Poetry
untitled
(september 2011)
birdhouse
(october 2011)
Hush, restless heart.
Quiet down, reckless heart.
Still the flapping of your wild wings,
and rest a moment in my hand,
so I may tend your wounds with my grace and forgiveness.
For I know you have sinned,
and I know your desperation.
I know your rooms filled with longing,
and then your rooms filled with dust,
and especially I know
those brimming with Love and Sorrow.
But for now I’m interested in the rooms I don’t know at all,
those with locked doors and shuttered windows.
Invisible to everyone and to me,
they open as I sleep
and close up again when I awake.
So hush now, careless heart,
and be still -
I’m after
a lock
that turns.
the dance
(june 2011)
Tomorrow, when the guests have departed,
the balloons deflated,
and the champagne de-fizzed,
you will sit alone
and contemplate how the years zipped.
But tonight, tomorrow is just a figment,
and with my hand in your sunworn hand,
we twirl round and round,
and I hope that you see:
I’m yours now more than ever,
our eyes, thunderstorm mirrors,
and your heart?
I carry it in my heart.
early morning saturday
(september 2010)
I'm up on Saturday at 8 a.m.
It feels like never.
I am not in New York,
I am in some other place where people drive cars
And use radio dials, switching from lane to lane,
Parallel parking in front of their houses
And pressing buttons to lock their vehicles.
They actually use their phones as phones.
Last night someone tried to charge me $13 for a vodka
and I laughed in her face.
I'm snooty about being poor -
That's the only way to be about it.
I watched my friend dance on her own,
And a strange drunk man came up and wrapped his arms around her waist.
She slinked away and I remembered
That some men play games with women's bodies
Like boys with their marbles.
I stood, drinkless and motionless,
Remembering when I used to call this fun:
Standing in five-inch platform heels, wax in hair
And gloss on lips,
Feeling pretty and famous.
Now I just felt like an outcast,
And it was a long walk home,
And the balls of my feet felt like sandpaper soles.
We went into town this morning,
Bright and early in a red car,
The most gorgeous fall day
Blowing through rolled down windows,
Reminding me of the parts of my old self
I want to keep around forever.
we are all little boys and little girls
(december 2010)
1.
I had a discussion with a friend
over monitors
about Freemasons,
who is one and who isn’t.
I said I didn’t know what
the big deal was.
People always say artists sold their souls to the devil at a crossroads
to get the talent they have,
whatever talent might be.
He said,
who knows.
Instead,
maybe they sold their souls to God
in the back alleys of their minds.
Because eventually the road ends,
and it’s either death or nothing.
People start to believe things they said they’d never believe.
People curl into themselves under sweat-soaked bedsheets.
People tousle the clouds under their feet as they walk upon high,
on rooftops so gilded,
they strip soles of humanity.
People smoke cigarettes and flick ash into the fire.
2.
I have measured out my life with IM boxes.
I have cried onto my keyboard,
drawing myself into a cube with tears running a river through Qs, Rs and Ts.
I have confused names and old faces and
I have forgotten who I am.
I have imagined defenestration
and masturbation
and a different nation,
one run entirely by machines,
leaving people like me
to capacitate and then undo their demons,
all while in their pajamas
or maybe never getting dressed at all.
3.
I am a Freemason.
You are a Freemason
And you and you and him
and his yellow dog too.
It’s one of those things
we can never disprove so it may as well be true.
God is a Freemason.
4.
The fall is nearly as thrilling as the high,
and it’s a cheek turned to God.
Because eventually the road ends.
All the parts you thought made you
shut off at once.
The grinding halt reverberates off slick bricks,
the rooftop blown off.
You’re left barefoot and childless.
Loveless neon signs vibrate through whiskey glasses,
wooden stools steal your shirts,
people tell you things but you can’t remember.
You remember when you used to hope,
but the feeling is distant
like a city you read about in a book but never visited.
5.
I think you’re crazy maybe,
but worse yet I think you’re dead.
Every day is a memory of the next.
I have seen you beg for your soul,
stirring it around in a bucket of shit,
over and over to the tune of a harp
that’s strung with the hairs of the people you loved
who didn’t love you back.
6.
At the end of the road,
there’s a sign.
It is the same in all languages, at all times,
and it reads:
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
7.
I live for a newspaper pressed into seedy cement on the street in Harlem.
I live for nights spent with strangers on SoHo benches.
I live for my mother, who said you can always come home!
I live for saltwater seeping into my skin as I step onto the floor of silent seas.
I live for must, and do, and will, but never should.
I live for the guiding light of glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceilings of our skulls.
I live for muzzles butting mirrors and stretching to their ends.
I live for a saxophone in a subway station squealing syncopated sadness.
I live for reflections in rocking cars, breath beating upon bombs planted in our bellies.
I live for my disembodied spine dancing in the dark to an invisible drum.
I live for church organs and choirs and stained glass thrown across my chest, broken.
I live for visions and revisions and reversing my decisions.
I live for the smell of your incense, your insensitive hands throwing me against the wall.
I live for the fucking Freemasons.
And I live for myself,
The only person who will never leave me,
Because I won’t let her.
The law of their God is in their hearts.
beautiful no-sun
(april 2011)
I wish it were
r
a
i
n
i
n
g
and that I could burrow
where you couldn’t see me
and I couldn’t see you
until my heart stopped beating
and my stomach collapsed
and my brainstorm short/circuited
like number five
(but)
i am alive
i am alive
i am alive
and the sun will rise and i
e
s
i
r
with it.
