My Willow (XOXOskeletons)

Sinners sit stationary
Smiles cracked open
Impetus on the ice pick
Wishing, absolutely dreadful

Silence is the noise stuck between your teeth.

Iron popsicle stick
Stab corneal stiletto victims
Bioethics digests probiotics
Yoghurt exonerates the colon
Cast iron crown cool
Branding my buttocks with Pepto-Bismol.

Never have I ever imprinted my pustules on writing prompts.

Snapping bones with line breaks
Creationism simple
Understood to the extent of organ donors
Honorarium proletariat
Algorithmic insatiable
Dripping dolomite dimpled delicacies
Churned cherry ostracism

If you can’t find it, check the gun chamber.

Sacks of minimalist murmurs
Too elaborate for cornmeal or asceticism
Garnished garter belts galvanize good riddance
Rotisserie style pockmarks for principle
Scab over with cinnamon to carnal caress
Seabed of flower pedals come out of notoriety
Tremolo totalitarians protest post-punk blithely because

…and then I will fill your lungs with cumin.

Burials brighten schizophrenic tweed jackets
Womby Tuesdays
Shooting craps with ardor
To shit-show me the way

I will butter your toast with hacksaws.

“Similarly weeping sideways,”
Willow wander-whispers
Tumult! Tumult! Tumult me three ways!
Parting hair iodine eye-soars
Ecclesiastic equilaterals find my equilibrium sentimental
E. coli (EEEEEeeeeek!!!!)
Under me, over me, mensal marauders
I had you; catheter lubrication

I will sap the seas with my liver and convert you to hydrogen.

Hispanic hypochondriacs
Shoulda—woulda, Buddha
Schizoid shunt

If you are hearing this, it means that we are both synonyms.

Summersault ecstatic
Simply woven ceremonials
Exocytosis my excision pompoms
Existential homographs are homophobes
Goosebumped, gallbladder, giggly-bitten hetaerists

I will lead you under clover sheets and supplant my headdress with corners.

Octoberist similarities silent
Still-cool matchstick conduits
Gingerbread utopian
Wisdom whisper
Bread-lined luminary

Even to this day, I hold you near autumn.

The Letter "S," Like the Number 5, Makes "She"

He floats on lint.
He culminates in coke bottles.
He makes mistakes like tree limbs.
He is not nacre, nor do his nipples taste like helium.
Never will you hear the feminine form of a noun pronounced effeminately.
If he knew how to read, he would love Hemingway.
If he were to sashay, you would think he was about to kill a bear or something.
He lights cigarettes with macabre stop signs.
Punctuation, to him, means applying a knife to a girdle.

I Wake Up In the Arms of a Red, Red Sonnet

Warmth sought in places other than hollow
hell, my arm lies flaccid on a couch ripped
and torn from syncopation and spit.
Stockings spoiled by a bastard’s elbow.
No kissing please. No! No kissing please, sir.
Who took your innocence away the fifth
time? When did you start adding ketchup to
chapped lips? May I baptize your wrinkles with myrrh?
Just don’t say ‘prenupts’ or ‘pap smears.’ Aroma
of something more purple than brown. Crust on
bullet casings or mattress springs left by writers
of all sizes. Her hair caramel whispers
that there is a rhyme scheme— but it’s a cold one.
Rifts in my pen cause the room to spill blue.

Explanation #2

I wrote this poem in the dark
I wrote this poem in urine
I wrote this poem while being chased by nudists
I wrote this poem in a Confessional
Marilyn Hacker told me not to write this poem
I tried writing this poem in Iambic Pentameter
I wrote this poem because I was aroused
I wrote this poem after imagining myself in the shower
I wrote this poem and then woke up in the shower
I wrote this poem after listening to a recording of myself crying
I wrote this poem after realizing that it wasn’t me crying
I wrote this poem in my sleep
I wrote this poem because I don’t sleep
I wrote this poem after drinking too much antiseptic
I wrote this poem because I’m impotent
I wrote this poem in the womb
I am repentant for impregnating this paper with my poem
I refuse to acknowledge this poem
I originally wrote this poem in French forgetting that I don’t know French
I wrote this poem after yelling at a homeless person
I wrote this poem after yelling at God
I wrote this poem because my mother told me to stop talking so much
I wrote this poem after losing my train of thought at a metro station
I have no idea why I’m writing this poem
I should have stopped writing this poem years ago
I wrote this poem after hearing strange noises from my brother’s room
I wrote this poem because I’m an only child
I wrote this poem as a means to get even with my poetry
I wrote this poem in order to map out my body’s twists and turns
I wrote this poem in case there is a Communist uprising
I wrote this poem after Senator Joseph McCarthy interrogated me for being a homosexual and a Communist.
I wrote this poem after ending my affair with JFK
I wrote this poem in a dress
I wrote this poem by mistake
I wrote this poem while making mistakes in a dress
I wrote this poem with icing on my chest
Why would you assume that I wrote this poem?
I wrote this poem after 40 days and nights in a dumpster
I wrote this poem shortly after my testicles dropped
I found this poem in a test tube
This poem wrote itself
I broke a car window with this poem
I made my father cry with this poem

A Breath Is Taken; But Not a Sweet One

The polar regions of the Sahara continue ellipses on mountaintops. Snow capped syringe tips point at the uterus in my incubation chamber. A bomb shelter away from a good pregnancy metaphor. Never understood the use of pronouns. “In my day, the clitoris of a pear was a mere legend.”

