(Notapoem notapoem) Black

Tonight I sat outside in the North American wind

and I scrawled on a burned and dirty cupboard 

with a dip pen and thick black ink. 

My charcoal computer played the manipulative elk tongue

(like the one moaning in the road)

gently filling an unnecessary space

and slowly unlatching the gate to a watery wave.

No tears though. 

It hated my tone.

Peter Silberman howled in my good ear

about hospitals and corrupted relationships 

overflowing with sourness

and a sense of handicapped love,

I allowed my sneaky subconscious 

to pick the melancholy music.

I was scratching away the words of my father

but about my mother, with my watermelon eyes.

Brittle chunks of keyboards snapped at me

And I wished you could feel my inky and satisfied hands. 

They'd eat yours, spreading the darkness, 

And maybe you'd understand me

cause it's all I've ever wanted, babe.

Joyous Gard

The woodsmoke girl in yellow

Changes her mind

At least a hundred thousand times

Her name is Sylvia (head in the oven)

No, Margaret (cold corpsy lips)

No, just the letter H

With a’s and l’s and y’s

Stumbling after

Cold in a sweater 5 times her size

(I know it’s the wind)

The animal arms hang down to her

Smooth knees, like chocolate

My name is whispered in a heated moment

Then never heard again

She kisses my neck

Smiles at me from across the granite tabletop

Shares her warm thighs

Then turns into Joyous Gard

With the wind choking on her high walls

And while the nobles converse

In hushed tones in the great hall

And smirk at the whistles and

Rich falsetto yells of the wind (trying to get in)

Lancelot leans over to Guinevere

And effortlessly places his cold lips on her warm, malleable cheek.

Welcome

You slowly creak the door open and

A volcano fizzes out of my chest

Like a blacksmith hunched over his grey anvil

The basement breathes a quiet "welcome"

(she's on my side tonight)

The far corner of it, drenched in a lightbulb's warm kiss

like the ones you stamped on my cheeks.

My mouth, though out of the question

(for that would be breaking every rule)

frames the intelligence of words coming and going,

lost and found, like the treasured jacket

lounging on the top of the heap,

Prince of lost and never found.

My crinkly blue jacket

is the third grade soccer player screaming

"Out-of-bounds!" every time a blade of grass is

swayed by black and white or a dirty sneaker.

It desperately wishes to wake your mother

But it's cries go unheard, as it is peeled to the carpet

For we are lost and found

in a huddled, quilted embrace.

Sometimes I'm Afraid To Say (Too Terrified To Speak)

These are the same murky swamps
that you hesitantly snatched up
in a crustaceous, red rock euphoria
And when you slipped on a bed of wet moss, ankle deep
You couldn't help but wade into
The brown water now lovingly pooling about your waist
then deeper, your face buried in my neck.

It's Dark and Lovely Outside and My Hair is Combed

It's dark and lovely outside
And my hair is combed.
Two-thirds races right and back, over the scalp
While the complacent third
sprints past my ear
(a few of the athletes stumble on the crest)
running from the sunny, mid-day voices
of visitors, visiting, dying alone
trying to get through to the brain.

I don't know why I took the time
to feel the bristles of my brother's greasy comb
Tickle my scalp and soothe me to sophistication
I didn't even plan to meet a handsome woman from a party
or a bearded ruffian
looking for a counterpart

I just went to work
and bathed in the
sickly deafening applause
Of a proud ladle, (blood-red gummy flecks on his chin)
and sauce and flour.
"Your hair looks good", she said
And they screamed.