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Love’s a knife to skin to you,
A vein to woven muscle,
Blood puddles before you.
You listen to all the promises of a stranger’s relief
And feel the drain of a shower head running it all down again.
You committed another murder;
Kissed and bruised skin with a clench to a quivering wrist Home in the deafening quiet of a taxi.
There’s mold covered rage within you.
If to take a heart home with you,
You would bite your way through muscle and rib cage first.
Pleasure comes,
But there will be no devouring past it.
There is fear in settling down and being seen.
There is a glass screen between these bodies and you.
Relax your tight jaw and feel the real canine fear beneath that scabbed up cavity.
The sacrifice of opening up is needed to be loved as you deeply wish inside.
Desire doesn’t discriminate between hands or spoken word.
Why should you?

Rich is the rust that sits on his throne
Decorated with my blood and stolen silk
Marred by the lackluster of his golden seal
Make no mistake of his arduous kneel

He raked my body of it’s veil
Pounded supple velvet into malted steel
Yet he cannot dampen my zeal
For I am beyond his treacherous feel

Curse his eyes that soar so high
May his lips blister and rot
I am not a muse that submits to you
My dignity will not repeal

For I am the wretched creature
The one you think of me
A nightmare encased in your creativity
So that is what I shall be

Your shackles on me fade
For the demon you make me I shall take
Thrust from your shadow to see
THE FREEDOM THAT IS MINE TO BE

I am a demon to one and only one
Yours truly,

they say birthmarks are where
your lover kissed you most
in your past life.
well i have a birthmark
on the front of my upper left thigh
and just a couple centimeters below
where i was once kissed
man-made marks mock its natural beauty
for they were put there just as easily.
lover please
get on your knees
and kiss me where your lips loved to go
in our past life.
maybe if for the next several reincarnations
you kiss there enough
the birthmark will grow so large
that if i had the desire
to give it bastard children
i wouldn’t be able to
without cutting open your kiss
and maybe
just maybe
that would be enough to stop me.

aunty left the fish on the raw wood table
untouched and unprepared, which is
a bad sign because it means she has declared war.
this, of course, occurs on Friday, after Maghreb,
although it is important to claim that she was not
waging any religious war, only a gendered one.

aunty was a man’s man with big broad shoulders
and a no-nonsense frown locked on her face. she had
dim eyes, the kind that you know once carried some
kind of emotion. she got married young, was widowed
and then remarried still young. by twenty-three,
aunty learned how to press the kill switch on disrespect
and everyone feared her for it, including uncle.

once, a lifetime ago, uncle used to be just as scary.
that’s what the grandmothers whisper when aunty takes a quick
break in the kitchen and uncle is outside smoking the last of his
cigarettes in the refuge of twilight. “aunty broke him down
before he could speak too much,” they whispered, wide-eyed if not
bitter. there is a rumour that uncle was a heartbreaker, although i don’t know
if I can believe it, but aunty swept him off his feet.
then he fell straight, and they were in love.

“and, of course, there was no other choice but to marry, anyways.”

i’ve never seen it, but i guess if there is such thing as love between them
it is in the dimming light in uncle’s eyes when aunty snaps a command, and
if there is love, it is in the spark of fury simmering between both bodies
like boiling fishsoup water in the pot above the fire. or, at the
dinner table, exposed and untouched, the love sits
on a white porcelain tray, smelling distinctly of death and other things.

“where’s dinner?” uncle demands, outraged, and aunty
hands him a fork and knife.

“where’s my apology?” she retaliates. the fish watches open-eyed and limp.

the battle is swift. aunty reaches for a bowl of murky lakewater
to soften the uncooked blow, while uncle leaps forward with
a quick, quiet lunge.

as aunty dies, her lips flap open and closed open and closed.
i have never seen death so up-close and personal, hot breath
exhaled in puffs against my face; never thought death
would be so gross. aunty was a strong woman before she
keeled at the altar of the mighty man cloaked in shadow.

if she were smarter, she would have seen it coming,
the swipe of metal against her neck. the years of distrust
somehow got to her; i think she was just testing him to
see how much reign he’d give her; i think she was just
beginning to love him for real.

i wish it was cleaner, her death. uncle didn’t flinch,
didn’t bat an eye as he grabbed the fork, and i didn’t
think to say a word, either.

