Run Away, Anubis

In Egyptian mythology, Osiris married his sister, Isis, was killed by his brother Seth, and his body was burned in several parts of Egypt . After his resurrection, Osiris was no longer able to dwell on earth, and fled to the underworld where he became judge of souls. He was resurrected by his other sister, Anubis, goddess of embalming.

Run Away, Anubis

Where have you gone and where have you been?
He waits and weeps in the nightmare sand,
Rotting in the roasting sun.
His flesh little more than the pulp
Of a crushed tomato,
Baking in an oven valley for its third day.

Why have you waited so long?
The meat of his five fingers
Winds like Grettle’s trail,
Leaving only bloodless bones
To search from the Nile to Stygian Shore,
Hunting for the other five.

Cavern for a cranium, two-thirds consumed
By a lone, circling vulture.
His languishing raw-hide thighs,
Once powerful vehicles of might and speed,
Twitch and disintegrate to grit among sand.

Have you enough fluid left
To parch the one deflated, juiceless eye?
Defunct, vapid staring orb
That sees none but Elysian Fields
And freshly turned soil.

Have you the strength to squeeze
That perished muscle trying to remember
To pulse, floundering mass that aches,
Desperately drawing in and out for blood
Long since drained, wizened, and thirsty?
The scorched casualty of heat and wind.

Have you stomach enough
To find his carious corse
Beneath the teeming maggots?

Even now he wails and counts the hours.
His nether realm stagnant, waiting for creation…
His flesh longing for your resurrection.

Belated Valentine Contrition

did I ever tell you
that story?
seems I never
got around to it…
..............how the way you
..............looked at me was like
..............being home?
always seemed better
left for another time.
but the time I’d planned,
the minutes I’d store
in a jar --
..............how eclipsed the light of fire flies,
..............the first time
..............I saw you smile?
I never saw
how they’d escape,
and slip between the grooves.
funny, how the lid never fit.
but you fit me fine.
..............how I found in your arms
..............warm rare moments
..............of utter safety?
and were I to find
you were mine
(again)
even for a moment,
I’d store in you
the story
I never got around
to telling.

Losing Bett

He saw her standing
Radiant in her shining twilight glory
Her coat gleaming, her mane rivaling the splendor
Of smooth, cultured onyx
Head held high, fit for a crown
“Nine” he thought, then said aloud
Even the sound of her, Number Nine,
Made him sure; and glad in his sureness
He fumbled like a school boy to find her name
And again, the sound of her washed over him
Like midnight rain.
“Bett” he thought, then laid down
Before the visored man behind the glass
“All on Bett, all on Number Nine.”
The anticipation, thick on his tongue,
Whistled through the air between them.
His guardian in a sinewy muscled hind
His savior, this beastly angel
Never dared dreamt of, a gift like none before.
He longed to touch that raven mane
And sparkling, glistening, silken midnight coat
But longed, even more, to see her run…and win,
To show the strength he saw
In her might, in her commanding stance,
In the passion buried deep in her shadow-night eyes.
The gambler never would have guessed,
But when she lost he understood,
And realized why she always would.
She’d lose, not because she lacked
In talent, or skill, or heart, or passion, or grace
But simply because
She gave up.

Future Label: Poison

Bitter bile this dawn --
realize, and remember again
what you already knew,
ever the fool.
the scar never thick enough --
the acid has, is, will
burned, burning, burn always --
such is the fate of a fool.

I refuse
not one word will I recant
..............do not ingest
I refuse
not one swallowed word will I regret
..............do not ingest
I refuse
not one word, I say, I yell, I scream
I refuse!

no mater how fleeting
flames, fires always die --
no matter how draped in pretense
(bile sometimes beguiles the fool)
no matter his words
funny how acid appears as water
as loveless as mine are true --
such is the devotion of a fool.

Yet I refuse
not one syllable will I be repent
..............harmful or fatal if swallowed
I refuse
not one syllable will I renounce
..............harmful or fatal if swallowed
I refuse
not one syllable, I say, I yell, I scream
I refuse!

Bitter ache this dusk --
realize, and memorize again
what you always knew,
ever the fool.
the wounds never diminish enough --
the lesson has, is, will
burned, burning, burn always --
such is the sorrow of a fool.

