words4

Dive

Diving into a tar pit
with false modesty resting on my pale shoulder
it occurs to me that perhaps
I should have worn goggles over my eyes
and lights across my body.
Instead I have one thick crimson stripe
running in a straight line
down my spine.
Hot and thick when I dive in
It's even darker that I'd imagined.
from the inside of my lids
against the outside of my body
halfway between solid and liquid
I push hard against it with my arms
breath forgotten far above me.
Sluggish I creep deeper down
to bury myself amongst the brighter bones
in my newfound home.
No traces left behind,
save footprints in bored mud
that slowly resmooths itself
with time and rain
and a single red hair
snagged on a low, gnarled branch

Dreams

Fragments of my dreams flew away
from my head,
my bed,
faster that I could catch even a single one
by it's many coloured tails.
Just static remained
like atoms from a photograph
blown apart and hanging in the air
too scattered to recognize.
Not even a stain remained
on my outstretched fingers,
not a mark on the page by my pillow,
no puzzle pieces stuck to the ceiling
to pry loose with gentlefingers,
gaze at,
and recall.
Just a blank chalkboard wiped clean
of any telling coloured dust.
The buzz from sleep slowly fading,
fading,
gone.

Trying to scrape last night's dreams
out of my memory
and wishing I had a waking tool
similar to a melon ball scoop
to use on my sleeping life.
I would shave ethereal images
from within my head
and lay them out in surreal spheres on the table.
Line them up like fourth dimensional puzzle pieces
and attempt to sort them.
I adore the surreal plane of sleep
painting my own universe behind my own back,
opening my internal eyes wider until they split and I can see.

Frozen

The photograph is from 1889,
the model long in the earth by now,
but caught here in hazy black and white
she is young and fresh,
breasts new and boyish,
fingers ornately plucking at her black silk stockings
as she sits amidst rumpled bedclothes,
leaning on one arm, her eyes cast downward.
Her belly is full and womanly; unashamed in its fullness.
The expression on her face
is one of thoughtful placidity and gentle contentedness.
This brief second of her life is caught
and this piece of her exists
long after she has passed into old age, darkness & dirt.

Carny

The moon up high
behind bloated charcoal clouds
is thrumming her fullness deep inside me.
I am soaking her up;
wine into bread
light into dark.
brightly drunk
until it doesn't matter anymore.
I'll ride her silvery glow into morning
bellowing from within.
Quiet here
except for breath
but inside I'm a Las Vegas carnival
raging
with feathered clowns
bearing their yellow teeth
stomping their huge cherry coloured feet
in time with my heart;
blood pumping
jesters grumping.
Bright lights
and smells of popcornsugarsex.
Drums pound;
deeply weeping.
Twisted golden beasts jump
through hoops of flame
their tired eyes blind
and white as milk;
smooth as silk.
Mirrors circled in red lights
turn fast
then faster
over brightly painted horses
frozen on their poles.
Up and down
up and down;
sexually redundant they rise and fall
faces never shifting,
eyes never blinking,
wooden heads filled with only the rings
of long dead trees.
Voices echoing back and forth
inside intricate mazes of glass
and warped mirror;
polished chrome
and solid air.

Speculation

It seems like someplace inside you
somewhere between your heart and your belly
something sometimes unfolds its wings;
a sad fluttering I can barely hear
You quickly pour honey over the offending reminder
to quiet its rustling
and wipe a speck of dark dust from your sparkling eye.

Do Us Part

Rabbit falters
before plunging through the brass ring.
It catches him fast,
shrinking tighter
and tighter
around his neck.
His eyes bulge pinkly
but he can still see the beauty
in the shining ring.
He tastes only its sweetness
not the death of the sum of his parts.
Out of the corner of one eye;
just before he blacks out
in that fuzzydreamydarkest way,
he notices the peeling of the golden coat,
the darkness inside,
the vastness of nothing,
a deep hole
hiding no treasures,
only the never-ending bottomless fall
into black.

The wrong side of the bed

Lying on my belly
waiting for the 1st morning coffee to hit.
The weedeater directly outside of my bedroom window
is causing my nerves to curl up
like baby rabbits hiding from a storm.
The roots of my teeth are shaking
and my mind has gone numb with the vibrations.

Blue Glass

In a blue glass bottle I sleep on stones
as I lie on my hardest memories.
Sand from the Sandman
melted down
and blown out through a silver straw.
My new house is fragile
but crackless
as I move gently
now that this is where I choose to live.
Keeping out the sun
save a few peacock rays,
I have only time in which to think.
I can almost see out
they can almost see in
but things are distorted
as in dreams.
Sewing together what was ripped at the seams,
silver lining torn to shreds,
I attempt the mending
pricking my thin fingers at every bend,
every curve
of the eternal internal journey
making me sick
with the motion of change
the change of emotion
and the range of devotion.

