
[14 Jun 2007|03:27pm] |
when i was one and twenty i heard a wise man say,
"give crowns and pounds and pennies, but not your heart away;
give pearls away and rubies, but keep your fancy free."
but i was one and twenty, no use to talk to me.
when i was one and twenty i heard him say again,
"the heart out of the bosom was never given in vain;
tis paid with sighs a plenty and sold for endless rue."
and i am two and twenty, and oh, tis true, tis true.
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| Lucy looks better with pearls |
[14 Jun 2007|02:02am] |
I want to write a song about her hips,
her hips and the way they fit perfectly in mouth spaces
and her lips, how they lace between fingertips.
I want to write a song about this girl and teach it
to the world as a goddamn anthem.
A rescue song for the loveless and half dead.
I'd tell everyone to turn their stomachs into human
plantations of flower and bed.
I want to pick roses from my ribcage and mold them
between her shoulder blades.
Like flying lilacs, I want to sew stems down
the
arch
of her back making for flower fields in the
sky.
When rivers dried up, I'd match her eyes to the water;
Say.. Turn blue ocean to black, but I will drink just the same.
Like seeing coral at night and leaves in the snow,
her body gives off the brightest light
a sinner has ever seen.
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