Category Archives: sonnet

FOLIAGE BEARS US ILL WILL

11 Saturday Apr 2015

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With your mad colors, your multiple inks;

henna could only dream of the dark hues

 

that you inhabit. I’ve had my pinks,

my oaks and walnuts, my skimpy sky blues

 

and wash-out reds. But burly green? “Green, green,

how I love you.” Green is the underworld

 

of all colors. It’s Hades, the obscene

door to Hell, it’s the Devil’s swamp, all swirled

 

with the bayou, rekindled with venom.

Green is death, it reminds us that foliage

 

bears us ill will. Do not blame green for your

woe. Green doesn’t care. It’s mad as Bedlam.

 

Heady as wormwood. Cryptic as language.

Wise as rolling hills. Foolish as liqueur.

GLITCH IN THE FOG

11 Saturday Apr 2015

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[[“besos fantasmas,” kisses from your favorite ghost, darling]]

Kiss like an omen. Kiss like its doomsday.

Cold bled lips. “Besos de un fantasma,”

 

as my lover, a Cádiz ghost, would say.

Swell. Her ozone. When I lick her karma

 

she melts. Love has no rules, which is why

I’m so bad at it. There should be rites, witch

 

craft, blood oaths; anything to defy

expectations. I ruined her death, glitch

 

in the fog, by calling her only half

way home. I’m a lousy fish. I keep her

 

asleep in my small eye. Palpitations;

she wakes, crawls out with a kiss and a laugh.

 

I love it all bad: bad teeth, bad posture,

bad rites and bad Spanish teenage demons.

STARTLED MOUTH

10 Friday Apr 2015

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At the gym the boy in the stall next to

me has, “bipolar,” “lovers,” “medicine”

 

tattooed here and there. I’ve got vindaloo,

rice and curry on my tongue. There’s cotton

 

balls in my pocket, band-aids, a thing – spork?

Something that’s neither fork nor spoon, and yet

 

I can’t throw away. I’ve got stains, all cork

and basque, under my eyes. With comb I wet

 

my hair, smear the steamy mirror. My tube

socks are pulled to my knees. My gym shorts tight.

 

Bazooka Joe gum in one cheek. My words

might mean shame or pride. Startled, the flashcube

 

on your camera goes off. I hate that light,

that shows me exposed, my startled mouth blurred.

WHAT WILL BE LEFT

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Let all the lovers be consumed into

intimacies. Let the interlopers

 

play with robbed muscles and slack sinew.

Let the sea give me all its pink corals,

 

betta fighting fish. I, too, am beta.

The slack sub-boy who has what hunger wants.

 

I, too, have played with a cardboard ouija;

listened to love’s whine, its nails-on-board haunts.

 

I’ve let the outlaws in, they’re so certain

that the fuck that they give is the right one.

 

There’s more plastic in the ocean than sharks;

that is what will be left to our children.

 

And words. And poems. About Hope’s garden.

And Yahweh’s pact. And Rumi’s love dog’s bark.

ONE WHO CRACKLES

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Right at the down stroke, with all your weight thrown

behind the blade, my arms raised to avert

 

the stroke, there’s a quick blur, pale like bone,

from two small fists, and the front of your shirt

 

(awkward) implodes. “Witch!” you gurgle; the way

schoolyard bullies splutter when at last laid

 

low. We love our movies about gun-play

but the thought that a girl could dodge a blade

 

or punch a hole through ribs is called bollocks.

Physics baffles us. My rain-reddened fists

 

unflex. I exhale, luster, turn elsewhere.

I tell you of Doc Martins and mohawks –

 

– of a dim slip-of-a-thing with thin wrists;

one who crackles, like dry-ice in the air.

SLICE BONE CRAZY

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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She shows us how to pierce the neck, the shaft

all a quiver in the airway, the man’s

 

eyes still agog. The poor bastard who laughed,

coughed just once and then flopped forward. Her clan’s

 

riders swept through the green cornfields, now flame.

All their arrows rose up and then came down.

 

Gravity, I love you. The sort of fame

she offers in a blood-splattered nightgown

 

is not for me. Poets do not amuse

her. I’m telling this backwards. She can slice

 

bone crazy. She has the mark of Venus

in one eye. Is such violence an excuse

 

to be enamored? Don’t care if the dice

roll tens; I’ll always bet on this princess.

ALL ORANGE GLORY

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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“The bud/ stands for all things” – Galway Kinnell

 

After loss then the libido snaps back

sick and mad as before. I don’t know why.

 

Knuckles push into moss until – hunchbacked,

straining – I pry the bud apart. My thighs

 

soggy sorrow burn all orange glory.

What gods would trust a mouth that makes such Os?

 

Thorny lips … that curl up around all three

of my fingers … a butterfly … that glows

 

when it dips for nectar — No, won’t go on.

What’s wrong? I feel like I’m faking it. Porn

 

on a Thursday. After loss why this brief

horniness? Once my fingers are withdrawn

 

let the bud close, leaving behind thorn,

moss-grown verge and grief. The gods’ own grief.

ALL THE DEAD LITTLE THINGS

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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I love that my fear lives under my bed.

I’ve been down there: torn condoms, used needles,

 

and my left toe-cutting knife. All the dead

little things I’ve loved and abandoned. Skulls

 

that will always be prettier than me.

Loose teeth. I’ve swallowed at least six. The jaw

 

of one Milady de Winter. What she

did — no, spoilers, sweetie. The things that gnaw

 

at me aren’t what you think. The Internet

where I live: “None of us fuck, see? Sex is

 

ugly. None of your free, hippy love shit

here,” as Johnny told Nancy. It’s that threat,

 

you might become mine, I might become his.

Strange how just a floor can become a pit.

danube

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Just say, “scummy waves;” that’s the sort of kiss
I want. Something so foul that it sucks down

seagulls in its wake. There’s a dead princess
who claims she’s a Czarina. Her pocked gown

looks a tad Orthodox. We made out, once,
though it felt like deep-throating an ice cube.

That cold got everywhere. There’s a science
to it, like when I swam in the Danube;

something pulled both my legs wide. I could feel
each wave lapping. Everything should lap, dog.

And the puckering … and the — tie my tubes,
lip gloss. If you want this, make it surreal.

Like the dead who kiss since they’re only fog,
or the living with fondness for ice cubes.

with flutes and fleas and dung

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Pick me clean. Strung up I’ll never go down
on my best friend. Never gape or have her

sodden laundry slap my face. All these nouns
define me. I am more girlie-satyr

than twin cocked-minotaur; with flute and fleas
and dung between my hooves. I know the more

that I write today the less I will please.
I hate being someone’s gear-notch; hardcore

engine-grind. I shift. I shaft. Stranger’s love
poems bore me. So what? They still won’t

dig graves or change diapers. Hush. There’s a hill.
(there is always a hill) with birds above

where I sit and do satyrie-shit. Don’t
it just cut ya? like bones in a gristmill.