WOUNDS

The wrangler works against the world
     or within it, at the prairie's edge
     or middle that reveals itself.

It is at times an exercise in sound,
     like the crying of lost cattle
     or the beckoning of sweat to bugs.

The wounds words make in the wounded,
     we are told, open up with light escaping,
     or is it more like cut skin needing air?

Our ravaged bodies speak to each other
     about the common pain wielded in words
     that gallop ahead to interpret too much.

The phrase burned into our recollection
     was that the truth was "out there",
     that made us miss it finally in ourselves.

The body's sores come like pauses in music
     to surprise our listening pursuit of meaning
     that we are all heirs to one, continuing wound.
___________________________________________________

NIGHT WALTZ

The strange sob of a jackrabbit
     that lingered too long on the wet stretch
     on the rancher's acres,
the pine tassels skittering down
     the pitch of a grooved metal roof,
     from chimney to gutter,
the naked shadows in the empty chamber
     of the wood stove, gasping for air
     as embers sparked anew --
these were the notes of my dream music.

I had to relearn my limbs were instruments,
     my head too top-heavy
     with deep grief,
while across the dream stanzas
     those I knew who died sang
     that they dread the living.
As I passed from sleeping to waking,
     I moved in a line dance and steps
     of an unfinished waltz.

And in the borderline darkness
     I put on my skin like a costume
     and climbed onto my saddle,
before I rose to cross into a new world,
     and the sky was as wide as.heaven.
But when I stopped to camp, there were no stars.

“The Whiskies of the Past”

Beethoven playing the opposite
of a lullaby at 7:37 AM,
while my coffee chases away the night
with its sensible eight hours of sleep
(still broken
as a drunkenly dropped glass),
putting to sleep the whiskies of the past,
when blacking out felt like a light bulb
in some great cartoon colored idea
I believed must be my own
original thought, only to wake up,
knowing if I had an artist’s pallet,
then my life would be painted
chromatic black.

Just The Facts Ma’am


If I said I loved you,
you’d probably smack my face.
If I said I needed you,
you’d kick me in the balls.

But if I told you truly
that your life is your own,
go where you will,
do what you want,

you’d probably stick around
and bother me
until one of us died
and left the other alone.

Terminus

That fading clock hung upon
the off-white wall, ticks sound
like a heartbeat, labored and
lonely.

The budgie in her guiled cage
stares blankly into her mirror,
bored or narcissistic? That is
the million-dollar question.

Pale green countertops are now
recovering from the lunch made
so hastily, life moves so quicky,
the workdays all blend into one.

Hours, days, months, years, spent
just waiting for that finial moment;
that terminus point, where the train
conductor bellows, please disembark.

Washed Away

Like the last train
Like the first flight,
I want to leave
To go there,
Where the lost ones
Are found.

Let me know
The kisses of survival,
The metaphors of distances
That feels the absence of nearness.

Let me find you
In the last drag
Of your existential cigarette
At a bar where all the music
Rains like ashes.



Drinking Away

I want to drink away the pain,
This jail, I am living in.

Share a glass of company
Let loneliness be kicked in the face.

Flood is like wine
It keeps recollecting like a memory
Which is just one more occasion to drink.

Thought Police


Crosswalks. My cell phone.
My husband’s voice like Big Brother, receding.

This watch –watching, witching, winking.
My lover’s Rhumba, bringer of tripping hazards.

Thermostats. Autumn, falling into place.
Time – simultaneously a treadmill

and a rubber band. I think a lot about friends
in other cities. I think about Chardonnay.

I think about stationary bikes
and what new contortions I could do with dumbbells.

The new black flanks of the mountains.
My lingerie that still smells like smoke

after six washes. My hotel bed
and what comes next.

My mom, who died months ago
polices my thoughts benignly

but inextricably. The sky, unattainable.
The three Donkeymen of the Apocalypse.

This spatula, ready for splintering.
These traffic pylons.

Remember

When you unearth a corpse and it’s still fresh, and you see it writhing
with maggots and larvae and nymphs moments from exploding into flies

remember: this is their home, and you’re as much a disturbance to them
as they are to you. Imagine the revulsion of a salesman stepping into your home
unexpectedly, on a day you decided, fuck it, I’m not picking up dishes
or doing laundry, or vacuuming or cleaning up after anyone but myself today.
That salesman would probably wear the same expression on their face

as you are wearing now, spade in hand, peering into the dark of fresh earth
pots of peonies and roses waiting to be dropped in, completely forgotten
the unexpected flash of white knobbed fingers, a deflated eyelid,
all those unanswered phone calls explained.




Just In Case It Is

You stand on the stage and look out at the crowd and you know
that there are people watching you right now that will be talking about this night
ten twenty years from now, it might mean something, who knows
who or where you’ll be then. Perhaps there is more honor in obscurity
more validity in an artist virtually ignored until unearthed so much later
either as a shoebox of recordings in the back of a closet
or under the tip of a pickaxe upturning your work’s final resting place

but wouldn’t it be nice if the people recording this on their phones
showed this night to their children or grandchildren twenty thirty years from now
have this night met with some kind of silent reverence
because even then, they know who you are?

So take a breath before you speak, make sure your throat is clear
there’s no phlegm or couch waiting to distort your words
This could be really important.

STATIC



Heroin
zombies
sit on
sagging
couch
Stare
at nothing
Air itself
drowses
No music
no video
games
no scent
of food
cooking
Pantry
bare
Just
an omni-
present
high

Makeshift

The men I’ve loved
or at least had sex with

slept in parking lots,
woodland patches,
basements owned by
another girlfriend
and her husband,

shelters run by the
Catholic Workers,
abandoned cars,
the beds of their own
pickup trucks,

distant relatives’
unfinished garages,
and countless couches
inside the homes
of well-meaning friends,

shortly before they
became ex-friends.

Such clever ways
to avoid that pesky
rental vise.

What’s wrong with
a bit of inconvenience
if it saves a few bucks?

Churn

Suffering makes you a churning cauldron.
That alone will not make you a writer.

It takes more than that.
Practice. Failure. Going at it again.

We all have enough suffering,
Twisted memories inside us,
To become a writer.
But not everyone can do it.

There’s luck as well as hard work.
You need a mix of that
Along with the pain

As you stare into the cauldron
And stir, stir, stir.