Weekend compasses dare to fashion waves with taken tonsils and introverted mannequins. Random accounts of history. Accounted accents. Awkward moments. Momento. Mentos. Me.
“She peeled back my face with tweezers, opened my sinus cavity with butterflies, and breathed silence into my larynx.”

Hollow cult-cut turkey breasts. Streetsweeping genres. Androgenized antidotal evidence. Eyes tell me otherwise. “Hopefully this is the last time you talk of hearts.”

Cardiograms and coloring (inside the lines) in three acts. Paintings in C minor. Minor lacerations to the bedposts. An ultrasound speaks of nothing but compound words. A breath is taken, but not a sweet one. “Holy N+7 Batman!”

Earl Grey mistreats his wife with diamonds and bergamot. Vetiver swamps and cardamom crimes. Cauliflower bouquets. Tumbleweed in a salad served in cases of sublimation.
“Just in case, here’s a notebook and a pen so the neighbors don’t hear you finding yourself in mirrors.”

I caught you sleeping with magic. There are no rules in romance novels. Your body was woven in syntax theory and contorted in subversion. The rhythms of your nostrils flaring in and out like my interest in the rhythms of your flaring nostrils. “Anthropomorphism is not the same as anthropophagi, but they are equidistant.”

The Many Faces of Pablo Picasso

A 1950s switchboard, you say? Too wordy for wires but plugs seem to stifle my meniscus and understatements. I am what my mother made me: a scaled person.

You found me wishing on sheared grass. A lawnmower chops and mauls
the parsley floor. Green blades smelling of spring inch closer to lop off my ears:
an impaled person.

Whimpers attract bears, so I'll cover myself with bees to attract the queen.

My stubbed-toe screams muffled by a postage stamp: "Lost-in-the-mail" person.

Venus descends with shining breasts, capturing the bees’ attention, then leaves.

I make sketches with an hourglass but later burn them in a Prius: an unveiled person.

Fireflies struck down by stars, eulogies written with chainsaws, and books that read like tanning beds. 

Too attached to those books; skin boiled, and blind: a brailed person. 

I’m a can of tuna and three shotgun shells away from Yahtzee. This is the end 

of a line etch-and-sketched into oblivion or a dry-erase board thin frail person. 

I’ve seen myself enough times in others to know that I’m a picture perfect visage 

of cubism and Marilyn Monroe. You stroll along silk entrails: my failed person.

I never had you; therefore, I never lost you

When contemplating the existence of losing myself, I try to follow the rumble of elephants chasing the tails of constellations and the moon’s milky nightgown, but all I find are spacecrafts in parking lots and discrepancies in manifestos. A “lost in the fields of barley” Scotsman calls out Lucifer (in German) for cheating at a game with no rules, while empty milk bottles deploy tendrils to suck up souls smelling of shit-stained suppositories. Ghosts leave crackling wrappers stray on turf foreign to sweetness and my soul, oh my soul, is a toothpick prick away from calling out for help, bingo, or amniotic fluid from an I.V. A derelict at a gas station swallows salivated nonsense from the foreign diplomat from Mars, while a trashcan goes over inventory for the night before finally going nowhere. A streetlight loses track of time after contemplating what Sunday did to deserve Church Sermons. Undead dream clouds float over cemetery fields before being pimple-popped by the scythe of a four-year old feeding on the corpses of princes past. Syrup drips from palm trees running gaily in fields of phallic objects until clouds decide to make it awkward. Rivers flow west where winter winds its way through tunnels of smoke-pocked timetables and schedules depicting the end of beginnings and the middle of ends. An old man in Delaware declares that hemp is hostile and that Elvis is himself an impersonator. I never liked that old man, especially after he enslaved cyclones with a smirk and stripped silhouettes of their wetness leaving them lamp-shaded and well rounded. As for me, I grew up three years younger, composed something of a symphony in the name of science, and still susceptible to someone saying, “I never had you; therefore, I never lost you.”

John and Diane Drink Coca-Cola in California and Make Love On the Banks of a River Grande (or A Teenaged Girl Finds Adventure and Love in the Son of Satan)

[Time fled years ago. Wind is blowing. That’s all you need to know]

Diane runs along the coast searching for cracked seashells. She gets tired and lies down in a puddle.

Leopold is blind but runs well enough. No one realizes he is a cat until it is too late.

John on the other hand is a strong name and therefore is real enough to be more than a marshmallow, but less than a giant. He is just short of 5’11 and strange; more so than gelatin.

John: This breeze is awfully pretentious.

Diane: {In an English accent (she’s from West Virginia), but sensitively serious} Indeed. Very much so.

John: {Surprised agony} Sorry, I was talking to the ocean.

Diane: {Equally surprised} Why would you talk to the ocean? That sure is dumb. What are ya? A dumby?