Flight of the Voyeur

Oh to grow wings and throw myself into the cool night air.
I'd gladly face the back splitting pain for a span of silver feathers,
hair whirling about me in a cinnamon halo,
body pale in the moonlight,
the features near airbrushed in their movement.
I could perch on people's rooftops
with nearsighted and voyeuristic curiosity.
Tiptoeing silent and breathless into their unlit rooms
and tickling their noses with wingfeathers until they sneeze.

2much2ask

Aching again with this wanting to be held.
Boiled down to my exhausted bones and still I'm chilled.
Cold glass shatters when heated too quickly,
making ridiculous dreams slip and slit their own seams.
Dandelion seeds float in to cover my eyes,
which water them to flowering.
Carry on carry on up and away
on the breaths of nothing left to say.
My kingdom for a young and untrained, unstained, unpained heart.
This scarred and bruised one won't be filled to delicious bursting again,
the thin skin surrounding it has been beat as many times outside as in,
hardening it like an old balloon
that can no longer hold a single breath inside its body.
Microscopic angels may try to patch it up with glue
and tongue pressure points internal to relaxing,
but they'd have to be injected by a sweet and unshaking hand.

A Toast

She hands me a thimbleful of lies
as if they're the finest wine.
I sip them, politely feigning drunkenness.
They taste white.
Fabricated from lonely grapevines
with pale bunches
that sting the fingers that pick them.
She rubs her bruised fingers
against her loose tongue,
pushes it against her teeth
to ease the hinges.

Arithmetic

Friday latest hours pulling pain
from this overused wrist and overfed eyes.
Slowing towards sleep low and lonesome,
feet bare and careless in this lair of quiet.
Empty head on the sleeping bed lying,
lips sighing sips of air
pushed out into this bored room.
Gloomy lightbulbs flicker with recognition,
spiderweb across,
their thin skins matching mirrors cracked.
Images repeated; distorted and scattered,
shattered apart yet held close by the frame.
Lights blooming from darkness
stark and sterile,
vile and sacred,
Scared into joining to two
not for bliss in love
or lack of loneliness,
but the pressure in solitude
that cuts too deep to sleep.
Planting flowers not to watch them grow,
but to cut them down when life has begun
and the blooming is done.
Sliced through and dying,
drying in your golden cup.

There is dirt on my pillow

Last night I dreamt
you were just beneath the surface of the dirt
horizontal
with your fingertips poking politely
up through the earth
like baby mice
writhing slow and rhythmic
drops raining slick
cold
soaking down into the ground
to dampen your head
your eyes playing tricks
on your mind
in the dark

Dante Spits

Grey figures smudged with red grow brightest golden wings.
They unfold like great silken fans
sending shimmering dust into the air like the coldest winter day
with its ice crystals that melt before you even breathe them in.
The wings dwarf the figures they hold aloft,
their beauty dulling the features of their owners, their keepers, their sleepers.
Dante spits pure gold on the pavement where it hardens to imitate a lost filling.
He squints up towards the bright specks above him
and makes a wish he's made a thousand times already.

just another metaphor

I'm not wanting to give myself again.
I feel the opposite of a jawbreaker;
every time I'm spit out, I've got another layer.
Further and further from the center
I'm a never-ending onion.

Goya's Assembly

They spin, sweating and frenzied in the orange light.
Shadows play across their rough and tumble faces
eyes wise and yellowing like old parchment
legs twist, turning their forms around the circle.
You can almost smell the smoke,
the body heat thickened air,
The Autumn dust.
You can hear the stomping or feet,
the gnashing of teeth,
the loosening of tongues,
the grunts and screams and excited black clad bleating.
You can feel the dampness along the walls;
slick and salty to the touch,
feel the horns heavy upon head,
sense the ragged velvet swishings
and see your reflection
in the wine spilled on the cool stone floor.

Death and Chocolate

Polar hog melting on my tongue
balanced by the heaviness of the day and the highballs in the night.
Bright coloured lights spun across a fogged room housing spinning people.
Hot beats flung themselves at us; brazen.

World AIDS day and my mind rests on sick friends and their loved ones.
Death so close you can brush against it with barely stretched fingertips.
Then I think about the sweetness
almost painful in my mouth practically unbearable
melting into me with alarming speed for a body so exhausted.

