sticks and stones

let me compare thee

to a car crash

full of broken glass

and blood on the street

everyone slows down to look

i am a dancer

limp and lonely

with angry eyes

and a dirty black dress

we eat fireworks

breathe smoke on a backdrop

of twisting metal

where you lay me down

lock me up

leave me

to drown in lightning

and rain

but i know the way back

from the crumbs of your

cracked soul

and i come stomping back

across your chest

to carve clouds

in your stomach

while you sleep.

Eve's Revenge

i like the way you

paint me out to dry

a sidewalk chalk monalisa

you're tall enough to be my mirror
old enough to be my 4 month younger

twin

except your eyes
are not origami unfolding
they are something warm on the stove

but i like the brushes you use
to color me in

or

sometimes a dull pencil you
sharpen to write stories about
this salem Snow White
burnt to ash
on a wednesday
while mouths tasted
ebony becoming smoke

the priest
who never kneels
spills
i heard that you camoflauged your
confessions
when you begged him
with your biblical name
as a man of god

as a boy of questionable motives

to find out for you

if the 4th of july juliet
who made fireworks in your mouth
still somewhere breathed
still held the title
of fairest
most fucked up
of all

but i came back to life for you
swam up from the bottom of the mississippi river
in the dead of night
next to a ferry dock
pulled myself out
by a split black umbilical
payphone cord
like
an off-broadway ophelia

smudged black and occasionally blue
and weren't you relieved that in our
shakespearean tragedy
my resurrection
kept you alive, too?

a clown-faced cleopatra
smiling at snakes that squeeze
me into every passerby's
imagined history

aging lolita with a candymouth
way of shaping words so that they
merge into things i do
with my hands
when you're too afraid to look

it's too quiet
i need a horse and an army
of acrobats to concoct a scheme
to get me out of here
a mint julep joan of arc
ready to lead my fog-fed forces
into battle
with the blasphemy
of blood at the end of your bed

start with a fact
and build a misogynist mystery
"there's a wall in china..."
that i wear as a garter belt
full of tens and twenties
up on a table nearer my
ceiling fan and
god to thee
dancing in and out of wilting
flowers
like the virginmary on ecstacy

you're wearing a bulletproof vest
you think i can't see
under all your brandname bravery
with your glass slipper soul
and hunter's box with a heartshaped hole
you pretend will fit anybody

but when i start the alphabet
i work my way back from Z
and right about now
i'm flying from
d to c to b
right up to the scarlet A that gets in the way
of your soon to be injured achilles

i like the way
you marilynmonroe me
over your heater vent

and when i'm falling
from the tops of tall buildings
you everytime capture me loislane-style
in mid-air
uncannily

never seeing the delilah scissors
i hide behind my back

waiting
waiting

for you to fall asleep.

its been
something like a landslide
and i was proverbially

buried

or maybe a tornado came through
momentarily ripping
me

from you

we know no shelter
to keep us safe
from stormconditions
from spinning blessings
of air
gaining speed
on our slow way
of speaking...

in the south
the sun turns purple
just before
collapsing
into humid horizons

and sometimes
i am more

undone

than that.

breathshaking somehow
you leave me
arriving with the want of more
and then less
emptiness

silent rhythms soothing through
channels
like fish swimming
all at once
and scattering into
starpatterns
intuitively
i move when i feel
you are closing in on spaces
between my fingers eyelids
ribs
that vibrate
with a constant pumping sound
two-fold
forward...recede
as if this was dancing
and dangerous
and everything was lit
by burning silk
knocked over candles

and something melted
down the sides
of our glasshouses
impervious to stone
or hail

come out of the clown car
and i will burden you with the taste
of my shoulders

slipping inside your mouth
like medicine
for a weary heart
grown ancient
before its time

i wanted to be
an elephant
disguised as a backwards giraffe on
your shelf
somehow holy
quaking
burning holes in people's palms
when they picked me up

signifying something
celestial
a caterpillar constellation
retreating into a cocoon
of roughripped silkstrings
that unravel
in the steam
of this city
when the moon spells june
into the palm
of a deafblind
deity
who blinks
twice
and folds into shapes
that almost look
like words

you make me feel illiterate
i have no proper words worthy
to respond to the cardboard kindnesses
you lay at my feet

so i soak in the subtleties
of time and place
fixed points on a graph
and its too early for me to be awake
but you stir something
in me from sleep
from dreams
and back in again
so that i don't know
which is which
anymore

lost in violet silence
where you are a soft whir
or hum
along my arms
sliding against me
more real than my blankets
more imagined than
mythology

to feast on each other in a cross-stitch
crazyquilt kissing game
where i breathe you in
swallow you
consume you
all in one movement
or a billion tiny movements
adding up to a tuesday
where you are in ohio
and did you know i drove through
ohio not long ago?

