Domestic

Domestic

He use to sleep in

my bed. He made it

so I was restless

without another body,

my personal flesh

pillow. Under sheets

our legs wrestled.

Two bodies as one,

we became a four-legged

monster. In the closet,

our shoes were separated

on the floor. One night

he put his boots on my

white Louis Vuitton's, "Filthy,"

he'd call me. "Slut,"

I'd retort. With fists,

we ended our discussion.

We both wound up

in the same bed.

untitled Anna Karina poem

I suck up my soda

like a six year old. She talks

like a valley girl, looks

like Anna Karina. I want

to talk to her about la poèsie,

about her tiny fate line. I

want her coffee cup to become

a cosmo, her words to have pictures.

I lie carelessly about

her. I know nothing she rambles

about. My bubbles are translucent planets,

I fade into my carbonated Big Bang.

She is lost in the pop.

lye

lye

my family keeps calling me

gay because i write poetry.

my shoulders need massaging

i tell you. your hands lift

off my neck into my hair.

obsessively, i wash

windows and doors. you

fix the bed, the sheets

lie open, used.

my face burns red

with shame. i walk away.

your arms grasp the way

they do on the nights

you call me beautiful.

"found" poem

bun

slurping on synecdoche

munching on metonymy

crunching on cacophony

i have been eating poetry

pour more milk on my alliteration

add sugar to assonance

put paper into waffler

see what line breaks burn

slice crust off consonance

slab on mayonnaise

of enjambment

the chunky white glistening of egg

vinegar imagery

take the first bite of bread, tomato, mayo

spit out soggy fiction

swallow symbolism

BBQ writer's block

feel flames ignite paper

collect the ashes

place soot on taste buds

vomit stomach acid onto page

bon appétit

don't forget the title

Patriarch Tics

This is a response to the poem "Patriotics" by David Baker for my Creative Writing class. It became something completely different than what I planned on writing.

"Our fore fathers for fathers for the 4th of July. No, not for the ones who light fireworks in their hands and blow their fingers off, for the ones that helped found America. The 4th of July that Americans have since bastardized with bright lights and idiotic stares. What a better way to commemorate the founding of “our great nation,” than celebrate with a festival of war. The whistles of a “piccolo pete” firework the sound of a bomb being dropped. Only the dogs fear it. Our neighbors watch and clap and “ooh” and “aww.” Only $59.99 to buy a box of bullets, missiles, shells, bombs. We give the children sticks radiating with fire. Igniting tiny, little arsonist minds, lighting the fuse, watching the flame run across their mind, reaching the base and erupting with “Learn to love it, the smell of detonation.” Their minds wiped clear of all thoughts of danger. Brainwashing like rain washing the rain of fireworks’ brains off the asphalt.

What else do the patriots spill blood, both their own and their enemies, for? The rights that the Constitution writers write, right? For freedom, for the freed…um, us? Us a USA in the twentieth century whose minds don’t mind the warning labels. Whose thoughts thought to light five firecracker bags at once in their neighbor’s mailbox. Whose parents in this “great nation” grate; nay, shun their kids who steal the box of matches and sip from the half empty beer cans scattered on mown lawns. Whose heads mourn celebrities but the discovered bruised body of a beaten babe is forgotten once the 5 o’clock news ends. The fore fathers fought for the fathers who kill their daughters and for the fathers who point their daughters’ eyes to the sky and talk about “patriotism.”

Everyone stands quiet as the “big finale” explodes the sky. Mouths hang open at bright lights and loud noises. Their “oohs” ooze drool and their drools rules this “great nation.” Intelligence lowers with each burst, crack, whistle. The work of fire where only fire works. Hypnotized by flames, maybe this country really has gone to Hell. Have an extra serving of canned baked beans with your processed lips and assholes. The BBQ of hellfire.

A fourth of July anecdote: A five year old boy joins in a pie-eating contest. His father pounds a brewskie and laughs while his obese mother cheers on. On the way home the kid complains about a stomach ache. The 400 pound smoking mother scolds her son for eating too much. A critical hippo and her alcoholic husband raise an American.

