Monday, June 20, 2011

from Shroud of the Gnome

AT THE DAYS END MOTEL

I turned on the waterworks and said
"Well you don't need to make a federal case out of it."
But she did and I suppose she needed to.
Let's get out of this hellhole, I said.
That's a nice dog and pony show you have there, she
       said.
Be my guest, I said.
You're really chewing up the scenery tonight, she said.
And you, you're a predatory woman, one of easy morals,
     cheap and tawdry.
Hey listen schmendrick, at least I'm not an inept
     nonentity.
Aw, Cupcake, don't let's get cruel now, I can't help for
       stains on the wallpaper, okay?
You're like a rabbit responding very rapidly to food.
I confess, in a crutch and toothpick parade
      I would never single you out.

Down the road, about a quarter of a mile, a tractor trailer
     jackknifed and took a station wagon and a minibus
     with it straight to hell where they had some
     remarkably good carrot cake.
A jackal-headed god of the underworld
      joined them at their table
      and was surprisingly convivial.


(JAMES TATE)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Sure About That

No annual fees. Tease me trick me take me there.
Blazing bargains. Tell me I am king.
Larger girth guaranteed. Test me on this.
Regarding. This, the thumping tango of my thirsty heart.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Chalk Dust Hands

It began with a red tricycle, the running away from home, the searching for something bigger and juicier and ultimately more humane. I would run after the rainbow and return to daddy's leather cowboy belt. Early on I learned to coat my hands with chalk dust to avoid sweat and friction. I was born beneath Saturn's frown. I was kept after school. I watched the world spin outside smudged windows. I was not allowed to swing or slide or hide and seek.

The preacher droned on about the ending of the world. My ears were still small and able to tune him out as my fresh blue eyes focused on the stained glass window behind the pulpit. Jesus was a kind shepherd. He loved his lost lambs. I wanted to be that white, that worthy of love and protection. I banged the chalk dust from the Sunday school erasers. I coated my hands.

The first man who wanted me for longer than a couple of nights was a pool shark. He was also a con artist. He wanted to be a rich and famous chef but those things take time. He feasted on my pussy and made me believe I had some value. I was pretty tasty for someone who dropped out of college and could not hold down an entry level job. My taste in music was a bonus and he liked the fact that after our first date I read his tarot cards then fucked him senseless. We moved into a candy colored house after a week of fucking. For months we fucked and fought and loved and hated, accused and abused. In March he knocked me up and I was glad. He left me in July for Jennifer and the rage and sorrow almost killed me but didn't. The baby grew into a girl. I gave her away to happy sane functioning Christian parents who owned a house and lots of other stuff. My girl would have a daddy, a happy daddy who drank Diet Pepsi instead of Jack Daniels.

My heart became a blackboard. I wrote across it in pink chalk a hundred times or more. I Will Not Give It Away Ever Again. I fell in love with Jesus and the Apostle Paul. I wrote Jewish names in my King James Bible. I would marry a man someday who valued me above all else. We would have four babies. We would give them Jewish names like David and Hannah. My hands stayed clasped in prayer. My hands stayed coated in chalk dust.

In a play I was a nun. I was on my knees. I did not remember my lines. The slutty rocker chick with the bad ass boots had to feed me my lines in a husky cigarette whisper. She would never coat her hands with chalk dust. She was all emphatic slap. I prayed I looked down I apologized. My mother approached the stage. She would find my daughter, the daughter who was not mine. It was time to find her and tell her the truth. I did not agree. She was my daughter but she wasn't. She did not belong to my mother. I did not belong to my mother. My mother thought everyone who cried and apologized belonged to her. My mother was quite the Hera, quite the Demeter. I was born and stayed Persephone, sloppy with spilled seeds. "That is not love! You do not know love!" I screamed. They were open, the wounds, festering and stinging with the salt from my mother's crocodile tears. I was always the blue whale hiding men from God. Come camp out in me and forget where you are from. When blue whales cry you know that shit is real. It's real it's deep it's pretty fucking felt. Blue whales are heavy with refugees.

Not everyone loves my poetry. Not everyone loves how I take straw and spin it while the kingdom sleeps and the cattle low. Maybe it's gold, sometimes. Usually it is dross. All my losses I take them and turn them into so much dross. The photographs sometimes are preternaturally pretty, the pictures of my face, the pictures of faces that belong to various inert dolls. Cover art matters but not everyone thinks so. I think sometimes I strike it, I strike gold.

Not one person matters more than any other. That is what I am trying to learn with my chalky hands. I am trying not to discriminate. I am trying to loosen what is left of my grip.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

More SeLF

Lites Camera Action

Transient Ensemble

not so long ago yes as you recall i was a goat
bleating my lonely deep and wide in ink pasture
night fighting with rats and skunks for my share
of garbage

nothing changes at the carnival
hot dogs smell like death with
a sense of humor
one person in nine million
plunges to death from
benign ferris wheel
(all those pretty sizzling bulbs)

next to piano
you are most cathedral
your eyes
almost make me
ashamed
to be
human
again

Berlin Graffiti by M. P. Powers

ALIEN BOB