Raw

White was never a good color for you.

Looking, I remember the fat roundness
as I tried to chase you down- down the hall, down the road
I always seemed to be following after you,
baby black hair.
You are no longer fat and round
grown thin, you thing, when did the color go
and the circles grow?
The cheekbones stand out now,
we start to resemble each other- the blood
begins to tell its story
I finally see us in each other
like we are mirrors
reflecting a false infinity
just as I stub my toe on mortality- mine, yours
Ahhh, God, my littlest one
you can NOT be mortal, must not be.

We thought once
we were aliens, remember?
You and I, child, you and I chasing 33 cats
and thinking one day
the ship would come to take us home.

This is the wrong ship for you to take
and you’re trying it solo, and breaking my heart.

Three Things That Fall Together in an Oddly Appropriate Synthesis

That Tell me I am not Mad

Bette Davis’ illegitimate child rides the bus
cursing about everything foul
in her mother’s voice.
I hear it in my sleep, though Bette
never said “shit”
so visciously- so vehemently
or even at all, that I remember.

The clock is both enemy and friend:
sometimes I fear the end of the day,
sometimes I beg for it.
When the season turns and it isnt quite dark
coming out of the building; the sky
is a mass of grosgrain ribbons spilling sunset
into curdled milk clouds,
the spirit lifts.

I smile secretively at my own reflection.
I know I, at least, will not spill the secrets
I carry, will not say the words that no one knows
I have behind my tongue.
Shhhh, this is the truth. You are safe, it is only
me that waits behind the wall.

A Silence

Once,
in the morning
I realized that the best
way to think of you
was to picture a bell, ringing
and how
after the bell stops
and the vibrations quit plucking
at the air
there is still you,
a silence.

Primary Sources

Primary Sources

close to the President have been heard to say
that the man picks his nose.

Down at the caucus, theyre generating false excitement
over nobody special and debating
inconsequentials,
like who parted Edwards hair;

and I wish I could say I did,
but they wouldn’t let me use a crow bar.

I cant eat.
Cant sleep either, and it isn’t because of any
of those plastic fantastic candidates
or any of that bullshit that wont matter
even to the losers who knew they’d lose
and ran anyway.

But it’s January umpty umpth
and primary sources indicate
it’s all downhill from here.

Primary Sources

Consider the feet.

Consider where the blood pools
and the chill shock drains

when the worst is confirmed,
when you approach the fount

and realize that the worst is only worst
because it’s real

and the feet must yet move,
must lift and lead the scissoring

of legs leaden
verging on collapse.

We create our own traps.
hunter and hunted

and the primary source
is the vein in the foot

pulsing, the heart beating.

Lyres 010608