Crown of Love

vexed within your infinitely
instant passes touching at my face
opening my mouth, caressing bare skin
later to deny its sweetness
always vigilant you
tried to sneak out with saying goodbye, to
extradite yourself without words or
dull glances from tear stained eyes

blessed with charm, anger flares to help
utilize blaming other people, but you
took it off, not

I.

listening to night symphonies now
others nonwords have turned to stone in my
violent stages I guess angry sex is better
even through biting back tears

yawning our mysteries
owning our fuck, you've finally
usurped the throne of love.

True Love (ThouShaltNot; Land Dispute)

In walks the villain of this tale
The door closing silent behind you
I smile and I offer you something to drink
In the hopes that a taste will remind you
That poison goes better with grenadine
That deceit's always lovely with lime
That bitterness can be so sweet
When it's served in the right place and at the right time
And we'll toast to a lifetime of happiness
And we'll catch up on mutual friends
Yes we'll laugh with good cheer and not mention that we're
Just a means to each of our ends
And by midnight you'll be so convinced
That all of our time apart was some mistake
That I'll sigh and I'll stand and I'll hold out my hand
Once more for your memory's sake

I'll hold you my love and never let go
I'll hold you my love and I'll never tire
I'll hold you my love by the throat
I'll hold you my love over the fire
So breathe with me, love; only love will work now
Hold onto my love like it was stolen
I'll burn with your love like I was Birkenau
I'll conquer your love like you were Poland
I'll act on my love like Pontius Pilate
I'll give you my love like I was Brutus
I'll radiate love like Three Mile Island
I'll prove you my love like I was Judas

Accidental Rap

Milesly Rose comes back from the track
Lord knows how she grows
My beat on the street is Harlem
Not these warm boulevards of northern Seattle
My song is a rattle and and hum.
Rattle and a hum.
Don't mess with me,
Better listen carefully,
Not from this place
Not with this hellish face
Your chatter -- my ears be ringing
No longer children singing
So back up, back right the fuck up
Because my song is a rattle and a hum
(a rattle)
(and a hum)
Step back, Rose takes your ngihtmares begun
Shapes them, makes them, rapes them
Stand against that wall
Watch your feet fall from the rhythm of my beat
My beautiful, furious, hellish heat.

Mean Streets of Seattle

Keep driving sir, and keep walking
Though my sneakers pound rhythm
What you hear is different than what they say.
Keep walking
Keep driving
I am not some hot-pantsed low-cut whore
Strutting the streets in stacked heels
and stacked chest.
I am not like these ethnic girls
saucily sauntering past
that you are eyeing
These are not my streets
With my blonde hair and
Striped sweater.
I just wanted a pack of smokes
Luckies if the Shell had them
Though luck is never with me in that regard.
Because you refuse
to keep walking
And keep driving.
You keep talking to me.
I don't want to talk.
You don't want to buy me dinner.
I know what you're after,
On these mean streets after dark.
(I am not the girl you're looking for)

Wise Things Said

"Being in love is like being on a boat full of explosives that somebody has SET ON FIRE. And how much you love someone is how long you stay on that motherfucking boat."
-Graham Swanson, 8/24/2007

Perfect Justice

First they came for us in numbers
Uncountable
Four point five billion six hundred and three
Too many zeroes found inescapable
Round prisons with no
Right angles
They killed us with kindness
soft touches
and flower bombs
Chanting into our dreamswept orifices
Thou
Shalt
Not
Rock and
Thou
Shalt
Not
Roll.
Lifting our pacified revolutionary bodies
into warm rivers
of sulfur and sweat
A spark of memory burns
We cried our rebel voices
scratched and parched weakly
No. No.
You cannot silence our --
You cannot drown the --
swiftly ended
Our mouths stuffed with flesh meat from fallen souls
and rebel children

They opened our eyes underwater,
ate our manhood,
Wriggled into our girlishness,
Destroyed us from
Our very insides
All the while chanting
Thou shalt not
ROCK and
Thou shalt not
ROLL
Taking our spouses
Thieving our loves
Cutting them piece by piece
Peace by Peace
Mashing them together with cloud gossamer
ad starlight,
Sweetly o sweetly feed us our morning dosage of
Comatose and Apathy

They came for us in numbers
Insurmountable
Impassable
Unstoppable
They came for us with spears of romance,
Swords of complacency,
and shields of unquestionable society
To cut through our trenches built carefully
of gardens and hope
To set aflame our houses of vinyl and 8-tracks
To spill our blood made of wine and lazy marijuana nights
They came for us in numbers
Four point five billion six hundred and one
so they could feast on our souls
and set themselves free.

