bottle up and explode

1.
After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span
Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like
Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being - a Starman
Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.
And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure
 
That someone was there squinting through the dust,
Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only
To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?
 
Would I put on coat and return to the kitchen where my
Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired
 
And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.
 
2.
He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours
 
Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.
 
Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?
 
The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
Fro something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.
 
3.
Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
he’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel
The way you’d think he feels.
Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.
 
I’ve lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet from a shooting star.
But I’ll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He’s got
The whole world under his foot,
And we are small alongside,
Though there are occasions
When a man his size can meet
You eyes for just a blip of time
And send a thought like SHINE
SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE
Straight to your mind. Bowie,
I want to believe you. Want to feel
Your will like the wind before the rain.
The kind everything simply obeys,
Swept up in that hypnotic dance
As if something with the power to do so
Had looked its way and said:
                                                Go ahead.

May 04, 2012, 11:14pm

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

wingspan:

Love Can Really Kill Your Writing- Derrick Brown

that night i was writing about you

I wrote down that water slide architects
had been spying the smooth of your back,
mapping blue prints
from the finger trails adorning up your spine

Stealing your design

This is war.

in this life I can see through your body
enemies still sliced by the wit in your lipstick

I screamed to you,

you are a sunday porch I can do nothing on
and  feel like everything,
absolutely everything was still happening

March 31, 2012, 4:00pm

I gotta leave you baby, please don’t make me stay.
You sing that shit it’s like you’re digging your own
grave. You’re not seeking a cure, not sewing
up the seams or saying your Hail Marys. You don’t
even dream of getting into heaven. Heaven.
Dreamhouse. A garden party in the back yard starring 
a cleaned up Mr. James in his uncomfortable tuxedo.

Fuck it. You dig until you die. You carve a hole
for your sadness and dance inside it, like a worm
in a jumping bean. Feel bad this morning. Feel
like I wanna cry. My lover’s hair was blue-black.
He presented the jewels to me in a blue velvet box.
Stars, he said, for the movie star. Tonight
my house roars with music. The noise ordinance
cops are on their way in their deep blue cars.

It’s deep. So deep, I whispered, biting down on his
ear lobe. I was a pit and he was falling. 
My hands on his warm ass. My chest is a guitar hole 
and I’m jacking up the music until the windows break. 
Gargle with cognac, with
semen, with sweat. Me and Elmore, a couple 
of ghosts leaning on each other.

Tomorrow we’ll paint the whole house blue.
Glue dimes on the walls to look like stars. I’m wearing
his hat, his tie. His slick shoes. 
I’ve lost my baby, almost lost my mind.

March 30, 2012, 6:07pm

She drank from a bottle called DRINK ME
And up she grew so tall,
She ate from a plate called TASTE ME
And down she shrank so small.
And so she changed while other folks
Never tried nothin’ at all. 

March 29, 2012, 5:39pm

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space –
however small –
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

March 23, 2012, 7:35pm

selfish-desires:

Poem to katy perry.

Sierra D. At the Berkeley slam. My favorite pub the starry plough, with my favorite poet. It’s like a dream come true.

March 10, 2012, 6:23pm

Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit
the inferiority of his culture…
—Franz Fanon

And there are days when storms hover
Over my house, their brooding just this side of rage, 
An open hand about to slap a face. You won’t believe me

When I tell you it is not personal. It isn’t. It only feels
That way because the face is yours. So what if it is the only
Face you’ve got? Listen, a storm will grab the first thing 
In its path, a Persian cat, a sixth grade boy on his way home 
From school, an old woman watering her roses, a black
Man running down a street (late to a dinner with his wife), 
A white guy buying cigarettes at the corner store. A storm
Will grab a young woman trying to escape her boyfriend, 
A garbage can, a Mexican busboy with no papers, you. 
We are all collateral damage for someone’s beautiful
Ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught. 
My father had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen. He never
Wore a wedding ring. Somehow, it would have looked lost, 
Misplaced on his thick worker’s hands that were, to me, 
As large as Africa. There have been a good many storms
In Africa over the centuries. One was called colonialism 
(Though I confess to loving Tarzan as a boy).