its not as far as you think
from my hand
to your heart.

you

are

delicious of mindbody

but your spirit floats

untouched by my tongue

i rolled over and over again
in sleep
crocodilestyle
as if

i was trying to escape something

i woke up tangled
in strings
caught by liliput nightmares

where you were my unlikely hero
with a key
to my sorrowshackled wrists

your fingerprints
set me free.

spun again
into the indifference
of a web for spiders
with no sense of
geography
no mortal instinct
to skim their legs
against
sapphiresheets

my head tips back
to drink in
the world
you have wrapped
inside layers
of language

until i'm drunk
dreaming
and dangerous

wet rats
as if i could be someone's
pet

call me up
tell me you want to come over

i don't have a house
but we could sit in my tent

and i'll tell you stories
of all my ghosts

spin around in circles
to the sound of
screeching tires

blacktop burning in
june
we hopskip run fast
from here to the sand

you with your stainless steel
lunchbox
crinkled smile

i had honeynut cheerios for
breakfast
and now i'm afraid
of the rest of the day

i have a check
that i wrote in excess
of the money in my account
there's a thunderstorm
warning
on tv

in between cartoons and
commercials

someone keeps saying the same thing
overandoverandover
a dog keeps barking
overandoverandover

and somewhere in new york
a broken fire hydrant
is spraying water
up into the sky
flooding a busy street
like artificial rain

call me up
tell me you're sorry for leaving
without saying goodbye
or goodnight

garbled dreams have stripped my blankets from
my nesting place
on yourmother's couch
on a dripdry sunday

you think i steal words
like a common criminal

but i've been in every kind of jail
imagined

my houdini-heart
knows no bounds...

hey miss
kiss my grits
i left a hallelujah
on your cell phone
just in case
i forgot what day it was
when sunday rolled around

hey mister martyr
as long as you're gonna be at the church
you should sweep the bells
find an air conditioning vent
and confess to
sucking the air
from the room
when i'm around

and you
people i don't know
don't look at me that way
just because i don't play
duck duck goose
by the same rules
you grew up with
doesn't mean
there's something

wrong

with me

(although i have plenty of other proof)

watch me hopscotch into a cup of ice
the misery index is topping out

the popularity polls are flatlining
and i'm fantasizing about chocolate ice cream
in a waffle cone

because i'm indulgent like that...

no wonder i don't like tv
the way the channels skip from
religion to ricochet bullets
and bad haircuts
its all intertwined
the commercials are like
my own dysfunctional family
the funny ones never stick around
as long as you'd like
and the unbearable ones
won't shut up

did someone threaten to call the police?

i roll down all my windows
open the sunroof
and skip my car payment
out of spite
for money
and obligation

i guess i've been replaced
or put in my place

but if i had some bubble gum
i might forget about the blood
just under the surface
suffocating in my own
sweet
mosquito friendly skin
everyone floods the exits

but i'm still looking for a way in.

i'm a cartographer i make
maps
i have a black pen and i draw grids and cities
in perfect replication
then build it all in sand
sometimes i use a chainsaw
to cut out lifesize
imitations
of cardboard cut outs
out of ice
i'm hungry
please help
i will work for
food
or
stories of how
a girl
bit
the very hand
that fed her...

there's something captivating

about being held captive

something tender about
the way you use your words
as weapons

physically speaking

you swallow the rain like breadcrumbs

i don't know how to talk to someone

like you

you scare me
like a dare i don't want to do

but if you knew a girl with origami eyes
and listen for thor's big black boots
as he opens his big black suitcase of lightning
i said so to speak to someone today

maybe for the first time this year
maybe for the first time ever

that's a little more convergence
than a virgin needs
to climb inside of a stranger's sheets

on a night like this
on a night like this