Our poor, preachy papers praise phony intellect. The extent of my political knowledge doesn’t go beyond a few famous quotes of dead presidents. Simply say something controversial and people credit you as intelligent if you make it abstract enough to be open for discussion. Make the paper sound smart and the message won't come off as pretentious. But the wit of words goes both ways. The fine line between obnoxious and noxious is crossed when not considering the definition of words. Our fore fathers of this great nation cheered the finishing of a document while we cheer face-stuffing and colorful gunpowder. They cheered words and we cheer smoke and mirrors. A diminishing attention span runs rampant ‘round America. The amazement at a quick flash and some sparkle a direct result. As well as a response paper as loose fitting as a triple XL hat on a tiny headed baby. As well structured as the previous metaphor. David Baker would be proud.

And somewhere, a girl is being beaten to death in this great nation."

Dominion

I was five years old the last time I was sick. I have no recollection of the illness except for one fleeting memory of flies hovering around my window as my mom spoon fed me medicine. Twenty years later and my body’s fighting off another virus. My auburn pillowcase is stained a grayish white from snot and reeks of vomit. I’m drenched as if laying on a broken waterbed, my sweat creating a crime scene chalk line around my body. There’s a ringing and I can’t tell if it’s in my head or if it’s the white noise of the air conditioning. The window next to me is open to let the winter air fight off the heat of the infection.

A fly lands on my forehead but my hands refuse to swat it away. The ringing stops and all I can hear is a slow buzzing build. The sound of one fly flapping its wings and rubbing its hands together, preparing to dine on the feast of grime running from my matted hair. That buzzing gets louder when I see another fly land on my windowsill. I can’t tell if it’s outside or inside. The weight of the fly on my scalp burns a hole in my skull, my head starts to throb with the buzzing. A constant hum of filth and trash. Three more flies linger around the ceiling my eyes are fixated on. The throbbing moves from my temple to the back of my head when I realize that I don’t bother to question where the flies come from, like accepting surreal realities in dreams. A biting sting above my right collarbone makes my mind lucid. A dead bee rests in the valley between my neck and shoulder, a stinger protruding the skin next to it. I look at the three flies on the ceiling and see their black, scaly skin fall away, a point extend from their backside, their wings flutter once and fall away. Like high hit badminton birdies, these once-flies plunge toward me. One lands above my upper lip and two land on either side of my neck. The pain is instant and doesn’t fade. I sense the sting on my shoulder bubbling, the pressure of the swelling intensifying. Like a pimple being squeezed by an uncaring mother, puss erupts from the red sore. The puss is a milky white, but milky like expired whole milk. The white turns a trash bag black and starts floating away from my body. It disperses across the room into hundreds of pellet sized black pearls. The black beads sprout hundreds of wings and shit-loving legs. The throbbing, buzzing, humming in my head is replaced by an awareness of the blisters on my lip and neck. The puss-born flies cover my popcorn ceiling. Black skin and papery wings descend like confetti followed by a hundred bullets piercing every pore of my body. My brain shuts off when the bubbling, boiling, ballooning starts. A voice in my head tells me the pain will stop if I let him in. My skin bursts, releasing white, red, black cream and exposing muscle, nerve, bone. I open up.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

In makeup on a mask he carves bodies and bones. Makes dinner. A wig over his head and an apron over his chest. A generator hums in the distance. A knock on the door and a voice. He places his hammer down next to the slaughtered chicken. The door opens in a creak. The hammer is picked back up. Back up, back up, back up. Metal clangs sharply as the hallways opens into a trophy room of small mammals' skulls. A slam to the trophy and the visitor convulses, kicks, seizures. Another slam with a scream and it stops. Dragged onto a table in the kitchen. Grab the chainsaw. Another voice, another creak. No time wasted as he grabs for the girl. Out into the daylight, his rubber-gloved arms around her, he drags. Lifts. Hooks. Through her spine, up her neck. Feet don't reach the ground, arms lose feeling as her neck stiffens. The chainsaw. The body on the table. Feathers on the floor. Skulls posed with femurs and spines and ribs of animals unrecognizable. A chicken clucks. A generator hums in the distance. A chainsaw sounds the same. Cut, slice, saw. The head dislodged from the body. The hook digs up. He lifts her. Slam once, twice. Convulse, kick, seizure, stop. Lifts again. Into a freeze, a lover and a body and a head. Another creak. Three's company.

