I’ve seen so many channel zero nuzzles
I’m starting to swallow what they sell.
Whenever I see two people touching,
I used to believe
Her mother taught her to redeem baby birds after a storm.
Now I think
Maybe she just likes the way skin feels,
Wants to love and be loved.
Maybe the shock of warmth spreading across her body
Like a hatful of baby spiders
Feels good.
I look over the shoulders of openhearted men
And know my Siamese twin
My missing rib
Waits for me.
But nonsmokers in sticky bathrooms
Legislated my submission to her cancer.
They told me that every kiss of her black leaf was sick,
That when my spirits fell
I should wait for human hands to raise them.
And since I learned to hide her
I have been disappearing behind that fig leaf too.
Tilt at the tiny windmills of my teeth.
I don’t have time for your dislike.
There aren’t enough Atlas shrugs
To release me from my mother’s lust for pity.
So I keep my little skin too tight
Because only bag ladies are allowed to be comfortable.
Only in a trailer can you tell the truth about who you are inside.
At night I tighten my tiny teeth
Lock my smile behind bars
Unplug my perfect feng shui hair
Unload the sugar bullets from my eyes
And check off another chilly Napoleon success:
A day without becoming a drug overdose
Burger King layoff
Pregnant teen suicide.
A day without jumping
Into the fountainhead below.
A binary star system in bars,
I wear women like plastic beads I can discard.
My orientation, obscured behind suits and boots
Renders them impotent.
A whiskey-perfumed nebula of need to which I am blind
Because I thought it was not me.
But when my clothes,
My hair,
My speech
Are eclipsed by the opaque Internet
The women still smell
My precarious gender.
Time flies too close to the sun
This near the asphalt
I want to be a nun.
But gods are just people
Always too close.
At mile 14, I fell away from my last friend.
I was afraid I would escape.
At mile 21, a church saved me
With cool water and Christ
But at such scale, even a tiny cup weighs a ton.
At mile 24, a song
Singed me gently like hot wax
And I learned
No one can cry
If they are chewing gum.
Better angels greedy for that greener world,
I wish for wild dryads
To twist the trees, the arms, the aesthetics of my neighbors
For the roots of my pure intentions to sap their rich soil
To grow where no one can dig them up
And make the world
Like my untamed yard
Mine.
When you ask me to judge your Humanity
As you run from that curled-up
Dead-spider bandit,
I am as empty as the moon.
You can serve Justice as well as any man,
And with nicer boots.
Justice is cheap,
But only a thief can afford Forgiveness.
It has been so long since I
Ate too much Halloween candy
Ran around the house a screaming, aching pirate.
Thank you for guiding me
Across the floor made of lava.
Sorry about the delay, everyone! First I underwent some technical difficulties on my blog, and then I was pouting because it is definitely too late to post my angry Christmas poem. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday festivities and is eager to get back to work, or however you normally do things.
I work hard
Holding tight to my tendons
Engineering every sinew
Not believing there is someone in there to help.
I need
Gym blossoms
Fist stigmata
The little flowers of saints staining sweaty equipment
Pounding the Nothing between me and my future.
As though it might be punctured.
Judge not
Little white wasp sarcophagi pupating
Erect as Arlington National Cemetery on a stoic hornworm’s back.
A Manchurian caterpillar clinging to a grass stem
Believing in its need to spread its liquid disease.
A mite smiting the eye of a blind limping beetle.
I prefer these little crimes
to a plate full of pesticides.
God loves
Parasites
Viruses
Scavengers of the almost-dead.
What does he want
Us to do?
Starting to replace my shower valve at 6pm seemed like a good idea. Now the store is closed, I smell like WD-40, and I am alone with what I have done.
