dangerous lover

Dangerous Lover

The oracle has nothing to say, so Apollo is homeless
and the whole sea is an icy mosaic of queens and sultans
with smoke in their eyes.
It’s a collective writer’s block, a great depression
whose wheels squeal, thirsty for the oil burned by foolish lovers
with tattoos of names that will be revised with black boxes.

Miss Golightly was buried today
and instead of roses, costume jewelry littered her grave.
There were lines out the door at junk shops and pawn-and-loans.
The glamorous mourners went to pay their homage.
I paid my respects, and I’ve got no money left.

I married Shakespeare’s humorless clown in a shotgun wedding
and we plunged into deep water with a thousand other desperate people
and tongue tied rebels covered in kitchen grease.
Like most poet’s unfortunate lovers, he was doomed to forget me.

I am no philosopher,
I am just a chain smoker, and my friends grow old
as they release their balloons into the threadbare sky.
There is nothing left for us but an empty pack of cigarettes
and beer cans littering the floor.
The party is over, and it will be awhile
before we get paid,
get laid,
get our say.

I need a glass of wine to call a friend, I need a string of lights
to compare to a string of failures.
Call me a dreamer,
call me a hurricane,
call me a slut, because I am not subdued and pale blonde.
I am not a reassuring bible verse.
I am a red, red stain.
I am a dangerous lover.

kissing ashtrays--1/7

Kissing Ashtrays

Would the moon have risen in the same way
in that perfection of dusk
with the winter trees regarding the sky with a philosopher’s third eye
if I had been with you as the bomb dropped
and spilled confetti in our beer?
Would we have laughed at the stars settling on our tongues?

I assumed you’d tire of kissing ashtrays,
and I knew that my bloody fits would be difficult to swallow.
You would slip on your headphones
as I kicked in the teeth of pan flutes.
I am that same hysteric, again.

I am the debutante of an impoverished society,
the handmaiden of the bohemian underground.
I spin in those cotillions that artists always throw.
I will be auctioned off to the highest penniless bidder:
She eats peanut butter sandwiches
and her lungs are collapsing along with her heart.
Who wants this slut?
Who wants to hold down her wrists and
roll her screams under your tongue?

They say the captain never abandons their ship
and I was no exception.
I watched many a vessel crack in half,
and more than enough times I crashed into icebergs in gin-fueled spasms.
More than enough times I sunk into all seven seas
not bothering to search for treasure or touch the bellies of whales.
More than enough times I wrote letters to god in dots and dashes
before the water flooded ballrooms and boiler rooms.

I am the bitch slave of tragedy.
He bought me a pitcher of beer and asked my name
and if I owned a pair of heels.
He had the upper hand, as most of my lovers do.
He made no promises, only proposals
and I still wear his rings heavy on my hands.
He has ripped apart every seam on my black dresses,
and I fall asleep with him filling me up just below the brim.
“I’m drowning,”
“Would you like some water?”
“My glass is half-full, asshole.”

The Divers

The Divers

The bubbles seemed feeble
intrusive and insignificant as flies.
Indeed, we are insect-like in comparison
crawling under this endless rug
more ancient than the trees huddled with birds
and termites.

The first end of the ocean erupted in color
a blush of red-lipped coral
yellow fish darted like taxies on the boundless blue highways.
We lost ourselves in green kelp forests,
playing Marco Polo when the tide came in.
We put anemones on our extremities
and wore shells in our hair
we drank wine from mermaid’s cups
and made lovers of ourselves in the tidepools.

Then we, the precious fools we are,
could not help but follow the riptide
to find out if sailor’s tales were true.
So we were strangled by squid
led astray by the lamps of murderous fish
our fingers clamped by angry red oysters.
They would not give us their pearls
not for the price we could afford to pay.

You occupy your own hillside now
taking up permanent residence in your crumbling lighthouse
where you blow dandelion seeds so they taste land
and grow rampant like we said we would.
I am still lying in the waves,
a drowning woman waiting to be rescued.
Ships have come, even kind canoes
other shipwrecked men have offered me their hand
but I cough in their faces.

The Potter and the Whale

I am all suggestion
and I’ve never seen snow this white,
so white it drowns out what would have been tears
to fill the barrels that by some rogue miracle
would have turned into wine.
It’s not a miracle
it’s just an alcoholic’s biology.

My face contorts,
and I cry out like a homeless prophet in flannel sheets,
my skin aching for clay,
for mud, for some desert tonic to fill me
with bubbles of light, the kind that make me spin in circles
flawless as a compass.

