wild child

Alessandro says
I used to write wild
and I am perplexed
as if I have forgotten sex,
delved into mystery
my mystery,
the enigma of fuck.
I think William Blake
sucked the marrow from my
language.
I'm still angry.
Self-annihilation is not
the poet's martyrdom.
You lose faith in your Bard,
lose faith in your God,
and your God self-destructs,
and thus annihilates
your soul.
Or your soul's words.
I used to write wild,
blackberry bushes,
growing over fields
my agriculture and my
nothingness.

blues for eagle feather

I.
blue sky bird with speedy fingers
daughter of three
wife of twenty-one days

amateur guitar god
sweet croon blues devil
brother in chronic
brother in wine
brother in chemical cocaine
stumbling into my bed
four a.m. plastic sheeting
rusty springs tetanus creaks
spun for one more fix
begging my sister for life
(please take)
a quarter of (please take)
one
half of your stash (please
take me) home
to feathers
and hunters
and prayer unholy

dear doctor professor:
my brother fucks with a snorter and crushed powder do you think this is safe?

I am afraid of the answer.

II.
Keen
for my brother he walks with eyes in flame
hopping one foot two foot
over smoke and woodcore
from Poulsboro to
Gratton and back
to the Rossi bottle in the middle
of the sea

what shall we feed our brother
who escaped death once?
who kisses dollar bills
and made friends with the snow
who is afraid of his life
and opens his fingers to
tearing teeth and night terrors

III.
Afternoon and the wooden table
blank verse
seventies vomited all over poets
we are all part of his waking
death

brother and sister I kiss
his lips beneath a table
and my lips catch
a powder sigh

pale cheeks (in sleep)
with body's tears

IV.
Eagle Feather, Eagle Father
our mornings are peppered
with rolled up bills and
empty pens
we cough into ink

our stash is in J's bag
but our fix is nowhere to be found

God is a junkie and he sold salvation
until I murdered him
with
a kiss

tension tanka

four a.m. --
decaf green tea
you and I
woe to the table
stuck between us

my androgyne

Something is buzzing in my brain
a literary hum
portraying and waiting
beneath the sidewalks
I am pounding on my way to you.
I will lay scrawling on your velour
velvet violet encasing my fingers
in cracks
filled with pennies and plastic
and orange rinds
from Christmas past.
The smell lingers on toes
even after morning's shower.
Moon winks unscrupulously from the window
leaving me breathless,
and my androgyne spectre
leading by fingernails
drags downward into sweet deep blues.
Kenning the sun will rise,
and eyes awoken by siren's red wail,
grasped by the hair and drug to the surface
waking shore,
and carried gently by my androgyne
to the truth's sunrise.

sun corner

This morning like all morning afters
I am fading denial from my eyes
cross-country undersea submersibles
waiting in nerve sewers
for the command to leak
speaking intangible ghost bubbles
promising forevers with fingers and spit
but denying all with eyes and lips
so red
what am i to do with this silence
that hangs like battle axes
weight like wine, heavy
on my mind
and waiting for drop the queen's head
wicker basket woven in blood
the endless children of summer
parceled out in fountain packages
a dollar a piece
a dollar for a year of your youth
the old corns of winter witchery weeping
matrons of autumn barking their wares
a dollar a piece
a dollar for a year of his youth
and the infants of spring waiting wide-eyed
and soundless
little faces bloodless in fright
for thier mothers have become
those ghoulish hounds of war
and night.
what am i to do with this silence
what am i to do
with this.

not quite your birthday

you surround
my soul
and I dream
in rock and roll
pine trees
summer
breaking my skin
tear all
my bones out
I can't get back in

don't be jealous

baby quota filled today
munching cup handles and
"that's not a raspberry, silly goose!"
six years of toy cars,
where is your mother,
why is Sue nana and
why are you shopping at walmart
careful careful the hammock's gonna flip
careful, we're gonna tip
summer yard raspberry tingle finger-nip
aunties with pink stained panties
chin stretch red tuck
glasses molasses cookie afternoon
vegan cos we don't eat babies
unless they're naked
"put your pants on, silly goose!"
electronic street race car explosion
beep beep deedleedeep
auntie Jessie camera
shift

chasms

in the wake of the pace
that demanded silence
and sliced our heart-throats open
you could touch me,
or not
in the funerial sense of now,
and never
a vacuum has opened our skulls
where our larynxes lie uninhibited
but uninhabited
don't leave me now,
in the aftermath of her conquest,
with empty ears
speak again, bright heart,
and tell me a good-bye
with a flinching finality
you never meant to mean