Objective

He tells me that his mind does him in;

That he overthinks his thoughts and that they spin

Inside the skull and numb his touch until

His skin becomes cold from his within.

And he'll apologize, and cry and cry,

and I, I'll kiss his eyes.

The brain's a masochist that quietly entices

Each plume of though down an oblique tangent

Into grisly forests of the mind.

Behind my eyes lie trapped half-truths and truths

That stretch into gruesome hyperbole and lies;

They mask the retina and they fool the hand,

Thus blind, I cry.

And in my mouth apologies, like soap, like bile,

Foam forth in weak disguise.

I'm grateful: he reciprocates,

He'll kiss my eyes, 

They all will kiss my eyes,

And murmur wordless sounds of empathy

That move like animals along the spine.

Is this how it has always been, will be? Or

Will there be a time when I

Can stop a thought before its path divides,

And, like a smiling animal, fulfill myself by

Grinning at the eucalyptus tree, or lying in the sun?

(2007)

Poets have told me I can be a poet,

But the door to the future is small,

And the handle sticks.

It looks like the door to a public restroom.

If poets live behind there,

Up against the shadows of skyscrapers

And crammed into tin cans, flower pots, match books,

Slaughtering each other with their pens for tenure and

Proselytizing metaphors,

Then perhaps I'll stay out here a while longer:

Bus tables, look for Jesus in the mayonnaise and

Mary in the jam,

Notice Fibbonacci in the sunflower's maw.

I can slap someone in the face with a bouquet of nettles,

I can kiss my sister on the mouth and shout,

Here's a poem for you all,

You ugly freaks,

Sayonara, but I've found my poems in the

Tree, the pinky toe, the toilet bowl,

And I'll never even write single word.

Instead, perhaps, I'll learn to blow the best

Smoke rings that anyone has ever seen,

So beautiful that people will weep at their perfection,

And helplessly try to catch them in their hands,

They'll be reminded of their mothers,

And first sexual encounters,

The Venus de Milo and Spaghetti-O's.

Perhaps smoke rings seem more democratic to me,

Or else I'm scared that I ain't got what it takes--

But when blown correctly a smoke ring can

Rim your head like a nimbus,

And also a cat's arched back will sometimes make me cry.

(2008)

What You Have Heard Is True

There are many and many things you've heard,

Things that are true about me.

It's funny, it's funny the things that are true

Of all that you've heard about me.

I'm an obelisk cowering in wind-whipped sands

Of a desert, that's how they left me.

I, who had swaddled them both in white dresses,

Had suckled and brought them to be;

Had housed in my body, had twice halved my soul,

And loved unconditionally.

Unimportant, it seems, are the ranch hands, the horse blood

Through which trembles our legacy.

Trifling, perhaps, are the words that I read them,

Yeats' torch songs and Annabelle Lee. 

Shoved under the door on a Wednesday, wet spring,

Lay an envelope addressed to me,

And its letter bore words and each word bore a will

Whose intent was to kill me, kill me.

It was written by doctors with faces as mean

As African death masks; who see

Only themselves bearing scepters of science, as gods

of divine Psychology.

The doctors, those doctors have torn them away

From my breast, from my bed, from me;

Hacked away at the trunk and split with an ax

The roots of my family tree.

And I'm left here among the debris.

May their snowcovered faces wax round as pink-moons and

their sicknesses lift by degree,

May they sing cowboy songs to their daughters and never

Be ruined; but may they grieve for me.

For they never meant less to me.

They never meant more to me.

They are me,  am me, were me.

Part Crow

What she does is she collects:

Words- written on the walls-

Ceramic pigs, jewelry, paper clippings,

Birthday cards, and photographs

Clutter the corners of her house

Like sticks do a nest.

Part crow, she'd give away her very wings for

These shiny tokens;

They are symbols, she thinks, of other things,

love.

It's a strange language she speaks,

One of metaphors and exchanges:

A stone for a stone,

A key for a kiss,

Or a live heart for something promised--

Anything less than a live heart makes her despair,

Curl up into the center of her nest and

Bury herself amidst her crocheted pillows

And empty beer cans,

The television humming the grey

Sound of trapped insects.

And she gives so much:

She'd pull her soul out through her

Mouth with pliers if she could,

Disentangle her own heart from the

Mess of organs in her chest

And make it a gift wrapped in

Gauze bows,

Its presence Momentous and Terrifying

on the living room table, and

so heavy it cracks through the wood.

She falls through the sky when she gives up

Her wings.

The cripple whistles through the air

Like a suicidal angel

Landing blackly with a thwack of feathers,

the snap of hollow bone

Out of her mouth slips the

Soul

She's bared so many times;

Its snaky ascent to the sky

As invisible as what she's

Tried so hard to give, and to receive

(2008)

Dad

When you got off the plane the heat

Hit you like a wet rag, and

The dark boy called Chief said, we ain't in Kansas anymore, ladies.

You got called Sherman, because of your glasses.

The first night the rain came, you said, it came hard,

and you were afraid.

You didn't use the ponchos

Because the sounded like dice in a tin cup:

(a dead giveaway gives way to dead).

The first night the rain came was black as

The spaces in between stars,

Black as an Asian eye,

Black as the inside of a body or a gun.

You didn't use the flashlights;

(Too bright, you said, too bright).

Dimly greening in the jungle you found mysterious

Leaves the glowed eye-bright,

Bioluminescing tokens that you tacked

To the backs of your helmets to keep track of one another.

You must have resembled and army of elf-men

Winding wayward through the trees

In your apple; peacock; olive drab.

(Inconspicuous prey).

What would the enemy have though to see

Your throng?

In the gloom with their feet wet and the skin

Becoming raisin-rot inside their shoes,

Their insides parched, their mossy outsides slipping down

Their skeletons; would they have spooked?

Would they have taken you for ancestral spirits, or

Is the trick of the glowing leaves known to them?

Your 36th day out, the tall blonde one

Shot a buffalo in its bulbous eye,

No reason.

When the bullet sang through you,

You said you contemplated god, didn't you.

Why was it, again, that you

Decided not to pray?

Apart

Circles have lost their circumferences,

birds fly in their particular trajectories,

the carbon cycle continues

irrelevantly

here,

things are not yet dead, and

I am caught in early autumn’s purgatory.

indecisive—

I am the leaf that’s yet unfallen

even yet ufurled—

I wait.

Hold me again.

Swaddle me in your sake.

Lick, again, the salt that rims my eyes,

Burrow, again, into the divots of my back,

The caves under my arms;

Burrow, again, into sleep into me.

Let us insinuate ourselves into

The rabbit holes that intersect above our heads,

Let us meet for hours in this floating underground;

Let us hibernate the heart until December.

I don’t see circles;

I don’t see birds.

My breath is invisible, until

on a cold day it will suddenly appear

before me,

like cumulous clouds drifting out of my mouth.

(2009)

Salsipuedes Street

the best thing I’ve ever seen is a mother with her baby’s fingers in her mouth

sucking them to keep them warm.

early autumn and the baby—with

pierced diamond ears—

wears a pink sweater, and her mother,

full of love,

a grey pea coat. 

(2008)