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when I woke up and looked at the sky

crushed gray velvet hanging low and dark

I thought It is Happening and made

the Sign of the Cross

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today in the wharf a fire burns deep

teenagers hide in the copper tin

of the musee mecanique, three thimbles

and a pea hustlers are giving it

but good. you leave your fur

 

on the molded orange bus seat,

you run down to the pier to feel wood and water

under your holy babe heels

there are days when your lipstick can't cover

your teeth

there are days when your lipstick can't cover

your teeth

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FOREVER YOUNG

you taught my eyes

how to do something new in your black silent nape

but never could look back after all that

fresh blood fell out of me, terribly

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children’s hearts ran scared

like rabbits

into barbed wire, into ribs so gratuitously broken.

everyone knew

what you did to me.

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sometimes they come fast

like hiccups, like yak from miami

sometimes they come slow

like a cripple of a sob dragged silently out from your jack-o-lantern mouth

while your shoulder blades shake and shake and shake.

we spit honeybees across the room and 

catch them in our pollinated mouths, every night

til dawn

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ADJUNCT

now that I find the queer, young women as tiresome

as the old men with whistling noses

and eyebrows like goats I see

it is me after all

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I will never be a ballerina

this isn’t fair 

why is everything for virgins?

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TETANUS SHOT

right in the arm, and six stitches in my leg

a reminder we’re made of meat, and meat

gets chewed up

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LEONARD COHEN

said he learned to write what he needed to read

I suppose it’s a good thing he never became a journalist

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when the dog brings a rat

in from the garden, just alive enough to bite

you poke it with a mop, you cover it with a bucket

you get back in bed, you drink

you wait for it to stop breathing. you wait

 

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remember, after your accident,

those bottle-shaped soft-serve clouds knocked you out

and I had to put you on the sofa

face down?

I don’t forgive you at all.

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he said

all the babies are alright tonight,

disappearing my doomsday wound

in a performance of benevolence,

and I cried why 

at the heavy red curtain on my tongue

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MORE THAN A HANDFUL

a bunch of bloody rags

sewn together with swan eyelashes,

seeping softly inside a bone box.

I never thought I was much more than that

but you could have, at least,

politely disagreed.

 

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fever panties

adolescent rosettes

they won’t ever die 

not even on high heat.

your kiss penetrates

my illness stench.

please don’t let me die

before I like myself, I whisper

hot tears streaming down my face while you help me

take a piss.

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POSTCARD FROM SF GENERAL 

seems like a grand place to be,

but there is no swimming pool.

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if I were to ever try

there would be

no stutter cuts

just gone

baby

gone

and 

that’s for sure.

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“suicide is not the route”

it depends where you’re trying to go.

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you killed yourself 

with laughing gas on april fool’s day

I guess you think this is all pretty funny don’t you

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it’s hard to love a woman

when a woman is your mother,

when a woman is your self.

it is hard to love anyone who reminds you

of those bitches.

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I broke his jaw

with a coffee mug that said cancun

I took his heartbeat

 to the university for a funeral

“here lies a dishonest boy”

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thighs that don’t touch right beneath your youknowwhat

they call it factory error. a keyhole of good luck

the men on 24th street don’t know or care about any 

other kind of gap. some say 

cake cake cake 

as I walk by and I flash a thirty cent smile

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academics love prostitutes

I don’t know why.

the feeling is not mutual

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FAUVE

is a skinny girl with blonde hair

and I need to know if we could be wild beasts

together

running through black fields

barefoot until we get

to "mexico"

 

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SCOTUS

behold the big ordeal. his head drops again, then back

the tan hustler with the inkdrop under his eye

lets the parade go up sixteenth, leaving just him with 

the sparkling cigarette butts, 

the garbage hush

 

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THE O’FARRELL THEATRE

it is not fair to say that because I wanted a love story

I was asking for a horror show

I used to go there, the russian girls were glass-eyed biscuits

perfect finger bowl collarbones 

that was before the angelfish, that was after bukowski,

who also got what he was asking for in the end

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BALTIMORE 1969

father joseph killed sister catherine

so she wouldn’t tell

what he did to thirty girls.

the police turned away

chewing glass, zipping up their flies

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STACEY

when sunny called

and I ran seven blocks with no jacket,

and they would not let me in,

and I stood alone with the loss of your mind,

a dying animal clawed from my throat

and spat blood and sputum on the hospital walls in despair

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the weight of your collapse 

is felt by me alone

to mary ann the night nurse

you are like the others- invertebrate, whimpering and sexless- 

at the fluorescent sink

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if I believed in anything it would be you,

the sound of your heart beating underneath my bathwater,

your pink seashell earlobes

and all you’ve left here,

all the hairs and smells,

that did not go with you

to the madhouse.

 

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MAMA

left my teeth and heart unfixed

I broke them both on the nearest dick

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they never tell you Foucault 

fucked men

and died from the bug

they don’t want you to know but

he was one of us

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100 dollar shooting stars fell all around 

mark bolan sang

you clicked your crystal heels

and the boys nodded thirstily

from the tomb below

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MARTYRED

what could be sweeter

than giving a blow job

and receiving nothing

but pink eye in return

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tom petty taught me all I know

about being american

I wish I could get out of it

like the mennonite kid 

during the pledge of allegiance in 

grade school

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you weren’t supposed to like it

I did it bad so you’d never ask again

where’s my money.

where’s my shoe.

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walk down 16th street 

there’s a woman there with sores 

in her underwear

that’s helen

say hi

 

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they talk about your body

like they know what to do with it

and you don’t.

it’s the same way they talk about the deficit and power tools

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existentialism doesn’t live in the bright future of a classroom,

but it’s still alive and shuffling through squares of blue light

on the corner of Ellis and Jones

with a KFC fix kit and a need

to reach the New Princess Market by 2AM.

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when it is late and dark

you and I share a dream

that we never discuss over breakfast.

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there is no pubic bone, 

no smoggy morning kiss, none

I have loved more than my own 

splendid, willful tears

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