(september 2011)
birdhouse
(october 2011)
Hush, restless heart.
Quiet down, reckless heart.
Still the flapping of your wild wings,
and rest a moment in my hand,
so I may tend your wounds with my grace and forgiveness.
For I know you have sinned,
and I know your desperation.
I know your rooms filled with longing,
and then your rooms filled with dust,
and especially I know
those brimming with Love and Sorrow.
But for now I’m interested in the rooms I don’t know at all,
those with locked doors and shuttered windows.
Invisible to everyone and to me,
they open as I sleep
and close up again when I awake.
So hush now, careless heart,
and be still -
I’m after
a lock
that turns.
the dance
(june 2011)
Tomorrow, when the guests have departed,
the balloons deflated,
and the champagne de-fizzed,
you will sit alone
and contemplate how the years zipped.
But tonight, tomorrow is just a figment,
and with my hand in your sunworn hand,
we twirl round and round,
and I hope that you see:
I’m yours now more than ever,
our eyes, thunderstorm mirrors,
and your heart?
I carry it in my heart.
early morning saturday
(september 2010)
I'm up on Saturday at 8 a.m.
It feels like never.
I am not in New York,
I am in some other place where people drive cars
And use radio dials, switching from lane to lane,
Parallel parking in front of their houses
And pressing buttons to lock their vehicles.
They actually use their phones as phones.
Last night someone tried to charge me $13 for a vodka
and I laughed in her face.
I'm snooty about being poor -
That's the only way to be about it.
I watched my friend dance on her own,
And a strange drunk man came up and wrapped his arms around her waist.
She slinked away and I remembered
That some men play games with women's bodies
Like boys with their marbles.
I stood, drinkless and motionless,
Remembering when I used to call this fun:
Standing in five-inch platform heels, wax in hair
And gloss on lips,
Feeling pretty and famous.
Now I just felt like an outcast,
And it was a long walk home,
And the balls of my feet felt like sandpaper soles.
We went into town this morning,
Bright and early in a red car,
The most gorgeous fall day
Blowing through rolled down windows,
Reminding me of the parts of my old self
I want to keep around forever.
we are all little boys and little girls
(december 2010)
1.
I had a discussion with a friend
over monitors
about Freemasons,
who is one and who isn’t.
I said I didn’t know what
the big deal was.
People always say artists sold their souls to the devil at a crossroads
to get the talent they have,
whatever talent might be.
He said,
who knows.
Instead,
maybe they sold their souls to God
in the back alleys of their minds.
Because eventually the road ends,
and it’s either death or nothing.
People start to believe things they said they’d never believe.
People curl into themselves under sweat-soaked bedsheets.
People tousle the clouds under their feet as they walk upon high,
on rooftops so gilded,
they strip soles of humanity.
People smoke cigarettes and flick ash into the fire.
2.
I have measured out my life with IM boxes.
I have cried onto my keyboard,
drawing myself into a cube with tears running a river through Qs, Rs and Ts.
I have confused names and old faces and
I have forgotten who I am.
I have imagined defenestration
and masturbation
and a different nation,
one run entirely by machines,
leaving people like me
to capacitate and then undo their demons,
all while in their pajamas
or maybe never getting dressed at all.
3.
I am a Freemason.
You are a Freemason
And you and you and him
and his yellow dog too.
It’s one of those things
we can never disprove so it may as well be true.
God is a Freemason.
4.
The fall is nearly as thrilling as the high,
and it’s a cheek turned to God.
Because eventually the road ends.
All the parts you thought made you
shut off at once.
The grinding halt reverberates off slick bricks,
the rooftop blown off.
You’re left barefoot and childless.
Loveless neon signs vibrate through whiskey glasses,
wooden stools steal your shirts,
people tell you things but you can’t remember.
You remember when you used to hope,
but the feeling is distant
like a city you read about in a book but never visited.
5.
I think you’re crazy maybe,
but worse yet I think you’re dead.
Every day is a memory of the next.
I have seen you beg for your soul,
stirring it around in a bucket of shit,
over and over to the tune of a harp
that’s strung with the hairs of the people you loved
who didn’t love you back.
6.
At the end of the road,
there’s a sign.
It is the same in all languages, at all times,
and it reads:
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
7.
I live for a newspaper pressed into seedy cement on the street in Harlem.
I live for nights spent with strangers on SoHo benches.
I live for my mother, who said you can always come home!
I live for saltwater seeping into my skin as I step onto the floor of silent seas.
I live for must, and do, and will, but never should.
I live for the guiding light of glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceilings of our skulls.
I live for muzzles butting mirrors and stretching to their ends.
I live for a saxophone in a subway station squealing syncopated sadness.
I live for reflections in rocking cars, breath beating upon bombs planted in our bellies.
I live for my disembodied spine dancing in the dark to an invisible drum.
I live for church organs and choirs and stained glass thrown across my chest, broken.
I live for visions and revisions and reversing my decisions.
I live for the smell of your incense, your insensitive hands throwing me against the wall.
I live for the fucking Freemasons.
And I live for myself,
The only person who will never leave me,
Because I won’t let her.
The law of their God is in their hearts.
beautiful no-sun
(april 2011)
I wish it were
r
a
i
n
i
n
g
and that I could burrow
where you couldn’t see me
and I couldn’t see you
until my heart stopped beating
and my stomach collapsed
and my brainstorm short/circuited
like number five
(but)
i am alive
i am alive
i am alive
and the sun will rise and i
e
s
i
r
with it.