In my thirties, 
I read a book by Franz Fanon. I fell in love
With the storms in his book even though they broke 
My heart and made me want to scream. What good
Is screaming? Even a bad actress in a horror flick
Can do that. In my twenties, I had fallen in love
With the storms in the essays of James Baldwin. 
They were like perfect poems. His friends called
Him Jimmy. People didn’t think he was beautiful. 
Oh God, but he was. He could make a hand that was
Slapping you into something that was loving, loving you. 
He could make rage sound elegant. Have you ever
Read “Stranger in the Village?” How would you like
To feel like a fucking storm every time someone looked
At you?

One time I was 
At a party. Some guy asked me: What are you, anyway? 
I downed my beer. Mexican I said. Really he said, Do 
You play soccer? No I said but I drink Tequila. He smiled
At me, That’s cool. I smiled back So what are you? 
What do you think I am he said. An asshole I said. People
Hate you when you’re right. Especially if you’re Mexican.
And every time I leave town, I pray that people will stop
Repeating You’re from El Paso with that same tone
Of voice they use when they see a rat running across
Their living rooms, interrupting their second glass
Of scotch. My father’s dead (Though sometimes I wake
And swear he has never been more alive—especially when
I see him staring back at me as I shave in the morning). 
Even though I understand something about hating a man
I have never really understood the logic of slavery.
What do I know? I don’t particularly like the idea of cheap
Labor. I don’t like guns. And I don’t even believe
White men are superior. Do you? I wanted to be
St. Francis. I took this ambition very seriously. Instead
I wound up becoming a middle-aged man who dreams
Storms where all the animals wind up dead. It scares
Me to think I have this dream inside me. Still, 
I love dogs—even mean ones. I could forgive
A dog that bit me. But if a man bit me, that would be
Another story. I have made my peace with cats.
I am especially in love with hummingbirds (though 
They’re as mean as roosters in a cock fight). Have 
You ever seen the storms in the eyes of men who
Were betting on a cock fight?

Last night, there was hail, thunder, 
A tornado touching down in the desert—though I was
Away and was not a first hand witness. I was in another
Place, listening to the waves of the ocean crash against
The shore. Sometimes I think the sea is angry. Who
Can blame it? There are a million things to be angry
About. Have you noticed that some people don’t give
A damn and just keep on shopping? Doesn’t that make you
Angry? A storm is like God. You don’t have to see it
To believe—sometimes you just have to place
Your faith in it. When my father walked into a room
It felt like that. Like the crashing waves. You know, 
Like a storm. This is the truth of the matter: I am
The son of a storm. Look, every one has to be the son
Of something. The thing to do when you are caught
In the middle of a storm is to abandon your car, 
Keep quiet. Pray. Wait. Tell that to the men 
Who were sleeping on the Arizona when
The Japanese dropped their bombs. War is the worst 
Kind of storm. The truth is I have never met a breathing
Human being who did not have at least one scar
On his body. Bombs and bullets do more than leave
A permanent mark on the skin. I have never liked
The expression they were out for blood.

There are days
When there are so many storms hovering around
My house that I cannot even see the blue in the sky. 
My father loved the sky. He was trying to memorize
The clouds before he died. I confess to being 
Jealous of the sky.

On Sunday Mornings
I picture Franz Fanon as an old man. He is looking up
At the pure African sky. He is trying to imagine how it appeared
Before the white men came. I don’t want to dream all the dead
Animals we have made extinct. I want to dream a sky
Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.

March 07, 2012, 10:00am

Maybe they were both the wrong star.
Perhaps she had wished on a battered
sloop instead of a majestic ocean liner,
read the green tea leaves upside down,
or failed to reveal the correct details
outside the psychic’s booth at the fair.

