AnniversaryI commemorated you last night,AlthoughCompletely by accident.You darted out from the powder pavementsSkirting my memory- like a wild wretchPaltry in register and reason.The season has been unkind,Sealed in static and skeletalTreason: trees illuminated grey and disconnected stars,Disconnected veins.I traced the place where we once parted.Pencil gallows, plainly fallow fields ofShameful chagrin pinned the hawk cryLike an arrow. We were frozen there,Marred by a detonated letter,A blinding bouquet of devastation.I dreamed I could wind back this cruel clock-And undo the shock absorptions that haveNeverCeased to stop.Hopeless brutal blows, an imbroglio ofTriage and misery-Entrenched-Clattering agony that perpetuallyTaunts this vacuum of trauma andSainted Titanic fury,Defilement.Injury.In this latest impasse, I sought you-Or rather,My haphazard heart-A surging flare of scarts unsoothedAnd bright ballistic brainwavesScattered in the shrapnel of footprintsAnd
They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a million suns converted into raw energy all at once. While it was rumored once that the flash was our doing, our own horrid creation, we all know better now. It was the Maker who brought it forth from the void and cast it onto the earth's crust, as though shot from an immense sling, taking only those who were brave enough to trust in Him. We, who live in t
But For Our MythsOn the island Avalonwhere apples growupwardthere is a treewhereleaves shield the sun.At least,legend says.In my defenseI would say that I hopedmore than believed.SoI lied to the onion of truthas I peeled back layersof skin, and said"I've no intentionof evergetting to the core."Soon, light would peekdownwardthrough the wordsinto the soilwhere nothing grows.
love poem for a linguistI love youwithout modifiers,without anythingadditional, optional—like the skeletonof a sentence,the essentials of meaning.I love youwith nouns and verbsand prepositions,with the barestof intentions,a paring downof poetry,a grammar of my own designin which everythingis integraland necessary.
SwellI am in a hospital, having a baby. I suppose I love children, but shit, I’m having a fuckin’ baby, after being pregnant for a year and a day or maybe longer. I’d expected my belly to be bigger, I think, more than just a shallow rise against the sheets. I anticipated a full swell, high tide. Real pregnancy, not just the suggestion of it.There is something wrong. With either me or the child (my little womb mate, I say with affection), no one knows. Doctors have hooked me up to monitors, stuck needles into my gangly child’s limbs, taped sensors to my sunken chest. At night, I tear them off in my sleep. The machines beep angrily, jerk me awake. I call for my mother then, but have only the cold hands of faceless (faithless) nurses to soothe me. They tell me I do not have a mother, that Sarah, dear, it’s time to grow up. After all, you’re having a baby.I spend forever in the hospital and still the baby does not come. I ask a nurse for the date. She tells
The Hard ManIrish laddy with a lavender bentThe darling of society with zero proprietyYour wit is flamboyant, this is trueThough I doubt a VermonterShould trust a lech like you.I've wandered the lanes of hardy New EnglandLearning the rhythms of their stoic bandPerchance to describe a snowy wood orThe sweat and toil of the reaping man.You reveled in infamyFlouting conventions with your blithe tongue a-stirSashaying with the ladies and lads, partying till dawnRemarking that your "blue china" outstripped even you.We both were born of a rare generation, I'll allowThe 19th Century in all her Victorian charms and strait-laced gracesYet in your folly you bucked the prevailing windsTo your immediate detriment and eventual ruin.As for me, I was nearly hailed a National TreasureHaving received a Congressional Medal of HonorNot s'bad for a surly old codgerWhose fame was attributed to the common man.Tis' sad that you were forced to break rocksLaboring under an iron handIf only you'd bee
a smear of electronsif there was ever a state known to be corporeal, i was far from it.my mother brought me wrapped in a black and red striped bandana because the cab had an accident and she couldn't afford to lose more blood just for my grandparents to see my face when i was born. the doctor strongly refused to let her but.. where else do you think my insanity comes from?they weren't pleased, they weren't shocked, they just stared at a ruffled, discarded piece of harshly dyed cloth and failed to understand what she was trying to make them see. they shuffled and dropped me but never knew they did, even when the thud echoed and stopped my virgin heart.though she panicked and fumbled and groaned and worried, no one knew why and with time, they didn't try hard enough to understand what either. she wrote letters to a dead father and a mother she wished had died but they'd still ponder and grow indifferent, too afraid of a stain of reputation to send her off to a nursing home.eventually, the bandana became
Desperately, I Grab Hold Of Something That (LT)On the day I tried to read Ulyssesmy feelings grew and shrankin tempo with my horrid thoughts(I couldn't decide what I truly wantin all the banality , in the all the mediocre wayswe hurt others).You bought this book because I asked you to.Now I can't read a page without seeing your face...
inconsolable,iburied my skinin my gutin the flowerbedof my intestines soi could hold outbeing open and rawand feeblelong enoughfor my flypaper lungsto seep you inand spit you outinto my bloodstreamas you pass throughthe cardiac chambersthat bound me toyou
RemoryI.I used to like the sound of raindrops against the rooftop. Now I can't stand it. I remember what it was like when she was still here; home was a lot more bearable.It's been three years. I've finally reached my third year of college, and I'm closer to a dead-end corporate job my parents have wanted for me than I've ever been.School was cancelled today, and I'm lying down here remembering the words that still haunt me from that day my entire story changed:The magic of the world is dying.II.I used to have a sister. This is our story.---Fuck. Oh god. CRAP.This wasn't good. I could feel her hand slipping. I dug my nails into the roof's gutter and tilted my face away from the waves lashing at me."Hang on!" I gagged as water rushed towards my mouth. The current was too strong, and my arm was beginning to ache. I could see my knuckles turning white. We needed a way to get on the roof, but right now Harri was being pulled in by the currents and my other arm wasn't goin
ChangeDown by the river, the fogwashes its face.It rises whitely, sated with moisture.Each morning I scrub off the old skin,pilling up, steam-slack, shedding melike a snake.And if I say, sempiternamrequiemrequiemrequiemIf I say it, well, there is no one to hear.There’s no shamein begging yourselfthough we make unkind gods.Snakes shedding,again and againdesperate to become fog.But there is alwaysmore snake to be found.