John: John is perturbed that this blond chestnut called his mother dumb.

Diane: What now? {Thinking that she has the ability to speak below a whisper} THIS FELLA HAS A SCREW LOOSE I RECKON. {The English accent returns after conceding that he will be sun burned regardless} My vernacular is quite strange. I find it almost comical. {She giggles, causing her nose to wiggle. She snorts unintentionally, resorting to more giggles.}

John continues to stare at the waves. I don’t know why, but the sun does the man good. His hair captures the UV rays like a pool, adding a shiny reflection of gold with a tint of copper. He may be a red head.

John takes Diane’s hand, while nodding his head.

John: Yes, this must be how the world ends. (He kisses her tenderly and melancholically. The English accent is touched.)

Diane: What in the world? (Of course, they are kissing, she as much so as he is, but still, the girl can dream). girgle girgle girgle.

John’s eyes open mid-kiss in search of plankton. His nose wants to smell his new catch. His skin is confused as to why John merely applied fish oil instead of SPF. His Ray-Bans are on the beach depressed and finding little hope in the ethical treatment of dolphins. John’s toes though, are warm enough in the sand, wiggling in bliss like hermit crabs.

“Oh” (or “Oww”) escapes miraculously from somewhere other than the girl’s mouth.

After what novelists would call, “The Kiss Grande” (which was a little much if I have to be honest. It was like watching a goldfish preparing to sneeze, and the other one looking like they were choking on a fork) plus ten years later, John and Diane are found by no one in particular rummaging in the Amazon. John now has a full-length beard (alas revealing that he is in fact a red-head). Diane after coming out of the local river, naked (locals consider the river holy, and therefore a sacrilege to swim in. They will declare war. John will win.) looks, and in fact is not a day older then when I first met her.

John: (Inhales deeply preparing for his lines. Diane does not realize that this is all just one giant joke) What a pretentious shade of green. (The beard falls off his face. He is again reinstated as beautiful.)

Diane: (Still naked) My dear, shut the hell up. We’re in a jungle.

John: I miss mother.

Diane: Oh Jésus Christo, not this again. (She expects John to chastise her like her mother used to after overhearing her speak Spanish).

John: John is silent and hungry (It is clear that John loves to speak in the third person. He goes off in search of caramel gardens and primate exotic dancers. He only finds a vegan meal consisting of horseradish and poi.) John is satisfied but not so thankful for this feast. (With annoying vigor)Blah blah blah CSPAN corpus erectus maximus blah rust textured sunsets, Yoko Ono, rose ripened lips, nape necked blouse, wet dewy navel, heavy breathing, heaving snot, moon-laced sun kisses, rainbow universes, spectral epiphanies, salmon skinned brush strokes, bird shit Sundays, bag pipe solos, ah-choo, amen to you, Tarturus, tarter sauce, tainted kiddy pools, wading in vomit, untampered beauty, you you you, and Diana! (Suddenly the horseradish sprouts into a fragrant grove of garlic, mana, and underarm sweat. The poi, sadly remains poi. After deeming his work, and the poi imperfect, John swings on a vine but does not have the upper body strength of Goliath or other Scriptures. He resorts to walking on water.)

Diane follows John undetected, fully knowing that he is off in search of the infamous chimp skin-bar. She starts to purr like a lawnmower. She finds it attractive. She finds her flame-haired lover, crosses herself like every good Christian girl should, and pounces on her prey.

John: {Quite sensibly and trapped} I love you.

Diane instantly orgasms. John does too but for other reasons. They both consider it a beautiful moment. John reconsiders “The Big Beautiful Joke” and begins to repent his chimpish ways. Diane draws a salivated cross on John’s forehead like a mother cleaning her child’s face. It is a touching moment.

Diane: In the name of the father; that’s God, the child; that’s Baby Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, we are now married.

John: I see.

Diane: Seeing is believing. Or is it ‘Believing is seeing?’

John: No matter, I’m pretty sure my father is the Devil. (John’s saliva cross begins to boil on his forehead. He seems to enjoy the burning.)

Diane: (The English accent takes off his cucumber slices from his eyes after tanning and comes to the rescue) It appears I’m in a little bit of a pickle.

John: (Strikes an intimidating pose, bears his fangs, and bites Diane’s neck. She seems to relish the pain. The ghostly “Oh” (or “Oww”) reappears, but this time escaping from her mouth.) (Singing (but not well)):

I wish for a son to bear my crest,

and a blond lass with a hefty chest.

Her skin, as white as a peach tree flower,

 and to kiss me softly upon the hour.

A fire that burns behind her eyes,

and heat of passion between her thighs.

Silk that wraps around her skin,

and hips and arms that remain thin.

An agelessness that never tires,

a pout that forever lights my pyre.

If ever I find a lass as fine as this,

I shall seal her heart with a vampire’s kiss.

