Honeycomb
He has a sweet mouth full of bees
he has kisses like honey
I fall into him in dreams
and wade through him for hours
his hands are hazy
and leave no marks on my skin
no trace of his form can be found
between my sheets
but sometimes I can feel his breath against mine
in the greytime as I'm waking
as if he's taking my sleeping body
and rocking it to life
between his pearly teeth
my head resting on his tongue
as though it's some velvet pillow come alive
at long last
after unreleased past
and whispers tossed wishfully at wistful ceilings
empty and white bright clean.
Hoi Polloi Piņata
Everyone's sleeping and quiet,
wrapped up in their mind's layers
like so many strips of paper mache
before they can fill their heads with candy.
Thinking sweet thoughts
without knowing what's to become of their lovely painted noggins.
Too many pseudo optimists with paste on smiles
that melt off when it rains or the wind blows just a little too hard.
Soulfood
When I arrived at the bus stop
I overheard a fellow there discussing
the spooning out of equal portions of the soul,
making sure they were exactly the same size.
After I had several surreal images of this act
perhaps performed by angels or devils
silken wings or gnarled claws
flapping or tapping,
I realized through listening further that the fellow in question
was discussing the fish he had prepared during his workday.
On my Grandfather and the one eared cat
I'm trying not to think about the malignant ball of cancer
that has taken root in my father's father
that he'll probably die come monday,
last thoughts fading in the midst of masked and sterile doctors
with their surgical steel
their latex smothered hands
their tubes
their minds that won't touch
on his wife
his children
his grandchildren
the poetry he wrote in 1927
his belt that I never knew
or his soft vein laced hands that I did.
I saw the earless cat again
and he reminded me of my grandfather.
Eyes half closed and irritated,
right ear hole spiraling down into darkness
the same ear that left blood blots on my Grandfather's hospital pillow
stains I tried to ignore and pity I tried to beat down
fear of death I tried to drink up and piss out like black rain.
Those darkening patterns I tried to read like tea leaves
or clouds ready to darken with thunder.
I sat on the sunwarmed grey sidewalk stroking the cat
trying to make sense of the fading blue tattoo in his remaining ear.
For a minute I felt a love for him
as though he held my blood in his tired feline veins.
His eyes turned on me, warmer than the rough cement we sat on.
He rolled onto his back carefully, offering his belly.
I rubbed and scratched his light pansy orange fur while he purred loudly
until I left for my final block home.
Memories
Remembrances piled like gumdrops
inside a tarnished silver soul bowl
grow sweeter with age
softer
then perhaps they'll liquefy
and we can shoot them into our bloodstream
with a single touch
a glance
speaking the same legendary language
with invisible tongues pressing out from our sockets
looping around each other
like keys to locks
like Pandora's box
open it wide
and scrub the inside
with silky eyelashes
torn from the eyes of dead lions
clean it til our faces are mirrored
in the light clad shine.
Doll
I've seen her picture for days
Roxanne Doll, age 7,
school photo beaming brightly with an unforced smile,
teeth erratically spaced,
with big, blue, painless eyes like warm blueberries,
hair thin and blonde, long in back.
Unlike the coloured TV picture,
the Xeroxed black and white flyer is stark.
Bright bouquets reduced to shades of grey on a white dress,
matching ribbon around her neck.
Yesterday 2 little girls found her body
in a shallow grave
under thick trees
dirty and torn.
Cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the neck.
No more smiling photos lace the screen
they are replaced by film taken
of a small thick yellow body bag
tied to a stretcher with heavy black belts.
Cut to her mother; tear flushed
and cursing the arrested family friend
who pleaded with his brother to lie to the police
to say that the blood in his van
belonged to a poached deer.
Float
Floating belly up on a raft
made out of dried umbilical cords
from runt piglets.
They drop off into the dirt like tiny twigs.
I gather them up and slip them into my silver basket
woven from the hair
of dying albinos
with blind, cherry blossom eyes.
Over and under I weave them
hypnotic in my hands
securing them tightly
with green twine and molasses.
