i no longer live alone
when the west sky bleeds gold
it spills on his jaw, under my hand
i am the most quiet masquerade
rope around my waist, silent raffia
shoulders dipped in chalk and fresh feathers
the first of all horrific things, the best
the river soaked in moonlight
the bloated body of a small child
a monster, a monster
sweating under a galloping drum
i am no longer alone
our compound’s ancestral dust
chokes the air, see the second,
my love with a ropebound hand
bloodtrails on his wrist, a red voice
the one i met before i met
the face from the other side
when the gong sounds, i turn
the world turns with me
the people fall to the ground
Round and about the edge of things
seasons
books
loves
truths
and other follies
follow my palm
divine
lies and wonder
work and wells dug with the bones of broken vows
nothing is meant to last
move too fast and the fury will come
brutal
slow killing on a floor designed for breaking things
hearts
knees
chains
cryptic like dust sprinkled on the grave of an enemy
write me poems
build me pillars
you will eventually tear them down
weep
whirl
wonder what happened
what happened to that small girl
gentle like rain
clean water from the tropics
none of this acid falling from these harsh skies
come back to me
my Jamaica
simple
like racism is just prejudice in shades
easy
like tripping was only over a rock
dock me two days pay for not showing up
not like this kiss-me-arse reality where they does fire you
for asking permission
to be absent
to be free of these cubic rooms
these desks nailed to white walls of forever
eternity is a long raas time
grime or palace
my toes like to be done
one a week
at least
I like a massage
it frees the shoulders for dancing
the legs for running towards things
my mother has been absent from my phone for months now
no answer
no way to tell is she alive or deathly afraid of living somewhere
anywhere I turn
I am so frightened of becoming my mother
lonely old woman
no bells to speak of
only the memory of what she never did right
tolling
tolling
for her
for me
for her three children
oceans between me
and the boy I first adored/brother
Grandma has been dead tw0 years and some
today the rain came in sheets
gray glimmer glaring angry at New York
this town is not for the lonely
or only for the lonely
sad
sad
the wing of October falls
cold
cold
mutinous my muscles refuse to move
what good is dancing
when the heart lies still
beneath the earth of things suffered
sometimes survival
is not good enough
wear me
thin girl
loud girl
pin me on your chest
display me
clay and dust
I am only human
flailing
failing
falling
fleeing
who am I fooling
if you come for me
I will follow you anywhere
false are these furrows
these furies
these flippant
ferocities
for you
I would fold
freely
feel the fetters float away
for you
I would follow all the follies
for you
I would
I would
(for E)
I stop my hand midair.
If I touch her there everything about me will be true.
The New World discovered without pick or ax.
I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for in 1969.
I saw it as a girl but didn’t know I was taking in myself.
My hand remembers, treading the watery room,
just behind the rose-veiled eyes of memory.
Alone in the yard tucked beneath the hood of her car,
lucky clover all about her feet, green tea-sweet necklace
for her mud-pie crusty work boots.
She fends off their spit & words with silent two-handed
twists & turns of her socket wrench. A hurl of sticks &
stones and only me to whisper for her, from sidewalk far,
break my bones. A grown woman in grease-pocket overalls
inside her own sexy transmission despite the crowding of
hurled red hots. Beneath the hood of her candy-apple Camaro:
souped, shiny, low to the ground.
The stars over the Atlantic are dangling
salt crystals. The room at the Seashell Inn is
$20 a night; special winter off-season rate.
No one else here but us and the night clerk,
five floors below, alone with his cherished
stack of Spiderman. My lips are red snails
in a primal search for every constellation
hiding in the sky of your body. My hand
waits for permission, for my life to agree
to be changed, forever. Can Captain Night
Clerk hear my fingers tambourining you
there on the moon? Won’t he soon climb
the stairs and bam! on the hood of this car?
You are a woman with film reels for eyes.
Years of long talking have brought us to the
land of the body. Our skin is one endless
prayer bead of brown. If my hand ever lands,
I will fly past dreaming Australian Aborigines.
The old claw hammer and monkey wrench
that flew at Brenda Jones will fly across the
yard of ocean at me. A grease rag will be
thrust into my painter’s pants against my
will. I will never be able to wash or peel
any of this away. Before the night is over
someone I do not know will want the keys
to my ’55 silver Thunderbird. He will chase
me down the street. A gaggle of spooked
hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard,
never to lay another egg, just as I am jump-
ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground
of sweet clover.
gasp through
dust & plastick
smoke thick w/
silicon computer chip
kevlar dust
ready to blow
refracted aluminum
mirrored
vastness
of the desert
horizon line
disappear around
subtle curve of the
edge disappeared
run out
through
i’d never make it
on these lungs
riddled w/ plastick
if a military trash fire
burns in the middle
east
does Anyone see it’s glow
jet fuel & trash
if the US silences any wounded
who will blow the whistle on it
choking on plastick
does anyone hear
the high frequency
injury retrograde
for you who heard useless
through honey trees in time of wasp and stalk
for you who raised surface we all mixed from hunger
generated off-color milk borne from chemical cousins
for train of mouths you who haven’t sat down
breathing a first bowl days waiting
for fog and spiced sky
I watch you weave
them bare grassy cane would not wash out no matter
tired body in shift and glitter how we found red
into whatever wore
me stolen a sheen
of milk memory saw
alone on the porch
to sleep and take up
a branch of that country
to allow maps of fire
our own fields of rain