Now with a belly full of blood, John forgives his father for being Lucifer. There is a bright flash! I begin to paraphrase…

John wakes up 86 years old in a downtown flat in central London. His face is old. His hair stubbornly remains red. His figure has diminished. He is no longer beautiful. Diane wakes up, looking at her elderly lover with a smile. I don’t know what she sees in him. She picks up a Wedding candle and drives it through John’s mortal heart. He dies agonizingly…

John wakes up from his post-coitus nap terrified. The sun is up so he is naturally sparkling like a red red ruby. His hair is still stubbornly red. He wraps his strong, tanned arms around his would-be killer out of fear with a hint of affection. It is a tender moment. I begin to suspect that this is how love remains timeless. 

I wake up in a dumpster behind a Slaughter House

I smell the world for what it is

A seductive catalyst of “if”s and “oh”s and tremolos

Polka-dots and ginger cats

Diapers, gun metal, Tupperware

With a hint of spoiled produce and slime.

I yearn for perfumed gardens that reach their zenith in December

With high notes of zinfandel that insert my similes for me;

that capture my “ooh”s and “ahh”s and irrigate my urine for its zinc.

I see the world for what it is;

A wretched rodent that survives out of spite,

claiming beliefs that only hold true in moody metro

bathrooms where suction is God busily converting waste

to potpourri and light bulbs flicker for dramatic

reinforcement.

I yearn for warm shelters on cold nights in Autumn,

Where red transfers its glory from red pedals to leaves,

and that seasonal cinnamon that comes from crushed orange peals

and wood shavings that leave me feeling estranged from my moth-ridden musk.

I feel the world for what it is,

Two-pound porterhouse beef strips raw­­–

(that is not sexual)

A red coolness,

cold enough that you know something is wrong,

Wrong enough, so that eating it is a guilty pleasure,

A pleasure similar to masturbating after a funeral,

or stealing a kiss from a snake charmer,

And a watery wetness over
"Oh no" eyelids that forever brings
a blush to pale fingers.

But deep at its center, (the beef I mean),
there’s a hidden warmth wrapped in itself

that hints at a pulse somewhere. Somewhere.

I yearn for folklores that matrimonially join
the undead with werewolves

in midnight fields of sun-blazoned wheat,
golden corn husks, and petals of brass

with me in the center of the story (and field)
busily trying to create a snow-angel,

causing onlookers to say, “What an odd fellow flapping

his arms like a vulture in heat warding off hungry eyes.”

I would be the world’s greatest gastrophile
to taste the world’s true colors;

the river reds, the breath of blue,
the spice of yellow,
and the youth in green and pink (but not together).

But my palate is gray

and my mind is full on

brown.

I yearn for a Shakespearean ending in which
the young and fair never die,

and I always have a rope of roses
wrapped tightly around a deeply-rooted

banyan tree,

so that when I slip,

I do not

fall.

I hear the world’s slithering silk-lined sestinas
hissing hymns of halcyon cloves,

but between each perfumed line,

acid reveals the forgotten mantra,

“No that is not what I mean. That is not what I mean at all.”

I yearn for silence to echo my sentiments.

After Dinner, I Look Up At the Stars Longing For

Did my face please you, Brie
and leave a strong impression?

Were my features not grand in scale,
and did you not find warmth in my expression?

Was I too cold and sullen?
Was my Cain’s curse exposed?

Were you taken aback from my tiny ears
and my nipple lobes?

Did you think of me
 as I so fondly thought of you?

And if so, then why did you not tear my lips
and with yours, suckle me dry of blue?

I love you Brie, I know I do;
In fact I’m almost sure.

I hope your teeth never dull,
And your memory remains blanketed in furs.

Cherry Blossomed Girl

Cherry’s eyes catch waves

like koi in a rice paddy.

Her lips castrate

cacti and scorch

cornfields in Kansas.

Her legs capture escapades,

Cadillacs, and soft

midnight-moans,

The cat’s silk pajamas, catwalk,

cat shit, can’t catch cat shit in Kansas.           

We strolled along gated sidewalks

littered with false-corpses and ivory teeth.

A couple passes us,

one of them screaming,

“Fuck Jerry! You crushed my dreams

with your drooping

neckline and beatnik staccatos.”

I laugh,

turn to Cherry and mimic,

“Fuck you Jerry for flooding me with your Allen Ginsberg sentences that litter my garbage with sunflowers and toy trains.”

I made this purple velvet suit I’m wearing

to say that I’m different;

God made her to say, “Fuck you.

I’m covered with amniotic hair,

maternal excretions,

and love that you can only

measure in decibels.”

She later asks me if I believe in God;

“I did until I dreamt of Jesus

who told me,

‘I give children to

sleep on Sunday’s,

knees to avoid

the hymns, and Psalms

to describe sex to

those wearing Victorian frocks.”

She tells me in stern humor

that I am absurd and “morning prayer

keeps the devil in despair.”

I’m also going to hell,

where there is no stage direction.

Her eyes now portray

gravity. “The only thing

I believe in are

cracks in the sidewalk

and Illuminati light bulbs.”

I’m pretty sure I love her

at this point like

finding crushed Viagra pills

in my gelato.

The date’s going well until

suspense kills

an asthmatic dog

already dying from

the cancer of society

located in its rectum.

I lean over the now dead dog and

whisper, “At least you didn’t die in an oven.

Instead, you conquered screeching tires

and halted traffic with your cries of reform.

