Ode To An Unexpected Feast

For the sweet drink of gods that tints my

lips with grape and that

warms me

happy-hearted with

spirits to the sky

like the bird I did not eat and

For the red beast and pink

succulent shellfish that I did.

For the white meat beneath  

brown flesh and earth that I

peeled and rinsed from it

and then pounded by hand

to a buttery pulp

and creamed and

For the gold that comes as a gift from the ground

wrapped in green textured papers.

For the night and 

the one two before with all its 

Freedoms of

pressing himself against me and

religion not tying me down

For all its pursuit of pleasure.

For the feast it seemed would not exist, but did and

For the warmth and abundance that exists

even in its absence.

Tattered Book

i thumb through You

excitedly pulling Your front cover open

i close my eyes and smell You

old comforting pleasure

mingled with unfamiliar new

and Your plot line falls apart

as i tickle Your pages

fingering through

the first few lines of dialog linger repeated

repeated

as i flutter past the mundane

into the open moments of suspense

where my heart

like antelope in the plains

beats its animal hooves

wildly on the trembling ground

away

from threatening claws that clench me near

and sharp teeth that may shred me

but the pages have been past wet

and the words begin to fade

bringing about my withheld breath

for the story tells the weak do not prevail

and here i have pranced over the beast

and landed on the page instead

where i die a painful death

not by gash but from internal wound

a clumsy gazelle who ran into a tree

self inflicted injury avoided

had i been attentive enough

to bright yellow caution tape

wrapped tightly round

You my favorite

story of the recent past.

+ This poem was written as an assignment  for my creative writing class. The assignment was to incorporate extended metaphor. This was my first attempt, and was written in 10 minutes with no previous meditation on the assignment.. 

Key Chain of Events

It is you, oh tangled chain

that I cannot live without

For you, jangling in my memory

and not jingling in my purse

halt my world

You dangle before the silk screen of my mind

casting shadows of doubt

questioning your whereabouts

and I simply cannot leave.

It is you, oh silver, rusted star

encrusted with broken jewels

who lights the darkness

to beckon me toward my vessel

You who opens doors

To the happiness of home

And locks my muscles with your Gold

medal of a gym card swinging

gracefully upon your rings.

Provider of entry to happy open roads

Warrior guarding the gates into my fortress

Tiny trinket of unknown value until you’re lost

Never leave me again.

Phallic

Puzzle to my piece you are

warm and full with pleasure

I tremble for you

desirous of palms caressing

your gently wrinkled silk

skin cascaded in your milk

pouring out with the feather of my touch

Peg to a hole

you do not slide but hammer in

hard redwood fibers burn

the delicacy of rose pink flesh

Pounding and clenching her petals

As you and the night glide beyond

Key to a lock

You are irreplaceable

Never could your part be played

By the falseness of plastic

Or models fragile as glass

I cannot break the spell you cast upon me

Oh slithering poisonous snake

You have me writhing for your venom

Let me kiss you with my lips

And take you between my breasts

As we slide into oblivion.

Taking and Running With It

Been down that road before

Dying,

killing potential

to win the race

Running a marathon with untrained

wobbling stilts for legs

screaming to

STOP

S l  o   w     d     o      w       n

But pushed on anyway

to a quick end

peeled up from the pavement

skin sticking

blood dripping

heart bruised from the pounding

grounds of dirt and memories

the wound took in for

permanent decoration

losing dignity and the pace

to move at all toward the goal

STOPPED

S l  o   w    e    d       d        o        w         n

one

step

                mile

                                stone

at a time

I’ll run past

The Finish Line

Harmonica

She breathes in slowly

Wide open lips

plumped with action

from its rubbing on the skin

In the darkness

all eyes on her as she

blows

and sucks

the bitter limelight

She’s a black little kitten

stretching out, tail in the air

and she digs in her claws

All aboard the whistle screams

a train song

and the cling clang

of metal circles grinding

on hard rails

begs me to 

come 

along.

*This poem was written in reflecting on the fun experience of having heard my favorite poet, Kim Addonizio, play a song called "Train Song" on her harmonica. 

Kim Addonizio is known for her bluntly honest, raw and sexually charged poetry. A fan of the latter, hearing her play, I had been certain that "Train Song" had been an analogy for foreplay, sex, and orgasm. When I asked her about it, however (yes, I did) it turns out, it was 'just' a song and not about sex at all.

It left me, none-the-less, inspired. 

Rainy Day Paper Presentation

You awoke to thunder

bolting you awake in bed. Body quivering with the first kiss of the rain

trembling with desire for lightning rods to be shoved

into your eyes

streaking from the sky as you beckon the chills

to come

from head to toe

between your sheets.

pouring into them, your soul,

drenching them in your wildest, most exaggerated dreams.

