Leather & Let Her

I.
You will always misplace keys,
important documents, wallets
and remote controls. But there
will always be an abundance
of random,
useless pennies and my great
worry.

II.
My Life as a Novel:
I woke up and then
something happened.

My Life as a Poem:

happened.

III.
On a plane ride across
oceans across languages
and tanlines that cut flesh
like cookies on a sheet,
a dear friend wrote me
words for the new year-
a simple recipe that I have tried
to follow and gain taste for-
"I hope love is your only addiction and
that you can be your own ambition."

IV.
A resolute chin and a
boxy-ness that lacked
any spring...I told you
the wind would shimmy
down this way. I told you
that the seasons
would alter, puker up and
malaise like women becoming
handbags digging in their handbags
for handcreams and photos saying
"Look here! New Zealand! Look here!
A cruise!" Saying "Look here!
A handbag for my hand in a bag
and I am digging out the bottom
of myself every day for sixty years!"

Lipstick collected in
the crevice of Marge's
bottom lip and offset
her wig. I wonder if she
found love, kept pennies.


V.
My life as a commercial:
Smile- it happened.


VI.
You will always
misplace key things.
They will always be
at the bottom
of everything.

For Mitchell Candreva IV

One
I walked-and not many men take that miracle as it is:
to walk, to take that split second between footfalls
where we are bent forward yet backward as if ready
to tumble this way or that-
I walked in the way that I thought would make you proud.
That is to say, I walked with a smile on my face.

Two
I slept
and that says enough-that I could find the time to lay to rest
without the heat of your chest
and dreamnt of the shape of your arms around my neck.
A noose that gave warmth instead of taking.

"From the streetlight outside your window" or 'A Moth's Song'

I.
How much could I get for my eyes
on the black market? They have never
failed me in the dark.
Or my legs- they have carried me far
and away and yet never at all.

II.
How much would I pay for your
shoulders, headrest for my sad
thoughts.
How many pieces of silver
could I exchange for a golden
morning in your sheets
Light coming through fibers to reflect on
skin to wake us but no

III.
We don't wake and you-

You are priceless.

'Alice' and 'All of This'

A bottle that said Drink Me:
Bottle, your eyes- what's the difference?
I had a long draw and grew so high
I could mistake it for flying.

A sweet that said Eat Me:
A frosted cake, your kiss- who's to say
they are not one and the same?
I had taste, followed by a feast
and shrunk to a world where all
I wanted was more and more and more

A book that said Read Me:
Printed pages, the soft skin of your
body- pick and choose the finer points
but I read your body while you slept
fingered the fine printings of hairs
and pores, scars and steel muscles.
I studied- but there are things I have yet
left to learn. This is the story I read in
dreaming- the thing I yearn to study
the most.

A Queen that said not "Off with his
head", but a Queen that said:
"Take my heart, you have all of it
in exchange for your Wonders."

Three Moments in the Life of a Bird:

1) I am skirting around brick streets, bobbing up, bobbing down
around the edge of a man's vision. He wears black leather- I can barely fly.

2) I am re-hatching but not from an egg, but from the dark in the folds
of green sheets. This is what happens when you say you love me.

3) I am picking the worms out of myself and offering them to you, building a nest I am proud to lay in. Singing your name your name your name your name...

When a Bell Rings

Dad was drunk- we all had ways of dealing with that kind of car wreck. Tommy lit bottle rockets in the backyard. They whisteled up the mountainside, leaving tracks and little pink sticks in the crabgrass.
Sally braided. Her hair. Mine. Mom's, while she re-read last Sunday's post.
She braided the carpet tassles, the pull cords on the dusty blinds, even her ragdoll's yellow yarn hair (some of the plaits pulled away from the head entirely, surrounding her in a little nest).
I carved the words "not" and "working" on eigther side of dad's srying soap bar with the end of my toothbrush. Then I filled his briefcase with the cat's pancake-like litterings, scooped dog shit up in a brown lunch bag and smeared it all over his sock drawer. These were the best Christmas gifts I could give him- ones that I really meant.
Mom started sniffling between the screeing sounds of Tommy's barade. Sally strung the doll's hair on the tree and tried and failed to throw her bald little body on the top point like some sad angel. She lay there, somewhere near the middle, on her side. The shiny tree looked like it was swallowing her, the lights made her look like she was on fire.

Dad was drooling on the kitchen table. I pulled the warming bottle from his outstretched hand, thenpadded back to my parents bathroom in my new slippers and refilled his Old Spice bottle with whiskey.

The whole town thought he was a drunk. Now they'd know he was one. He'd loose his job, and then maybe Mom would brave the stick shift of the station wagon, pack us kids up, and go. A three inch metal lever was all we needed to get us out and away. I wondered if he's miss us. "The whore" and his "nasty little fuckers". I wondered, if we left in the night if he'd sit alone in the pile of ribbons and wrapping paper and regret.

The senior year of College smells like a CD warpper (that clingy kind that sticks to your hand).

That is to say, it smells like anticipation (the overpriced kind).