Bundles deep
until they'll bear my weight upon them
the only thing between my body
and the rollicking liquidjade rockinghorse sea.
Sky and sun snakes;
bright reflections slithering endlessly over the water
images copied and floating on the surface like oil
like melted mirrors.
Dreamlike I cradlerock
on the metronome sea.
Sleep slips between the cracks
until I'm lost behind closed, white-pink lids
and openspread arms
with sleepy, warm, halfcurled fingers.
Alison's Dreams
Alison told me she'd been having nightmares.
She said that the graphic extent of the dreams
probably stemmed from a friend of hers who lived in a warehouse.
The upstairs was rented to a couple he knew slightly,
but wasn't close friends with.
One day he heard a knock at the door
and opened it to find a policeman
who politely asked if he could use the phone.
It turned out the fellow upstairs
had blown his head off,
and there were brains all over the telephone there.
The ambulance came
and took what was left of the body away.
The policeman explained to him
that there aren't people designated
to clean up after such things,
and that the dead guy's girlfriend
wasn't in any state to see the mess,
much less clean it up,
and would he mind terribly taking care of it.
The guy agreed without knowing what he was in for.
Upon going upstairs he found blood everywhere,
all over the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the windows.
A figure was outlined on the floor
and the rest of the room was red.
There were brains and fragments of skull
splattered across and embedded in the wall,
blood in the windowsill cracks,
bits of teeth.
It took him over 6 hours.
He said he had to shut his brain down
and just scrub and scrub and scrub.
He'd think he was finished
then walk across the hardwood floor
and blood would seep up from the cracks,
or find a golfball sized chunk of brain
under a table,
a spray unscrubbed,
or another slice of death stuck in the wall.
He said he never realized until that day
how much of a mess the human body can make
I suppose summer is over,
poured across my life; quick as a whip.
It's slipped away again.
Reeling days spin faster and faster
like insane children around a maypole
and I'm tied to the middle wrapped in multicoloured ribbons,
a kaleidoscope mummy bound tight before the burning.
Gasoline ankles branching out
above toes holding fans of wooden matches;
ready for the striking.
Debauch
She's become just another alternative junkie with delusions of grandeur
her quickly emptying head dripping her fake red dreads down her back
vocabulary regressing to profanity and white lined lies
fingers growing new skin akin to flypaper
her kohl lined eyes are bloodshot and missing their former depth
traded in for a dull glaze
like marbles left in stale water;
shallow and impotent.
"Satan provides" she always said
as she slipped chocolates, candles, and shiny coloured disks
into her deep pockets
as she clomped down store aisles in her thick heeled leather boots
and grey faux fur coat.
"Satan provides" she'd say with a grin as she rolled another joint
on her purse, a re-incarnated hatbox,
black and red and round all over,
decorated with shiny red stars,
glow in the dark skulls,
and 6 metal sixes.
Her dark prince has rich black dreads
a smile that could coax dead insects to tears,
and leathery pockets full of various powders.
With his arms as wide as Niagara Falls
he welcomes her to him with a kiss on her mouth;
drawing her breath into his lungs,
slipping his ring about her finger.
Photo booth pictures catch four separate seconds
and veil them with a greenish tinted taint.
She says she's going to fax them to her mother.
Shots of her and him tongue tied
and signing allegiance to their great provider.
New Year
The New Year blooms through crosshatch gardens
watered by hangover headaches and lit by too bright lights.
An old guitar hums in the hands of the man at the end of my bed.
This body of mine is clean and smokeless
under a rain filled window covered by crisp white blinds.
The first day of this year
and outside it's still as dark as a blackberry stain on a blue velvet dress.
Pale pages continue climbing - lingual vines.
I keep finding my mind wandering away to places yet unfound.
Ready to further myself or at least set another line into my face.
Gilded
Golden finches swallowing frozen teeth,
swelling up like bladder balloons,
tied tight to thin aqua threads; tiny kites,
bound by tiny grey claws
thin ankles near to snapping.
