contrarily, a dirt sea

dirt sea

the land has known

ashes

has known blood, too

and the muddy barren

fields stick to the 

boy’s throat

i see 

inexplicably 

how he stands holding

a perfect crimson 

apple 

surrounded by his dirt sea

one year with no umbrella

one year with no umbrella meant

wet

cold sadness smearing the frames

of my arms rolling 

down the window of my chest

“i know that you can see through me, you

all” 

i thought i was stained glass wrought

animate by ironic misfired gift

i thought of choking hands i thought

of kissing car windows 

i dreamt and could not keep

from dreaming,

there, that is where he was beat 

with the fishing-pole

sleep was cruel and so too was

his wake

and every bit to do with

being awake

snakes don’t like the rain

they say 

they were cast out of my homeland

they met the ocean 

became kelp

day in, day out

"day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr..."

i had a rather easy--
--but wait
some times what i say
seems only the skin
of truth, and not
the stuff itself

here are some things
which i find funny:
but no,
that feeble movement
is not funny, don't
mock my walk

i could say i'm only
His, the royal
His, but wait--
I do not lend my
caress to a god-king

Day in, day out
I am known by
none, sweet
the anomaly
of my battered
innocence

warmer waters

I. 
a piece of me 
a seashell
palm-held, seen
for the first time
is still there
on the beach


II.
years ago, a dead
cormorant in the sand
was all black
feathers and 
extinguished yearning 
for flight
the beautiful fallen
bird, stilled by 
its death-mystery


III.
i have returned
to the cold shore
recalling
warmer waters

oakland by bicycle

i was sitting in the dark again with oakland, the hot dirty night mother
the hot dirty trash-drunk shopping cart gas station mother
my crumbling pavement mother

i was sitting in the dark with oakland, my fragments glued with truth
not broken any more, but healed, healed by oakland
thank you my darling kiss the cheek oakland's oily cheek thank you.

oakland i am healed can you believe it?
i didn't foresee it myself, street of six desolate- times- motels, you are
my home street, my boulevard, thank you, oakland, for west macarthur boulevard.

now the light stays green so long, it seems,
the billboards blare their vapid candy,
i say, get the fuck off of my street, billboard, quit fuckin' up oakland!

and my city waited for me,
playing motown on the radio, patient mother oakland
waited for me to put on my party dress.

oakland i am cycling along your streets now
sore and adoring, my legs bent pipes, my dress hiked up,
pedaling by my can-collecting suitors

contemplating love, hiss and growl for love
snarl and prowl for love, but there is no hunger oakland
you have fed me and i am full, full of love.

simple weather love, heat wave love
beer in the park love, cats in the parlor love
love in my basket, i am the witch of north oakland

whirring by, seduced and satiated

in the sea / i put the weight on you

I spent a night and a day in the sea,
Borne among the waves.
 It broke loose a gasp of hope from my chest
And the darkness held fast to the heat of the day.
I returned to shore a lighter thing,
Loving of my lot.
Plaqued with salt and free to sing
Of all that I’ve given and got.
Plaqued with salt and stuck with sand
I put the weight on you. 
I felt my fragments readhere
And I was known and new,
As new as some black waterfowl gone swimming in the slough.
Now the train dips and rolls me northward
Toward what I cannot foresee.
It was not, until it was,
And yes it’s quite all right with me.
Beneath the water all was well,
The tide it tipped and bucked and swelled.
Papa rode the breaking wave with me not far behind.
But in the night when only I
Was mad enough to strip and dive,
You watched me from the shore,
Held me ‘til I was warm,
And held me until finally I knew.
It’s all right to weary,
To give up resistance,
To do what we are meant to do.
To lean into your arms
No longer harrowed by harm
And to put the weight on you.

seeking!

Single twenty-two year old female enjoys: Watching 'gossip girl' on internet thieved from 'the bay bridge inn', long chats with her psychiatrist, crashing cars, her favorite cafe, debussy on vinyl, good bourbon, and masochistic pursuits. (!)

Seeking: male of above-average intelligence. a deeply-seeded penchant for self-loathing is a definite plus! should enjoy hating oneself, sanctimonious judgments, playing it cool, and a self-perpetuated state of 'being all-alone in the world'.

For: A psychological dalliance of pathetic yet nuclear proportions!!

The Weaker Sex Has a Qualm, Qualm, Qualm.

The weaker sex has a qualm, qualm, qualm.
The weaker sex has a qualm.
It disputes its classification.

The weaker sex would like
Nothing more than a day,
One sweet, one Iron-Tinged day,
One day during which to
Stab the cursed hand that reached for them.

The weaker sex will hold you
To their breast.
The weaker sex will love you
With your flaws.

The weaker sex will say yes
Should you decide you want them,
If they want you in return.

The weaker sex will seethe and burn,
The weaker sex will be silent
And the weaker sex will speak.

The weaker sex has a qualm.
The weaker sex has a question.
The weaker sex disputes its classification.

The weaker sex bore you.
The weaker sex raised you.
All you have which was given
The weaker sex gave you.

And the weaker sex may cry.
At times we may keen.
Yet deny the sense
Of the weaker sex
And the weaker sex will leave.

I Do Not Thank You

I cannot breathe, it was not a good idea.
Silk bound breasts. Blurring vision.
My body does not thank me, my mind
Does not thank me my straining heart
Does not thank me my shaking legs
Do not thank me, I do not
Thank you.

I do not Thank You. For pulling me
Into your arms, for biting my pleading
Limbs, for baring my laboring chest
I do not Thank You.

I sweat, I tremble, I Do Not Thank You.
For dealing with what you've wrought,
Should I then thank you? For
What you were and then were not
Should I then thank you?

