The Virgins of Garden City

I only had the name of the city. I passed it several times a week on my way to work. Still, the rest came easy. The imaginative trials of tribulations of that mysterious city in the middle of nowhere...

You should not have come to Garden City,
With your sorrows,
And your promiscuous ways,
Teasing your hair up like a sky-bound kite of cream potatoes,
Teasing our flustered virgins,
Their heaving chests bird cages of canaries
     yellowed by the sad songs they sing,
Their day beds poisoned by the stain of your unsatisfied love,
A warm sun on the pastel-colored wall paper,
And on the exposed flesh left in piles on the day bed,

You were only twenty,
Or twenty-one,
But, damnit, they were so much younger than that,
A wild milk snake among the manicured flowers,
Dapper lilies as untouchable as magnificence,
A thousand sex organs beckoning from the bushes,
They stood a long time gazing into the mirrors of their vanity,
A childish Polaroid taped to the glass,
Assessing the dead eyes that gaze back,
The skin pulled tight across their bird bones,
The purple bruises left by your heavy fists
     like storm clouds above a softly pale and undulating landscape,

You stood behind them,
Holding their long braids,
Breathing on their necks,
Those lifeless virgins locked in little girl rooms,
The daughters of Garden City.

12.2011

I That Cut You

Working through the heavy emotions of heartbreak, who's to blame and who isn't, who caused the damage and who didn't; for all the thinking and internal reflection and conversation, when love shatters it's almost impossible to trace the true and honest steps that led to the explosion. In the moment when I wrote this poem, I suppose I was pointing the finger at myself...

I never meant to be the dagger that stabbed you through,

Nonetheless,

I became the ignorant blade that did not know the sting of its own edge,

the reflection on my polished cutting surface was a mirror,

a window that everyone could see into but me,

I stabbed you,

you loved me,

I stabbed you more,

you loved me,

-all the while trying to go on with a severed heart-

I stabbed you still,

and love was not enough to keep our life from bleeding through your wounds.

It was the blood that pooled around your fallen spirit

that made me finally see the damage I had caused.

But then what can the knife do?

7.2007

Twelve Soldiers

A poem pulled from the far years past inspired by a trip to the wild desert where everything is both gorgeous and tragic at the same time...

Twelve soldiers disappear into the deep desert on a lonely night

when the wind kept the sand comfortably cooled after a day-long fiesta of heat,

a day that missed the stars but made the wait worth it,

a night so cold that it fooled you into thinking there wasn't sand beneath your feet,

twelve soldiers walked out into that,

beyond the fence line where the laughter in the lit tents ceased to be jolly,

where men feared not the death of endless walking,

endless days in a tomb without walls

that without a heavy lid a soul could wander carefree to heaven,

the path to its gates marked by the crescent moon

and protected by the sun himself,

twelve soldiers feared nothing as their sandals whispered hushed words

and left a meal of footprints for the hungry Eastern Wind,

innocent eyes watched near camp fires as fathers melted into shadows,

the shadows soon into nothing,

the camp fires burned ever onward,

the night rolled and dipped on the back of a lazy camel fast asleep on his feet,

for a short while the dust twirls in his shaggy hair beneath the ropes and carpets,

and he knows peace,

when the morning again arrives the sun replaces camp fires so vigilant in the night,
but the twelve soldiers are a thousand miles away.

3.05

Behind Dust and Doors

Another Western, another grisly scene between lovers, between bodies, am I'm still never sure who comes out for the better...

She tasted like the dirt beneath his fingernails,
Like the dust that blew in the summer heat,
And he only knew his name as it sounded on her lips,
The fabled guns of his grandfathers in shadow beneath the lamp,
Hiding in the cracked leather beds of his belt,
Perfectly shaped to put cold iron asleep,
Or to wake it quickly for the killing,
Where the stars are doors to other places,

She moved against him and her skin made horrid foreign shapes,
A soft orange landscape masked by coarse sheets cast aside,
Her fingers finding a strength to hold him close
     that her heart did not possess,
Kept from the darkness by the glowing candle lamp,
He crushed her with a mad violence born in the desert,
Born in the folds of those endless red canyons,
Born in the miserable pain of his screaming mother,
In the moment he was given his life her’s was taken back,

Somewhere wild dogs tear the wet meat from a dead animal,
But his hands were too slow,
The candle fell silent and his guns were lost,
His worn boots and sordid clothes empty on the burdened floor,
Black blood swam slowly along the mattress and into the wooden planks there,
Her hands were cold and her flat naked chest rose and fell,
She whispered his name into his ear,
Barely a voice there,
A quiet sound,
And pulled the dagger from below his ribs.

1.2011

The City of Lights

Tips are diamonds in Shining City
An Empire on the sand
Where everything is as fake as when we say goodnight
Where the sun sets all at once
And makes the world beautiful
Drumming on your skin
Fuck, always you!
In the walls
Beneath my fingernails
In the corkscrews swirling in my brain

Tip-toeing down the halls of Shining City
In slippers that leave constellations of glitter on the carpet’s scalp
Trying to figure it all out at once
Dragging you behind me through the stars
Falling in the night sky
Burning us alive
Sleep in tomorrow morning
Make a breakfast beneath the golden spires of too much thinking
Outside the window
the Emerald City
The City of Lights

12.2011