Story

Once upon a time there was a face
In the clouds, I saw it there, Picasso lips
And eyes like dinner plates, newly washed.

Drain

Drain me like a bathtub,
dirty water and suds, wash the stench from
my hair, I don’t care,
scrub me raw.
Shocking, isn’t it? Like broken eggs on the floor,
when they begin to sizzle,
When your grandmother gives you a cigarette,
When some kid spits in your face.
Check your messages, its all there,
meandering tape, scramble the voices,
Lavender soap from your mother’s shower,
pick up the dry cleaning.
Come back here young man,
I’m talking to you.

ChinaPond (july)

You there, across the lake
Can you see?
Are you looking out your gigantic picture window?
Do you see her, a pinpoint,
There on the end of the dock
Standing next to the yellow banana
Of an overturned kayak, the girl
In a black bikini, red popsicle
Dripping down her right elbow.
The light is eerie, the rain sweet and soft
The sky rolls syllables around in his mouth,
Trying to decide what to say
To the east, the sky flashes occasionally with far-off lightning.
When she was little, the girl
Used to think of metaphors for these storms,
God is angry, angels are crying.
Now she does not care about the emotions
of celestial beings,
she is merely enjoying the overlapping ringlets
on the pewter surface of the water,
the surprised “o”s that the droplets
make when they land in the water.
She is slightly sunburned,
freckles dot her nose and cheeks.
She is letting the rain roll down her back,
Bead up on her calves

Pringles

In the back of the station wagon
they ate Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.
The salt burned the corners
of their smiles.

Soulmate

Sometimes, late at night,
she would whisper stories to the star-shaped pillow
beneath her head
by the glow of a lone streetlight.
She thought that she would be an ideal person
to share a bed with:
quiet, still, warm.
And good at telling stories.

Strip My Mind

When all that was left
were the tiny tack-holes in the wall,
he smiled her and said
Now we can begin.

Tainted Love

That night she dreamt
of a man of water, transparent and moving,
impossibly tall
And she loved him powerfully
And when she woke she found herself
frightened of the day,
grasping at nothing.

Lost

When Little Bo Peep
dialed 9-1-1
she felt a little silly.
But honestly-
who else will help her?

Hunger

He would always smell to her
Of the floury hunger that seemed to hover in the air
Of the pizza restaurant.

I Still Fail to Understand

She was polka dots and iced cinnamon buns,
She was red silk bras and silver high top sneakers.
And every morning when she woke, the world was hers to take
and all the kings horses and all the kings men
fell every night madly in love with her again.

syrup

I've been meditating
over skim milk
and hershey's chocolate syrup.
And I think I've figured it out-
when he said, "Don't worry baby. I won't fall in love with you"
what I should have said was
"Stay away from my windows."

Milk and Cheerios

you know how it goes.
the patterns, the circles,
the soggy bits at the bottom
of my heart, of my lungs,
you seem to me oversaturated,
red eyed and white teeth, its all sort of
garish and i'm not sure i like it.
further down the assembly line
droopy-eyed girls pick out your eyes,
one by one,
each of you is prepared.

Run

I ran home from your house that night,
salt-frizzed hair swinging behind me,
worn flip-flops slapping softly, a rhythm in the dark.
The dark trees cut me a wide strip of pale
grey sky, stars hanging big and close.
No headlights, no streetlights, just me
and the crickets, deafening.
I ran home from your house that night,
face to the sky, breathing coming fast now,
the cool sweetness of early September
in my lungs,
the yellow line led me all the way home.

Listen to Your Heart

She is sweating, she is slick.
There is darkness, there is flowery perfume,
there are endless thoughts she is making an effort
to toss forcefully out the proverbial window.
Set the scene to a racing techno beat,
set it to crushed grass, set it to sandy jeans,
set her straight, she is wandering,
dripping curls parted lips she needs to know,
she needs to decide its coming fast now
and here comes the chorus of the song
he is waiting eyes asking
set the scene she is listening for you.

Have You Ever Been Low?

