white noise

I asked a man I know about the train track
of belief-- asked him because,
through white noise and copper wires,
I read wisdom he gained rather unhappily.
Asked him what to do when believing stops,
a train with no more track, rusted out,
obsolete.
And the folly was in my question, sent out to
one dear stranger, that pitted place inside grasping
grasping, grasping
beyond voids, valleys, souls, bodies,
when will those fingers be still, filled?
The man said (and I thought of him looking
past a desk into a yard and beyond that, the sea)
said, it's shit.
But you have to sit with the emptiness
and let it speak. So here I sit,
where he once sat, this well-worn place.
And the emptiness keeps making noise
like a stomach growling. 

the last moon

Clittering clushing jaws
and the beastly maws
suck a pipe of tobacco
out of blistering doors

Magiclous mournish decay
(what a very fine day!)
and a yo-ho-dee-do
for one unfulfilled road

Tattlebone in pheromones
drop of parasitic kerosene
--for the smoke off the river
--to the stink off the hide

Loverly lidless ladies
on their amble through hades
found a dried up macaroon,
shot down the last-ever moon

winterously

winterously
look at me
what can you see?
my shivering, frolicking
swarm of a song

pretty one,
my winter sun
my darling gun
blue, mute, and wild
white winterous child

winter storm
sweet first-born
hellish groan
and parting sigh--
interminable goodbye.

let me pretend

you-- you there!
if you have a soul
that is heavier than mine
if your arms happen to be
stronger than my tattered cloak
if your heart
is thicker to ward off stray arrows
or merrier to soak in more wine
come close to me
and be my shelter
come close to me
let me lean against you
and soak in your greatness
let me pretend for a moment
you are the god i've lost

on being erased

human existence, I'm told
is a fleeting, finite phenomenon
if you stretched your arms out wide
you could erase our whole history
by filing your middle finger nail
you could erase us
with a flick of your emery board

I have been erased
with words and gestures
on the streets of that old Nile city
I have been curled into my skin
my hair my eyes my body
the atoms and molecules that determined
I should be born white, and woman
the history that somehow placed me
across an ocean of privilege

and these fateful decisions offend
this city... they have their revenge every day
whether they say 'let's fuck' or call me beautiful
whether they grab at my thigh
or cheerfully apply the tax levied
at the color of my skin
we are no more real to each other
than those ages of human history that came before us

I in my sinful paleness and un-hidable difference
They in their power, roving in packs of impunity
We blot each other out under a too-harsh sun
they cover me with acid, venom that takes
the weight and worth out of my being
and I dismiss their humanity with my spit
Across an ocean I might be the powerful one, but here
they can erase me
with a glance of their eyes.

dark matter

We only know blue for the sky
no other skies have scampered across this
windy unreachable expanse in our lungs
and over our heads.
The scientists have determined there must be
such things as dark matter, dark energy
invisible, unknowable bulk
that keeps the universe from crumpling
like an old shopping receipt
and slurping life's potential away
into skies that are no longer blue--
but they cannot find it.
Well, you can tell them I found it
I know where it lurks
all the dark matter has gathered in
corners of an old Nile city.
On the streets are acres of choking dust
in the alleys, shreds of plastic, fluttering
behind every creaking tin bus, a spew of
such dark matter, it erases the air
and the dark energy, I found that too
mountains of it
in the leer of young men with no future
or the aggressive salespitch of a child
selling tissues.

festering

anger
pure, righteous, cleansing
creates distance between
right/wrong/good/evil
(such useful things, dichotomies)
sorrow
putrid, passive, helpless
carves me out, all my
swarming innards
sorrow and anger together scrape out
the mallow
I dry in the sun, a husk, partly relieved
a child who has wretched out the poison.
oh humanity, I sometimes say
why destroy, maim, torture, ruin
piss on the seeds of creation
stamp out your own potential?
But there is no why, no because,
no humanity
just husks in the sun
some are we
some are them
and we could never become like them.
we, we are pure
and festering in holy anger.

the curious wreckage

to find the rhythms of a breath
the tumbled ocean of a thought
the windy wayward wiles of a word
we tread that muddy field
that borders the sweet void
and barricades us
from meaning
we build our own mythology
to learn the texture of a fault
the blazing penury of want
the brackish thorn of discontent
we speak the olden curses
and spill three drops of wine
to know the ending of a dream
--to find the rhythms of a breath
amidst the curious wreckage
of a soul

shivering

I am a little
this, this, this
on the outside
outside of a window,
looking into a room bigger than the world
outside of a wall,
peering over to paradise
outside of a crowd,
hearing such magnificent talk
on the outside,
shivering in my boots.