Small White Pills

Moon full and headache high,
cider mutes the pain briefly but it returns,
loudly pounding at the front door,
causing that same old wound panic in my heart,
the same lights in my head.
I let it in just to get it to shut up.
Small white pills
sit redundantly albeit brief in the palm of my hand.

I thought for a second that I'd left this behind me
in a cloud of medication and moderation.
The rising, pounding metronome is back,
grinning sarcastically from my bedroom ceiling.
Razors are pulled into a black screaming eyedropper which releases them;
drop by drop, onto my bed, into my head.
Adjust to the next level and when it's nearly bearable
another wretched door opens wide.

Moon Close

Moon close to full and mind close to empty,
I sit with eyes tire-twitching.
It feels as if there's a radiator inside my head,
humidity inside the skull there as thick as wax,
malleable and pliant
like silly putty slapped on an old love letter
or an old lady's bible.
The words are pulled, twisted,
stretched thin and fragile and distorted horribly.

The Crucifixion

My roommate and I; corseted and in various finery and trinkets
our friend and chauffeur in a long 70's furry cat glam gown,
purring atop her babyblue feather boa.
We watch as men dance around a bowl of fire
and a woman waves flaming torches to a heavy drum beat; low and deep.
Then a male friend steps forward; shirtless and painted.
He reaches out to a large wooden cross that is suspended from the ceiling.
He drapes his arms over the limbs of the crucifix.
Slowly the dancing men come to him and begin to wrap him in plastic,
starting at his feet.
Tightly they pull the saran wrap; thin and shiny in the firelight.
Higher, higher, higher.
Our friend is turned around and around, revolving on the cross.
When he is covered nearly to the neck, the wrap is tied off
and the cross begins to rise higher and higher and higher.
He is tied tight and begins to writhe; a crucified sexworm,
pushing his body into the cross; harder, more rapid
frantic and sweating, high off the floor above our upturned faces
until the drumbeats begin to slow and he is lowered to the ground,
unwrapped, and allowed to stalk off; dizzy feline grace.

My Funny Valentine

He beats himself with roses;
floral flagellation,
thorns biting their guilty welts across his sad skin,
leaving fresh petals behind them.

Disgrunt

I'm becoming more restless and irritable.
I have anger in me like fiery kudzu
and it rises and breeds; incestuous, inside.
Vines reach out of my eyes and mouth
to wrap around people whose mere breathing irks me to no end.
I can avoid or ignore, but still the tense clocks wind tighter.
I'm waiting for my head to go hot and furthest from loose
shortly before blowing brain and bone in a mosaic all around me.

Pass the Hot Chocolate

The air outside hardens bodies with it's chill.
Spines ache; dull and dark - like the edge of an old pencil.
Nearly full moon sparkles repeatedly on the ice shattered grass,
moaning quietly underfoot.

Half past midnight and the metallic red on my fingertips
is splintering onto my bed in tiny bloody shards, thin as flea bones.
The window above me is open and blowing icy air up my fevered legs.
Strength has welled up internal and straightened my spine.

Have a pint on Jesus

3am.
The phone rang and woke me up.
A drunk man calling for my roommate.
He said his name was Jesus
and to tell her that he had opened up a rockin' booze can.
Joy of joys.
I was hoping it was someone else,
but it was just Jesus
and now my heart is burning with disappointment.

Swansong

Wringing out my heart in the same manner
that I'd twist the neck of a trumpeter swan
until it's empty and small
with darkly creased wrinkles
where blood once flowed.
The white wings not prone to flight
falter
then drift downwards to the ground.
Tiny trails of down snow down onto the dirt
dig into the earth with seedling fingers
planting delicate sprays of Queen Anne's lace
that I water with the salty red slick
that has run from my gnarled veins
into a small copper tin at my feet.
Green pushes upwards;
opens into lacy blossoms
with featherlike petals
run through with pale veins.
Snowflakes and popcorn
and other things white as my bones
cannot compare to these aching flowers.

intellectual pancake

My eyes feel like old nickels and my teeth feel too clean
I'm damn tired and full of half dreams behind dry, half-closed lids.
Brain floating in brine
I could wrap my fingers around it and wring it dry
leave it to wrinkle up in the sun like a raisin
I could press it flat between the pages of a book
and carry it like an intellectual pancake down to the beach
skip it across the water and watch as it slowly sinks down.

Oral Orchard

Eyes flutter like wounded butterflies beating their torn wings.
Dust falls as dawn wakes, primping before blooming,
spreading clear light over a musty world.
Too much pain drains the people.
They are tired and cranky and closed in every way.
Fear taunts violence that plants new black gardens in turn.
Bullshit spread thick to coax new growth.
This orchid growing from my mouth
is pale and lovely and sweeter than words.

-rü

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