words spoken and sung on the First Friday of 2013

Week 10

You said to never leave a cold glass un-coastered,
and this whiskey condensation's sure to leave a mark.

A reminder of promises' suicide.

Your crying eyes called for retraction

And I always wanted to be a runaway

so I ran till you couldn't hear the angels in my voice no more.

Cross country hitch-lust hike affair.

Touched a screw as I passed through all the state lines,

like we used to. 

In Topeka I made friends with a mailman. 

His name was Gary, 

Told me his daughter looked just like me.

That he hadn't heard from her in years.

In Terre Haute I saw your neck.

Someone else was wearing it.

And they didn't have it on right.

I bought forever stamps at the last post office
before passing through Warsaw, 

Because I made you something
And thought you out to have it
But before I could fold the coffee filter hearts into the snow pattern

I threw up.

So I mailed you that instead.

...

Week 11

The night you first saw me

you held my face.

We were whole. We were high. We were new.

Come over. 

 The night stopped. 

I've made a mistake.

It's probable that i will drown. 

Come over, 

the water's dark,

I've got everything lit.

The wax, it slowly drips down. 

I'm waist deep in Om's Lake

with her Indiana moon.
By the pontoon.

The grey suit 

I've spent nights
watching you shift shapes,
delving deep into the globe of your face
recalculating vocal variances.

You're ancestors must have tamed something wild,
for when the fur of your face comes close
it holds a growl.  

I want your mouth around my neck.
Carry me to your den. 
make me one of you. 

Land body-kisses that dip teeth to taste
one single birthmark hip.
Can't hardly see it with this lighting.
Hand sockets full of lush.
        ...
The grey suit you folded last shifted slightly during landing.

It fits better now.
Think of me when your arms go through it.
Play your heart out with a beggar. 

Let a gypsy read your palm.
And on your first cobbled night in Barcelona
when you see the red dress,
carry only spoken water.
Truth in a clear tenor promise. 

A softened drum.
Kindess to hush the wild hearts.

A cup of steam
for which the sailor's wife will take her tea.

--


there is a piece of you

that wont go away

cuz i wont let it.

i write your name

in my sleep

so i wont forget it.

take away the the air that you displace.

Watch me paint a wall a thousand colors 

every coat i try to trace the way it felt to wear your clothes.

lay underneath your breath.

to wash you.

But There was space

inside our bodies, a hollow trap.

Felt thick and brittle, the leaves of Fall--

a shadowed lung would pull, 

I'd turn and hug the wall.

I hoped in both my hands

up to the ceiling like a prayer.

through the crickets, came a thought

that to this morning makes me cry.

I know you heard it too.

"it can't last forever

this syrup love.

the way i meld 

to only her surrender and give

in."

"No, it can't last forever

this simple truth.

The way he carries me to dream.

A wooden raft soaked up in sun." 

___________

The stars from here still look the same

I Raced the dawn to write your name.

To feel the breath of 21

float down a river soaked in sun

Remember speaking somehow new

I inhale love

and breathe out you.

Why they shut my circus down

They said I was too touchy feely with the cheetahs

They didn’t know I used to be one

Fast, skinny, hungry for grass

For chalk and four-square

For my brothers before they started drinking

For my mother, before she stopped

Before the missionaries dunked her

Made her wear a jumpsuit

All of a sudden we felt bad for wanting coffee

They shut my circus down, it’s November’s fault.

The month her eyes crusted up so thick

Was bad news for the balloon people

She couldn’t eat, nerve wracked she felt milked,

Hungover, invaded.

She got lost in memories of sixth grade kickball

Of just wanting to be picked first

To make the team

To fill out her halter-tops, go on all the dates.

But days can taste like glass if you yell through them hard enough,

And she learned quick that she was good at yelling.

She was taught that brittle bones make for a good story,

And that bleeding fast like pennies is a source for strength.

So she shouted in apartment bathrooms 

Got tangled up with one too many brown haired boys 

who broke her body one lash at a time.

Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Gather Round!

Come see the famous fondler of the the spotted cats!

Come see the most bendy backed asians yet!

Come see The Helium Family Singers, they'll make you a balloon animal while high pitch belting!

And through this curtain we have the woman pregnant with claws

Tears caking up her face with lips, thin, like dead leaves!

It wasn’t a lucrative sideshow.

Made the collage boys hurl rape confessions up in the trash

And mothers like mine were shocked and appalled.

She went alone on complaints that our decline was indeed her fault.

She was wearing stick on earrings

Shivering under the stethoscope,

Her eyes black with questions driving themselves into trees

It was then she thought to herself, 

How cold do I have to be to disappear?

 .

When the clot fell from inside her shallow

The big top collapsed 

Into the ground, a miscarried child.

The contortionists took it the worst

And started eating again.
The balloons ran, like they always do
into the atmosphere bursting like the squeels of
sixth grade girls running from base to base
in search of a safe home.

November was left clinking her fork to chicken bones

Staring blankly and full

Of harvest, gratitude, emptiness.

Sick from all her good luck.

The cats and I made it out, we fled

Jumped a train and headed lost.

Past all the men with flannel houses

Past all the door knockers, and turtlenecks.
Stopping only for the kids skateboarding on their stomachs,
Fast skinny cheetahs.
We waited at the bottom for them to race down the hills that only seemed
big to them then.

.

on going back

..

I was searching for the chop of yellow hair,

the bounce,

the eyes that used to burn diamonds.

I felt like an actor.

Furrowed and desert dry

pulling for the words, hands in the dark.

My frame got horse

from all the wringing back crescents.

I felt Apology pinch my lips small,

Guilt caught the sweat and put it all back

into the cold places.

Were we underwater?

Was that why I was holding my breath? 

Lars Bolt

Even your temples are toned.

You must moisturize like a mother

Because I can’t find forty seven anywhere,

Except for maybe this midlife crisis car

Which I am dying to fill up with Furbies

Because those are the only things more outrageous

Than these character head shots you’re showing me.   

Bare chest. Hard hat.  Matte finish.

And you are doing it! Making a living. Smarming the intern into a date.

Once the light turns green I’m going to plummet you with complements

Watch you bat and gnash them with those pearly white bones.

…

Lars.  He swivels his brag into the bar stool.

He is elbow deep in status and I’m regretting all this lip gloss.

Two glasses in, I finally just tell him,

Buy bigger pants.

Your thighs are googling me.

And cool it with this small of the back business.

You know what I’m talking about.

     Ladies, you know what I’m talking about.

Where they arch you up to borrow your balance?

There’s no way out. 

You’re Souffléd.

…

We may have had a mirage of hope, Larz and me.

When he glowed up a smoke, I did feel a draw

As though I knew I would want to tune in next week.

His deep thumb ashed, and pulled focus down

Sunset Cement, to my Ohio feet, sandaled.

That’s when then numbers came

Like bucketed fish

Wading in the limited oxygen of someone else's catch.  

.