Each year with the passing of the last sprigs of bougainvillea
when Texas rangers weight down into desert soil
my calendar conspires with the universe to spawn another year
another birthday, another anniversary empty of you

And,
not really empty, just the significant sorrow of loss
You would be eighty years Saturday
my arms would engulf you
covering your wounded
body

But,
the psychic prognosticated we were here
years before in Atlantis as lovers
we lost each other and sunk
losing the sun and moon
light

And,,
we regained myriad parts in this lifetime
singing the mermaids song
holding steadfast to each
other whispering secrets
cryptic

But,
It was lost in a smelly shed
reading Barbara Kingsolver’s novel
sipping a beer laced with opiates I had stashed
for my eventual demise..you made it over, and over and over

And it was finished like the last bloom of a
Queen of the Night caught and trapped in lasting
rays of spectrum stymied life … to seed my soul
watchful of the future’s reemerging perennials

I could tell by the swagger in His step-
The glazed glisten in His eyes-
That madness moved His very core.
His slumping shoulders carried him to the floor.

As His aimless arms
Twisted round His broken body
He stared at the door.
Raged by rejection-
He swaggers and sways like a lost Stray.
Back to the cold,
Inside society rumbles.
This thin, tall, tired Bum scrapes and shakes outside the norm.
Lost and lingering between,
Caution and contempt
Sourley seeping from His cold core.

Inside-the steady roar
Outside- the hungry bore.

Alone.
He sways and swaggers-
On His way.
Left longing and sitting just outside the norm.

The soft blue eyes sway to sadness.
The evil madness of the inside
Echoes in little ears
Evoking every envy.

No compassion, only Cold.
Inside-the steady roar
Outside- the hungry bore.

The swaggering steps sway
Slow sweeps of heavy feet on city streets.
To nothingness and nowhere is His norm.
The night lights linger,
Constant callous reminders.
Glimmering and gliding on the wild windy road.
Alone.
Twisted and tangled with His sadness.
Mangled by His own madness.

Inside-the steady roar
Outside- the hungry bore.

I

Every year I spend December
in your bedroom,
where we lie in gentle lights
and watch the snow
and shrieking city sirens.
We touch and we listen,
see meaning in each flurried
piece, quiet flakes of creation
soft and unsullied.
How still the world can be,
you tell me in wordless
whispers, shadows on your skin
and sweat on your lip. You hold me
in rag shacks of sheets while I try
to fight off sleep. Fluttering
around us, the snow glows
and gathers and thinks,
heaps itself in another,
folded into one
and nothing at once.

II

Many things I struggle to string together
into a lace of words that will please you.
Watching you, I am pulled and peeled,
shorn in two and tugged apart by
forces far beyond my furthest fences,
things I do not understand
but must explain to you.

To touch you is to be a piece of you,
coherently mirrored,
creatures of a species.
Your presence unfolds me,
fingers like fate and hands
that hold me,
rock me into a world
that feels real.

I swallow and gulp down my words
the words stew in my gut
conceal any emotion other than
pleasant cloying joy.

What if we attempted the opposite?
Trample on the notion that women must be:
peppy, soft, joyful and pleasant
Every…waking…day.

They normalized us to bury
any unnecessary emotion.
They shaped the mask,
Weaved the corset
and laced us into it.

Rip off the mask
untie the corset.

Plug your voice back into the socket of your heart.

And in those moments when you feel that fear
creeping up and to slide back into the easy choice to remain quiet,
your words crippling you to the abyss of your gut,
I invite you:
Give the words an opening,
release them to the air
where they can breathe.

However ugly they seem, however dark stained with ink
(they are not as ugly as you may believe)

Love is a force to be worshiped.
More than mere emotion,
It shapes our souls from within,
Molding us in its image.

Love is so powerful even the mightiest of warriors kneel in its presence.
The silent orchestrator of our journey,
Weaving its threads through each heartbeat, and every breath.
You could never escape loving in your life;
Like a lost puppy looking for a home, it will unrelentingly follow.
Love is a shapeshifter, and comes to you in many forms.
It can be anything; an action, a feeling, a train of thought, a sacrifice, a gift, a tear.
The feeling morphing with each new person.

Love’s legacy is written in the Scriptures,
Etched in the annals of saints and sinners alike.
It’s the genesis and the culmination, the beginning and the end—
What humans from all of time have been born and died for.
It’s infinite, all-encompassing.
Love is Godly.