Crushed in a way that
makes moving impossible, sticky drips on the
sidewalk, aching eyes staring into the darkness
of two in the morning, sleepless, watchful.
You are the last petal to fall from the flower,
the lone robin left north in November,
there is no one to lead you to warmth.
It is August and you are slimy with heat and
yet somehow deeply cold in the marrow of your bones.
You regret nothing,
Instead somehow you are the one regretted,
you could not escape it, you spun on your heels and
dove, a perfect subconscious swan dive into
this forever, this early-morning oblivion of lonely tangled brains.

BreastStroke

I went swimming this afternoon,
jumped off the old dock straight into the afternoon’s saltiness,
swam far, a beeline to the horizon,
white arms in green water,
Hands taut, scooping,
feet flexed, thighs molding the water into motion
The rhythm was mesmerizing:
inhale, look forward, see the horizon
stretched out before you in endless shades of the same color,
Exhale, face to the ocean floor,
eyes closed against the fearful depths,
blow the air out as if to mock what lies below.
Its all about defiance:
defy the monsters of the deep with closed eyes,
Defy with the very act of moving forward
the monsters you left behind on land
Defy the endlessness before you
by swimming until you find the end.

Mermaid

Her soul was salt, her eyes
lit from deep within.
Her hair curled like shells,
stars crusted her ears.

One night the city boy drank
his fill of life, he was hungry
he was swollen with pain,
the ocean would heal him the ocean
would fill him.

He drove to Venice Beach
and ran beyond the sugar
lights of the boardwalk,
the black silk water
welcomed him.

She saw him from below,
a silhouette of boyish
desperation, saw his hunger
like an open wound.

Smooth skin on the wet sand,
her hair on his face,
salt drips in his mouth, she
left him gasping for more, and yet
satisfied.

Astronaut School

He got a scholarship to astronaut school
and learned to cloak himself in stars,
to wear the clear darkness of eternity.
He learned to fall into nothingness,
to unexist, to roll
in the waters of time
like a spinning planet,
to sleep with the stars.
His girlfriend wondered vaguely
during a Tuesday evening phone
conversation what was so dissatisfying
about rolling hills of corn,
sugary city lights,
and macaroni sticking to the pot
that he needed so desperately
to lose himself in deep darkness.
She wondered if maybe it was really
all about dying.
Why bother with bottled oxygen
and fishbowl faces?
There is no need to eat
freeze-dried ice cream.
If you want nothingness,
she told him mentally,
if what you are searching for
is a cosmos of dark clarity,
do not seek it within
the fiery machinery of a spaceship.
you will never find it there.

It Takes Two to Tango

so she tried foxtrot
bellydancing too, though it
wasn't quite her style.


(haikus galore!)

Cinderella

1.
She thought of herself as clay,
the neon colored kind you mould
into something exciting and carefully
wrap into plastic so that it stays soft.
He could mould her into whatever neon shape he chose,
she was malleable, she was putty in his hands.
She smiled every day at the colors
he mixed, the shapes he made.
Her happiness was tangible like powdered sugar,
light on the surface of tarts, breakfast delicacies
Soft and sweet and always there.
He gave her roses, she gave him kisses as the
sun set softly over the parking lot.

2.
He called her from a golf course in Florida,
she sat on her bed and looked out the window at rain.
The rotting leafy world seemed to
echo with things fallen, things lost.
She wondered where all the leaves had gone,
when everything had become so grey and moldy.
He said that he missed her, and she wondered
what it was that he missed.
He had become the voice in her head, she
collected stories to tell him, she
predicted his reactions to her everyday ups and downs,
the screaming child in the grocery store, the comment
her mother made while cooking.

3.
Try on as many Cinderella shoes as you want,
he told her,
there will be no fit,
no happiness in the ending.
After he left she sat alone at the table;
red linen cloth, white candle in a glass bowl.
The jazz singer crooned,
making love with the piano music.
Smoke rose lazily in the air over the bar,
slow thick spirals in the yellow candlelight.
She dropped sugar packets
one by one into the flame
and watched them burn.