Mango

Entranced... pale... hands.
Blue eyes framed
Tortoiseshell glasses
And my mango sorbetto
Orange beauty digging with the
Silverspoon borne in my mouth
She is watching me across the room
Eating her cheesecake placantly
Brown eyes melting frosted chocolate
Hands while brushed with papercuts
Gotten from filing the forks in my sock drawer

Be a Crooner, Baby

Nicotine stains on my fingers
Blue smoke like a halo around you
I don't follow the lines to keep your wings
Bass cries over the police
Sirens they're calling me home
Jazz slides through my being
Make a dash for the door
No one knows the gun was yours...

The Morning After

After a weekend of angry fixes and a week of
Meaningless sex
That tries very hard but had nothing to say,
Becoming a masked rock for thoughts unvoiced;
After a miscommunicated day of dating,
Engagements and NotMarraiges,
You turned off the alarm.
Fell back asleep in my arms.
You keep yelling at me not to stare at you,
While you are
Changing
Reading
Talking.
What's the big secret that I
Am Not Supposed To See?
Who are you hiding from me?
And while we're in this hurricane of
NotSpeaking
NotStaring
and NotSexing,
Remember not to kiss me Goodbye or
Goodnight,
While you're at it.
Why, darling, do we care as we did
Only in dreams?

Psychedelic Experience, 8/20/2007

"Knife hits, sweetie, not Nitrous."
That's not even an element,
it's a combined gas.
"It's a color-flavor explosion---
Or a hamburger with pancakes---
PANCAKEBURGER!"
Don't have pancake sex, Van Velzer
It's too sticky.
A chain reaction, this might be.
"Sam, don't eat off the floor."
I feel a little like a mother,
Possibly my own.
I think maybe my own children will
Laugh with such joy in their
Adolescence, remembering their
Infantile happiness,
with the toys that Mary Jane brings.
"What's a fivesome called?"
"A gangbang."
...maybe I will not have children.

Tonight's Headlines

Having lost my tortured poet's soul
I am no longer seeking solace ---
only to strike with a poison-fanged
Pen.
Wryfaced and smiling I stand to break
Down your walls of infantile kneejerks
and poetic plaintive whinges.
You who have suffered none
While I watched my brethren dive
headlong into the river Styx
And laid myself on eggshell carpet
artists soul seeping out my eyes
my heart and my precious lungs
Unable to lift the hand to hold the
pen to tell the tale of my fallen
downward woes in a schizophrenic
haze.
It may have been all in my head but
for better than a year my head
was all I had.
Black souls birthing in my every breath,
Staves swords cups stars circling
fingers toes, an omen in every blade
of grass my charges prematurely plucked
So don't talk to me about cruelty,
or what you are capable of.
I know better than you
how you got here
and where it was you got lost.

For Nora II

Nora, I am sitting on a dirty tile floor
wondering where the hell everything went.
I am punching walls and screaming
but my knuckles will not bleed and my throat
refuses to make any sound.
Nora, I am collapsed on the floor in a puddle
of black and glasses
Wondering what it will take to cry again,
and if you're thinking of my drunk promise
and secretly hoping I'm keeping it
but I'm trying whether you know or not.
A poem everyday but sometimes the words
just won't come,
Like you.
Nora, I miss your face and your warmth,
I need somebody here telling me I can make it
I wish that person was me.
Or you.
Nora, if you think we can't make it
Just remember our heart-hands in the ocean
under starlight, eternal lovers, and my nose.
We can make it.
You can do it.
I will always believe in you.

