Helen of Troy will die,
But Helen of Colorado never.
Counter clerks and soda jerks
Populated the old days. Remember
Woolworth’s? I do, but barely.
Whether my path is ineffectual compared against
what justice I might sew if my strengths were applied elsewhere.
I convince myself with fear and escapefulness of
there is no pure good. No option only to heal or live as a clean breath in smoke.
These are the equations
which are sought to unlock
the epistemology of rooms
where sunlight cycles through
the numerical significance
of days passing
I stick my entire body to his skin
his hair smells like a storm is coming.
As my fingers play in the ravine on his back
my body rattles like thunder beating a windowpane.
Awake in the darkness, listen:
there’s someone sitting in the chair next to
the night stand, talking to you:
What matters once you’ve claimed that way as yours,
and walked that bitter mile through the dust,
and pierced the veil, and mastered your disgust,
is pulling all the corpses from the rift.
i knew Sitting Bull before sitting pretty
and images of bareback warriors protecting the tribe lulled me to sleep in the thud of the wild mustangs hooves
i have crossed deserts, meadows, mountains, and oceans
to get away from my white (wo)man’s burden
yellow came and told me
paint a dog, find a corner
bodega, steal me some
of them Swisher Sweets, while
red gave me the finger, called
911, kicked me in the shins
Instead, we rainbowed the space― hung sexy lace.
I ordered Gitmo closed and asked for the extra clothes
to patch together a warmer wintery scene.
We clothed some homeless folks in Georgetown,
gave them three squares each and a jail house cell.
It becomes dark forever at 6.30
as I'm the only one to get off at my station,
warm train taking the light away
to stars. In the west, Passaic
rustles its winter waters in the leafless world
as I walk the resounding mile
and why should we not feel the fluster further
sensitize our oppression and fortunes
to understudies of undertakers and why should we not care
when they don't upstage us and why should we not fight in the streets
for the same fucking thing everyone fights in the streets for
kryptonite drive the light will change steel lines shadows shall
continually respond so make sure you keep your egg in morose
spin dizzy $1800 rent check made payable to cockroach
ambassador conversely each flea has 2 big beautiful eyes
“Two scoops,” I tell the vendor, “it’s the best
way to ward off despair”—and generous
he is, loading the cone full and high.
You say he was a good man. he wouldn’t like
My pulling out my eyelash, eyebrow, arm hair
Now. now, mommy, it’s okay. I know you
Remember me with hair—braids with colored,
Plastic balls settled at the top of a nest of black—
a statue is watching people strolling
scattering the birds from his head
thinking of the man who locked him in stone
And you breathe slow like you don't notice
The man's hands following his wandering eyes
And the stench of their findings on his too-late
Goodnight kiss on your already asleep cheek.
I will walk on my own, stand on
my own two feet, keep my distance
always. I cannot swallow what
she attempts to serve. I must
look out for my best interests.
Dark hairs above her lips are exposed
by your lens. Behind this photo
looms a large volume of Western art.
A coin bought your admission, your presence,
keeps her eyes closed, keeps her voice silent
as if she were dead.
Sorry about my uncooperative nature
but I’m just not into accepting snake oil
and being bamboozled and sold
on da boastful and promising pitch.
The 30 year old cool kids are emptying their children and youth all over the parking lot. Dirty diapers without an owner that once belonged to their kids or maybe themselves, smelling like a hefty child support court story...
if we shimmer, somehow,
above our ivory clouds;
if we are to them
as silvered fish
but it appears they take themselves where
taken their destiny is all that’s behind them on
the road and that child’s voice not even a memory
within an architecture of raw air
(Cy Twombly triptych, an
innocent & pre-
plastique Michael
Jackson concert, a
touched de Chirico).
Whenever I wake from a bad dream, my murderer gives me homework. He’s there waiting. Not at the edge of the bed, as one might assume, with a hand resting calmly on my back, but sitting alone in the dim light of the kitchen.
the sun skims across their faces everyday
razing red-hot and cancerous skin
in time all the stones will turn black
and melt away like Icararuswings.
hips puddled pale on the asphalt
path, where lately space has been
spread a blanket of columbines,
weeds seeded out in puffs hugging
her silence all after, reckoning.
To defend José Lezama Lima is a right
defend him from God and from the hell
of majuscules and luck
stiff-necks and influxes
of the azure
is family style, is by the book.
Is none of my bid'ness.
They have a joy-free smoke,
a homemade drink.
They came from the four corners of the country
from remote places, walled off, cut off
and secluded from civilization,
practically removed from the map,
people of many clans, customs, and cultures
6. The Protesters: massed in the streets,
shouting, lifting signs high in the air,
all to no avail. It was over—they just
did not know.
Jim Dandy takes his place in the soup queue,
Huck Finn just behind, and they
laryngitis whisper: it ain’t worth being
civilized, advertised, mesmerized,
They were young.
Maybe not the brightest.
But among the most intrepid.
They were not Hitler youth.
Their motto wasn’t “Blood and Honor.”
Curbside beers, meals of tramp stew,
collapse a minister’s graven idol imagery,
diminish metaphor and the morning.
Rancor falls, random as a star.
I have no sense of the way home.
They turned the torture zone into a tourist site
the torturers all got jobs showing busloads
of foreign schoolkids where the tor
tures used to take place.
But we remember also the marches
against the wars of horror and shattered bones
who would cry out against Napalm
the burning of villages, not just
one who prophesied in the '60's train
but many friends, many friends
I became certain of silence, its
speech more relevant amid my
open hands releasing what was
learned among irrelevant
histories
she adored the aroma of nicotine on ripped fabric and
the appealing white-stains on abandoned evening gowns
these new signs became
her own innovative Rorschach tests
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