caution--3/11

Caution

I would be very careful
if I were you.
You should be very careful
if you were me.
But if you were me, you’d learn to reign in
Apollo’s smoldering ponies
and pray the sun doesn’t rise on Medusa’s mascara-stained face.

Get out while you still can
because after me, you will see the world through bloody Oedipal eyes.
I will scar you worse than your mother’s back and wrists
but unlike the cripple she is, I will chase you like a vengeful Fury
or leave you like Homer’s wayward Muse
only to return at the most inconvenient hour
mid-fuck or in the middle of a hypnotic state
while you are trying purposely to forget me.

Proceed with caution, wandering bard
for you are in grave danger of a potentially pining Calypso.
I am madder than Cassandra,
drunk dialing in her tower.
Play on your burning piano
you have struck a chord.

trash

Trash

Really, what’s the difference
between Eurotrash and white trash?
Those bastards have just been around longer
and English food is just as shitty as Southern gruel.
I don’t see much of a difference
just hot noise, street pissing, and a few ruins
and exposed tits to gawk at.

Ça va, mon amor? (Je ne sais pas.)
Whatever the hell that means. Çe’st la vie.
The best way to lie is to say I love you in French.
I don’t measure my madness in metric.
I don’t see why anyone ever would.

I am the ugliest American, and I can admit it now.
I will not transplant myself, though many have.
I will not come bouncing off the plane with Chlamydia,
a Prada scarf, and a brand new worldview.
Oh, your semester abroad when you ruined your expensive jeans
and had too many rendezvous
with pretty boys in their Ikea-strewn flats to call yourself innocent
as if you were the first.

Man of Leisure, Man of Peace

Man of Leisure, Man of Peace

End it, go ahead!
Kick me out, you grab-ass landlord.
You are no lizard king.
You are a reptile of the most common fare.
The Buddha hides knives behind his serene smile
and all his followers are just greasy-haired whores
who look good in orange.

I am tired of your clanging finger cymbals at 4 am.
I am tired of your deaf and dumb psychedelia.
I am tired of your Mayan roulette.
I am tired of your cat-hair covered boxers
hanging around my floor like passed out partygoers
but the only one attending was you
and maybe a couple hits of blotter acid.

I am checking out of this haunted hotel
I am a lady of taste
and your lukewarm pasta dinners are squirming in my gut.
I got burned out like your opaque chemicals
and there is no safe place to scream.

psycho bitch

Psycho Bitch

but I prefer the term “train wreck”
see also: “hot mess”.
Virginia Woolf should have warned you in a dream
(hair full of seaweed and sand up her nose)
that you should not have gone home alone with a poet.
AA never worked for sex addiction
bitches like me always tuck and roll off the wagon
and board the blue bus with a wink
as they hike up their skirts.

You’ve got mail! And it’s from your worst enemy!
Apologies are like popping valium for a fine young lady like myself.
My hips are full of the awkwardness of a post orgasm sob fest.
It’s going to get ugly, my friend.
Stick with bi-curious rendezvous and self-pity.
It’s safer.

I am as short lived as nitrous oxide,
light as whipped cream and just as forgettable.
A stranger’s bed is my crack pipe, my dirty needle.
I clean up nicely,
but I’m bad news, baby.

valentine 2/13/08

Valentine

The blueberries you ate were bitter.
Each helpless blister burst beneath your perfect teeth
and the red dust stained your gray sweaters.
So when you said you couldn’t taste anything,
I made you a cake entirely of sugar
and it caved in the middle, in spite of it’s sweetness.

“What is the point?” you asked, “When I’m not going to eat it anyway?”

You wanted a poet.
You wanted a piece of history.
You were willing to make a wager.
It seemed easy to see my name in print.
In the between Cartier and downtown loft ads in some magazine
or on the marriage certificate as you reached for the next available ship
to whose oars you would cling.
This was not my maiden voyage,
you preferred a scuffed schooner.

“What’s the point?” you asked, “We were heading straight for the rocks anyway.”

In that gray cotton darkness of your bedroom,
Me, in a familiar haze,
a story of gunfire and scorned women staying remarkably afloat in my mind,
I tried to reach into you
but our spines, like those twin pisces,
lay in desperate parallel.
You apologized, the night after
drunk and screaming affection into the receiver
and promised me dinner.
I’d make you buy me wine,
I was becoming accustomed to bitter reds.