2/25---Hijack

Hijack

The bluebird springs out of the black forest clock
singing and ode to 4 a.m.
I make myself dry toast and topple out of his apartment
like a door off its hinges.
all before my early flight.

I wait for your announcement
and I realize
I am too real to be a ghost.
So I don’t fasten my safety belt.
I won’t be needing it.
I have no envelopes full of death-powder.
No digital bombs.
There are no mug shots of girls with icy eyes
they all have eyes like mine:
red: the negative.

Pilot, from beyond the silk curtain,
I watch you switch buttons on and off,
pull chords and plug others in with a sigh.
Soaring with all the calmness
of a doctor before a tumor of mourners.
You gave me a complimentary pin,
your aviator for a day.
I stuck my thumb
and I gasped at my own clumsiness,
my own swamp-child hair
and once you realized who I was
I took hold.

We crashed, of course
and from under the wing, I watched
the survivors slide down onto the glittery Vegas strip
and you, mon capitan,
shook your head and rolled over.

Hey Karl---2/13

Today, I am an angry socialist bitch.
--db.

***************************************
Hey Karl

Karl Marx, I'm beginning to feel
the metaphorical sickle and hammer
get tattooed on my forehead
as I stand in line at the finiancial aid office.
I chose to be a scavenger,
keying Hummers and fucking lawyer's kids.
WATCH OUT!
I'm coming for your sons
and for days, all you'll see is me outside your bay windows
waving a red flag,
wearing your wife's discarded Lacoste polo.
You can't miss me if you tried.

It's after work, I count my tips
as the radio puts it's tongue in my ear.
No one can escape the weasels
that sneak in through the television set
attacking our faces,
leaving numbers bleeding from our eyes and mouths.

Sister Capitalist is a high-class whore
she gives us another set of eyes, cheap
cellophane 3D glasses
to humiliate the proletariat.
She tucks us in
and sings us a lullaby of 800 numbers.
Everything is
as it is meant to be.

Chipmunks--1/22, edited 2/12

Another excerise from CW poetry about a childhood experience.
-db

*********************************

Chipmunks

I woke with a purpose in the room with the slanted floor
in that house where my tiny body would stir
6 years old
6 a.m.
(early bird) my father’s daughter.
Like a canary I would hop downstairs
hopping over sleeping cousins
and across the cold tiles of the kitchen
taking a handful of peanuts from the green glass antique jar
like alms to feed those whom I loved.

scratchscratchscratch
against the concrete (like mother said)
and they would run to me like devotees to the child-god.
They were bold, climbing my church clothing room slipper.
Little bandits, Russian spies
complete with masks and fur coats.
The rain would cling to the spiderwebs
as the springs would plan their next attack
on which foundation they would choose to crumble.

Of course, nature quietly came to claim it
My mother cried with grandma’s peonies
drooping their heavy bouffants
like southern belles in mourning.
My two aunts and five uncles paraded through,
taking bits and pieces; relics.
The glass bottles dusty on the windwsill, sweatshirts with bottle rocket holes,
the afghans and paintings my mother had done in high school.
The gauzy pink curtains floating in the bedroom
where my grandparents must have kissed.

At eighteen, I returned to the porch
And scratched a peanut against the concrete
The grass had choked all but a few peonies
and my cousins had swallowed pills and swelled with pregnancies
the youngest tipping back tequila at age sixteen.
The chipmunks hid, settling for acorns.

Birth---2/7

Birth

I used to think I was some sort of heroine.
My footsoles stealing down the alleyways, my red hat
fixed like a dreamcatcher.
I thought I was some extension of god
like a bud from a spiritual sponge.

That was before I sat in your bathroom at 3 am.
an oracle folded up on her knees
and met the ghost in your bathtub
the woman you tried to drown over and over
whose blue eyes your fingers tried to close
but they snapped up again and again.
Now toothbrushes fly
and lights flicker
I leave when she asks.

I know her name, but I'm not stupid enough to call it into the mirror.
She sleeps in each lobe of your brain.
A new one every night
twenty identical bedroom sets
twenty identical shadeless lamps
twenty identical portraits
one dancing ballerina in the jewelry box.

I thought I was some sort of exorcist
but the only thing I set free
was a premature i-love-you.
Dead on arrival, I let it squirm
and you stared at it's oddity
as it lay in the incubation box.
Full of tubes and sacks of blood.

But I am not it's mother.
You are.

bullshit atcha.

There comes a time in every writer's life when they realize that poetry is bullshit. It will never be widely read, and they're never going to reach people.
What's more devastating is that, if we're true poets, we can't help but continue anyway.

filmstrip--1/30

Filmstrip

Come on in, you may as well
take off your shoes
your shirt
your watch.
You may as well stand naked with me
and we will sing songs into ourselves
you set the tone low with your tongue.
And plunge me down when I try it uptempo.

You remember.
You found me rolled up in a dusty trunk.
You held me up to the light and I held you up
so that my skin could strip you.
Through cellophane eyes
I watched you decode yourself.

Today I was vaccuming in my silk skeleton clothes
fixing my hair as I dusted the furniature
set the roast in the oven
applied morning glory mascara
and waited.

But you had them made,
each a completely different card in the same deck.
Collect them all.
You love it when I sleep alone
because you can line them up outside your closet.
That way,
you can show me how much you don't care.

Crocus (la petite mort)--2/2

I thought
"Fuck winter"
and chewed my way through the soil.
With soft green fingers I clawed myself through the frost.
You must have been shocked
seeing me, a purple bell
that tolls for everyone
everything
that flashes through you, a shock that pulled you to the floor
in a manic fit of god.

We could have been a couple of marble-faced saints
getting shit on by pidgeons.
Your childhood blanket over our faces.
Religion meant to choke us
castrate you
make a blank page of me.
But when the Holy Ghost couldn't make me come,
you did.

You're the sort of man
who will crush windows with his fist in the name of another woman
and come to me to pull out the shards.
You live for a little death:
that warehouse roof teeter.
that ex lover's scarf in a knot.
the vibrations on the surface of your tongue
when you know you've tasted something you can't explain.

another assignment from 406: Chateau Ghetto---1/31

Chateau Ghetto

Low rent halo of celestial desperation
spins kalediscopic
around the Aqua-Net heads of the whores
in their moldy furs and bubblegum machine bodies.
The ducks that float in the clear heels
as she shakes back tears
barrel o’ monkeys.

A baby is hungry and everyone, even
the silver spoon fetuses
hear it wail and twist like an ant
under a magnifying glass
and curl up like snaky fireworks.
It’s parent’s inject orgasms
because religion and summer camp rape
stole all the real ones.

In Juarez
an old woman’s eyes grow white.
Her head is a balloon in a dusty corner.
Jesus peppers haunt her card table.
The banker’s kids are speaking a language
that’s supposed to sound like heaven.
There are baby shoes on wires and buzzards
picking at a dog’s body.

And me, with my wings made of headlines
in my shoes made of payday loan forms.
Every time I speak, god’s word is
BUY BUY BUY!
SELL SELL SELL!