She was always waiting to cut herself,
like in that movie where the protagonist
cut herself. Monica wanted to go in
reverse, even in fourth grade, when she
jammed her legs into last year’s yellow
fleece pajamas. The movie’s protagonist

washed dishes at the local pub, impaling
pint glasses on the scrub brush panel
two at a time. Monica remembered the best
parts of all her past jobs, especially ones
she despised. The twenty-minute lunch
in the break room with an orange booth,

ashtray overflowing its stale Virginia
Slims. She was reading an Anne Tyler
novel, which almost made it romantic.
The protagonist of the film had probably
wished on the wrong star, which would
explain the two men on opposite sides

of the jukebox. Monica’s grandmother
claimed she’d learned to walk backwards
before ever running forward. As a teen
Monica had scoured the previous year’s
fashion magazines. Who could blame
her, though? They lived in Michigan,

where nothing ever changed. But when
would the pint glass shatter in her hand,
just like the woman on the screen, limp
ponytail snaking around her shoulders?
Would she have to wait for the flush
of blood, or would the transformation

be instantaneous? The black and white
world reversed, a bite of tea cake spit
out, onto the saucer. How long until
she went back fifteen years, days before
she staked all her money on the wrong
horse, grazing in the wrong pasture.

March 07, 2012, 5:41am

Dogs barking, wind blowing, how I never get
used to wind blowing, how I can never make
the wind mine, it just goes through me. Trees
spackled us with shadow and everything was still
okay. Strike that. Reverse it. The trees became
more specific. And suddenly, the wind clubbed
against me like a clapboard. You heard. People do
this. People collide like sex. You told me what
you heard. I repeated his name quietly. I repeated
her name loudly. And his wife suddenly had no name.
She became a gabled roof with a rusted antenna,
she watched them inside lathering each other,
holding the bar of soap up to the moonlight.

     *

I took a wrong turn. Here I am at another
poetry reading. The beams above don’t look
like stars. They are rotting wood beams.
Professor X opens and closes his mouth.
There’s a light that halos around his head and
a podium he clutches like a drink. But I am not
listening. I am thinking of what you just told me.
I am thinking of him again. And his wife. And
the child. There is always a child. I remember
one summer. We sat in the little blue café.
He said: I miss my wife. I imagined him biting
a wife’s neck, kissing her with his eyes closed.
And I stared into those fierce eyes.

     *

The laundry room was just a laundry room.
Where clothes beat against each other.
But I missed the point, always missed the point,
always have to be told. A laundry room
is not just a laundry room. A man is not
just a man. A young female student is not
just a young female student. Who is up from
a night of dancing on wooden floors. Up from
too many dizzy drinks. So she pulls the old
married professor into the laundry room,
he doesn’t pull away, and she cleans his mouth
with her lips and tongue, and their bodies beat
into each other, fold, collapse.

     *

Two eyes and a heart don’t add up to human.
In my latest dream, the telephone had replaced
the heart and it rang and rang but I couldn’t
pick it up. In class, I stared at her bare back and
knew that he had run his pink fingers across it.
Had cried in its winding tunnels. Her back, his tears,
the garden where his wife pulled up weeds each year,
the fireworks, the fish in the river. How can they
not be aligned? Walking back from the party,
I stopped in the middle of the dark dead road,
and watched two shadows come out. Then
disappear. Then two more. You tell me. People
do this. People pair up. That’s fine for now.

     *

A hind limb, an eye, apparitions appear and
disappear, cicadas stick and unstick, shout
in unison on all sides of this narrow Tennessee
road. It is anguish not to see them, to know that
at once, they can lower themselves onto me and
do what they will, kick me with their boot-
like legs, stamp me out. Go ahead, come down
from the thicket of trees and wag your legs
at me. You will all die brittle. But what is that
through the trunks? A white cross as large
as a farmhouse. Even the cicadas stop their
factioning. What have I done? I begin to see the
morning’s failure, the cicadas’ failure, my failure.

     *

If I take off my eyes and give them to you,
will you take them? I want to tell you without
having to confess anything, without having
to tell you about the men that have passed
through my mind just this morning. Imagine
them. Imagine their hair pressed down with
my hands. Am I guilty if I stand behind
the window and look? If I only desire to bloody
my fist? If my mirror holds a thousand tides?
I try, I do. I try and try. But there are the dreams.
There are these mornings. This road. The cross.
The empty benches before the cross. The cicadas
that eventually must land.

(Source: versedaily.org)

March 07, 2012, 3:31am