Consequences of Pavement

If I could comprehend the complexities of the intangible
I would have peers like Flintstone vitamins
and one proud exhale after another.
I have to drink evil to forget my heart,
but in moments of expected reciprocity
I find myself an insert-
like the occupant of a seat for just one flight.
If only the sky was blue above beautiful things
and cold and dark above the despicable.
Utilitarians and Kantians could call a truce
and Heathens would bundle above the smoking gutters
uninterrupted by tilting heads
who'd warm in blue sweaters and sip tea indoors.

there are a billion hells on the wet pavement,
hot and raining from the multitude of lazy seething eyes
stuck on something sad and perfect above them.
How much does the righteous laugh at the errors,
from their cloud carriages and billowy robes?
When the crowds in funny hats stumble into glass
and lose bits of intangible wholeness with each tripping blow.

There's so much swaying taking place
in the speed of that popular road.
I forget which way is east or west,
and the digression of that knowledge is ironically
so healthy.
Irony is a devious shadow,
I imagine it behind me in a hood
making obscene silent gestures
noticed only when moments
are rewound in my head.
Like, oh there, smirking,
holding red flares,
lighting the path behind me on fire,
but I become distracted by the speed of my feet forward
and the placement of puddles
and how great it is to splash mud on my calves.


I close my eyes and know the shade of gray on that sharp corner
and the dark barren trees lining the walk,
the branches like legs of acrobats mid flip.
I liked to believe there was no other image to mentally reside,
but the monsoons and the puke in the car
and the low gray blankets
and the blurry wind shields
from the unnatural steel placed by the water
would have killed me, I'm sure.

Irony is a Machiavellian
parading though Malta, poisoning all in a rampage
while the crowd watches noting the moments
they could have all been spared.
hiding behind the street lamps and allies,
industry rewound shows him burning ominously
while the steel hands spread higher and wider
like the accumulation of ash by Vesuvius.

Choose Your Own Puddle to Drown In

In your own eyes under the dim bulbs,
swimming in music that makes you feel infallible,
it is loud and induces movements
you wouldn't do in front of your dad.
he'd really hear you,
so you wouldn't speak either.
There are no birds near the paneled condos.
I miss the recorded screams on the platform,
scaring the pigeons away.
I told you the word today was 'pablum',
but you do not register details near the vision of you.
you said, 'hmm', fixing your hair.

I hid behind my milk,
but the elemental boy still saw.
I guess we can share a conversation,
but I know I'll think you are boring,
and you'll think that I am mean.
Mean?
Why?
Because he called me 'sport'
Or said 'goose egg', holding his fingers in a circle
or asks me how simple things are 'going', like walking.
'that a girl' he said,
and I admitted it wasn't funny.
How can I converse about your desires that make me cringe?
the voice inside sounds less and less like myself
and more like a powerful stranger.
it makes the message seem natural,
like rain
on that day when the heat was unfelt-
it poured from the hot clear sky.
I ran
and each block further,
blurry hell lingered on the pavement
and I felt warm tar down my throat.

little shirtless Asians jumped off the rocks
into the waves.
caution tape lined the melting slide.
he, who would never be too optimistic,
who would never make me puke
with one wrenching word,
came that night,
and everyone saw he would never say 'sport'
or 'kid'
or 'how's the bar treating you?'
like an inherit notion he lacks all the repugnant phrases.
because his name's not "Ken" or "Mark", perhaps.
in the room, the floor was black,
you said my dress was filthy
and we laughed
and we couldn't resist the awareness of honesty
or the three hours and one night
more clear than a whole year.
It's easy to smother though.


and just the way I'm so far beneath the surface tonight,
diving into black oceans of reef and fish,
I can hear the covered sounds above the skim-
of the tv or the phone..
the papers on my desk I need to know.
I'm scuba diving when I write.
You are the same when you see yourself,
when you watch your face and back,
lost in your movements and skin-
but both pursuits are done in vain,
under the layers of coral reef
with muzzled clarity like boats-
when selfish does not actually offend,
how should I persist to roll my eyes?

Intoxicated

On mornings when my brain shrinks,
I simulate a falling leaf when I walk.
My sweat smells like pomegranate
in the hall where I can feel my favorite taste.
In the fort, he had it on his lips
and it turned my sternum into alka seltzer.
'Transmogrification'- my favorite word for change-
wins when the words together are personified,
but 'inevitable' is most congenial,
because it's naked.

