Madame X--5/22

By John Singer Sargent
I think I understand how she feels.


Madame X

I can be a femme fatale for you
and abort my greens and blues for darker shades
if you can give up Cinderella for a few moments
for stranger companies in the linen closet.

Go ahead and tell me stories of your former lovers.
I've lost my taste for jealousy
and I've forgotten how to make dolls
of other girls.

I can make my eyelids film noir umbrellas
and you can climb underneath if you want
but I can't promise you won't feel the rain
now and then.

I can be a sexpot in a victorian city
as minimal as math, my skin full of forumlas
and under my veil you can see
the bobcat still slinking around inside me
appearing and reappearing
eating songbirds to survive
dont' bother to trap him
he's there for good.

Overexposure won't make me less of a woman
but don't be surprised
if it makes you less of a man.

Assia--5/17

A homage to Sylvia Plath regarding the woman who tore her and Ted Hughes apart. Greatly inspired by "The Rival". Don't know if it's publishable, but feedback is appreciated.

-db

******



Assia

You can blame my ghost all you want,
you moon-faced wretch.
You with pierced craters grated in with glassy stars.
You can dance in your veil and stroll around a prize or two
someday, a daughter
might be a decent consolation prize
confirmation, a wailing gold trophy.

In the sinister hour of 3 a.m. you’ll think of a past life
when you wore red wool coats
and spoke with an accent
and you’ll sweep it away in a weak little tide.

Nature moves in cycles
and you’re just the washing machine
he sits upon
waiting for the opportune moment
to reveal his transparencies
in a series of little papercuts
that he calls songs
that he calls poems
that we’re supposed to call art.

You can pretend your face isn’t changing
You can pollute the air with enough fake roses
and a perfume that calls you 'princess',
but my ink will stain everything you own.

Bitch--5/17

Bitch

I want to pull you out of me like tape
from a cassette
and all your music will lie crumpled at my feet.
(There is too much
I have yet to erase.)

The town you live in
has all the flavor of cigarette paper
but instead of watching it burn
I chewed it up like bubblegum
(how many times
will I have to break my jaw over you?)

Spring never really came for you
unless you count that day you noticed the rings
in that glass case you call security
and sang Patsy Cline as you undid her bra.
(I can narrate the whole scene and yawn at the end
but I can’t be your suicide doll anymore.)

I can’t be the dog that lies her head on your knee
some bitch waiting to play fetch all day
in the sun-swallowed wheat fields
(oh, I can’t wait
to show you how much I don’t care.)

I have a secret that makes me claustrophobic
the ceiling is too low
and I feel like a deranged parakeet
gnawing at the bars of the cage.

Gold---5/6

Gold

The camera flicked off
and I saw only my reflection
in the infra-red lens.
You had disappeared from behind me;
your resonance
laid like dead orange butterflies
on the asphalt
until a hot wind took it into the
enormous white silence of the sky.
The parade was over.

The ribbons hung in the trees
and the balloons floated across the lake
to meet at the island in the middle.
The bluebirds turned back into children
as if some curse had been lifted
and I saw things
not through the eyes of some hysterical muse
but through my own.

You said in some unfinished melody:
“There’s a hole in my heart where there will
always be a place for you.”
Now I’m sure I don’t want to live in a hole.
I’m looking for a whole heart to live in
and I promise to whomever is willing to let me rent the space
that I’ll paint the walls gold
and hang paper stars from the windows.
I’ll look out at the perfect rhythm of their organs
and feel safe as the wind chimes
sing along with their blood.

So while you claim a few highways as yours
and try to fill the hole I left open
with purple paint and cigarette ash;
while you throw pennies into goldfish ponds
wishing for a girl to write your songs for you,
while you stand in your glass box
whoring out gold rings and broken TVs,
while you’re swallowing the weather like cough syrup,
I’ll be busy letting birds out of cages and
calling love whatever I want to call it.

holla at me.

I'm gonna be reading "Pills", "Filmstrip", and "Pinup" tonight at the open mic/poetry night at the Ames Progressive office. Come holla at ya girl (and other sweet local poets) if you happen to be in Ames at 'bout 8 with nothing to do and you happen to be wandering near 118 Hayward in the same building as the Scallion.
I promise you I'll shower and take my meds beforehand. I'll maybe even cover the giant zit that's forming on the side of my face.
Poets are just slightly above mimes on the list of most hated artists.
We're full of shit, but come anyway.

-d

possible book idea in its infancy.

I'm going to start thinking seriously about self-publishing a bona-fide poetry book. Complete with images, if the person I want to help me with that is willing to comply...

Thinking of going through a self-publishing site, Lulu.com...I'm going to do some serious editing, designing the layout myself, and maybe setting up reading(s)/book signing(s).

The title: Dress Up Naked

Poems will include (not necessarily in this order or how they're appearing on the blog):
Pawn Shop Boy
Groceries
Addictee
Birth
Bluebird
Crocus (la petite mort)
Filmstrip
Pinup
Sunday Seance
Hexapus
Pills

Possibly including...
Hijack
Winter Room
Man in the Well

Pills--4/2

pill--noun
3. Slang. a tiresomely disagreeable person.

example: "Quit being such a pill, Jordan."
-me, a cold Sunday in late February, 2008.

db.
****************************************

Pills

I was your housewife shuffling through a Vicodin binge
yawning as she sauteed the mushrooms and peppers
and stirred the sighing pile of noodles.

(pop this pill, Mrs. Lonely, and your life will be
just like a movie.)
(I want my life to be
just like a movie.)

You were as white as asprin, unassuming.
You made my blood thin as a first communion veil
and I became transparent, every detail of my pulse revealed.
So when I came near you
a prick of a brooch pin could have made me bloom
a shocking, clumsy stain
enough to make the locker room girls blush.

You were a cornfield raver.
and she raced through your brain on a purple bicycle.
I tried to cut holes in her tires, but she had already
made enough neon paths to spell our her name:
Just as certain you would remember
as quickly as a hit of her blue and pink and green
catalyzed your brain into
yards of burning photographs
it was easy
it seemed so easy.

I tried to be your penicillin
your cure-all girl with yellow bruises on her wrists
but you shot up like a shell-shocked 'Nam vet.
The green in my eyes reminded you too much of the jungle
and how you wanted to lie buried as the forest floor
yielded to your body
punctured by organic poison.

Ever the homemaker, I lay twitching on the cold bathroom tiles
as the teapot screams in the kitchen.