renga senryu, 26.01.08

barmaid laughter
long and loud
another glass

old man at the bar
drains his ha'pint
and winks

what a place
for a beat
to find herself

The Wrong Bar

I want to ink myself
a tattoo of my loneliness
stamped over my heart
I am sick of English with accents
I want a nice boy from
the city to sit across
and tell me I'm pretty
or more appropriately
"Bangin'."
Amsterdam is leaving me cold
as the old folks more in
and out of the bar
A million streetlamps
no sidewalks and so many bicycles
That Ian McKellen looking old man
is staring at my young flesh
...he looks nice.
I wonder what the price of mitigating loneliness
is in this town

The Open Door

I am still Cassady somewhere in my soul
But I'll jump into Kerouac
when I board that plane
And find my wanderer's eye
Wandering
Touching faces and pleas
of please
But refrain
because I am beat
My motto is self control
and self reliance
So I do not need your body
do not want your body because
His
is at home
Waiting for me
And I love you all for your secret charms
and quiet smiles
but he is waiting
For me.
To unlock all his secrets
peer into his heart
be a peer of his heart.
And I am waiting for him to see me
as I was
all over again

In Memoriam

Oh, I am not sure
when you became another line
a sweet harmony in the bridge of my little life
But amid sweet soft jazz
and a dimly-lit room,
I lost.

All I can see is your eyes
shyly unfamiliar across the table
kindly uncaring among my past transgressions
Oh, you will never leave me
your voice sighs
I smile knowing that you will someday
because you and I both know
that all good things must end

When I step back on that plane
My heart will break
I assure you

But the piano man is playing something oddly familiar
like I have known these chords
and they have touched me
in places no man dare go
A haunting refrain some ghost from my past
has superimposed on your face

I drift longingly away back to the good months
of Persephone's shores
You are speaking again though I all hear
is Bella gently playing
as I give up on academia

Hidden beneath a piano
or a bed
this is where I stay
in memoriam.

A Song for Koeln

Deutschland über Alles
and I am satisfied
with your cobblestone streets
Blowing kisses to your cooks
through thick panes of glass
Contented under your archways
taking sixty-second portraits
of Carnival costumed festival goers
Under rain swollen skies
a city at last that loves me
and I, too, will love you
in kind
after our German cigarettes
you will ask me to stay
and sweetly
in your eyes
I shall

Whisky Mirror

When I see my reflection
the train window
the door
I see that easy smile
those heartbetraying eyes
and I am lost

I am thinking that
perhaps
she was always there
always lurking
and she can't be killed or stolen
my Milesly Rose
its to late
and I've lost myself
to her

You Didn't Know

Did you know
that I have legs and they
are covered all in little
scars that I don't know
or care where they came from?

And my hands are
just the same I am looking
all unbroken skin so soft
so smooth but the scarring
I can see

Everyone has their favorite
stories favorite body stories
and mine I could tell you
over and over

When I cried for Pablo Neruda
and did a power slide
in a skirt a mistake because
the material didn't cover
now running down my shin three inches
of skin too dark

When I went to my eval
first eval I actually attended
and I wore my slippers slipped
on the steps my poor right hand
it looks like the bat signal
broke my favorite ring too

My favorite little thing no idea
where you popped in
just 3/8ths of an inch crossing
the first knuckle indexed my left
hand and I don't know
but I stare at you and wonder

So I think back to your body stories
and all the little things
I knew how much pepper
to put in your eggs or else you
wouldn't like them but you
never even knew how I took
my tea a mistake you
should've asked oh why darling
why is it you didn't know

Missing You

and Death Cab makes me
melancholic
because I started listening
to the lyrics and they all
make me think of
you.

and Ben tries to tell me about
the comfort in the sound
but I am not hearing it

and Philipp is shouting
again in German
and I don't think
they like me

or maybe they just
don't know what to do
either

and I hate my poems
they used to be good
and now the language
is so plain
and I lost my words

and I want to write you
your letters
but I have no place to
send them

come home to me
sand and sandfleas
collect my tears in your hands
delivered on the wind

I am envying your
sixteen hour days
at least you don't have
the time to dwell
I think

and I am lonely
and I am sick
but only for the love
of you

13012008

What the fuck?
I thought we were
going to Brussels together?
I am getting
crankier
with the men in my life
all the time

Mass

I always think Sundays
are the best days for
restarting
Even though right now
there is nothing running
through my poets head but

"Crap, I have to go to Mass tomorrow."

Well, I could skip it
and spare the wrath of Brighid
but I like Gregorian chanting --
I always thought it sweet --
plus I could take Communion
and no one would ever know
(except God. And my Gods. Goddesses.
They might get pissed.)
running back to my pew
tittering in delight
how I adore flaunting
the rules
of organised religion

Cologne

with a cloud-covered sky
and the city so ancient
the train rolls by
I find myself waiting
for lightening
because the wheels
beating against the tracks
sound just like the thunder
I used to know

For Nora V

Shit, Nora,
I'm lying again
really to myself
I thought a new language,
a new culture,
a new home:
these things would be enough

Nora,
there is a ghost in my bathroom
it keeps opening the window
and turning the showerhead
before I'm ready
And you know there's a lighter
there's a light out there
And I know
in my very bones
another man is going to fall
victim
to my eyes

Cold Deutsch Stars

Three a.m. and I am outside again
Smoking my non-American cigarettes
and contemplating
your departure,
you bastard.

Beni's plant is dying
and I don't know how to save it
because my hands are white
like frost
I am not green like my mother

I bought a mask for Carnivale.
I want to wear it now
even if it doesn't hide
my minding eyes
my smile has always masked
enough

I am not playing your games.
When I grow up
I'm going to be a lesbian
because I don't know
what to do with men
anymore

Kitchen Secrets

When the eyes are alone,
the mind will wander
and thus follows the heart

One hundred years in a kitchen
juicing lime para sangria
(carrying the base root of 'blood',
I am suspicious)
Heaven knows the secrets
hidden in recipe cards
battered and stained.
How many hidden loves
have been baked into the cake?
One, ten, twelve, a thousand?

What of iron-willed restraints
secreted in soup,
and kisses like bombs
discovered between master
and maid
How many whispered footfalls,
tenderly in the dark,
how many unspoken I love yous?

You could never know
even with every interview
every book in your hand.
Like a chef, every woman
is entitled to a secret

or three.