Clouds; bleached kelp washed up by winds
gold against frothy blue
they strain to break their bonds
but wings thin and fragile tire quickly
they rest and try again
tiny hearts hitting hard in feathered vests,
rich and breathless.
Technicolour Raincoat
The grey day is dripping down into me
deep clouds clotting the weepy sky;
the colour of shaving gunk.
It pleases me that rain is clear,
but I'm picturing it differently:
sky a deep rubine
heavy
as if something more vast than reality
could burst through
angry and wrought with predation
the drops from it
fall bloody and bright.
Creamed squash sky
thick and sluggish
slow to boil
stout raindrops
warm and large as baby carrots
hit the ground with soft plopping sounds
pallid circles thick and viscous
melting lazy
back to earth.
Piss-like drizzle
from sulfuric lemon skies
skidding meringue clouds
sour and salty
amber light through stained glass air
squatting bursts
like dropped yolks
in the dirt.
Staring up into a collage of slurpee acid-green
scabbed around the ivy twisted clouds
slick like cabbage rolls
dropping newtlike liquid emeralds
in Ozlike rhythms
through pale sea-foam minty mists
to rest shiny on rain polished grass.
Transparent melted robin's eggs
pooling sadly in my hand
falling like dye in an old ladies' hair
bluing in the wash
or the eyes of Siamese kittens
it comes harder from the sky
of ten billion overlapping forget-me-nots
lacquered and waterproofed
to hold them in place above us
wiry blue cotton candy clouds melt
running down like methadone
into my palms and across the ocean
upon the land.
Velveteen crushed iris skies
reminiscent of spilled orchid soup
clouds restless as swarms of dragonflies
dropping tiny lilac flowers
from their iridescent bodies
which fall away from them
like wingless newborn children
staining the soil a deep plumblood bluish red.
Upwards into black nothingness
a blind man staring
into an unlit room
full of the bodies of burnt ravens
and charred beetles
shuffling
hands outstretched
toward the wet inkblot sun
shedding tears down into darkness
black on black
charcoal on the tongue
of a crazy closemouthed priest
tar injected from a tiny hairthin needle
into the pupil
the lead from an entire pencil
rubbed over the same square inch spot
ink bottles smashed on black construction paper.
Once, all umbrellas were black
and I'm still pleased
that rain is clear.
I take it back
Can I wrap myself in black and quiet as a funeral
steal into the hearts and memories of loves and lovers past
to retrieve from them those apologies I made and regret to this day?
Can I dig them up and set them free,
planting in their place those promises wrapped up so nicely
in gold paper with ribbons and bows,
given to me by those that knew those pretty boxes were empty.
I can plant them deep
so they'll take root and grow gnarled and ugly trees
bearing guilty sour fruit that rots before it hits the ground.
Then sprinkle forget-me-not seeds
around my own garden.
First World Problems
Today I made muffins.
I sorted through strawberries, finding 1/3 perfect,
the rest were either dead fisheye white; hard and premature,
or overripe, mushy, and emitting white fuzz,
like the pubic hair of an elderly dwarf.
I had to throw most of them into the depths of the stinking compost.
Someday I want to travel someplace desolate and needy.
Somewhere that could let me feel my appreciation for my life
like a kick in the soul.
Somewhere that will remind me that there are a lot worse things
than rotten strawberries
and people pissing on your toilet seat.
Linguistic Fix
He's back now.
Clothes shed across the room
blowing his nose
scratching his ass fetchingly.
He says I'm going to ruin my eyes,
but I quite like my air-brushes nearsightedness.
Things are softer.
My body is slowly cooling and it's sleep-seductive
chamomile daisies flowering from my skin,
my eyelids fertile.
Pollen in the air like a gentle dust storm,
sweeping across my body,
morphine powder with a slight case of jaundice.
When I'm sleeping my spine will split in two
pushing through my flesh in rosebud wings,
growing rapidly
spanning across my mind, my dreams.
My veins will be filled with ink
the pen; my waking syringe
in the crook of my arm.
My writing will be a ruddy darkening brown
and eventually flake away,
inhaled by whoever is there in-between the open pages.
-rü
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