Below You Shall Find All of My Poems.

Enjoy!

“Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)”

If you could just behave and do what I tell you,
we could hold onto what little we have left.
I’m man enough for you to trust me.

I’ll show you who’s got hold of you now, you hear?
I’ll make you fear the one that you’ve reft.
If you could just behave and do what I tell you.

Everyone in this town knows what you are, a jeer,
A goddamned bitch that won’t seal this cleft.
I’m man enough for you to trust me.

But you’re a wench that’s going to veer,
and I don’t deserve the punishment of your theft.
If you could just behave and do what I tell you.

I never promise a woman anything, not as a peer,
but I’ll guarantee you, at finding I sure am deft.
I’m man enough for you to trust me.

Now, I’m going to make this loud and clear.
I’ve got this aching in my head that leaves me bereft.
I’m man enough for you to trust me.

“Happy Birthday to Me”
slobbering, blow them
yellow flames, they are spoon-fed
three for thirty-three

“Loose Leaves”
tight-tight overshoes
keep your frozen hands tucked tight
in your tight pockets

“At the Bottom of Everything”
pity and fear- two
loose ends tied up with jimson
I saw And I cried.

"Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place"
I told Father it was me
sitting waiting watching in that tree
a gull perched on the thread of mockery
so high- the smell of honeysuckle
nursing, latching onto me
the way iodine stings on my thumb
or the way she smells like potpourri.
But it’s all nothing, a train ride to nowhere,
a huffing breathless instance of life
that jerks into a halt of silence
at its moving-sitting-still destination.
And I meandered along
with the weight of her bosom and my hands and
the everlasting ongoing continuity of that damned watch
ticking ticking in its self-assured wrongness
all neatly packaged in a rectangular box
and tied up with a little string.
It’s easy if you try.
Did you? Did you?
You can’t know anything
but that second-hand smoke
filling your lungs with knotted up gnats
that skim the surface of the water’s edge
as you look too close at your own reflection.
That, sir, is what we call tragedy.
And if you’ve never tasted the fruit of the tree,
if you’d never have had it at all,
how can you know? You can’t know.
I’m caught in a haze of drowsing infinity,
a slipping fleck of a shadow on the sun
that mindlessly drones on in assimilation,
a yellow ant on the floating log that is my future
unwinking, motionless, stirred about in my
weak-coffee-dust-stalemate existence.
And not a soul knows.
It’s lonely. Breathless.
The vines creep in when it’s dusk, and the smell
of hot damp worms comes wafting in
as the lights under my hands turn on to show the way,
and the fishbone is still lodged in my throat.
I try to spit it out, but it’s stuck there.
Do you care now?
Did you? Did you?
You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
It’s just
your gasoline lips
pressed against my nose
my swan-throat
my dead face.
I am an accumulation of nothing.
I is the saddest word of all.
And nobody knows what I know until I is not.

“When the Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass”

The damp dew settles in on the pasture

light tendrils of wet that seep into your breathing

and feed the hungry roots of the oak tree

with leaves on a twig the brightest yellow

echoing the caterpillar’s cry of little death

in the swaddle of a baby’s cloth, “It’s not over.”

“I die for you over and over,”

says the worm to the tree in the pasture

whose own brittle hands break off from wintry death

when the dark night air becomes dragon-breathing

and the face full of teeth is ragged-yellow.

I think, “I am strong because I am a tree.”

It loves out of all reason, the tree

it is not our fault, is it our fault if it is over?

the worm’s eyes peer out, small moons of yellow

looking far away across the grass of the pasture

holding up a knife to stop their breathing.

I’m not the only one to think of death.

The tangled web of security welcomes little death

and holding on so delicately is the tree.

But your body will rise up and trick you into breathing

and the gasping air claws out and spills over

as new life sputters out in the pasture

and the broken shadow glows a dim yellow.

The flutter of a butterfly’s wings golden-yellow

beats right out of the mirror from death,

who sits placid-lake longingly in the pasture,

and meets the branches of the womb of the tree

as the worm gives it a long look-over.

I knew I could hear your far-away breathing.

In the swoosh of cold night, it twinkled, my breathing,

a glinting reflection of the promise of yellow

and the unsettling words from the worm- “Come over”-

that hasten the progression of my eventual death.

But I am more than a stunting stump of a tree

that is forever grounded in the pasture.

In the tumultuous caddy-callings over the winds of the pasture

In the yellow wings of hope salvaged by the love of a tree

I can continue breathing when you can think of only death.