You turned red lights green, and green lights yellow,

so as to bring droplets to the dry deserts

of my cheeks.”

She stared at my stooped form and dewy eyelashes

and cradled the inner workings

of my intentions.

My voice broke-   

like an ancient phonograph,

just as I was about to denounce communism and

tell the world that I was done

with it’s rhyme schemes

formulated plot twists

and vampire endings.

I had enough of cherry blossoms

floating down like a

regal stained glass procession

on a breeze that just wanted to

unleash some expletives,

old men that promised

means and averages,

Freudian obsessions, and

Roman numerals,

and restaurant waiters that float

on Hollywood dreams

and know your darkest

secrets before ordering cocktails.

She took my shaking syllabic hand,

and told me of all the years she had laid with

only to find out that her mother had stolen time

and kept her youth through paintings of effeminate men

and prints of a van chasing sand-koi through the desert.

She told me that the only real thing in this world was my surrealism

and the dog, now burning on a funeral pyre.

I clasped her lips with mine

muffling her promises of tiramisu.

She stroked my flowing liqueured cheeks with rose-colored ladyfingers

and an espresso fragrance that somehow immersed itself with my shadow,

still hunched over the dog and reminiscing over shattered Italian light bulbs.

Her tongue professed that the time for cinematics was over,

that climaxes will rise and fall with condomized rouge curtain sheets

and all will applaud (or tremble) as she saps the bitter honey

from my dark chocolate ego and dwindling starlight.

She tells me that she loves me like finding a Spanish gold coin

hidden within the thorny trenches

of a fermented rose bush.

Classical Observations of a Self-Absorbed

14:11: My (or am I supposed to be detached?) classics professor speaks of “niggling questions.” I had to look up what “niggling” means for the purpose of my observations.

2:12 pm: The professor lifts his two hands, and pushes my invisible spirit off of his podium with great force.

2:10 pm: A girl in front of me strokes her hair five times in succession. I hope this doesn’t become niggling.

2:10:45 pm: I am confused as to why the girl has to feel her chocolate strands in front of me five times in succession. Does she know that I’m secretly salivating?

2:06 pm: I arrive late to class.

14:00: The classics professor makes introductions to the class. My spirit observes his perspiring scalp and the sigh of relief his thankful Panama straw-hat makes upon feeling the chilled surface of the inorganic laminated desk next to the podium. 

2:21 pm: I catch the phrase “The House of Oedipus.”

2:22 pm: I receive a call from my mother. Luckily no one seems to oberve the irony of this, or the sound my cheeks make when they try to hide behind the crimson pool forming at the surface.

2:24:50 pm: The girl in front of me strokes her chocolate strands again.

2:25:05 pm: The girl in front of me strokes her chocolate streaks yet again. I’m starting to get annoyed, both at myself, and the girl who seems to love the feel of her hair more than I would. The girl sitting next to her doesn’t seem to notice or care.

2:27 pm: The girl with the obsessive need to taunt me with her Willy Wonka chocolate rivered hair combines the flow of the aqueous strands and pulls them into a concentrated sweet stream over her shoulder. I can’t help but think of a water hose.

2:28 pm: I’m pretty sure the girl knows that I am writing inner-monologues about her hair because she throws her head back, and with it the hair. Everything is in order; I hope for good.

2:31 pm: I become concerned that my audience will find my writing surreal.

2:32 pm: A student to my left is sleeping. I wonder what he is dreaming of. Does he too think of the girl in front of me, who again strokes her hair teasingly at 2:32 pm?

2:34: I start to daydream about meeting my poetry. I think I’m smirking at my own cleverness because there is a girl wearing a casual blazer (probably a business student, or pre-law) giving me an economically odd look that my eyes object to. Also, I think I caught the girl in front of me feel her hair again with my peripherals. Where does she think it’s going?

20 ‘til 3 pm: I consider using the lenses in my sunglasses to catch the reflection of the girl with the beautiful hair’s face. I’m almost sure that it is beautiful.

2:40 pm: I think about how I used “river” as an adjective.

2:41 pm: I think about how terrible I am at using correct grammar and Mass-Observation.

2:42 pm: I promise I’ll try harder at observing the masses.

2:43 pm: I think about George Orwell and the phrase “Opiate of the Masses.”

2:45 pm: I tell my poetry to stop peering over my shoulder in order to peek at my observations.

2:46: The girl with the scalpal waves of chocolaty clay remodels the tide on her head to look more becoming of Venus (or Juno, which ever one is prettier).

2:47: I think of Paris and the “apple of discord,” and then my thoughts turn to the three times I climbed the Eiffel Tower only to find that Paris is ugly on a cloudy day. I am determined to find the beauty in French and conquer Parisian clouds.

2:48: Oedipus’ wife/mother denounces the Gods and my plans to battle Paris.

2:49: The chorus listens to my Parisian aspirations and laughs to create an imagined V-I cadence.

2:52: The girl in front of me attempts to make the universe not so indifferent to her hair, that I’m sure is just exhausted at this point.

2:53 pm: I think about not writing about the girl in front me until she cuts off my thoughts with her compulsive need to illustrate hazel nut velvet.

