nevermind

they had hand prints
on hand, that said the government has blood
on their hands! when I look down
at my own clean fingers.

Against abortion? one screaming side then
have a vasectomy! glaring for my not caring.
I have walking disease, I can only
walk away and not with

the cool crowds of change, telling my
uneducated gait that Stonewall was a riot
not a brand name! deeming my impossible
human existence a conflict of interest.

how do you choose between grocery lists,
fucking the man, or getting to bed on time?
does my scratchy low voice
sound enough like a man to choose?

photos of dead Evelyn surface,
i go beserk because i knew her murder
was not an accident, but an
incidental incitement

for the press of change,
for the face of a cause,
for the politics of righteousness,
for the iron curtain drawn

between your fire-lighter passion
and my cold indifference;
your politics and my poetics.
Thought she could change the world, Eve,

by opening her legs
to unready public radio stations, screaming
her side to change policies, please!
Thought she could change his mind,

Eve, try kicking them instead,
try unlearning sexist bullshit before you scream
obsceneties into my ears,
before you call it ----ism

It will not be a movement in banter
or blood, it will not take the mass
with well-intended propaganda,
it will not be where you see this is what a feminist looks like!

But I shouldn't pretend I know better
when I have no idea where to go or how
to lead, so I will take my leave
as quiet as you are loud.

water signs

triple chocolate ice cream
in the afternoon,
indulgence heavy on my tongue,
crushing hard candy as if it were medicine
for some fast-approaching fatal disease
or just a sugar high
to counter a sleepless night
when i thought i might be, could possibly have been
dying,
on the phone with some nurse named Deborah
who kept forgetting my name.

isn't there some famous line
where the world ends
not with a bang
but with a sigh?
that is how I feel
at the fault line,
seek to deliver my soul
offer only defenses of the deepest scars
free for anyone
from afar
i draw veins trailing from my heart, a roadmap
of love and tragedy in the rain,
standing in the rain,
standing,
forgetting
that we do not live upon the skin.
sensations fail
i comply
the tips of my nerves
burn.

Last night,
I had drawn myself a bubble bath
I had made a list of better memories
(belong in others but)
slipping off their tongues
into the air
when
I had taken a knife and meant to suicide
but the warm water was your voice
and i touched myself instead
speak softly into the dark, the imprint of their love
lingers in my watering ears and
i would be pure,
but for the wake of such intensity
just a shadow here.
And i would be whole,
but for this life.

visitation

I count the tears of the sky
they call them cloud lines but I know
better, live higher than bed-hopping bunny rabbits,
and eat the same celery stalks.

"Shut it, Diane." he says,
diagonally.
bead by bead in strands strung up to save the lives
of dead hair, insists it's for the given

gratiutious time wasted by chemical cleansing.
we'll leave
when my laptop finishes charging
his plaits settle into polish

and four outfits come alive to die:
we take so long to walk.
there's enough minutes by the door
for me to wear more mascara.

"don't forget the knife in my shoe"
I say to him, unsure of what either of us meant,
slip a cellphone down my pants
to a september street, not far from home;

in a vast and empty prose,
buttercups he bought spill yellow
trees all apple blossom, warbler call and
flutter, I linger

along tiny berries glow
like rubies in the grass,
raindrops, red lips and fingers on each patch.
In my head, I couldn't see

Aphrodite in the neon night,
black-and-white scenes in Revelations
or in pursuit
of each sun-plump, compassionate moment.

white-teeth of a woman's face telling
my story to her son, singing
about school children on bikes go
ping

as they pass along once-in-a-lifetime,
alighting the right birds to watch
take flight,
we stay and we sit and we choose to resist.

Ghandi sits alone
on a pedestal or a square stone
depending on the angle
and we like to visit him on our way to the Institution.

he was twenty once, like me and my friend,
arguing to change the world
smartly dressed in a British suit while
sending wind to distant stars, unfamiliar like

we're in camphor smokes,
marigold garlands ring the neck of my dress,
hold my molecular hands as
we walk towards vermillion ash,

getting closer to Ghandi's dhoti,
which is neither exotic nor alien,
and every day he asks us the same
question:

"Can you be still enough to change the world?"

but we must turn from black forests,
damnation temples lit by flickering wicks,
scathed in heat and brightness by our own encounters,
exposed.

return to bus lines
drawn not in orange decadence,
return the rags used by brown hands below,
validating the village we live

where there are good times in lights, music,
unrefined apple juice, forget the
berries he collected spill pouring into my palm,
spill into tangled weed blades

i come home to cut -- it was my turn this week.
we'll do this again next month, he turns away,
when there is another silence in heaven
for half an hour.

my laptop is draining out of energy with each step gone
and I can no longer find in memorandum
what was burned sacred and wild
into the backs of our eyes.

eighteen copies for monday class

bring us the pieces
she asks
of your soul, you must show
an exhibition
of how young you are and how old
you must feel,
of the exposing bone and sinewy
you must dare to show
in eighteen different places
to eighteen eager ears
waiting for an itch

you must
bring us the feel of a fingerprint or
cotton candy entanglement or
crimson berries plump in a tummy or
bottle rockets, home-grown hearts.
you must
bring us the dangerous thoughts--
that when surfaced, we'll have lost our skin-sticking will,
have pushed the rough thread count
out too still or in
too far,
you must
offer us your secrets
not just the commonplace,
you must rip them from you
raw
make them beautiful, languish them
in this life
they will fight
for air
you must
surrender the effacement of you
unto them
surrender pulsing desires
unto them

we will not betray you, we will
whispered them meekly instead of
screamed,
letting your secrets seep
into our pores
into our own forging desperations,
you must
give us something more
than you would give to him, to her, to them, to those who
have not shown up in time
to hear our voice
in yours
to witness
this exhibition of the dead soars
taken and fallen
of the cloud castles
dreamt and forgotten

you must
come onstage, demanding
dig holes dig holes dig soles
you must
expose the technicolours of your blood
you must
demonstrate the the vinyl sounds of your heart
you must
exhale the stale air from your easy breathing
bring us the meaningless meaning
strike us a chord in our humanity
bring us the pieces
she asks
and let it resonate
until there is nothing
left

my best friend today

maybe, just maybe or perhaps
it won't be so bad to sit with her another coffee date
my best friend a mirror to my
inner river-twisting hateful soul

mate. but what if it was me all along?
if my moods are as contagious as her
size eleven shoes
that i steal with three layerings of stockings.

liars and writers and thievery between the best of
ourselves. the way we connect is at
worst - nothing to regret and at
loss - nothing to pretend.

i feel guilty for looking into eyes and
still, i can lie so lie next to me and sleep twelve hours into saturday
night. take drugs and make mixes to take drugs to
or don't.

see if i care. see if i leave. the only thing
we know how to do
and do well is
leave

each other in mutual dust. Bite me
before I suck you dry, give me all you are before I
accidentally take it from you dry.
who am i to tell you who you are

as if i could distinguish our waking days,
bedrooms across sounds and creaking halls
do not seperate the soulless from the fake from
you and me.