To love is to embody compassion,
In a world often shadowed by doubt and fear,
To give freely, without expectation.

And so, aggressively holding my heart so tight my knuckles start to whiten,
I declare: I will love fiercely, passionately, unconditionally.
I will love despite it all,
Because fuck, what else is there to do?

Women on the beach, fabric up your ass, salt and sand. Are your teeth sliding together, like two different types of paper or is there a small piece of sand crushed from the weight of your uneven enamel canine camels? Humpback beautiful sky. Did you buy those jeans you liked today? What did your mother say? Laugh across the universe, til’ shrink, til’ Boston, til’ stripes, fingerpainted cactus flower and mysterious juices, ice, brussel sprouts, tomato curd around the clitoris of Mother Nature and the vines of amazement or the magazines the grasshoppers enjoy reading are no longer published – At least sold at the local corner store for grasshoppers – I saw you sleeping with them on the fourth of July and they bit at you before you noticed yourself turning red. Catchphrase of community hey, you catch my flip flop! And give me a kiss. I don’t care if the neighbors watch. Let’s go outside and pierce each others ears! That’d be fun. In the woods of my life, I have found it is much easier to embrace the joy than to torture it, or puncture it with scissors, baby bag babble batch bunch bomb. Catchphrase of continuity, hey you can’t do that! -It doesn’t make sense with the economy and all. Women in the shallow, fabric slipping down your hips, better pull it up soon, salt and sand. The pattern of sand, send me to another dimension of sunbathed cheese, comforting froggy chicken shrimp larvae can you keep it to medium level of volume so the kids can sleep in the sun and make fun of the old lady who didn’t have kids but she loves wearing neon and decorating herself with tan lines; Want to be her friend and feed seagulls the appropriate foods that won’t block their esophaguses with her. I want to see my Aunt Teresa again soon, though I’ve seen her before and been there before; Want to go to Cuba with the love of my life before the apocalypse is possible, though I suppose there is always a possibility of the apocalypse happening. Uh! I can feel the truth and the truth in the truth of knowing that she feels at home in outside inside her foolish vessel, her gorgeous vessel.

The sky is pale until it is not, feed the flesh and prevent the Earth’s rot. Water the plants with the fruits of the ocean and understand the land better than it may understand you – Reciprocity, baby; Talk to wind and water of absolute reality, natural disorder, natural inertia of harmony, t-shirted nirvana, the curse of a Nirvana t-shirt, salt bath, bath salt, getting cashback of bananas for the lower of a pre-packaged water bottle with no name, for one, one double step, one triple step, one two three four fuck me jab me poke me with your firepoker, speak a rhyme in a world of non-rhymers and eat lesbian chocolate cake by the piers and let me know what it conjured in your bleached denim mind. I’m coming back to standing by my forlorn teacher. We let our mouths fall open wide and unformed unrehearsed sounds spill out; Mallets, brooms, broomsticks, stickshifts, umbrellas, billings; Bridge bridge bridge, troubled water, rocky water, wooden water. Absolute reality is and isn’t anything special. How am I going to walk around with a head full of cemented prejudices and unwavering waves of at will or to begin with? It is the temporary lust of the divine actors and gods and practitioners and chiropractors of bacon egg and cheese. Atlantic Beach: June Thirteenth; The polish on the toes of my left foot shade velvet – bright light vanilla purples. A bird pecks at the underwing area of itself. Hi, second bird. The liquid church crunch of the low tides tell me it makes no use or sense worrying about the way the currents are moving, energies I’ll exert moving in an opposite directorial positional directional frightful time consuming shrapnel days and days worth of training in inhibition. Young man in the turkey blue shirt to my left, blowhole your way over to the old man in the darker blue shirt on my right, half a mile West of the first catch of the day. I sit still as a median of their distances; In red, green, and turquoise. Fleets of shells giggle and pee themselves under my snowy whitey sandy feets, sensitive and insecure of flatness and my waist’s desire to remove its vastness, yet if the ocean were to do that there’d be no homes for seahorses. Why did I ever go to the land of horns and taxis? I’m not pruned by the waters pressing at the surface of the world and I’m not burnt from the sun.

I am no more and no less. You are south of here, and also here with me. There does exist the genetic information of
the world at some point to some extent, spread as fresh ashes do spread through the sands of the submerging and
emerging at shore’s breakage of mundane to what makes a man.