Not purified water that showered you clean,

but frigid acid-laced drops which, stinging

fell in quarter sized plops upon you rough

before you got Kinky

multiplying

your creation in a glass room filled with humming,

vibrating machines, allowing you to plug an apparatus,

press their buttons and do whatever

you want with love notes scribbled on recycled paper. Anything

involving the pierce of a staple, or a clamp for thicker tissues pinched together,

perhaps some binding apparatus or a thin plastic wrap

All for additional cost, of course.

You pranced in puddles, no protection present, and presented.

White long-sleeved tee painting your breasts black with moist,

shivering, shaking

so hard

that words came out unrecognizable

as your necklace bounced up and down with your quaking breath.

**Decided to try and write a poem in second person. Also decided to try to capture my rainy day excursion to Kinkos before presenting a short fiction aloud to class in an artistic and suggestive way. This was the result.

My Poet Roommate Tells Me

She tramples in through my bedroom door and stands there

in the frame, hair a mess and the plumes of smoke from her

cigarette jumping through her hoops

She looks down at her pint glass—full of what—and dazing,

droopy-eyed,  breathes in the tension in the room.

Then she looks, I think at me, her petite and

boney body pointing a sharp finger without needing to even raise a hand.

She accuses me of “trying to finish a conversation already over”

wanting to “kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth,

the simple name without a shadow” and other countless things

as I tally up THE NUMBERS of everything she’s said so right.

She asks, much too loud for this hour of the afternoon

“WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?” and tells me.

Tells me what I want, as she sways a bit toward me,

arms with fingers, every one clad in silver rings, relaxed at her side

and plops herself onto my desk chair to say I’ve stolen her red dress.

The one that confirms his worst fears about her and

shows how little she cares about him

or anything except what she wants.

And she snickers, bluntly, how poorly it fits…

too flimsy and cheap for me.

She leans back and relaxing into her vodka-drowned mind

tells me that she knows. She knows “I can’t forget…”

she pauses, drifting the Virginia slim back between her lips, and

exhaling bursts out laughing about

“the long vein rising up along the underside of his cock”.

I wonder vaguely if she’s gone and fucked my man

however mine he isn’t anymore….and anyway

She asks me. Asks me to TELL HER if she’s going

to stop thinking about her losses now and listen to mine.

She tells me to tell her how I hurt and to dance with her

“dance with me while we fool ourselves.”

Then she’s whisper silent as she tells me

“starting things up was hasty, love” as I refuse to SPILL

and then I remember again

That she’s blunt and ugly

She lunges to punch me in my gut and sinks it

deep and penetrating ‘til I feel it in my chest,

when I’ve just held it all weighing there between my breasts.

She drowns me with my own sorrows and dilutes my words

to kool-aid while she pours out her straight Jack and I sip, direct

from her pages, hoping to strengthen my own.

+Written inspired by Kim Addonizio, a poet I have to "spend the semester with" as a "roommate" as an assignment for my intermediate poetry class. Really so excited that I chose her. She's going to be an awesome roommate to punch out some words with!

A few lines were "borrowed" from Kim from several poems found in her her poetry book Tell Me.

Social Death and Brain Abuse

The fine print is reading rest in peace

asking if I comprehend

I’m donating my brain

and they need permission to administer

21 units of substance

my heart climbs up in my throat,

constricting and convulsing;

lungs suffocated by my thoughts

burdened by books of biased words, and

sinking in stacks of stapled papers

I sign

21 units

wading through war-zones of un-washed  laundry

knee-high and wasting in the ground

mixed with smells of last week’s dirt and grime

from both the humid heat and the death of time.

The plague of Troy fogs my eyes as                       ENGL44H             MW 

Freud strikes a fire and fries my mind,                  PSYCH1                TBA

slowly peeling away delectable layers   

to taste the fear of failure as I lie,

mastering my female anatomy                                HLED4                   TBA

while telling tall tales with little words                   ENGL 27B              Th

that tickle the tongues of those thirsting                ENGL 27A              W

for something to compute in labs where               CPAS10                  TBA

tables have no use for chairs

but provide communication.                                   COMM10                M

21 units of venom sink and slither slowly

until that’s all I am,

fearing falling asleep in the battle-field of class

while running with no breaks

along dotted lines with the zig-zag of my name

signing away my life

just for the semester.

My First One Night Stand

It was late, but not late enough for closing time,

And we were just two young old people

with half too many beers and the heat of cinnamon schnapps

fogging our decisions as we sang too loudly to that Gotye song.

He leaned forward in his chair, beaming grin, stubble on his chin,

and pressed his leg way too hard into my thigh.

Game on, my brows answered before my tongue.

And that’s when we left the building.

For me to make a play and

wrap myself around him from behind.

