Donna

 

Donna in her soft socks and french fry legacy
lamenting of long lost days
she was wilder wielding trinkets sapphire spirit
drinking from the creek cursing all white fathers
she was fifteen pounds lighter a dancer a jubilee
a blonde hawk for moonstone
and chicken breast

Donna does not shave anymore
she doesn't have anyone worth the allure
the thin black artist's stroke along the contours of her
ruby slipper slick for fantasy
and for her own clumsy fingers
invisible barricade in her bed
termite mounds of some other life's clothes
Donna giving her water to a sadness of her own contrivance.

TA

Martha

 

Martha drove mad hungry for late night pleasure
a bit of sloppy grease and golden parapet
blinking red lights lilting like tired cocoons across
empty intersections dodging dangerous potholes in the road
disappointment after disappointment spurned her onward
into midnight frenzy
a twisting growling savage diatribe spoke in hymns from
her guts
the sleeping denizens sheltered in dark boxes
dared not wake up
Martha would not be bothered
she plagued the quiet thoroughfares with her hot desire
racing through the city's deep oak shadows with her heavy foot
pressing the petal

until in the distance that waxing yellow light revealed itself
a beacon of hope
and under that banner
a burger.

TA

Bishop

 

To the Bishop and his lovely wife
this dance I dedicate
kissing the carpet with numb limbs
slick with my own archived jism
I can't tell a burning cross
from a hanging tree
and we got rockets that land themselves
y'all really making me wonder what's important
probably why I gave up colors too
this beleaguered high
this swaying soul

Bishop be kind and your lovey wife too
this I pray
on bended knees in hooker boots
electronic hymnal keep the beat
they say they can prove the trajectory of
our planet
that it isn't flat
they say math is the true God
and triangles never lie

Bishop hear my prayer
grant me time to bear witness to the Singularity
grant me grace in professional poverty
give me fodder
keep me hard
even Jack knew the Muse was hidden in sadness

and your lovely wife too.

TA

Cora

 

I met Cora at the Washateria
her heavy coin collection
a red wasp tapping at the ceiling
a sparrow in angry pursuit old fat crow flapping
blaming someone else

her hair in constant circulation
web servers running an exposed port
this aint no victimless crime
a cock roach hungry for the wild
her fingers like spindly branches a switch my
   mother told me to pick out
little red welps and piano notes in the margin
a flag discovered
harassed
Cora laughing in the river her wet pink gills filling
like crystalline pouches

she tells her story inside my circuitry
a photon filibuster ahem ahem to the chamber present
fumbling with her emotional expectation
dealing with her own shit
one pinky painted in pearl
lowlife praying the sinner's prayer in her full brown bush

she says stuff like, hopefully my story helps
   if I can and if I can't,
she's on her toes
her tongue like a lizard tasting the day
she chooses to do the right thing, Cora
does.

TA

Kickers

 

I fashion for myself silk stockings,
torn of course,
form-fitting corduroy suspenders so
my shoulders roll, so the crescent
of my breast delights in swinging laissez-faire
from the tepid pool of muscular linkage
nestled in the cleft of my armpit
to its carpeted milk bone anchorage,
high heeled in wet leather kickers
whose cliff silver sparkles clank a
patois of two-step patterns,
twill courage proliferating from a
back pocket fold, when it is needed least
a blade hidden on my proper,
to make threats at my throat,
to cut her tie-down if she pulls back in panic,

I lean heavy into the lather and polish,
curl the tips of my moustache with your slick
spit
to remind me of your taste
and your poison, praying to father Fibonacci
in helical conscripts over your coiled corpse
hissing at me
with your long wet tongue,
in my hands the white lariat,
binding the bones of your translucent wrists
in knots of gauze, submissive
rawhide bleached,
to find you bound, to cast you
into the lake of fire,
of my eager devotion,
my infatuation.

TA

Tepid Pink

 

A glittering emerald crucifix guarding brittle
bird bones, pseudo drawbridge skunkworks
of her skeletal architecture, waiting to hang some
future king
for criminal intent to (maybe probably) heal the world,
everyone who has ever tried has
failed,
a cigarette trial for the trouble you've caused,
reaching below the dinner table corpse of
Last Supper riceandgravy snaking
your stormy shorn panties
along goose stalks long, poison offerings
in tumblers turned up,
may I be excused?

tip-toeing under citrus star clusters
through the maze-riddled
midnight garden of your suburban spiderweb,
where once buzzed Magic
now bundled a silk suitcase cocooned
and cold, frozen diorama of
yesteryear's wonder, a cup to the door
listening
to the tempestuous divorce of adventure
and circumstance,

wrong to be
brave,
wrong to have
fear,
rigid in all kinds of heat despite the
tragedy of something irretrievable, like some
obscure life-raft has already (maybe probably)
been abandoned, a disoriented dreaming,
a forfeiture without destination,
and into my grey and unforgiving hands
your bundle of tepid pink cotton
fingerings
crawl like warm whiskey,
like virtue we never had
nor wanted
nor needed,
a long lie nonetheless
about the disparate hardships of our unequal traveling.

