Free Stallion Read online

  A VALID QUESTION ENSUES UNSTITCHED

  No, your clothes are cute

  but a faze to me,

  a poisonous recipe.

  I watch out

  for those kinda snacks.

  My stitches are early scratches,

  semi-seam lines,

  uncontrollable scars.

  You make honey cakes

  a mummy’s thought on fatalism

  practicing preservation skills

  on a jelly-filled lady roll

  for a woman

  with no jiggle at the end of her tailbone.

  How am I to fit into your bulimia?

  Unzip my curves’

  voluptuous secret,

  petty bone right below my womb.

  You silence it

  with fabric of fabrications,

  treaties deceitful to my gallant ancestry.

  What images do you hold?

  Not mine!

  How am I to fit into your bulimia?

  Don’t know what else to tell you—

  I love pizza.

  FREE STALLION

  Wet pavement makes me yawn,

  a cat out of slumber,

  dreams rumble

  whiskers

  memories whisper

  cold kisses my spine-time-line

  broken railroad track

  crossing refuge of a century turned bitter,

  empty trains

  belt out silent crossings,

  ghosts tap-dance out a beat like:

  nothing is wrong

  nothing has died

  no short is long

  no tears have cried

  swinging

  head to heart

  heart to hand

  hand to head,

  it’s a disaster,

  bloodstream’s a circus freak

  turning tricks,

  female inherence replicating

  an equestrian prayer,

  a woman running, free stallion

  as I like to call it, yes,

  free stallion

  a bottle of jack and the night is a coward

  coming

  going

  kissing and telling

  climbing into my sheets

  never calling before arriving

  raiding my fridge

  never calling the day after

  leaving socks on the dresser

  sexing me when it’s good for me

  hitting me when it’s best for me

  apathy when the end is bleak

  when night skips sheets

  not my lover but just another

  momentary treat

  a love seat

  minus 1

  what innocent free stallion?

  what innocence

  PLUME

  Raw war

  too bloody for taste

  tastes like born-again/death wish.

  Raw war

  genes of generations

  momma’s vertebra no longer vertical,

  scattered like shrapnel

  far and wide.

  Raw war

  the fat needle

  the bomb-ass drug,

  dazed and uneducated

  Sam sweeps secrets under his peruke.

  Vomit

  he infects me

  the thinking thing

  nature’s unwanted trademark

  selfish, sandy,

  rubbing rustily,

  fuck me verbally,

  slowly,

  exclamation point,

  the dot of misery.

  The whitest plume

  raw war

  the fat needle,

  insert here,

  globalization is erect,

  love floundering, outdated and discontinued.

  PAX VOBISCUM

  (last love song for Woody Guthrie)

  You’ve been here before

  here now ever last

  poetic proletarian

  lost

  bloodshot

  eyes

  frostbitten against

  ties that dye, red maybe

  decades of you,

  pauper, seed-planter,

  the infamous struggle you watched,

  fighting was no option

  but absolute.

  I dreamt I kissed you,

  it was 1934,

  dust was popular,

  populists a scarce disease,

  the first red flag

  warning discovered

  you, my hero,

  battling sensationalism,

  the queer concept/institutionalism

  the form

  of America

  ‘n’ all them

  poli-TISH-ns.

  I dreamt I was the last

  catching a glimpse,

  your freedom fields

  wind blowing agitation running wild

  in your eyes frostbitten.

  I could make love to your memory,

  the prosaic figures of my youth

  less the equivalent

  of strings you have strummed,

  those battles you won

  this dream, merciless transcendence.

  I wake caution, she sleeps too much,

  national continuous slumber

  I’m dwelling/dying in it.

  Where have you reincarnated?

  Did you birth anew?

  Where are the lost songwriters

  of you?

  Woke up,

  dreamt I was the last,

  wept for my country,

  she’s so confused.

  It was 2003.

  We’ve been here before

  you and I

  singing

  fascism the joke,

  the ha-ha of ironic unfolding.

  /

  History is reality is future,

  Lomax was there,

  he taught me F sharps,

  fire-illuminated

  Thomas Hart Benton paintings airbrushed into your

  wrinkles

  the most astonishing portrait,

  patriotism as individual,

  a sight not even Maxim Gorky could describe,

  Communism’s true definition

  I could contemplate

  your meanings.