For his breath to hitch just before he turned

to unleash a trail of kisses down my neck, and

strike a flame with the match-head of his finger, burning

slowly along my desire, down the valley between my breasts,

over the plains of my belly, and finally smoldering inside me.

In a blink we had voyeurs; a mommy-daddy date night,

gone terribly right as some stick-figure bumper-stickered gold Suburban

paused mid-street to enjoy a rarely-seen public mating ritual of the dark and urban jungle.

We proudly gave them quite a show,

until he licked his fingers clean of me while dialing for a cab,

attempting words from his mouth as I distracted him with the

flesh from the back of his neck gathered gently between my teeth.

And when the cab arrived, there appeared no driver present

as we tinkered and played with one another in the back seat of the car

before unwrapping each other as candy

In the industrial concrete stairwell of his building

where the current could no longer be contained

between our male and female circuitries.

We nearly melted the metal rails we held to,

As we soldered ourselves together.

And then: everything the way it was before.

His door closed, our clothes off, contemplating the pleasure of the couch,

but pulled into that too-familiar hallway on the left, and the room directly to the right.

Into those same blue sheets, nibbling, pulling, drinking in

the man I’d missed for months.

Mine, again.




+Written on 8/30/2012 for Jeff Epley's Fall 2012 Intermediate Poetry class. The assignment was to capture narrative elements in the poem.

On Cat Boxes and Laundry

She looks at me

Big green eyes made smaller, slightly,

slighting me a little.

I know she’s thinking

Why the fuck the dog

Gets fresh-cooked chicken

In extra virgin olive oil

While I scoop what we call

“chinese food” in her bowl.

A small helping

Of essentially nutritionless

Sawdust and pulp.

The package says chicken

But we aren’t entirely sure she

Isn’t eating cat

At ninety-nine cents a bag.

And I know she figures

If the dog does something annoying--

Say, persistent whooping cough

Or whining as bulbous glaucoma

Squeezes out her eye--

And gets a treat

Maybe she’ll receive the same.

So she stares at my mom—

The queen of the house—

As she enters into her bed chamber

And squats

To piss

On the queen’s

very treasured

Crown

pillow.

Dear Change

Dear Change,

I’m sorry but I

Can’t explain the

Strong aversion that I

Have for you and your

Inconsideration

Toward normalcy.

I get comfortable with my

Pocketbook and you come and short

Change the situation

With your lack of

Balance and stability.

I get comfortable with my

Man and he

Tells me he can’t

Change…when that’s the

Last thing that I would

Ever want him to do.

I get comfortable with a

Schedule (that I don’t follow

Anyway) and you come in and

Disregard my disregard and

Change it all around.

I don’t want things to always

Be the same

But I don’t want them to

Change

Me 

I feel…

Sincerely,

Stuck.

Socrates

"The hottest love

Has the coldest end."

Said from the first drop of grain

In an hourglass full of sand.

So, that explains the

Fogged mirrors in a room,

And the bed with no covers,

Soaking wet brows, and red panting bodies 

As the winter blew through open windows.

And explains, now

Clear reflections from the

Icy moisture-glazed eyes

Goosebumps and shivering body

While the heat wave should be drowning.

Sometimes, Life is Like a Movie

So, there I am, talking about my "conflicted" life on Facebook and on Instagram with a photo revealing that I am reading both the Bible and a raunchy s & m fiction book simultaneously. Well, here's another little scene to paint a picture of my character:

It is noon. I've decided to tan in my skimpy-ish little animal-print bikini. Push-up top with thin straps, bottoms with little pink ties. I lay on the grass and opt for my sultry and "sinful" reading. After having had a few much-too-revealing conversations with my grandfather, picking up the book in such little clothing feels...a little strange. But I go for it. This is me. Age 26, sexy, in shape, tan building steadily like it never has before. And moreover. sex deprived--for two whole months!

I lay basking gloriously when my grandfather comes out on the porch. "Have the sprinklers sprunkled?" he asks. The ones that wet the mulch have been on throughout the entire duration of my bronzing, so I answer yes, as water from the nearest contraption gently trickles down my ankles, barely there. He nods and explains that he will be downstairs watching a movie if I'd like to join, and in response, I inform him that I'll be down in about 30 minutes, returning to my dirty erotica.

About two minutes later, I wonder how the grass stays green in this ninety-something-degree heat, if the sprinklers only reach the mulch.

And as if on cue, the real sprinklers turn on. COLD! Fifty-something-degrees of cold--rather ironic since I'm reading Fifty Shades of Grey--showering atop my baking body!

