Swamp Thing
How many times will you go belly-up in your toxic tank
just so you can try to reach the ocean?
You have worn out your welcome
and passed out naked on the couch.
Shut yourself in your shantytown
and let your failures become urban legends.
Your eyes have a second skin
a primordial glaze of a reptilian lush.
I have slept next to the river.
Voodoo embers fell upon my knuckles
and by morning I smelled of singed lashes
and burnt toast.
You can glide through the sewers
growing fat with the flotsam and jetsam.
You slither up through the drains of unsuspecting bubble baths.
Eel-like, you slither through the silt floor
trying to smother the brightness
of coral-haired gazelles
but I was always too quick for you.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Attics and Turrets--4/23
Attics and Turrets
There is more truth than you think
in those fairytales about those aloof princesses
kept in attics and turrets by spinster aunts
or hungry dragons.
Why, might you ask, did they not throw themselves
shrieking and kicking into the boiling moat?
Why didn't they dance off the windowsill
to meet the soft black earth cradled in thorns?
There must have been one cell of love in the dragon's tongue,
She must have felt some security in those leather wings.
There must have been good intentions
in the aunt's withered lips.
They must have known
that they would be no less trapped
in the arms of a prince.
There is more truth than you think
in those fairytales about those aloof princesses
kept in attics and turrets by spinster aunts
or hungry dragons.
Why, might you ask, did they not throw themselves
shrieking and kicking into the boiling moat?
Why didn't they dance off the windowsill
to meet the soft black earth cradled in thorns?
There must have been one cell of love in the dragon's tongue,
She must have felt some security in those leather wings.
There must have been good intentions
in the aunt's withered lips.
They must have known
that they would be no less trapped
in the arms of a prince.
Santa Annas--4/23
Santa Annas
You're an east coast baby
but the Santa Annas always keep you awake at night
this time of year.
Your black lungs cringe against the gusts
and your heart bleats like a windchime.
The ocean holds its breath with me
and you board up your eyes in vain;
the hurricane will always rip out the boards.
This weather, it drives you crazy.
Like the sky, I make my rotations:
each year, Cancer shuts me in it's shell as I scrape along the reef. Each year,
Leo steals the sunlight and give it to everyone but me.
The moon pushes and pulls
and I am thirsty for her again.
You're a landlocked sailor
and your weathered hands clutch women's limbs
like stalks of corn in autumn
but they will always bend for you.
You're an east coast baby
but the Santa Annas always keep you awake at night
this time of year.
Your black lungs cringe against the gusts
and your heart bleats like a windchime.
The ocean holds its breath with me
and you board up your eyes in vain;
the hurricane will always rip out the boards.
This weather, it drives you crazy.
Like the sky, I make my rotations:
each year, Cancer shuts me in it's shell as I scrape along the reef. Each year,
Leo steals the sunlight and give it to everyone but me.
The moon pushes and pulls
and I am thirsty for her again.
You're a landlocked sailor
and your weathered hands clutch women's limbs
like stalks of corn in autumn
but they will always bend for you.
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