Two Micheal Keaton Syllabics

One. Big. Dark. Room.

Beetle

juice. Beetlejuice.

Beetlejuice. Said three times

and he'll show. Havoc and mayhem,

strippers and flies. A dusty VHS,

black and white snow when Micheal Keaton talks. Rewind.

Watch. Rewind again. "Come on down and I'll...choke on a dog!"

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Mulitplicity

Batman

Gotham City

Jack Nicholson's clown charm.

Michael Keaton's loveable face.

He talks to a mirror like it's female,

laughter ensues. Bruce Wayne. Mr. Mom. The Ken Doll.

Where is he now? Night shift. A forgotten 80s icon.

Going Green

In the labyrinth of the woods, a girl got separated from her parents when she decided to run up ahead. She waited twenty minutes before she started back for them. Bushes became brushes and the ferns grew into a fen. Her Sesame Street fanny-pack containing a box of raisins and a half-empty water bottle got caught in the vines growing around her. She was able to save the half-full water bottle before the vines engulfed her pack and suffocated Elmo's smile. The day sunk into night and the girl saw a pale light in front of her. As she headed toward the illumination, the mush floor suckled at her left shoe. Next to go was her right shoe. The swamp rose to her knees as the light grew closer and a faded into a darker shade of blue. The trees around her loomed ominously as her feet bumped into roots growing in the undergrowth she waded through. And still the light grew larger. Something skimmed past her right leg and she shot her hand down to brush it away. It had no blood coursing through it's veins, but it was alive, a branch or a root. She continued to wade further, the muck up to her belly button. The light was almost within reach when something hit her left leg. Again, she shoved her leg into the brown mud below her only to feel another lifeless root. When she tried to bring her hand back up to bat the flies around her face, the root became a tentacle and pulled her further into the earth. Seeking nutrients it made its way between her fingers and up her wrist. The terror rendered too much and she was left voiceless. He eyes did the shouting for her. As the root embedded it's way further into her arm, her right ear was submerged. Roots began swarming around her legs, sliding under her toenails and up her dainty legs, piercing her hips, crawling into her belly button and entering through her ear. Her hair turned into vines and attached themselves to the branches above them, entangled. Mosquitoes birthed from her nostrils like a running faucet. Lily pads expelled from her mouth and the light rose. From her black pupils a stem drew closer, finally giving birth to flowers. Her skin became wet, brown, disintegrating into mud. Then she noticed the warmth coming from the light, it guided her limbs.

Sacrament of Penance

I have come from church. That squared-in religious cubicle they call a confession. Through those gothic, wooden-stuttered windows I sighted a gray bearded chin. Above that was a crooked nose and, above that, wire-framed glasses. I did no talking. I had nothing to say to that man. My sins were between me and God. Started three months ago, my sins did. I was to be a husband. Wedding was three months away. Over the next few weeks I heard that sick coming from him through the bathroom door. That kind of sick that sounds like a soul expelling evil to make room for more sins. His eyes sucked into his face and the valleys between his ribs grew deeper. He tells me he met someone else months ago. That time he said he was visiting his sister in Iowa, he was in Key West, Florida sucking his own death from an eighteen year old Puerto Rican. You know how brides-to-be are suppose to have that glow? Brides and mothers, they're suppose to have it. That glow left his body when his soul did too. He got rid of it. Took my glow with him.

Today would have been my wedding day. That voice inside my head telling me to commit those sins, I've pushed it out. Every now and again, on those nights I can't find my way, I hear that voice in the alleys next to me, behind that door. Begging for me to let in in. Up in that church, I had no strength left to say no. That beard in the boarded-up window turned black and fell away. The glasses shattered and pierced the man's eyes. Blood dripped upward from those empty sockets, a puddle grew on the ceiling. The man in the space next to me was no longer a priest. That man smiled at me. His teeth turned yellow and his tongue black. His nose retreated into his face, all that was left was two empty ovals in the center of his head. That musty, wooden divider between us broke apart, evaporated. That voice in my head was no longer in my head. I've come from church.