I rise up quickly in reflex, forgetting that my top has been unfastened, and my bottoms have been wedged in my ass crack for maximum sun exposure. As I spring forward, my breasts become exposed. I try to remedy the situation while simultaneously realizing that this act, without re-fastening, will be unsuccessful. I give up and, instead, reach for my towel to cover my breasts, but I'm standing on it and nearly catapult my own body straight into the ground. I jump off, gather my belongings, grasping them to my chest in a grip that I am positive has me looking as if I suffer from cerebral palsy, and run, wedgie-assed and topless onto the porch, yelling repeatedly "shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!"

Here I am, "sinful" smut reader in "god's country", running around topless in the sprinklers.

I suppose I can honestly say that this book really has got me wet!

ba-dum chhhhh!

Little Packages

Old Spice for
an old flame;
Nivea beard scrub to
face the harsh reality;
Manchego cheese
with my whine,
hoping to let the man go,
but he's still there,
A Creeper in my mind.

Magnum says
he's too big in my head;
Sunscreen because
I have no protection;
Pathfinder as I
find my way without him;
Pinot Noir for the
dark alleyways he still
absently walks me down.

It's the little packages
That bring the biggest pains.

The Many Ghosts of You

Pillows no longer suffice

for tangled up legs and bodies,

and delete buttons only exist

on keyboards and

not in the mind.

Matching puzzle pieces almost

always fit together in that

unchanging way.

Maybe we were pressed against one

another

just hard enough to seem

like our colors and lines were meant to be.

A false connection.

And among all the uncertainty

when it's dark and quiet

and the lonely night is

tugging at my brains,

the one thing that I know is this:

blankets pulled tight over-head

won't suffice in protecting me from

the many ghosts of you.

Girl Brands

Pamper’d with

Mr. Bubble 

Bath & Body

Works cited

for a DUI

InStyle with

metal bangles and chains

right on Target with the trend,

wanting hot Coco Chanel.

PDA suffocated by PTA

Chex Mix-n it up with

Mommy ‘n’ Me and

Gymboree so there is no

Gripe Water works

Aunt Flo-ing

as she Playtex-s with her man

in 500 thread-count Egyptian cotton

she saw in O magazine

Barbie queuing

Behind fifty pounds of extra

WeightWatchers

And Curves she hates.

Some guy named Steve

Madden-ing her with

Fisher Price(s) she can’t afFord

So she’s Pamprin herself

with movies to tell her

how to AMC life positively,

Starbucks in her eyes

Pantene-agers hand in hand

In a Mini…

van much to their dismay.

One-A-Day at a time

Icy Hot has new meaning

joints no longer heal, they hurt

and the men’ll pause when she does.

Met-Life and it wasn’t how she planned

but answers “how are you?” with

"Am bien"

Til one day her family has to

Kaiser goodbye Permanente.

Reset Button

Reset button.

I keep looking for my reset button.

I’m full of all these push me points

that every body seems to find

but none of them can press rewind.

I guess we’re all not built that way.

No fast-forward. No pause.

No eject button to push some person out of a soul.

What use are all these buttons if not for those?

Reset button.

I keep thinking I have a reset button.

It’s got to be somewhere, up there, in the brain.

I keep thinking, hoping, some

surge of energy will come upon its wiring

and ignite the start of a total system reboot.

But I can’t complain.

I somewhat like these memories replayed.

Reset button.

Not even the robot on my favorite tee

is in possession of a reset button.

He or she wears its heart on its sleeve

(just like me)

cassette wound tight in the stomach,

Teeth in its smile all gritted, biting at life.

And it’s cluttered with details its

creator felt were all essential to its being.

I am not sure if I wear the tee or if it wears me,

we are so close and tight and pressed together.

I don’t want a reset button.

To Love Me More

Walking around with my head

toward the ground,

trying to be rid

of my upside-down grin

and my jaded crown.

I am the queen of aloneagain.

It feels like I am in a pawn shop

with some valuable I’d like to hold

yet knowing that for

something more vital,

I need to let go.

The transaction, you see,

has already been done.

You traded me in for some other one,

and that said more than enough.

In fact, it rather said it all.

So, I left you sparkling behind the glass

where I can no longer run my fingers

over you, my favorite jewels.

I’ve locked you up, a treasure,

I had thought, far more valuable

than the heart of gold I presented you.

But then I saw it sitting by you

in the case,

and I took it back, explaining

to the man behind the counter,

that I was there

To trade you in.

So as I move on,

it isn’t that I love you any less;

just that I’m beginning

to love me more.

Non-Fiction Writing

Several hours spent

Sitting scrunched up

Staring at a blinking cursor

And a blank-again computer screen.

All the words that come out

Want to point to you

But I’m writing fiction

Not to be based on truth.

Realizing that I’m writing

With no success

Because I want to be writing

Straight to you.

And just as I go to close this window

That song I called yours and mine

Comes up to play in tune with my heart

All hopeful but sad and blue.

"True Love Will Find You In the End"

I was hoping it had found me

Turns out it’s still searching

For me and for you, too.