3:00 pm: A student walks out of class before my professor gets to read Oedipus’ soliloquy.  I should have stopped him.

3:01 pm: The class understands that the girl in front of me is beautiful, as they acknowledge this in spoken silence.

3:02 pm: “Alas, alas” I start to wonder if I should have been more serious with this documentation.

I think that (15:04) I am the love child of Dionysius and Apollo. A student four rows down snorts in reply.

3:06 pm: Class is over. Everyone seems to wake up in unison. I think I may have failed as an observer. The Greek chorus acknowledges this failure with a melodramatic minor chord progression. 

Westport Is a Wasteland But I Call It 'Home' Anyway

             Running along the choppy coast of Compo Beach, a child on the cusp of fifteen feels the chilled sand beneath his raw feet.

“Where’s the poetry in sand?” he asks the waves gasping for air.

The breeze was catching up, so without a reply from the waves, he sets off. The innocent-enough boy hid behind the famous Minuteman statue, at the moment depicting how America struck the British from behind, like a cold, or a Connecticut spring. It was late November, and yet there was another boy rollerblading inside the caged basketball court.

“A wheeled prisoner,” the boy whispered to the ironclad Minuteman.

Immediately, the smirk was wiped off the boy’s face though, as the statue tried to struggle against its encasing.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but can I ask you something?”

The statue said nothing verbally.

“How many children come and go, playing with hearts blown by Michelangelo?”

Again, the alloyed statue said nothing, not appearing to be interested in glass hearts or blossoming curiosity (even though I was).

“How many birds flee, from a poet’s feathered simile?” the kid asked, not knowing if he was on to something.

For the third time, the statue said nothing.

“Am I boring you? I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be meeting someone. That’s right. She’s really pretty too. ‘But isn’t beauty just a fleeting pheasant?’ Or is it ferret? I’m pretty sure it’s ferrets, but ferrets aren’t very poetic, don’t you think? Their eyes are all squinty, like an inside-joke or an ultimatum issued by Switzerland. Anyway, there she is!” There was a girl of sea foam porcelain that popped out of the choppy Westport waters, and beckoned to the bemused boy.

            “Swim with me,” she said. “I’ll be your muse, and you’ll be one of Odysseus’ crew without the wax in his ears or just captivated by my bare breasts.”

            “Ok,” replied the boy. “Just know that I’ll follow you, like Dante followed Virgil to shake Satan’s peppermint hands in Hell.”

            “But I’m a fish and this isn’t Hell. This is the Atlantic Ocean,” the sea goddess wittingly responded.

            “It’ll be our aqueous Hell then, and besides, I want to play with the symbolism in your scales.”

            And so it was that the ironclad Minuteman, the kid with the rollerblades, some discarded sea shells, that kid’s dad, and I all witnessed a young generic Westportian walk entranced into the shivering Atlantic Ocean like one of Odysseus’ crew captivated by the song of the Pied Piper; or maybe he was just high (or “inebriated” according to the papers).  Maybe he just had a problem that could only be solved after going to the Ben and Jerry’s on main street, ordering a large “Orange and Cream” ice cream (because his mom liked it), and throwing himself into it until he discovered the orange peels that gave up their innocence in order to please the endorphins coursing through his tongue. Maybe he just needed to blanket himself in beach sand even though it was forecasted to snow later; but then again he could still taste the spoiled cream in his mouth, the cream that went into his lungs instead of his now-upset stomach grumbling about hot cocoa. He was hungry, sad, “inebriated,” sensitively desensitized, judged, abandoned, discovered, betrayed, injured, broody, melancholic, redundant, dragged on, prosaic, poetic, artistic, redundant, chaste, resentful, confused, enlightened, and glad to finally see something open up to him that wasn’t broken up into stanzas.

         "But children come and go with hearts crafted by Michelangelo," sang the Westport waters contently as she savored the boy's creamy citron lungs. In retrospect, I should have applauded, or cried, whichever seems more appropriate.

A Response to a Long-Overdue Letter

Dear Justin,

You would probably write

something along the lines of,

“My thoughts were meant for couplets,

Not these iron circlets and moldy

Toilet seats.” My clothes reek of myrrh and syringes

And you’re an

Asshole.

I mean, who the fuck

Writes, “I can’t say anything about the breeze that wanders

like some invisible spirit beckoning me to play.” I may be

The convict,

but who does society truly

Value more?

The convict or the poet?

And by the way,

I don’t remember what that

Cross-dresser’s name was

as I was too busy noticing

How much he resembled

You in leopard pants and Uggs,

Strutting like they were stilettos.

Anyway, give my warmest regards

To Mom.

I love her very much.

         -   Julian

P.S. By the way Shakespeare, get the fuck out of my room.

I Write a Long-Overdue Letter

Dear Julian,

Your room still smells of prison. Your clothes are still lying around, with cigarette pock-marks scarring their youthful features. I still have one of your sweaters, the one with the cut-out smiley face on the right sleeve. The left sleeve looks gloomy in comparison. I probably shouldn’t mention anything regarding freedom, so I guess I can’t say anything about the breeze that wanders like some invisible spirit beckoning me to play outside or the weather that changes like one of those cross-dressing prostitutes you and I met after getting lost in London. I think one of them was called Jen, or John, I can’t remember. Don’t ask me why I’m in your room right now. Maybe it was the siren I heard outside of the mall the other day, or dad’s glistening gold watch that reminded mom of a missing handcuff. She quickly told dad to cover up the naked time piece.