Teach me your language.
Let me wander your continent until I am weary enough
to rest in the oil twilight of your hair.

I am a patient stretched out far as the concrete girdles
that bind our country like a faceless consort
being burned like a witch or frozen like a god.
Maybe if I changed my voice,
changed my hair,
changed the color of my eyes so they don’t notice
the purple smoke that climbs up behind them.

I wanted your planes crashing into me until I felt everything,
until I felt nothing, until I felt something as expansive as grief
but something of an opposite.
I wanted the blacklight, the white light, some light to fill my vision
so that I couldn’t see you anymore, so you wouldn’t reflect
as you always do.

Teach me your language.
Let me wander your continent until I am weary enough
to rest in the oil twilight of your hair.

My mouth is tired, a cavern where no flashlights come to visit.
It is wet with love, but not yours.
It is the same fleshy extraterrestrials
that so often come to the same conclusion:
this planet is vague
this planet is yearning deeper than each and every widow
whose tongues are made of black lace,
whose palettes filled with white paint.
It aches, it moans, it waits,
but they only fix their eyes at the back of my throat
to see a transfiguration,
some mystery explored in ancient cloth.

You made your way out of my ocean
with mermaids licking salt from your sand-colored skin
brushing me from your hair.
You have shaken off
the wonders of deep water.
Like a beached whale, you can’t ignore it
you just want it picked apart
and I will be laid bare.
I will be laid bare for you.

The Potter--11/3

The Potter

There’s a crescent moon and one stray star in the sky,
but I don’t bother to squint at it anymore
unless it’s full to the brim
and beating on my window.

Today I fantasized about your hands covered in clay,
but I won’t come unless I see it in real life
making bodies into vases.
I want you to smear it across my thighs and tell me
I belong to you like I belong to the earth.
My roots are planted in you
the white fibers woven throughout you.
The story in the soil is a love song
that whispers through highways and the blue light
of apartments with white curtains
I hear your thoughts in the snow on the fire escapes.

Our pages are yellowed with smoke
and my cursive script is undetectable
but you have a bright lamp and I have the time
let’s decode the necessity of absence
when we could have been kissing our eyelids
and watering our houseplants.
Love cannot be kept a secret
it begs to reveal itself in the most garish purple.

Dirt Floors--11/3

Dirt Floors

You cleared your rain gutters
and told me my face was too white.
There’s not enough contrast
and I am not your complimentary color.

The way I saw it,
we were a pair of 3D glasses peering onto a screen
allowing images to converge.
I am water and I wore you down like earth,
but you receded before I could erode you enough to reveal
the soil beneath.

So wear your flannel
build houses out of sticks or stones
find a woman to keep you warmer than I,
a threadbare quilt.
I am worn thinner than paper
a few stray threads
and made up of so many scraps of pioneer dresses.

You swept up the crumbs from your kitchen floor
and rinsed out old bottles of wine for recycling.
Here is the one I made you try
and you spit out the window.
You said it tastes to much like oak trees
and the tongues of irises.
I hear you shuffle barefoot on your dirt floor cabin.
Listening, I am the glass in the dustpan.

untitled so far

Black dress metaphors + WASP imagery=I watch too much Gossip Girl and I'm madly...smitten.

-d

****


You are the seam I don’t want to rip out.
I’ve re-sewn this black dress again and again;
the style has changed with me.
It started as a moon-shaped collar,
but it became a neckline as low as a drowned man
and the black satin lay strewn on the cutting room floor.
It was a dirty movie I never wanted to see again.

I’ve made some cuts
taken it in and stretched it out
crazy stitched a red heart
that looked more like the burning end of an expensive cigarette.

I wore it to Gatsby’s summer parties
a black hole in white-hot August
the sweat and wine blotting out the fabric
like an exploding feather pen.
The sun burned my shoulders
and all of old money New York saw me plunge into the pool.
I made a spectacle of myself
just as I planned it.

I met you on a yacht in the racing red heart of Indian summer.
All their couture eyelids opened to watch the idiot
throw herself off the edge in a deafening splash
but you pulled at my sweater
and I fell back on deck.

What started as yet another cheap performance,
yet another manic fit
soon became what some call love
(but I’m not sure.)

Carl Sandburg’s cat cleans himself in my apartment
as we create chills for ourselves, a magnificent fever.
You made me a perfect tailor
on a dark dance floor.