Monday, May 21, 2007

not birds, but bees



should you be a flower,
i will find you among
lilacs and lilies,
growing as bramble and beauty
between the orange blossom and
the aristocracy of the rose,
a buttercup your friend and
the iris your companion,

and i, a bee unto your pollen,
will tread the stairs to heaven,
trace your winding,
graceful stem,
behold the ground below and
breathe the heights to which you brought me,

i will place my nose among your petals
to gain your sweet and nectar scent

i will drink the dew that lines your blossom,
take mementos to remember you in flight.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

jealousy.



i could not help but notice
the way the shadows traced
the outline of her cheek,
flaunting their airy fingers
down her neck and arching spine,

the candle, with its
seductive scent of lavender,
flickering exotic
erotic belly dancer fashion,
tempting the shadows to
not only touch, but caress

the rise and fall of her
soft breasts,
recently intimate with sandalwood soap,

or how her bra,
daring to be lacy
and knowing full well she is mine,
wraps itself around her bosom,
its clasps on her back
where my own hands belong,

and the quilt,
taking my place between her legs,
draped languidly as if to say
oh yes, i know she belongs to you,
but see how happily she lies with me,
how she stirs and sighs when i,
smoother than your just-shaved face,
embrace her napping form.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

had Marc Antony a child,



it would be in September
that I removed the mantle from my country,
spread it upon the imperial ground, and
unfolded all its humble creases so that
all the blood stains were there,
so bright they were almost blood stains on my own blue eyes,
almost blood stains on humanity's chest,
almost blood stains that I created when
I strangled my country to death — or was it to life? —
I cannot remember,

for so long ago I forgot
my country had been murdered,
stored away in the morose attic,
thumping away like a telltale heart,
(did I panic? I cannot say,
being enraptured with Poe I had neglected the moment) where
so gently encased in a trinity of colors
it was so unaware, it seems, that color is a treacherous friend —
unaware that I, lover that I am,
Whitman-imbued soul that saunters like a god,
mouth of spewing prose that masquerades as poetic sapphire,
might have felt December a more satisfying month,
or February,
sweet February,
Valentine epoch of capitalism and orgasm,
was February a more fitting conclusion to infidelity?

— or was it betrayal?
So often the blood and its vampire nature sugarcoat the whole affair
that it becomes a difficult question,
whether the lover murdered
or the beloved embraced suicide.

Sometimes I have an ocean
that I call passion

— and oceans tend to not be subtle
or distinct —
they tend to exaggerate,
dramatize themselves into nightmares
so that I, patriot and rebel, even sinner and divine
("human" if I were cliche),

I seem to lose my train of thought
and choose to mourn the death of majesty

— then live,
perhaps to grip the nearby shotgun,
later to write similarly of Poetry.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

aesthetics pt. 2



one by one, she said,
& she placed yet another on the string—

her hands, stained by ink,
rummaging through a dictionary &
thesaurus & the wet negatives
in her mind, brain synapses
becoming words, women
becoming fairies, dreams
becoming figures cloaked in colors,

& everything becomes a
clumsy chaotic pile of beads saturated with melody,
an audibly acryllic symphony of sperm & egg
& yesterday's conversations about god & history & dinner & why he loves her,

& her fingers grasp bead on bead,
stringing them on form and flavor,
how they roll sumptuously off her tongue,
until a necklace emerges &
a poem receives the breath of life.

& you can almost see it:

the naked, youthful poem
rinsing the blood from its emancipated body,

how it stretches its gaudy limbs,
rubbing the sleep from its newborn eyes.

aesthetics pt. 1



what is poetry
if not
a complex underground of scribbles
holding back the hour—

the way her arms
make triangles around his
soft clock of minutes and seconds—

words growing nimble legs
& dancing a spritely jig
disjointed
harmonic yes
and no
the monkey will not dance without his forest—

the oceanic overwhelming
warmth of
joyous mass
when her arms & the words & monkey & scribble
become one
titanic frankenstein chorus—

an infant suckling upon the breast of
hypnotic misery—

the moonlight, blushing,
as it slips quietly between lovers' tangled limbs—

the titillating tick tock of surprising syntax,
where vocabulary has a harsh & violent undertow
& death remains the midnight chime.

words unlike woman, or, aesthetics pt. 4



words
don't
come

like
a woman
comes

they don't grow,
surely,
quietly,
arching their
backs, their arms
stretching above
their heads, eyes,
wide open to the ceiling,
building,
blossoming,
into an overwhelming
backing down of
soft,
hard,
beautiful words—

faster words—

more complex
rhythmic lines of
orchestrated flutes and violins of
symphonic lingual rolling-off-your-
tongue-and-heart words

they don't grab your hair and
press your pen onto paper and
yes! write a stanza here, an ode!
there! a haiku! a sonnet oh god
write what you want! and
misspell! write sloppily! or
calligraphy! an epic of titanic explos—







no,

words are juvenile males—

they leap on your mind

they come,
they go

lot's wife, or, aesthetics pt. 3



i am full of blinding visions
i am chock-full of first attempts—
revisions—
weighty,
symbolic
tangerines dancing—

i am the pomegranate and the apple
i am the teeth of eve on apples
i am the beauty of the apple

(i am round
ripe
ready to be plucked

i am the serpent and the temptress
i am babylon and israel)

i am pregnant with metaphor
as mary with messiah;
as judas with his master
i sell meaning for thirty shekels

i illuminate through symbols
i am sodom and gomorrah
the salt becomes my tongue
my tongue salts the pillars
lot's wife becomes my rhyme

my words take on divinity
thrice they smote the angels
twice i ransomed syntax
once i sound the bell

(my words split hairs in heaven,
my words are kept in shells)