Dreamers

I dreamed delectable dreams of her.
She dreamed of dead animals littering the floor

and her being forced to walk over them. Read the rest of this entry »

Cleveland

I just walk a landscape
littered with lost souls-
Fatherless black girls
strut their bulging asses
along ghetto curbs,
An assembly of street dealers
Thieves and pimp entrepreneurs

The sun never shows its face Read the rest of this entry »

Year One

You dragged the mattress into the living room, citing
how insomnia has crept into every Sunday
of your life and how white noise somehow
soothes the beasts in your head
to rest, just enough to sleep.

At first I felt internally resistant, struggling
with lights flashing in pixilated repetition
around the dark room, each sound
from the television a knife
running along my nerves. Read the rest of this entry »

Sappho Dancing*

Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirring me-
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in,

who time will now call Melissa

*

Sweet mother I cannot work the loom
I am broken with longing for a boy by slender Aphrodite

And she has chosen cruelly this time:

his stomach is hard
but his head is soft

Still I long for him to place flowers
in my giggling hair Read the rest of this entry »

Bi Polar

I drink and I drug because of this
And there is nothing
Unique honorable or special
About it
It’s just there
At times it’s a muffled frustration, which
Begs to be set loose
At other times u are the best thing that
Ever happened to the world
A lot of people in my family have this
Affliction
It’s nothing to be proud or ashamed of
It’s just there like a
A Peregrine falcon perched
On a tower waiting
For it’s prey and very quiet
And focused Read the rest of this entry »

I Am Sitting

Looking at paintings by Purcell
one especially of a hanging
and it is the year of the DOG.

I am sitting, staring at a 4X8
photo of Bogart nursing his drink

in the middle of my bookcase
between a history of England and the diary
of John Evelyn.
He has been nursing that drink for two years
while my mother and father gaze
in a gold frame gave at Shou-hsing
god of longevity
carved from ivory.
Shou stares out at a red candle
on a coffee table
and a sign on the wall above that says
REMEMBER.

Read the rest of this entry »

Muse On My Staircase

not your regular water nymph
or white-robed rider of hippocampi
flitting through small
spaces, or Melpomene gripping
the open-mouthed mask head
trailing saliva no match
for the sweat that gathers
before the morning’s first drink

dripping from the jungle ends of his
hair and tearing down his forgetfulness
as again you ask it
what the hell
happened to you

Read the rest of this entry »