Oh, Yes.

She pushed me up against the wall, hard. Her eyes had the manic glaze I’d come to recognize in one of my ex’s that still sent shivers down my spine. Nothing good can come of this was the last coherent thought I remember having before everything went warm and fuzzy and then turned into a slow molasses sort of slide into oblivion. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the floor, but her arms wrapped themselves around me in a blissful tangle. Breathing was both effortless and deliciously hard to do. It’s the little things. Her lips brushed my neck as she pressed closer. An epic unfolded, fractal-like, as I tried to figure out how to get us up. It’s hard to get off the ground when there’s a universe being born. Everything I touched was a cascade of light, she was unbearable, radiant, bliss in the shape of a woman. I lifted her off the linoleum, so light, so fluid. The wallpaper supported us, clung to us in a sea of light, sustained us. I pressed my shoulders against it’s faded whirling roses, green and pink. Breath, breathe. We are alive, right now. She clung to me, like the wallpaper, arms around my neck, cheek pressed against my breastbone. I hold her as tightly as I can with one arm. Have to keep one hand on the wallpaper roses; I can feel them trying to bloom, pinkly. She tells me about everything she feels, the cotton weave of my shirt, the roughness of my jeans, the feathers in my hair, the heat of my skin. She tells me what would be amazing as each moment passes; lying in the grass, dancing, the swing-set down the road. We walk, arm in arm down the hallway. It’s difficult to leave the roses, but I know it’s better this way. She sighs against me, and because our hands are palm to palm, her bliss is my bliss. We are floating down the hallway, and suddenly it seems too bright. She agrees. We have to get to the screen porch, the old couch and the patchwork quilts. The quilts are important. They are a collection of information, each square a separate bit that has been sutured to other bits. We undertake this journey, a mutual purpose. The screen door must be touched. It sings when fingers graze the mesh, but we keep going. Sink into the couch together. We made it. We can sit here forever; the cicadas sing for us.

Yes.

Yes.

I love you.

So what?

Staccato

The rhythm is played on the drum of my heart

By the rough fingers of calloused hands,

Sailor’s hands, that play also on those frozen barrels

Full of thick black oil, slick circular rainbows

Churning in the icy slush,  wake-riders.

Rip Tide.

Have they called to me?

“Neptune’s daughter, child of the sea?”

-

Do they know me by my words? Syllables which are not soft

snowflakes which settle one atop another, in peace and perfection -

They are heart-piercing, they are the cries of the gull in the night sky,

harsh and raw invocations full of sea-spray and salt.

-

Have they discovered me by my bones? Bones which are not

delicately hollow like the sparrow’s, or the fragile

mineral reeds that might support some ephemeral body,

made of nothing but wind and the reflections of stars -

This frame is forged of stronger stuff, a seashell skeleton,

tattered fishnet sinews,

tidal flesh.

-

I am the unquiet wave that crashes against

the pebbled shore, grinding new sand.

-

Bright one, you are the lighthouse

telling the dangers of dark reefs and the

safety of an invisible port.

Forgive me; I am already promised to the rocks.

Senseless.

 

When I broke it open

The cracking sound satisfied

Some visceral hunger

Long suppressed.

It’s un-wholeness, those pieces

irrevocably seperate,

Thrilled.

Silver

She is dressed in only silver bangles,

And the tangle of my sheets.

Soft beside me, sleeping curled

Against me, a whirlwind, a dervish

Woman caught momentarily with defenses down, still, asleep.

Worship

My language is of the flesh,

The sound of calloused hands

Against smooth curves, rasping

Sibilance in darkness.

It is the heat of

Radiant bodies speaking,

It is pressure and resistance,

Support and supplication.  

It is wholly a language of prayer.

Static.

“Are you weary like water in a facet left dripping/ with an incessant sadness like a sad record skipping?…”

“I died for beauty but was scarce adjusted to the tomb/ when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room…”

Anybody listening to the same crackling station in their head?

Static.

Inspiration

I’m Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds? I’ll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks, and trees. From there you could look out over Castille’s dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raul? Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember from under the ground my balconies on which the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea. And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings – and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children’s blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate! Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives! Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain : from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull’s eye of your hearts. And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see The blood in the streets. Come and see the blood In the streets! Pablo Neruda

Lilith’s Charm Bracelet

On my blue-white wrist I wear

A charm bracelet. Strung on a chain

Of tears beaten silver

Are all my broken hearts,

The night noises of the desert;

The haunting calls of cactus owls

And the whisper of the wind,

Mementos from the garden

Where all was lush and green and feeble,

Fragile and anemic in its perfection.