I've Half a Mind to Grab My Gun

I know that look in your eyes —
a wounded longing, limping
fox huddled down in its burrow
watching lean winter blanketing and biting,
the crows like dead leaves blackening
then deserting the barren trees,
envied beasts of smoke and stars.

I know that look in your eyes as a hound
knows the scent of blood.

I know that look in your eyes —
gripped as if blind and bound
in soil shrinking, loathingly sinking
your teeth into your trusting lover’s
throat, feeling her heartbeats like thorns
plunging deep into long-denied dreams,
hallucinating rain above, parched and near-
mad from thirst.

I know that look in your eyes as a vulture
knows the near-damned.

I know that look in your eyes –
even as mine weep, too far consumed
by the thinner air, at last bereft of this
professed cross, turncoat and timorous
blood, you crave to be effaced, to forget
the heaviness of knowing yourself
stitched to the leaden carrion
that was once christened
your heart.

December, Despite Myself

I like living seven snowy blocks down

the street from you, your sinewy animal

body and Erl King hair; though I never

pretend you haven't hidden elsewhere

your fickle minstrel heart. So it goes

with mirrored names, unfounded effigy, all

arbitrary baubles that bind us together

with preposterous frailty. Writhing,

like a wolf finding itself suddenly fawn, I

at night imagine using my tongue like claws

or sharp teeth to tear out those hushed

truths that would doom us. I hunger

to force our strange circumstance into familiar

chaos, emptying this damned heart I bled

once to bury and blister perfectly black,

yet, as of late, near and threatening

to be roused, even now breaking recklessly

through Moira, cruel and savagely reborn.

It's the transition from myth to reality that so often unhinges me.

Because They Were Not Distracted

"They walked through street after street, conversing and laughing; they conversed and laughed to give substance and weight to the most gentle of ecstasies which was the happiness of their thirst. Because of the traffic and crowds, they sometimes touched, and as they touched -- thirst is the grace, but the waters are the beauty of darkness -- as they touched there shown the brilliance of their waters, their throats becoming even more dry in their astonishment. How they marvelled at finding themselves together!

Until everything transformed itself into denial. Everything transformed itself into denial when they craved their own happiness. Then began the great dance of errors. The ceremonial of inopportune words. He searched and failed to see; she did not see that he had not seen, she who was there in the meanwhile. He who was there in the meanwhile.... Everything went wrong, and there was the great dust of the streets, and the more they erred, the more they craved with severity, unsmiling. All this simply because they had been attentive, simply because they were not sufficiently distracted. Simply because suddenly becoming demanding and stubborn, they wanted to possess what they already possessed. All this because they wanted to name something; because they wanted to be; they who were."


Clarice Lispector, The Foreign Legion

not just the Jameson talking

"We've been disguising with slight fear a far greater fear and for this reason we never talk about what really matters. Talking about what really matters is considered a blunder. We haven't had faith because we've been sensible and petty enough to remember false gods in time. We haven't been pure and innocent so as not to laugh at ourselves and so at the end of the day we can say, 'At least I don't act like a fool' and so as not to feel bewildered before we turn out the light. We've been smiling in public at things that we wouldn't smile about if we were alone. We've been calling our candor weakness. Above all we've been afraid of one another. And we consider all this our daily victory."

Clarice Lispector, An Apprenticeship

lie to me

for Leda, reincarnated

Dream a little dream of me...

the best nights I've spent

are sins I need

to repent

My Sins Are My Own

I am drawn moth-like to your dark underlying.

Marked, your true self lies shrouded behind a mask of curved lips,
lithe hips, hiding a hurt beast burrowed beneath your ribs.

I want to lick your wounds, devoured and devouring
the Eucharist of a black mass, martyrdom of inappropriate sensuality.

Your mouth tastes of lost innocence, ripped ribbons and mint,
repentant, broken and promiscuous; this dark cavern

concealing a fevered, frightened thing, pulse laid bare
like a bassline pressed beneath fingertips, the lost language of blood.

Down by the river I daydream of primitive baptism, salt water and smooth skin,
the seduction of you brilliantly falling to pieces, writhing -- rapture reborn.