  Early America

  you tried to salvage,

  you beauty, you,

  the passion molding an infinity’s heart

  before us

  among us

  against us

  beyond us.

  No one sees you,

  a voice provocative,

  a recording/distilled ideology

  crepitating gestures, pictures curling,

  ages moving,

  morals washing

  away.

  I still see you,

  night time sings me

  my own dust-bowl ballads

  like searching scars in the dark:

  In love we trust,

  in time we rust,

  the man

  the legend

  predestined prophet

  words like pollen rest heavy in this amber,

  it’s a metaphor

  like 1934.

  Dove, where have you reincarnated?

  Are you laughing in disgust somewhere?

  Did you birth anew?

  Where are the lost leaders

  of you?

  Guthrie

  I’m gushing

  America

  the “once was” story

  manifestation of all destinies

  turquoise nation forgave us too soon

  time

  half of me

  pax vobiscum.

  ANNA

  In the dusk partial and complete, you drop in

  behind the dripping melon-colored marquee.

  The fault title font fronts a fruit-cup decay

  with your name all over it.

  Drunk in that love cup,

  blood-berry strong
in that heart’s garden,

  saffron kisses in heavenly 1930s night skies, as dusk

  may give you away

  to eternity,

  to the sky,

  to the garden.

  Drunk in that love cup,

  you imagined the sunset and fled to it,

  chin up, eyes straight.

  I craved that fruit today,

  my birthday,

  2 days before you passed away

  up into the sky.

  BEYOND THE PALE

  No poem

  or word

  was good enough

  for her.

  She melted ingredients

  cared little about

  our little-hood,

  she was breeding in a barren bakery

  Poes and Millays,

  her brow erupted

  spectacular shock

  breaking the horizon behind.

  Her face

  orange rusty pear

  hair strangely tamed

  frozen fire in mid-explosion

  eyes tunnelled in

  gaping endearment

  reaching out

  magnetized to our immunity

  the spider captured our imaginations

  in the web of her allowances

  for the most part

  crying at the notion

  owning individuality

  a crucifying possession.

  She never took never

  for an answer, did she?

  I questioned her rigid speaking,

  hated her for academic archaism, with a spring in

  her step

  she read

  A Wrinkle in Time

  our minds captivated

  in elusive difference

  daydreaming

  this crack-house public school

  had a prizewinning ghost

  erected from the basements

  to scare us

  into loving her

  and face a public disability

  known to us as constructive criticism.

  She found me annoying

  overly ambitious

  a stumbling linguist,

  cerebral writing

  came un-ruled and wild

  swerving from my pen

  misspelled

  misused,

  she fell for

  my slapdash liberty

  reckless loyalty to love poem-fodder.

  No one

  listened

  the way she did

  above all the others,

  my spoiled life to her,

  beyond the pale.

  Her wisdom predicated

  a hungry soul

  bound to keep me

  from an easy choice,

  a fool’s choice

  “acting career.”

  Yes, the Paraclete

  raised me with loving arms

  sobbing fingers

  afraid the written me

  was a future nonentity.

  She never forgave me

  for punishing her persistence,

  an unspoken failure

  most notable

  at the last moment

  of her last year there,

  no bittersweet utter

  “I’m so proud of you”

  “I’ll miss you”

  as she slipped through

  cracked unpainted hallways,

  through 3 generations of apprentices

  left half empty

  to color in a life’s work

  half done,

  the ironic beauty

  demure banana posture walking

  out the doors

  my school my heart

  battered haunted by her mystification,

  the most painful daze.

  I never did what she dreamt.

  She’s a butterfly now

  or maybe a moth, yes,

  hopelessly stuck to my subconscious light

  batting wings grey and brown,

  flagging me down.

  Remember the hard times, she would say.

  What I taught you, she would whisper.

  Sometimes I see her

  walking past my house

  smiling talking of sunsets and such things,

  deeply involved, unaware

  as I drive by

  unseen.

  The crusted-over scar

  peels a little.

  She makes the pink poke through.

  Freeze frame.

  Her punishment lives on

  driving on,

  taking me nowhere.

  DEAR S.

  There you lay in the hospital coiled up in pink sheets.

  I dreaded coming here for weeks now

  to face you and your new friend, Death.

  You both stare waiting for me to commit to my grief and let you go,

  but I can’t let you go.

  I hate that you smiled, ever.