Mom cries now every time she sees baby powder at the store. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the whiteness, or maybe it’s just the powder. I’m guessing it’s because it kind of drips through your fingers, like satin, or the tearful clichés I’m trying to hold back because frankly, I’m fucking pissed like a urinal cake. When you come back, instead of smelling like hibiscus blossoms, or even ivory, you’ll come back reeking of damp confinement and sun flowers in October. I’m picturing you coming back looking like the letter ‘Z’ and being reminded of the line, “I dream of hospital beds / and you lying / in one.”

I hope you aren’t too upset with me for not visiting you, but I didn’t want to be reminded of Jen (or John) and have mom tell me to explain the politics in my poetry to kill time.

Your Fraternal Foe,

Justin

A Tragedy In One Act (A haibun)

I woke up from a nap thinking about in medias res. It was 7:30 pm on a Tuesday and my room was sweltering with something in between radiation and sleep deprivation. My skin felt like the outer layer of garlic and my breath reeked of rotten banana peels. My left eye was swollen, possibly because I dreamt of the inclusion of the letter ‘T’ in the word “dream,” and I never have a good reaction when it comes to grammar. Anyway, so I wake up thinking about what happens to mornings when faced with the letter ‘U’, and seeing the spit stains on my pillow case resembling something of a twisted cloud of enzymes, salts, DNA, bacteria, and whatever it is that makes my breath taste like my toothbrush whenever I forget to douse it with Purell, I terrifyingly screamed hoping to scare off the possible mouth ulcer forming on the inside of my right cheek. I fell back to sleep briefly, as I sometimes do after being faced with long journeys to Oku and having to act serious in front of my dinner plate. I look at my open closet door and ask,

“Why is it chilly

For a window to think of

Existentialism?”

Suddenly a middle-aged fist starts banging on my door followed by the onslaught of, 
“Justin, wake up you lazy ass! You better not have fallen asleep at the computer again.”

“Is it wrong to sleep

When the eyes are heavy with

Syllables and mulch?” I responded.

            “21 years later, and I still regret teaching you metaphor. Anyway, get your ass out of bed. It’s dinner time and I made a nice ambrosia casserole, i.e. turkey and cucumber sandwiches with a fresh canned cheese garnish,” replied the fist.

Sometimes I wonder if Venus really is my mother, or just another stage name. 

Arizona

I dream of desert mounds, cacti, and pomegranates

Where I snore in hollow mauve orchestra pits

And wiggle in cool sand sheets

I dream of coyotes, snakes, and spiders that may kill me in my sleep.

I snore in hallow mauve orchestra pits

With eyes shut, I see gold-laced clay rooftops dancing just for me

I dream of coyotes, snakes, and spiders that may kill me in my sleep

The prickly cactus deity watches over me.

With eyes shut, I see gold-laced clay rooftops dancing just for me

The sun bakes nectared promises to lure my dry palette

The prickly cactus deity watches over me

Scarabs perform a dance to a Navajo’s appeal to blue.

The sun bakes nectared promises to lure my dry palette

My skin sings of pomegranates and rubied citrus flesh

Scarabs perform an interpretive dance to a Navajo’s appeal to blue

A heckling diamondback displays his scaly cicada rain stick.

My skin sings of pomegranate spectrums and lemoned flesh

My feet savor the taste of freshly caught desert sand fish

A diamondback displays his scaly cicada rain stick

Unknowingly wooing the desert with scales, fangs, and sensitivity.

My feet lament over the forgotten taste of sun-lathered sand-koi

A cactus pines for green garnished with daybreak

“Does wooing the desert require more than scales, fangs, and sensitivity?”

I write her a poem about urban Stop signs and laundromats.

A cactus pines for shades of vegetation and chilled starlight

A rock seeks some shade beneath a fruitful carcass

I read the desert my urban poem about stop signs and laundromats

Shedding her veil of impassioned hummingbirds and blooming Saguaro flowers.

Upon the return of the long-departed thunderclouds that bellow like timpanis

I am roused by the crunching of store-bought pomegranate seeds

And the wind’s rant reeking against my window forgetting that

I dreamt of desert mounds, cacti, and pomegranates that watched me in my sleep.

Trinity* (Renku Collaboration)

1945

A boy sits and ponders as
A boil explodes

Radiation burns scarring
Soft faces and bloody skies

Patches of sun burnt
violet massage
the tainted air

Come! All you disbelievers
Praise in the name of science!

Splitting the atom
yields the thunderous applause
of our fearful land.

Explosion defines the earth.

Flames destroy its surface.

An odd cloud appears.
Somehow, I know I will die
Or count my blessings

Atomic, verdant crater
Melted into a glass bowl.

Thunder howls in pain

Screaming out thousands

of bullets in one voice

Men in masks stare at a girl
as she excretes destruction

Planet-cracking force
shakes the scales of Gaea's skin;
Tectonic thunder.