Daddy’s Little Hothead

Dark, corkscrew pigtails swing free and freeze.
She turns a pointed gaze to the sticky red smile
And fingers of a thief. The last,
Hers by right of passage, carelessly wasted
When her gaze, unaware, landed elsewhere.
She will crush the big girl.

The passionate pride of a people deceived;
Their own tide relentlessly pounding, mocking,
Biting at their heals like a hound at hunt.
Temper’s fueled steady pulse, and throbbing heat
Of their ever-summer isle,
Fuse and Burn from within, rise and redden
The cheeks of her sun-gold olive face.
The smiling desperado they saw, she sees…
But she will not believe.
She will conquer the big lie.

Capricious green eyes, fierce as the Caribbean in storm,
Locked in furious glare beneath furrowed little brows.
Her hands, defiant on overalled hips,
Ready for the fight that never comes.
Enraged with the impotence that forced
An entire generation to flee by way of the bay.
She will face the big waves.

Dark, pouting lips force taut and freeze.
She’s turned a pointed gaze to the
Sticky red lie of the big thief.
High on her father’s shoulders, the waves seem placid.
She swam once…unafraid.

Untitled

It’s a guessing game
I know well, dear boy,
and I am not flattered.
Incensed, ill at ease
nauseous and in dire need of fresh air --
...............Do I miss you?
Your unremitting current of honey merely masks
the smoke in your mirror --
smothering, strangling as your expectations.
Your pleas tiresome, and far exceeding
any gratitude earnestness might have rendered.
...............Do I miss you?
Were I not reproached as if I spoke
in tongues --
if only you hadn’t coveted, craved…
your hunger calling for the lovely berry
you placed there, on the flesh in my mouth;
...............Poor boy, is your idiom only that of the idiot?
but listened, instead --
heard it plunge from my dropped jaw
and bathed in the sound as it plummeted.
...............No dear boy:
not the shocked skepticism you’d have,
nor hymn of praise, poised
to replace my mouth’s vacancy
and color the air in brilliant tones --
pure, undiluted resistance
wouldn’t glue my tongue in place
as your honey has.
...............‘Tis a pity I pity you so.
Were your eyes not heavy with idolization,
ruined in erroneous adoration,
you’d see the blood-tipped fork that would stab
that sweet lush berry.
...............Revel in your torture if you will, boy.
So sweep my words beneath the rug
before you’ve chance enough to feel their spear like sting.
No matter --
your ears were always numb
when I spoke,
weren’t they?
Now you may feign blindness as well,
as I crush this inept attempt
like the over-ripe berry in my fingers.
The weight of my foot slides
in your sickening sugar --
there’s a reason they’re called
sweet nothings.

Future Self Redux

A most bizarre event.
The reading, the meeting
The gaze from across a lattice work
Of metal and fire.
Does she know what I see in her eyes?
Her voice inflicted with inflection
I can’t discern
But it sounds like whiskey tastes.
And she wouldn’t cough
If she didn’t smoke like I do --
Professing, proclaiming it social nuisance
As she lights the fresh one
In her red-tinged-blue lips
With the butt of the one she hasn’t
Yet finished.
Does she know what I sense in her gaze?
Dark swimming orbs
Surrounded by shadow that’s almost not there
Above, finely arched brows.
Below, a smear of lipstick
Smudged in the divot of her cupids’ bow.
Do I do that with my water, too?
As she grips my hand
In a too-soon fare-well,
Her salutation more sincere than imagined,
She gets one last good look
And sees --
Within her smoke-whiskey eyes
What I see
Is me

Reading Cate

Listen to your story

..........Do each other’s hair
..........Have a drink or ten
..........Dance and laugh
..........Borrow your make-up
..........Giggle at nothing

May I tell you mine?

..........Till 4 A.M.
..........Show you the town I don’t know
..........Be your midnight confidant
..........Smoke more cigarettes than you
..........Here, have a brownie

We needn’t have bothered

..........Do each other’s nails
..........Yours are chipping
..........Mine would be too, were they painted
..........Is your hair that carelessly pinned on purpose,
..........or haphazardly lovely?

For they reflect and refract an image

..........Open your book
..........Swim inside,
..........read through the wake
..........of your Ink-stained typhoon
..........And share the audience burden

Equal to that before the glass

..........Have a drink or a hundred
..........Feed from the town that brought you
..........I’ll wear that lovely hair
..........When I be you,
..........in a year or ten,
..........And I’m inside your skin.