  You let me into your heart, and house with crumbling

  walls and caving ceilings,

  you let me make fun of your laugh and be mean with admiring intentions,

  you let me cry in selfishness when you broke the news,

  and offered no tears to partner with,

  you let me share the stars in the sky and your eyes

  and the days crashed and the waves passed,

  you let me love you for a second before you

  handed me the knife and requested a turning favor,

  you let me be your mother,

  hate you for being so young,

  miss you before you were gone.

  Now I see that door.

  I’m blood in a hallway like a vein

  strung from your death grip.

  All veins lead to your heart

  and I’m pumping hard.

  I could tumble over my remorse for not coming sooner

  and fall right into your hands.

  You’re quiet now,

  white and gold.

  Yes, I remember this body

  but not the face.

  That halo still sits above your bed and that head like an elevator shaft.

  Angels sit selfishly awaiting your skyscraper-arrival.

  I will not return you to whoever gave you to me,

  I can’t.

  So you will leave truly alone,

  your bier built into my chest like ancient stone.

  The floors are clean,

  the curtains drawn.

  I’ll say goodbye without saying it.

  Who’s gonna take that toe ring you danced all night on?

  Who’s gonna keep your writings and sob over their forecast?

  Who’s gonna smell your absence in your clothes and burn them,

  those jeans we played mischief in?

  Give them to the army surplus store (I couldn’t do your figure justice).

  Who’s gonna blow wishes with my fallen eye-lashes?

  Who’s gonna come that close to my face, ever?

  Who’ll take my breath away just by breathing?

  Who’ll silence me just by being?

  Dear S., dance with me in the dark of your familiar.

  Let’s touch swan-like for a last time, in this hour,

  wrap necks and

  coo (your favorite word).

  I’ll say it

  without saying it.

  VIBRATION

  Our love spilt,

  hate left the stain.

  Touch march.

  I’m holding an anarchist’s stance at the rally of your neglect.

  I’m standing on the front line of the protest,

  I’m picketing with signs high in front of your think tank.

  You’re gonna have to run me down,

  to really run away.

  My blood slogans will not go unanswered this time.

  The message pulls focus:

  yes, the meaning is clear—

  I’m chaining myself to our memories,

&nb
sp; you don’t need a key to release me.

  Riot gear shields you from my kisses like

  tear gas makes your cheekbones run interference and

  my voice screams for a crowd of thousands in a singular note.

  Scar tissue should be outlawed.

  Battle marks are for the brokenhearted.

  This

  is the woman’s right to choose.

  You split up my soul-vibration like packaged meat,

  for every public eye to have a piece and eat.

  You served me up

  cold and raw.

  My headlines have become the wallpaper inside

  your burning house

  where I watch you penetrate a desert of my ashes,

  one mole at a time.

  Correct this death penalty,

  I demand it.

  Drop your weapons—

  pick up my hip attachment.

  Screw it,

  on.

  I’m suing for a-sexual harassment.

  MOTHS

  I consider myself flexible in awkward positions.

  Not a home wrecker,

  but I do knock.

  And you and I are pals.

  The kind that

  open up to each other but keep mouths

  at a safe distance.

  But I cannot amend all tongues.

  I walk the dubious centerfold of your eye-line, friend.

  I carry my purse on the same side you walk next to me

  to avoid hand.

  To avoid saying anything small.

  We are the shredded fuse,

  the rebound wires commencing,

  badly rerouted and iniquitous. We are the failed test of the emergency buddy system.

  Chums.

  I am a derelict without furniture or life signs,

  painting your posture from distance that

  can fit inside the palm of your land.

  Though we share ice cream instead of pipe dreams,

  I know

  you’d never be lover to another poet

  because you are one.

  And the fear of being served a reflection

  in the way that you have served some,

  is a glass house you are not ready to escape from.

  I’ll keep liking mint, while you go for chocolate. Conundrums

  I can’t seem to get away from.

  You are just another sheep

  jumping the fence in my nightmares.

  Counting out numerical complacency,

  a platonic answer with a nod-off.

  Like a million hairs you’ve grown near your mouth

  plowed down, rough and sore

  my beard too wants to be a little roughed and worn, but

  the time is not now, if not ever.

  Not before, during, or after

  her, your lover, another, or the next chapter.

  So let’s just say,

  let’s just stay