Fumes of reaping metal cling

To the planet’s scarred flesh

Numbers chant in sync.
The ritual melody
Adds tones of despair

Binary screaming heralds
the gallop of four horsemen

They helplessly trot

through sands splashing specks

of glistening ash

Shards of green glass and crystal
Bond; Earth’s radiant smile.                                   

Gaea smiles no more.
Blood spattered on melted sand
Countdown to sorrow.

Drowning in a Hennessy

intoxicated sun

John and Blanche made love,
And drank chilled rum and Cola while,
“Don’t Fence Me In” played.

The atom's atomic dance
in a throng of thrashing force

Destruction is the

Weapon that fizzes

Fumes furiously

My skin tells me that it’s time.
One day this is how we'll die.

Festered barnacles
of irradiated flesh
pockmark her children.

Leaving them exposed to the

Poisons filling into their land

“Please take the children!”
Cries the father, as the lumps
Begin to surface.

Dark splotches on milk white skin
Sunspots mark the dusk of man.

Tarnished land feeds on

memorable sunken souls

lost in gloom disguise

Solvents now find themselves in
A realm without alchemy

Lead and Mercury,
Archaic elements now
Obsolete witchcraft.

Divine power unraveled
Behind masked western science

Director Kenneth Bainbridge,
Said, “Now we’re all dead”
To Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer said, “Now I
Am Death, destroyer of worlds.”

And so the sky said,
“Bienvenue!” to the newest
Fungal Phoenix.

God missed the divine rainbow,
Trinity’s "bulbous fireball."

White sands melted green
Glass grows molten in the glow
of nuclear lamps

Light burns the atmosphere

illuminating radiance

Manhattan, borough
many boroughs into one
Secrets in shadow

A breathe of dusk protects

the camouflaged agenda

The Atomic Age
heralds the dawn in the shade
of a mushroom cloud

Pieces and particles prance

In the public’s pupils

Gotta get 'Gadget'
Secret names for omega
Hark! The end of days.

Twisted conclusion of a

demolished beginning

There goes the blue-sky
atmospheric deletion
or complete dud.

Red smoked gray’s beauty

as the mountains just watched

Flawless disturbances

abandon civil

beings in wreckage

Raising blemished questions

of broken moralities

The Allied gamblers
Toy with the apocalypse
The horseman called war

War it was. Shock waves rippling

Riffles through distant echoes

Verdant glass a scar
forever on the white sand
the new age cometh

An Impatient generation

yearns for new science to come.


* Note: This poem is about the July 16, 1945 Trinity nuclear test. This test resulted in creating the world's first atomic bomb.

Frosted Pearls and a Ginger Setting (Collaboration With Danielle Bond)

Sometimes I wonder

If her body traps sunlight,

Or rose cadences.

Who thinks of ginger at night,

Or the smell of indigo?

Do stars stop to think?

Or am I alone in thought

Over sunlit dreams?

Who whispers songs to pear juice,

But craves the taste of warm milk?

A baby’s weaned tongue

Wrote a haiku doused with flames,

As the milk just watched.

A couple stares at children.

The woman bears a secret.

Does anyone know

Where the snow in moonlight falls?

“Over the blankets.”

Silk sheets should summon courage,

Dust sparkles more than jewels.

Frogs bury secrets,

Spiders scare adolescents,

May cherry blossomed.

She seeks closure through citrus,

As the man stares at rose buds.

Hair sings in the rain.

Skin softens through silk.

Lips linger with lust.

A breeze freezes whispered thoughts

Spoken in angry silence.

Can dusk be a quilt

To a memory?

Forgotten in fabrics.

Birds only fly south when the north

Has transformed their world into ice.

Glossy vision of

Frosted pearls dancing

Onto dark pavement.

Sweet tastes pleasure the tongue, tease

The stomach and torment the soul.

Shadows speak softly

To selected strangers

And slivers of the sky.

The man who sees through black stone

Can read the minds of white demons.

The earth paints people

Onto its surface, weaves

Footprints into its core.

*This poem was written in the Renku form (18 alternating links consisting of a 5/7/5 stanza followed by a 7/7 stanza).

I Tried Writing You A Poem, But I Got Distracted By The Paths of Your Legs

I wanted to write you a poem,

but instead, I couldn’t help but dream of your legs.

All the while being reminded of long lists, and shapely stars, silky sunsets and the rising ripple of our bed sheets.

Your legs made me smile, but as my eyes ventured onwards,

I lost my breath.

In your groin was placed a fertile crescent and the cool warmth carried by the sea.

It was there that I discovered the fusion of pinks and reds your blood would paint beneath your cheeks as its canvas.

Your breasts evoked memories of fruit bowls and children peeking their heads over walls,

While tides and sea levels rose in my mouth to prep my practiced lips.

I stopped to think of how I wanted to write you a poem,

but then I realized that my love for you
is beyond sensuous similes and sultry sentences.

So instead I prayed my body knew the words
my metaphors couldn’t mold.

And after, we simply smiled

as I examined the rouge your blood painted beneath your seamless opal cheeks.