This room has a name. Living. I write my name in it
on pieces of paper and strew them everywhere.
I am snowflakes. Fill the room with fragments.
I am the mess in this room. Bottles in the corner.
Socks under the bed. Scribble them on scraps
not to forget them. Flakes of the skin I've shed.
The universe keeps getting bigger but I've stayed the same size all these years.
There is another place for me.
Strange visitors eat, play, and laugh as I remain here, and each leaves a residue behind.
I am not the floor or walls.
I am a residual resident ripping bandages off my skin slowly. Hairless patches left to caress.
I am a ripped corner
of notebook paper.
This is not my home or else why are there still voices at this hour? Why are the floors still creaking,
the dog snoring?
I built a fort in this room. Sheets hanging from above.
Come back here with me so that we can be alone.
Everything's here in this little tent. Crates of poetry,
old tax forms and unopened bills. Don't touch them.
Lie down beside me. This is where I come to breathe.
We're safe here for now. The paper is protective.
Portable. Easily dismantled. No voices or dogs.
I like listening to you breathing. I like your body.
I like you here within these paper walls of mine
with that gauze of diffused light upon your skin.
I wrote my name everywhere. This fort is
made from my name. This is our quinzhee in the snowstorm.
Bodies pressed together beneath the cusp of the wild, vast and brutal.
Let the storm scream and moan at us. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad it's you.
I'm taking you. I won't harm your body. I won't waste your body. I've got you. Right here.
I'm on top of you looking down to search for my reflection. Somewhere in your eyes
I can see myself, refracted by your perspective. Let yourself scream and moan.
No need to hold back from me, I'll take it all. I am the roof, floor, and walls.
Clutching. Shaking. Bed squeaking. A storm hiding from a storm,
ferocious and then calm. Now the fort is a snow globe.
Paper floats around us. This is home for now.
I'm folding sheets and filing papers.
Packing. The fort is transient.
I wish I could pack you too. A fixture in my fort.
Winter showed us many kinds of snow
this year -- light, powdery, thick, wet.
But I've never believed that no two snowflakes are the same.
There are too many.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Snow Fort
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Harvest
INT. FILM SET: DAY
Poverty's royalty -- you're nature's princess.
Every bird, frog, or blade of grass unconditionally
loves you. Forever Christmas morning --
the charmed life of unyielding beauty.
It's all some special privilege for you,
this kid's life -- minimum wage with perks --
leftovers from the meals of B-list stars.
The food never came. They forgot about you.
But you laughed the whole shift through,
hanging around the set eating pbj sandwiches.
The gaffer probed your abs,
going for the goods with hairy-knuckled fingers,
but he never got a good feel --
your doyley-dress that's all the rage in Spain
was in the way. You were too proud to let him stop,
too shy to lift your top
and expose the residue of harvesting.
Peculiar -- you dabbled in self-loathing,
just to feel alive --
all the spores, bugs, and pollen in the wind wept
for your beautiful bleeding garden of skin.
INT. DORMITORY: NIGHT.
From the hallway they can hear
your frantic fingers on the violin for hours.
I caught one
standing outside your door listening.
He looked up at me and said, "she's good."
You must press it stiff against your neck.
When I see you there's a red mark there
but maybe it's just a hickey.
And you are good.
You're starving but it never shows.
You're alive but you never bleed.
Courteous Daniel has pictures on his angry door
of black and white faces resembling you.
Chopped and photocopied tiles --
pictures of a domestic goddess
from an old housekeeping ad.
He is never angry when you speak,
and he offers you cigarettes
even though he knows you don't smoke.
But still has pictures of not you on his door.
Friendly Ursula is jealous.
She smiles to your face,
but when she first saw it, she wanted
to drag a rake across it or to kiss it.