Jane Awake --Frank O'hara

The opals hiding your lids as you sleep, as you ride ponies mysteriously, spring to bloom like the blue flowers of autumn each nine o'clock. And curls tumble languorously towards the yawning rubber band, tan, your hand pressing all that riotous black sleep into the quiet form of daylight and its sunny disregard for the luminous volutions, oh! and the budding waltzes we swoop through in nights. Before dawn you roar with your eyes shut, unsmiling, your volcanic flesh hides everything from the watchman, and the tendrils of dreams strangle policemen running by too slowly to escape you, the racing vertiginous waves of your murmuring need. But he is day's guardian saint that policeman, and leaning from your open window you ask him what to dress to wear and to comb your hair modestly, for that is now your mode. Only by chance tripping on stairs do you repeat the dance, and then, in the perfect variety of subdued, impeccably disguised, white black pink blue saffron and golden ambiance, do we find the nightly savage, in a trance.

Calm Down

It is a warm blue,
relative to black,
by eyes towards the inept sidewalk.
Among the ugliest of pavement,
and the moment of actual capture-
the heavy white beauty on the branches
is like stillness on the twenty-sixth,
when the wooden church doors exhale,
wind from heaters nears Dystopia,
like God watching his breath turn cold.

When Jesus puts away his license,
The arms, loose from ham
expended by knives,
The fingers like teeth through plastic,

will retire tonight

behind shampooed hair by the fire.
By Monday, the nailed teeth will wake
and drag the strands out, like children in shops
throwing fits for Change,
the knuckle knees fall at the temples.

Oily faces sit in a circle measuring time.
You poor things will go no where.
in The City of Drawers
she's hollow beneath the black coat and glasses,
pushing her hand out like a need from the inside,
climbing the rope with every vein.
She speaks and the syllables slow down, becoming her,
the fat on her belly, the blonde dye,
the Cocoa pebbles in her brain.


Today is the day, anxious girl, to remember the way
light dies behind clouds,
diminishing in tiers with no stories to deflect the gold descent,
like fallen buildings with batted eyes,
or the sound of God swallowing breath in the darkness.

Sestina: The Festival

I

At the cherry baptism- elephant ears dipped in oil
and Save Your Soul picketers cross Gucci shades at Cool Waves.
A girl with four bright eyes plays the flute in the road for coins-
and the tilta-whirl, fun house, and Ferris Wheel glass the bay.
Disciples from ant holes magnet the bug-zapping cherries-
where you flew too, and the bright burned your chin on the paved road.

II

and you spit cherry pits in the river from the bridge on Cass Road,
but fell short to an Egg with a turkey leg deep fried in oil
so you sulked in the soda shop, your red visor like a dangling cherry.
"Cherry salsa, cherry soda, cherry chocolate or pie?" says the salesman and waves.
You reconciled red sins and crowds repelled from the bay,
from the red wash, your rumble stomach and breath, alone you skipped coins.

III

You rode the penny ponies at Meijer til' you ran out of coins,
And by the wild hills with brick eyes you passed Florida to Indiana plates on the road
and whistled above creeping hymns and beeps from the shopping mall to the bay
where the beach bodies Kruger-link in the sand and roast like Hawaii pigs in oil-
your wrists are hot stilts and on plush boats leather skins dance- their tummies make waves.
Stilts sizzle, your dropped skull guns the blue blanket sky- stitched clouds looks like cotton cherries.

IV

You follow the visor flock to the floats, the red trumpets tromp and jag- promenade of cherries.
Red backs shadow penny wishes- grandpa said 'wish in one hand' so you scoop the coins-
beyond the tots, the fold-able chairs- the Queen, with a crown of ripe fruit- cups a slooow wave.
Karate club, veterans, high school bands and bops on the cherriot slide the road-
awwed- you bury between two beatered boys, whos bis and tris bubble in oil,
SPF splotches your shirt- one brow bows and hollow pebbles vaunt the bay.

V

Like red quacking bills- the visors flock to the shore- the open orange mouth eats the bay.
Bills spread blankets over the sand, over the bumps and lumps- pits of eaten cherries.
In dim light florescents spread from ultraviolet puffs of smoke, like water and oil.
Jeaned tweens 'woo!' as fired lights scream the sky- the billed eyes gloss like multicolored coins.
Red white streams trickle down rear view mirros of west bound Wranglers on the road-
and the coined eyes and the red bills watch the colored sparks drown in the waves.

VI

Then the babysitters and the under agers- haunting ghosts yawn in waves-
pendulum eyes fold the red piped lights and Beatled notes bounce off the bay.
Lazy-eye Bill buys a cherry pint, and you step sip spill with kaleidoscopes in the road.
3 a.m big belt badge says "cleeeear out", a tooth pick prying his pearl bed of cherries-
Lazy-eye swings a fist- you jack in the box- the band stops, and the gutters tink from kicked coins.
The streets strangled, cherry pint hot on your breath- you pray on a stoop, 'damn splotch of oil.'

ENVOI

The ROAD pillows your brain barefoot on the bay- Beatitudes inked in the WAVES, and in that blessed parable the lame gives all her COINS... you carefully crucifix the OIL tightrope-- and tilted mirrors gasconade. Bungee ropes below reach leather coffins filled with CHERRIES.