I know that I was your accomplice.
In every deed and each kiss.
I do not deny it.
And I Do Not Thank You.

pseudohaiku #?

when people walk by
past the parlor window
i wish they were you

then again

The boardinghouse burned down
Must have smoldered in the night
I regret that I wasn’t present
To experience the light

I’m ready to give to you a handful of ashes.

I’m sick now and unsurprised
In my bed I flail and writhe
Seethe with fever and I crave
Your dystopian sound

Its bitter grain, I’m nowhere-bound.

There is a day for which I wish to cry
And I may remember, or try to deny
It may have been a day spent
Kicking water from the dock

Then again it may have not.

And there are things I can’t forget
Trapped by the fence, alone on the swing-set
It must have been a day spent
Fifteen years ago

Or the night it made me shake beneath the blanket that you lent.

I am sinking just like you, my cynic.
I can hear your looming insect drone.
A woman would paint you with ashes
And still we are alone

The sense, I just can’t find it. Despite how much I’ve grown.

Limp on, your crippled shuffle and drag on, my blurring steps.

Badly Done, Allison

in the mornings i don't feel good. i just don't, feel good. i just don't.
when i wake i don't feel good. i just don't, feel good. i just don't.
i feel like a bottle of champagne someone knocked off of a shelf
to go rolling rolling round the floor. i'm all shook up.

the book is described as containing a 'comically helpless masochism'
i don't want to read it.
i do not think that the words apply to me, the thoughtless words,
so stupid.

a ‘comically helpless masochism,’ oh, go fuck yourself, you,
whoever you are who could believe in such a thing.
i am bleeding from my mouth, it pools beneath my tongue,
i clutch the gape in my chest that is blown through,

my eyes roll back, i dream in pain of you,
ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy, says the page.
when i wake up i don't feel hate or rage.
i just don't feel good. i just don't.

you could at least get out of my dreams
you're a very mean thing. you're a very mean thing.
while i endeavored to be the lady in green
i was getting all dressed up to go nowhere.

vera and deanie

my prize

Bury your face in my lap until I have a heart attack, my cynic. I want to die with someone in my arms.

With your nose in my skirt, unveil your hurt, inhale my vapors and grow slack and warm, no longer to come to harm although you won't believe it.

And your pain has become my pain, cynic. Like when you pulled me onto your back and we tumbled into bed. The cynic in you became the cynic in me, and drunkenly it went straight to my head.

And your darling features belie your bitter heart like a ravaged cypress which will not be torn apart but simply stands there, bowed and broken, and begging for support to deny.

This is who I am, cynic. And this is where I have arrived. You've seen the shaking of my body and known the stones in my eyes. And cynic, I don't know what you think, your misanthropic mind. What might have been or what lies down the line. To steel myself toward something that I cannot yet recognize is what awaits me now, my punishment, my prize.

hypothetical conversations with the cynic part IV

dark clouds are rolling across the sky, obscuring my vision, cynic. what i thought would be simple was a painting perceived from a distance. in front of me it is rough, the texture beneath my hands feels like clotted pigments. the truth tastes like a mouthful of whisky, like old espresso.

each person walking by can see through to me and through me, my vermilion pout, kissed a million times, split and bitten, abandoned, like a pomegranate. each person peers through the glass into the very stones of my eyes, steals what they can and, fortified, strides off.

i will not blow the dust from the surface of a memory, cynic. i will not recall the freedom of two strangers on that very street who neither knew nor cared, then, who did not know: that the cynic in you, my darling, is the cynic in me.

and so the fruit was torn in two and out were sucked the seeds. it is not impossible that at some point, one got what they needed. it is not impossible that something new was seeded, but i cannot tell the future any more than the next beautiful, wounded cynic limping down the street.

hypothetical conversations with the cynic part III

All I want to do is sleep, cynic. This waking life is too sharp and I am too frail to withstand it. And I have seen you in your nakedness, so wounded, while you have seen me disarmed and charmed and weak. You would say, what does that count for, Allison? You would say, I’m glad you’re entertained. You would say, I know myself. And I would know your thousand fragments and your chains. 

Let’s be light, a little lighter, cynic. The droning insect can be batted away by a hand. We can try, can try to understand. You would say, what does that count for, Allison? You would say, I understand quite well. Your loneliness resounds to me, its disastrous bell. Your dissonance resounds as it screeches and swells.

Some people say that they feel like death but I feel more akin to dying. Not in the sense that I am trying, but in the sense that I'm on some dark doorstep naked and bent. You have chewed me to the quick and spat me out, contorted, cynic. You are embittered beyond any light of sense.  The droning insect circles you and wraps you in its web.

You would say, you do assume to know, don't you, Allison? Perhaps you'd say, yet you don't know a thing. Perhaps you would be right, adored cynic. I can only know what I can see. There was once a day, bore some pollen which whispered a notion of happy. But for your scorn it has evaded you as it has denied me. 

                                                                          sandy denny
                                                                                            says ouch

what may be last, my cynic

what may be last, my cynic
is considerably more

than what i so open- armed and ill-informed
had bargained for

turning my pockets inside out
and showing what remained

bare and undulating
was a stomach churning drop, a burning yellow plain

the grass grew high all summer long
it waited for its flame

and what is parched, what is reduced
is all now that remains.

i read it in a book, my cynic
that ecstasy is pain

shocking the body in waves
on nights that beg for rain

i've been a fool and been a fool
and poor as could be conceived

what has burned and loved me
retrieved, my cynic, and hardly believed

hindsight shows me some ophelia
tumbling toward the reeds

the present shows me only
what may be last

and what i need.