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