EXT. DREAM: NIGHT
embodiment of your contorted body nude
head down on the bed neck bent awkward
face is not your face
your remains flipped up at jagged angles
and all your buried gashes hidden bruises vulnerable and open
what is this field and what is this fruit
this bed under stars this harsh wind on a harvest moon
get ready for the harvest
prodding hoes and scythes are coming
your body's sown full of wild oats
hicks in a huddle with booze and smokes
are cussing about your gash and your rack
who gets eyes who gets nose who gets what
c'mon boys
grab a bushel for a couple bucks
i'm the ghastly silhouette against the moon the
grimy reaper who wants it all intact blood bruises and all
scattering a circle of ash around the field as they have their way with you
that cackle that could have been the wind
a rusty fiddle under a shaky arm
accompanies the
smell of death bubba's whiskey breath
squeal like a pig as they dig
in
tap tap tap the circle is complete
my bag of bones my tasty piece of meat
scuttle up and crawl on the sky like a spider
you're my free bird my crow show
all your blood and guts splattered across the stars
the projector flickers celluloid catches fire
and the world busts apart into fiery blemishes
the bottom of the dream the onset of the harvest
the soft suck on the surface
you await.
An Old Fashioned Love Song
Love against the law. 1098 miles.
Gut jump. Heart pump. Subgingival
blood diffusing in the mouth
tastes sweet -- the kink of betrayal.
The thrill of neglecting to brush your teeth
in favour of making love all morning.
Bonnie and Clyde never really died.
Decree: there will never be a kiss.
Live with a knife sticking out of your chest
to the amusement of the gallery.
Fill with unrequited fire. Burn. Burn.
White flames licking at internal organs.
Burn. 1098 miles. Burn. 22630 hours.
You must remember this: a kiss is still a kiss.
Shame on needing some time and space.
Shame on video games instead of sex.
Shame on toilet paper, cat litter and broken wine glasses.
Shame on Laszlo Toth for smashing pieta.
Shame on keeping diamonds in the bottom drawer.
The movie ends when he gets the girl
and no one cares what happens next.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
This Highway's for You
This is my thumb.
It can stop cars.
I used to stand on the shoulder
and squint in the sun,
each unstopping truck
spitting rocks in my face.
That was my spot. Now it's for you.
A few simple rules --
you don't bring a knife so you don't bring a fight,
and when kooks pick you up, let them talk about Christ.
His blood, His body, His wounds.
Lost souls forgiven are driven.
These are the woods where you go when you're lost.
After headlights and headlights and headlights go by,
you walk through the ditch and you hop past the fence.
You can kick off your shoes on this cold bed of twigs.
Sleep in this neck of the woods. Sleep on this lip of the creek.
It's hot and it's clean when you live in your guts.
Taste pride in your guts. You're brave in your guts.
Feel the air in your lungs and the blood in your veins.
Hear that animal snapping the branches.
Smell that fresh dirt in the air.
Live in your guts and don't ever get soft.
These are the hills like warm thighs.
This is the wide open sky,
where the government can't find you and nobody knows your name.
This is your thumb. Look at your thumb.
Back by the road in the morning
some pretty girl's gonna pick you up
and tell you about transubstantiation.
This highway's for you. It'll always be here.
This is for you. This is your thumb.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
A Silverfish Named Desire
He's ramming her loudly again.
The walls are thin. My body is desolate.
A silverfish darts across the floor. A derelict offers a plate of rancid snails
as my starved stomach roars with toxic grinding blood.
Vision of tepid and effortless fornicators every house along this street
squirming for pleasure with clammy skin.
Creeping insects baiting with swamplike sex.
I grab my Oxford Bible,
squash that filthy silverfish
and go to the bathroom to see myself in the mirror.
This whiskers condition that grows on the face --
bloody boils will explode when they're shaved.
My beard's grown thick like Noah or Abraham
Grown ugly. Grown ancient. More ancient. More ugly.
Stella in the chair with clipped ears,
in the itchy asbestos dress,
porking the President's peers.
Vision of a fat woman sitting on the President's face.