TA

Her Happenstance

 

In coarse shimmer paradox
she gift-wraps her crescendo
argument, peppered as it is
with golden flakes of charm and intellect,
her happenstance,
she badgers me until I am
tilted, with alarms blaring spinning in
red petticoat and court jester aftershave,
her spittle a luminous thread across the bridge
of my french nose like the money shots
openly hiding in my browser,

mother gestures a holy pattern her
long skeleton fingers hovering over a
bleached breastbone, the mole of a thousand
generations, stolen pearls her grandmere
lifted in a New York braggart,
her heart yet to give up on a brute
alcoholic menace that gave up on her,
fellatio and affairs in the dark corners of
eight-ball tournaments smelling like smoke
and trophy polish,

don't go near her, she warns,
and the waitress brings the check,

later I am drawn into the trap on my
knees in the wet limp lit afterglow behind
Linda's Lady, a wet garbage smell, rancid
urine aftertaste, overgrown splash of
wild weed in the concrete
exchanging grey grit
for a taste of my blood,

I oblige,
I bleed on,
she kisses me cloaked in the silver drapes
of countless midnight American Spirits,
she does not waste time on dramatic overture
or useless diatribe, she is
vapid,
and angry,
she pulls the trigger and I am sent remembering
my mother's words into something else
entirely,
into abyss,
and sleep.

TA

Jazzing

 

She calls from across the
street a serpentine tongue twisting
along the coiled
rhododendron drawl of the telephone's
nervous system, take your
panties off, her wet temple
planted against the drywall panel,
an advanced mosquito strategy
developing in the war room,
and on pine needles
and on black cold stone
and on the midnight ground
we skipped crickets we skipped
crawling ants we skipped an unlikely
encounter with that
sacred hairy growling forest god,

I lift one corner cowardly, then
the next with courage,
she flashes the porch light a pertinent portion
same as a flasher in a city park, shadows play
in the apartment twilight over
damp toddler toys tossed willy-nilly in
the unkissed tufts of heather 
company of sleeping snakes,
even sweet things slumber,
but tonight I am jazzing and putting on a show.

TA

A Coming To In Green Respite

 

She lay wide
awake in the quiet morning's wet wood
covered by his scent
her long pale fawn shape
her crooked legs bend and stretch
night lust lingering in drip
from awakening foliage
mist creeps

her new skin soft and wanting
stout bamboo scripture across
her cloven
white ass
some poet's signature
laments scrawled in pearl verse
joyful hymns too

she traces love
in the riddle's encryption
in the waltz of golden arrow sparks thrown
through the canopy
her naked coiled fern
her swollen lip

a trumpet banners at the mountain edge
his return
in wagered breath
with fresh kill
meat
and blood
to fuck again after breakfast
to discover fire by lunch.

TA

You and Your

 

You and your cuck
laughing with trembling flesh having
a wonderful time, your long twisted
witch's tendons
wandering willy-nilly along my
spinal hem, not him,
his corrupt posture and
fallible dignity, his awkward
virtue, his empress
cachet in pale posture indignant
on cypress knees,
he wishes,
suffering for your attention
your cuck
reaching for a cup of my garment
like a beggar to a passing
priest,
I'm not myself, Father,
his rabid thirst squeezing my throat,
your lips on a slick track encircling
my unsociable right ear
voiceless and wet and
bidding
and disregarding your cuck's
clutch,

But, I feed him anyway
my passive attention
my limp focus
that same deaf ear,
watching in the window's reflection
some lucid theater, alit with searing
torrid temperament a waltz
to old King Solomon's psalms,
Davidic blood hardening like a
pillar of salt,
maybe the accumulation of so much
sin will destroy this city?
you and your cuck
begging for my gluttony
tilting on a carousel of gyral
fantasy, of midnight's flesh,
dizzy
with the task of finding chorus,
falling in and out of love,
crawling and repenting and
a swill of starscapes spinning
out of control,
this is all out of control,
your knee over my shoulder,
shivering whispering poems from
a vault in your black heart,
you and your cuck,
his bittersweet eventuality, his
warm labor, his
Christlike demeanor,
I reach for his smug mulish
passionate
pearl hook
and save his goddamned soul.

TA

Naked Foot Diorama

 

Your halo hung here
our desperate escape
fresh sign of your coming along the trail
black mitten sock
discarded tights melting into my carpet
white lines on the picture frame
my old college buddies smiling loud
thick tufts
a razor blade

your long pale proboscis and
naked foot
laughing in respite
your spread lips
crooked teeth
possessed of the common snake
snarling in repose
quote
we serve the Lord
we who rescue the forlorn Samaritan
and fuck till dawn.

TA

Where I Am

 

In your musk,
in the illusion of your wet stone,
your lonely heart,
in a puddle of your melted jeans
and cheap panties,
in words that fall from
your sun-singed lips
sometimes hard
sometimes soft,
in the melody of your poetry,
in the sad refrain,
in your warm bath water,
in your window framed
in streetlight
in pliable black and white
curvature,
your amaranthine appetite,
in the way you describe
what you need
in the way you want
happiness,
your guilt,
your regret,
in the black copse
where the wild things crawl
I am ever bent stalking
low to the ground
hunting
for your scent.

TA