Peace Negotiations

found on a cold night
in lieu of darkness
over a hexagonal glass of whiskey.
I took off a boot
we discussed Faisal,
fingers in the middle eastern pie
that make it the shattered mirror
of lost lives

living in this universal crowd
of masked faces
where to touch one is tantamount
to sacrilege, violating
caste purity–
how could I pick your face
from the anonymous mass
contravening this unspoken
border between each individual country.

Such craving throngs to crescendo,
the wrangle between autonomy and harmony,
hands wanting to cross boundaries
minorities within perimeters
pan-identity beyond frontiers
and the sanctity of the solitary.
You reach across your wall
to my foreign hand
on a cold night
in lieu of darkness
passports no longer needed.

The Backstory

Commissions Committees and Councils
expert formulators, creators of stories
conscious banners of testament
providing neat explanations
packaged, palatable, and positive

entire libraries devoted to deconstructing such stories
peeling off layer by layer
of elaborate exposition overgrowths
hiding dung heaps.

We each have a council proffering
monopsonic truth
seashells chattering under the surf
deciding memories.

so looking back childhoods have no shoes
and cats have no teeth
heroes battle villains
stoic homelessness survived
secret commissions assemble flawless stories
personal folklore formed and dissolved,
elaborate beach built structures.

Sarah

She siphons smoke from her cigarette, hand draped like an old spider web over bare knees (summer time means the coat is hidden, like the long johns). She tells me about brawn, a jewel in her crown that turns relations into delicate barriers against war, a threadbare string keeping a pit-bull from its dinner. That’s why it all ends badly, she explains between drags. But I’ve seen her cream-thin hand kneading knots from brows and tired shoulders in her guest bed even been recipient to her chilled hand gathering the blankets affectionately to my chin. She deposits straws in juice cups, drips cheese over nachos,composes meals, assembles late night snacks. Hands dancing to supply. That’s why cigarette intervals puncture post-sunset giving. A time for her gossamer fingers to lay catnapping over the pacifying edge of a cigarette. I sit with her. Sometimes even taking a little smoke offered like her blanket tuckings. But I listen too. She is brawn, but the type that links–strong glue for misapprehension.

This Old House

crushed flower petals

frozen in dust-held grime

they clutch 

and quiver under

old tile counters and

showers of termite feces.

Some old houses 

keep people like cradles

in embrace of stasis

pretending that wood is not warping

professing that nails never rust

and can forever support

walls from foundations for floors

that sustain feigned banquets

cooing perpetually in an ancient embrace of decay

stitch the fallen threads

soothe warping wood

clean rusty nails

fixing at the same speed as dying.

When we moved to this house

the old faucet broke in the bath tub, 

greeting us with a flood which soaked

the hallway carpet and living room floor for days

We’ve still never cleaned it up.

What a homestead we made…

elderly before birth

a sunset perpetually ending,

strategies for escape

that never reached fruition

because we were essentially building a dying house

within a dying world

while dreaming of not dying.

You wanted me to keep you alive

you begged so often for just a few more seconds

to lap up hopes melting under a thousand summers suns

but all I could do was watch you 

expiring slowly over your rotting bedrock

you exposed me, paralyzed to your death,

and so we died together for a little while

in that dying house

within a dying world

while dreaming of not dying.

Molded

When I was a student
I grasped the grass,
observed all the slow steps,
holding slides to the sunlight.
I was an explorer in the Congo
and the jungle was breathing,
but as time passed, creepers
atrophied to ashes
roots became foundations;
grasping tree trunks
my nails broke on concrete

Not Touching

last night i was up late. too late. when the morning came quickly, thoughts crowded like high school crushes. it’s been so long since i felt like that lightning…but i have been sharing my bed with someone who makes my vagina hot. The morning came too quickly and thoughts of guilt kept my shivers company. double titillation. double thoughts of double agents and my cunt must be hungrier than i thought. 

 

here i am, sharing your bed almost every night. two peas, used to the familiarity of rolling over next to the same log of human hair, skin, and excretions every night. i rolled next to mine for 5 years, you for 3. You sought marriage, i was afraid of it. but the same result came for both of us. we roll into our logged ruts. partners in kitchen cleaning. giving rides. i’ll be there for you, go to your doctors appointments, your court appearances, paying the cable. we eat together, clean together, pee together. There’s a comfort in there that is un-rut-like. I like it. Like leaning on a million year old boulder.