Friend like mirror,
be patient.

Language, Poetry, Art and the F-bomb

I started this blog…well for lots of reasons but mostly to break away from fear, out of myself and past the block I’ve been rutting in for oh…about 3 years. I have all these poems and snippets (things I haven’t looked at in years if I’m honest) and thought I’d start there – revisit my writing past, see if I can’t trigger some cogs into motion. But when I read them and think of posting them…I can’t distance the words from the girl who wrote them enough to be objective. I remember where I was then, and it’s SO FAR from where I am now. But I know, too, that being an artist means putting it all out there, even the ugly. I know that despite our differences, that girl did what I am struggling to do - put it all out on the page, especially the ugly, so that whatever power it held could be transformed into something else....something that might just touch a cord with someone, something that could possibly resonate on a different scale, something that would mean more than a singular moment in a single day of one ordinary person's life. She knew that if you write something that doesn’t come from a place of truth, your reader will know it, you will know it, and yet…here I am agonizing over the last poem I posted. Why? Because it uses a certain word some people might find offensive.

Oi vey.

When I wrote Act... I found that specific word to be the most appropriate expression befitting the poem, line and momentum…I still do. Read aloud, there’s no mistaking that word is there for a reason, and everything that word carries with it is intentional. The explosion of the hard consonants after the push of breath between teeth and lip – there’s no getting around that sound. So why am I wringing my mental hands over a four letter word that might offend someone who reads my blog?

“I think there’s something missing in an actor’s persona, or maybe mind, about censoring out certain emotions. They are “overreceptive” …People who are tremendously good at closing out the troublesome tend not to be brilliant performers.” Michael Boyd from Mind, Memory, and the Actor a public discussion held at New York’s Columbia University.*

I think what Mr. Boyd speaks to here applies to all artists and art forms. I think it’s a crucial, integral part of creativity, and that same “overreceptivity,” I believe, is what compels an artist to create in the first place. And it is fear (another four-letter-word beginning with F) the stunts that creation, or keeps it in hiding. Do I really want others to see the world as I perceive it? Maybe. Do I really want to show the world my vulnerabilities? Mostly (like 99% mostly) no. Do I have to bear my every tender feeling, bruised heart, or wrenching sob story for the world to see? No, I don’t HAVE to.

That being said…I will. While I may not give away every naked detail, I will at times allow (or force as the case may be) myself to pour out whatever prompted the work in the first place, warts and all. Because I must never allow the feared reaction of others to affect my pen, I can never allow my own trepidation to make my voice stutter, I cannot hesitate to embrace the embarrassing and painful as I reach for the wondrous and joyful. MUST I be completely honest with my subject, and myself, and my work if I’m to be even remotely satisfied with any artistic endeavor I embark upon?

Without a doubt.

So prepare yourselves.


*Thanx for the article Eric .

Act I: scene 2

heartbreaker :
leave me
if you’ve a heart -
should I play the role I always hate,
that tortured intellect to which I was drawn,
should I draw myself as one
run!

neigh-sayer :
(insert your line here --
something along the lines of choices,
or control…
maybe fear…
yes
use fear--she fucking hates that)

heartbreaker:
forgive me
if you fall prey -
should I sweetly seal your chosen taste
(that famine respite with which I am enticed)
should I write myself as she
leave!

neigh-sayer :
(ad-lib with this part if you like --
just go with the feeling you know--
whatever comes to you in the moment --
that one thing you know will make her stay)

heartbreaker:
I could form for you a list of all
My flaws and faults
And still
You’d
want
more

So you see...

it’s merely my time and turn
to learn

Snow...

We had a sudden drop in temperature the past few days and it's got me excited for snow. The below poem was taken from an email I wrote my first winter in Chicago...

since snow started everything
slows
down
it snowed again today and still
amazing
every time i go outside
a surprise
the night sky is pale and glowing and the sidewalks
glisten...even the alley
awe
every time i go outside
soft warm socks are your best friend –
random flakes will
find their way to your tongue and
(I) miss your mouth
if you try to catch them

if this is as bad as it gets,
the answer will only frighten you –

above all else
snow is so…