Did she suck on your yellow?
Wrap her tongue around mango sherbet skin
As if it were already summer?
Let juices flood canyons of her chin
and wipe her mouth with the leaves of your rose bush?
Talk about tasti d-lite

I wonder if they can hear me listening
Glass cup against these parchment paper thin walls
Breathing in silence.
It's past midnight
And they're arguing again.
I don't care if it's none of my business

She Does, "I Do" Not

    It was final with the "I Do". My mother was married. Pawned our relationship for a platinum band. Ten years of cuddling through nightmares was now packed up in the linen closet with the old sheets. The train of her dress ran the length of both the groom’s legs stacked one on the other. The only uniformity amongst the soon to be dead flowers, and the unrecognizable faces I will call family, is her smile. Everything was silent as the moment came for us to take our first steps as a family. I would not budge. But the light blow on my back forced me to the next room.
    Everybody rose and pushed their way through the double ivory-wood doors and gather like a pool of water in the lobby. The enormous sound of their presence rolled like thunder off the walls and struck me like lightening. Everyone was joyous but me. I stood there and wondered if anyone would bother to hear my silence, my stillness. Notice that I cannot go forward into a life with the tombstone of my mother and I buried in the backyard.
    The room quieted to a low roar. The clicks of heel colliding with the marble floor lessened. Unaware they were trying to get my attention, I stared down shamelessly down at the man who would lay his head on my side o the bed. The rhythmical tapping on champagne glasses flew through the room averting all the glossy eyes to the balcony. I stumbled backwards against the wall. Slid down till I was resting on my buttocks with my hands cradling my knees. Feelings of perpetual loss made the good memories vague, and commissioned hatred for those to come. Still, I felt as unloved as she once did when he, my father, left her.
    A bronze colored woman stood beside me looking disgustingly hopeful. Not so much as a regard for me. I notice for the first time that I was not her only pride and joy. The people filed out, one by one, like ants. Spying on the food that would soon make its way to the table. My mom grabbed my hand with an excited touch. Beckoned me to join her at the table for the wedding party. I reluctantly declined. She turned away without a care leaving me lonesome at the end of the dingy train. Took her smile with her. I resume the fetal position with everything curled up and tucked into the black of my eyelids. It was her day, but I remember when.

A Lover's Quarrel

We relate like strangers in love
I greet you with no words
Just a smile and a stare
Laying entranced in each other's gaze
You show me life in pictures

But too often I get lost in the black of my eyelids
Wandering in worlds all my own as you sit idle in the living room
You overheat and become turned off at the thought of me
As I peek from behind my eyelids I can simply hope that we meet again tomorrow

Now you complain that we sit too far from each other
I am too distracted by other people
The connection was lost
So you have scheduled our time in blocks
Making me wait on your hand and foot

I will admit I've become a fiend for you
Like any fool in love
I wanted that day where we spend 25 hours exploring each other

I bring you upstairs.
Undress you.
Press you flesh up against the wall and tie you there
Leave you with only your black skin
I can resist you no longer
I fiddle with your cable box to turn you on
But there is no reaction until I start pressing the button on your big black remote
You let out a big sigh, filled with static
Compose yourself just enough to tell me I was never equipped to handle you with care.

For Grandma Britt

I went to say goodbye
But they'd already plucked you from this fish bowl
A world of faulty blues not dark enough for our deepest sorrows
Still I search for you among the sea of black dresses and charcoal suits

Refusing to get dressed up for this occasion
I sit in the first pew
Looking everything but Sunday's best
And Shameless
My face void of any feeling
Evidence of my emotions lay on my lap in the form of chipped [nail] polish and bitten off fingernails
The eagerness of my right foot to strike the floor as quick and as often it can manage

Blood runs with a vengeance through my veins
My heart has planned an escape through my ribcage
So they battle
And these eyes of mine…
Prance aimlessly along the stained glass
Occasionally stopping to gaze upon a damp face or a glassy eye
Refusing to recognize the internal struggle
I Feel Nothing

The bible said you'd be at the left hand of God
So I have perched myself on his shoulder
Preying-
…To find you. Hopefully I can capture you and bring you back.
God whispers in my ear to "Let Go My Child"
As Jesus is tugging at my foot
Reminding me that I have not been through the wilderness
And have not earned the right to rest on God
But isn't this hard enough?

Jesus is selfish
Calling on St. Peter to do his dirty work
He escorts me outside heaven's gates
Releases the trap door hidden in the clouds
As I bang with broken fists and a shattered soul

So don't think I'm down to earth
I'm bound to it



Everyone has trickled away like water
But I will run from you no more Grandma
I sit on the edge
Bare feet dangling between life and death
Staring into the hole your seed will be planted in
I am tempted to get in bed with you

To apologize
For all the absent I love You's
And unreturned phone calls
For time that I kept in my back pocket for another day
And those jeans just wound up in the hamper with all my other dirty laundry

Did I ever tell you that I'm proud to have your mustache?
Proud that your are intertwined in every curl
So people can see the greatness of you in me?

I went to bury a woman that day.
A woman that I may have hugged ten times if I'm lucky
But I have tattooed each encounter on my foot

And as I turn to leave I notice a gravestone next to yours with my name on it.
I smile
Cause that crypt doesn't have our blood running through it.
But I know you will always be beside me.

Just before sunset
The horizon lays heavy on your eyelids
Blood staining torah as you kneel
Gathering spirituality in the palm of your hands
Pressing them together
Praying "Not Daddy. Amen"
Wondering parent would tuck you in

Maybe tonight you will return to your seven-year-old vessel and rest a while
But he loved you…
Just enough not to be your worst nightmare
Growing eyelashes so long they shut out moonlight
But you still see the darkness of his soul
Hooded and cloaked
Feeble and weak behind the stars

Somehow mustering up enough strength to break you
His little clay creation
Shattering as you collide with the floor and the clamoring chaos tucked into your bed sheets
Since two years old you've been sleeping with disease calling his name from the back of your throat
And his moral scruples hang themselves on your uvula
While he stuffs his manhood into you voice box
Stealing silence

You speak hatred
Lust rots on your taste buds
Spewing sorrow as adults tremble in your presence
Praying you don't speak of life in the present tense

So I ask you Daddy
Are we mimicking that of the Rabbi?
The blood sucking circumcision of infancy?
The role reversal of your perverted mind made me Rabbi
You new born
And while you force-fed
My mother begged for my protection
But the family name shielded her attacks

Did you feel as close to God as I did?
Body distorted and mangled
Death seeping out of my pores
Almost like your heart
Or conscience
[You never did teach me the difference]
You were lonely
Lonely enough to find my desert
I was a mirage of a lover
And when you came to visit your sun burned my sands
The scorpion between your legs stung my womb
So now I choose not to conceive

Daddy do you believe that I still love you?
Because I laid quietly in the confines of your arms
Or since I kneeled at your feet volunteering my heart as a gravesite for your
Transgressions


Daddy, were you afraid like I was?
We walk hand in hand
Fear on our heels as a dismal shadow
Afraid someone would believe that you held me right
Or that I loved you wrong
Maybe we will be lucky enough for them to be indifferent

Dear morning,

 

Hoped you wouldn't come today

 

Dedication has never been so unwelcome

 

Yet you climb into my bed daily

 

Tickle senses to waken the soul

 

The sun tags along for laughs

 

Revenge for my affair with the moon

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