 

but is this how it should be? worried of returning to what felt like solitary slavery? but here, in this one, we can fuck for hours. but here, in this one, you hope to pee in as many butts as you have leg hairs. sometimes i think you want me for the gas i burn getting you from here to there. I will leave soon, oh don’t worry, i will be gone. and you will still be here. hoping for progeny with a lifestyle unfitting. i need to continue on. past this way station in the desert.

 

last night, i stayed up way too late. and when this morning came quickly i pressed send even faster so that he could see my smile behind my hand behind my tan-lined breasts. i looked at his manhood again. how exciting is the excitement of not touching. of the potential for touching. the thoughts of touching.  his promises of poetry and picture-taking make my thighs quiver. full of promises.

 

is forgetting this unforgettable way station a sin. perhaps judgement day is here. i judge myself with the tentative paw of a cautious kitty. you still make my vagina hot, but last night I stayed up way too late, not touching someone else. talking about not touching. smelling not touching. looking at photos of not touching. perhaps trying too hard is a sin. i can’t make you blush…although you send my cheeks flaming…and here i am blushing thinking of not touching.

Internet Isolation

I found an old friend today.
Through heavy haystacks of google
I sifted results–
too young,
too blond,
fat
wrong country
…but then:
“Best teacher eva”
“really funny but can be too smart, by far best Irish teacher”
“i tink she is a pain, she says wat she tinks!!”

I like to find stacks of friends
hidden amongst linkedIn, bebo and facebook
the most lucrative pages can be courtroom roll calls–
but sometimes Deans lists or academic journals.

the view from those stacks feels like a party
as though, if i had a birthday,
more than 3 people might show up.
That’s why—on cold nights
i’ve nestled up amongst those google haystacks,
keeping frostbitten limbs from turning
black and
stinking–
pretending has a certain pretense that can keep
you living one night longer.

Diversions

I took the sheep out to pasture today.
They rushed across the early-summer wisps of counterfeit desert grass
tails tucked.
witless.
teensy bell songs.
I was an advancing carnivore,
with other things to do.
swiveling sprinkler handles
adjusting doo-dads
switching switches
bringing swathes of sod to the sod-less
dust of high altitude juniper.

I stop mid-stride of my celestial chores
recalling my finger tracing
the line of forehead to chin.

I check the pond level,
ensure the pump survival.
I’ll need the pole spinning valves
working the primitive mechanics
of an aging artist’s hand-dug irrigation

I’m looking for your graying eyes
flashing blue in the leaden shallows
your chin jutting with perplexion
as you absent-mindedly place your hand
on the inside of my thigh
below my…

I just need to turn two off
and two on
and the pleasant hum of
machinery ejecting water–

the sound of me
when I hold down your hands
and sheets slung to the fringe
when I gasp at the astounding nature
of…

I’m looking for your greying eyes
flashing blue,
the quiver of my day
filled by your arrows

Reveries

Wake Up
comes the delayed call
shivering through oily swamp silt
eyes closed
sunlight, soft
sifted through a stained glass brown and blue.
I lick my lips,
moistness gathers a sweet sigh
-the mind gasps clenched pillows-
-the lungs inflate and deflate in exile-
tomorrow should be here today
but today,
hanging moss brushes my eyelids
lightly closed under a thin film of water and mud,
no need for breaths
my chest vacuums every impulse
until I’m crying at the lightning striking.
I want to feel your breath on my shoulder
I take an expedition into your eyes
and never return

Labectomy

“Labectomy,” he smiles,
and wonders at the colored candies
in his palm
reborn as a baby
bruised in white coated arms
yet he cries for the frigid comfort
of the hospital

He gropes blindly for answers
within his rebellious body
wishing to discipline
the illness like
his alarm clock

His body calls to its estranged
friend for understanding
but his ears hear selectively
that bodies are weak
vessels to use, to sculpt
and somehow he thought
the fault must lie
with the sculpture.