Big Fat Metaphor

Trapped in the corner of our lies
yours a kiss, mine a tryst
I lived my life on a stage
blinding lights, shuddering darkness
Home a lonely set, everything a prop
The end of a day, the end of a run
You the only audience
Yours the only applause filling the empty halls
and hollows
of my heart
I am closing the lobby doors
My stage to become dusty,
abandoned
empty
I am costuming
hairdressing
applying base, shadows, liner for the last time
The show must go on
With a new face
Fresh-faced terrified mewling virginal face
And I shall fade into the backstage of your memory
Just another technical face
Invisible from the pit of your orchestra

For Nora

Waiting
Trees, mountains, my life passes by
wonderous windows.
Trains. Trains.
Clickety-clack down the track
As minds atrophy into
trashy romance novels
I pulsate one thought
multiplied
divided
added:
Home. Home. Home
that is lost
that is where the what is.
Heart. Heart. Heart
already beating in time with the rails.

It's Cloudy Today

We are running from dead bodies,
skeletons in the closets of our minds,
closets where we can't reach the end.
Truth is a liberal bias,
two weeks of shouting it,
we are mice among eagles and hawks.
Your feet are filthy from mud puddles and rice,
my lips filthy from your bathwater.

Fuck Ode to Michael McClure & Carl Solomon

This is not a meadow, meadow, meadow
These are your hands/tits/thighs/tongue/ass/cunt
And all the saltily slick places in between
for lips/tongue to hit
This is fingers wrapped in hair
and mouth buried on neck
Lonely cock pulsating/shaking/pressing
against moon dark silken skin
This is not rose meat or any flower meat
These are your legs spread on the car hood/straight in the kitchen/
kneeling on the floor
Face hidden below navel licking/sucking/aching

This is jaws cramping/cheeks flush/eyes stinging
from sweat that drips drips drips like precome
Onto bellies and thighs leaving half-dry
pools of salt and cold
These are deep red scratches/voices crying/hips bucking
Sounds of breasts slapping against ribskin up/down
up.down
These are ass cheeks wide ready for
cock/balls/teeth/buttplug/harness with matching steel
Hipbones, wristbones, anklebones leaving angry purple splotches
like the plague
This is teaching in the frigid night
nipple pinching/waist biting/skirt tugging
The cage with paddles/handcuffs/metal burned skins and handprints

This is a word begging climax
yes/no/yes/please god/yes
Soundless pleas falling on perverted ears
and tired eyes rolling back in heads
These are militaristic fingertips cutting into flesh/
curved like dildos/divided between assholes and wet cunts

These are gashes open for telepathy/
talking is for pussies
This is a body given for you and for all so please just shut up and lets just fuck until our souls are
defenestrated/masticated/domesticated
and sexed

Where You Were All Wrong

kind soul/gentle soul/cold hands/warm heart/
good judgment/good breeding/perfect pitch/
perfect tits/and sweet

I will tell you,
I am sweet like antifreeze.

Night Noises

Sleep becomes me though I do not become sleep
I lie awake on the creaking of bedsprings
A fugue lulls the cold, despite these discomforts
There is airy melody reminiscent of death's call
And the sweet rhythmic snorts of my spirit animal
Down the hall is happening a train wreck of whistles
and wheels.
Beneath it all, the far away roar of the sea.
I hear you murmur softly in your quickened slumber
I want to crawl into your bed and add whispers to the symphony
The sound of fingerskins brushing and your arms in the small of my back
The lightness of your breath on my cheek
stirring the freckles that lonely sunshine created
O Stranger so sweetly savage
What has become of me that I should add no rhythm to this sonata with a scratching pencil
It is out of time and out of place
As am I.

Letters that Hurt

Gina! I lost you to Reed and your senior thesis
I lost you to libraries and stressful tears
I lost you to the arms of Portland's Athena
far from my cold northern kiss.
Gina, I lost you in pies and breads
Our bed was nothing but flour and yeast.
What a horrible thing, to sleep on eggshells.
At the end you fixed me with black wings
I slipped a ring on your finger,
you hung it about your neck on plain silver links.
It was then I knew that I could never love a woman
Or maybe you were still a girl.
Either way, heavy breasts can no longer call me,
And long brown hair turns me off.
You turned me SHY, lady love
And I spurn their open mouthed kisses
Even as I crave my fingers in their cunts.

Thoughts on the First Night

Awkward is the new pink.
Whatever happened to arrogance?
Whatever happened to the snide chuckles
I used to get whenever I mentioned
anything with a rhyme scheme?