Sweat-salty. Piss-salty. More ugly. More ancient.
Stella's ear-clippings all kept in a bowl
for snacks.
Fear of fallen beard clippings.
Traces of blood from ugly boils.
I will shave this off.
I hear Stella whimpering orgasms next door
and gash my face with the dull razor.
I crush another silverfish in the sink, bare-palmed.
Jagged cut. Twitching bug.
Blood down the drain.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Cursing
Voices from the old tv set crackle. There's fire in their throats.
You're watching your Disney movie about love and magic spells,
eating the omlette I made for you. I hear your chewing.
I just want silence.
The window's open just a crack and lets in a draught but I plant
my ass in bed, breathing the cold air.
I spent last night alone beside you, breathing out of synch with you --
my arms bare beneath the quilt -- my freckles incubating in darkness.
This morning you're ashamed of me. I'm back in bed cursing the daylight.
Desires are just neurons firing and cells traveling.
I look out the window.
Flowers emerge from under snow; bare arms emerge from under coats.
In the park stands half of a lightning-cracked tree,
a rotting house for insects. Barely breathing, never growing.
I look at your soft neck.
You will undress for me and wriggle underneath me like a worm.
You pull your arms up your sleeves.
Take off your bra so I can feel you underneath your shirt.
Fondle my naked torso with your cold hands,
kiss the burn on the back of my hand.
You tease me, hold me down and dangle your breast
an inch from where my lips can reach --
I can barely feel it with the tip of my tongue.
Your hands force mine against the pillow.
I'm at the mercy of your desires, spelled like a seven-letter word.
I lay beside you in the afterglow and I'm cursing you under my breath.
I'm ashamed of myself. I want the TV dinner in the comfy armchair.
Would you at least get me my goddamn slippers?
The whole room's an uncertain cell --
As if the walls may shatter any second.
I brace for the blast.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Divorce Song #378
Recalling all the onion
tears and alligator tears
falling off your eyeballs --
evacuating a hazard zone before the quarantine.
They were all one half a seventeenth.
Someone watching you fall apart
might have called it all a farce.
But he was really
all you knew.
It's not all for you to decide --
not the mold growing in the walls,
not the tall, bug-eyed man at the bus stop
who called you a whore,
not all you were for your lover -- clown nose, horsey tail
and all that lipstick on your chest.
When you were finally done chopping onions
you burned all the nachos,
but that's all you knew how to cook.
He said they tasted all right but
to stomache it and call you sweetie, he only made it worse.
Practically a bitch-slap.
Fall down in a heap. One of these days, to the moon.
You were pallid when he ruined
all your favourite shirts in the wash.
Punch the wall. It's still unfixable.
So you did all the dishes and cleaned the bathroom
all the time while he sat on his ass watching roadrunner cartoons.
The fight never ended. And after,
love was ebola or the common cold.
But that one night,
those sweet words,
those fingers on your thighs --
all belong to you
alone.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Evening
We used to let the daylight fade
slowly and without shame.
We used to wait for night
to drip into the sky.
It had to happen,
whether we were playing catch
or digging holes.
But we learned to linger in the end of the day;
we made up tricks to drag it out.
Just one more minute,
one more game.
The evenings of my childhood
were always evening and evening.
Now every one is even.
Sidelines
You've been here before.
The softball diamond at night.
As you bunch up and shiver,
I lean in close to hear your voice,
and stare into your stoned and tired
beautiful red eyes.
I tell you about when I was a kid.
I once ruined a three-run triple by trying to make it a grand slam,
barreling past the third-base coach.
As I got older my parents made me choose
one toy animal a month to throw away.
Dear Diary, I love you
for listening to me.
Still no matter how opaque I try to make
myself feel, I'm transparent to you.
You're weary through and through.
Falling in love is a hobby of mine
like coin-collecting or tasting wine.
I polish the nickels and pennies, put them in their pouches,
take a sip, swish it around,
spit it out.