*"martyrdom of an inappropriate sensuality" is a quote by Clarice Lispector from her work Agua Viva

Even the Dog's Crying

I thought that I would never love, then you thickened
every lean thing inside of me, even my bones
flushed with too much marrow, and I marveled
as this glass girl melted and burned blissful, unknowing
she was damned.

Now, the seasons silvering between us elongate
like corseted spleens, thin and frail without breath,
constrained as empty rooms that narrow quietly
overnight, compact with stale air and the rumpled sheets
of hysterical dreams.

Why couldn't I be born a bird, bereft, yet nescient?
Or the slim wing I see at night, lying with you like a lover,
curled around your fragile flesh somewhere deep
in North Africa, the last thing in that wasteland left
knowing your name.



First in a series (perhaps?) of poems inspired by a WWII air force locket I acquired recently. They were given by the airmen to their girlfriends and wives before leaving for war. The reoccurring question: who was she that had this locket first?

Angela Carter

"His hair was marigolds or candle flames....

They were standing on opposite sides of the fallen queen. He lightly set his feet on the stone buttocks and sprang across, and, seized by some eccentric whim in mid air, raised his black p.v.c. arms and flapped them, cawing like a crow. Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing.

'Caw, caw,' echoed his raincoat.

'Don't be frightened,' he said. 'It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.'

She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost on a level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast's mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked.

'Oh, get it over with, get it over with,' she urged furiously under her breath.

He was grinning like Pan in the wood. He kissed her, closing his eyes so that she could not see herself any more. His lips were wet and rough, cracked.It might have been anybody, kissing her, and, besides, she did not know him well, if at all. She wondered why he was doing this, putting his mouth on her own undesiring one, softly moving his body against her. What was the need?"

from The Magic Toyshop

Lupine Love

Say again my name like a starving man, beastly
shadows clinging to your skin, my shame

a mask, all rosy cheeks and raw lips from falling
into this yearning that tastes of blood and teeth.

Wild, you used to wear the false shape so well,
hell hidden for five years until I too caught fire

with craving. I still ache from transformation,
cloak shredded for the baseness of fur and forest floor.

You come and go, but bitten I remain, cursed,
world warped crimson through lunar fog, thick and feral.

Even now as you prowl on across the plain, I whisper
the wind to rush through bare aspen branches,

breath through bone, marrow music calling back
a creature made to break, I pray longing to be broken.

Near to the Wild Heart

Have you ever found something outside yourself, something you had no hand in creating, and seen a piece of your soul? Is it not beautiful and horrifying both in the same moment?

All-call for the Carnal Circus

This troublesome lasciviousness --
a daylight night terror with tenacity.

Smirks and steel strings are predators
for girls who pretend at being pure of heart

while dreaming mad melodies; nightly,
these little unpruned poppets merrily doff

their fears for feral Russian lullabies. Watch,
as in the still of safe suburban slumber,

the sweetly savage-eyed devil clambers
out of his portrait and under the covers

where white silk Barbie dreams
are waylaid by wicked wanderlust.

It's just an itch,
hitch a ride --

on the highway to hell,
which is also his mustache.



(for Eugene)

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them."

Anais Nin

from the past, out of time

Your bruised and swollen mouth
Could still read me poetry
Bourbon in the South with
Lightning bugs all over the veranda
Your eyes are like those of an animal
But, oh god, your mouth,
Your pretty mouth
And milky skin
Hands like an artist
Long and thin
With ink under the fingernails
Hinting at your transgressions
I am wearing a cotton dress
From 1969
Muse in another decade
Long forgotten by time
But hands still clutching damp thighs
No more than a girl
The june bugs are buzzing
No cities before our eyes
The sky slowly drains of light
But the thick swelter lies heavy
And the crimson sun drags down the night
Your eyelashes brush my neck
Just like a world-weary child

"At two o'clock in the morning, no one is to blame."

Amy Bloom

Hearts speak with the tongues of children.

awaiting

those eyes
spun ice
winter tundra eyes
quiet lashes
upon lashes ink
stained fingers
my poet a flutter
in November
twilight electric
aspen leaves
over prairie plains
those eyes I drew
from memory I drew
as my dream
I drew as smoke rising
from my lips
my poet passed
within miles & I lost
a breath
the cello stirred
sleeping birds awoke
the Lady of Shalott turned
from Lancelot
for those Black Sea eyes
in everything