To Basquiat’s In Italian

 

The letter was addressed

to you.

It was in Latin and I couldn’t read it

and the blood on the envelope

stained my hands for days.

I’ve been staring at it, grinding my

teeth

waiting for you to respond as I inhale

the remnants trailing upward

from this perpetual fire.

I pretend not to notice

when your puppets flash headlights

into my living room at night…

The sheer vulgarity of it makes my

stomach clench

but you do not know this;

I made sure not to tell you.

The severed phone line is an illusion of ignorance,

a masquerade like the hands that

melt and bend at your will,

dancing on strings like slave

marionettes.

Teeth chatter in your presence as they

throb,

humble and nervous,

sick with anticipation:

They call for you.

You stand in the bone-chilling winds

filled to the brim with defiance,

mouth gaping closed

with a strange sanguinity

colder than the ice picks that

stab tender hearts.

The rich hot liquid is spewing

forth now as I take control

of everything you never knew existed.

I will die with the one thing that

escapes you:

Freedom.

to Basquiat’s Untitled (we have decided…)

 

I just thought you should know that the bullets were, in fact, extremely fast. They cut straight through the skin without an ounce of hesitation. Slicing through the heart and scalp they then blew his teeth away to rob him of his life and identity. There will be no investigation. We saw the way his legs gave out beneath him at first as he clutched desperately into thin air for a nonexistent savior. But the headlines have been born and reproduced so all we have to answer for is whether his blood will cover his deeds. This microphone though will not extort an answer, so you can be the judge of blood spilled at the hands of a nation you had once trusted.

dreams that go “bump” in the night

I’m driving on the freeway when I see a sign that says something like “Police often check speed here.” Inside information, its seems. I slow down, and then I’m rear-ended by the car behind me. I pull over to exchange information with the other driver, but he drives on right past me. I get off the freeway and stop at a beautiful vineyard, full of wisteria. I crave red wine. My life is a movie. Some boys and I, including “A”, go to destroy an old man’s house. I don’t know why. We set fire to one of the rooms while smoking weed. After setting fire to a five other rooms in the house, we decide to go smoke more in the first room before leaving. I walk in and “A” is sitting on a desk. I stroke his face; I can feel the stubble on his cheek and chin. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. 

“Get away from me,” he says. “You smell different now. Like abuse.” 

I’m not mad or hurt by this. I stop touching him but remain standing there. Looking at the joint while realizing the cruelty in his voice, he says,

“Man I need to get off this stuff.”

He says something about it making him very socially uncomfortable. He doesn’t use the word “paranoid.” But I know this is what he means.

to Dali’s Persistence of Time

 

The sun hammers down on a glistening pool of sand. Time ceases; love ceases; all ceases. Pale existence on the horizon: shadows and suggestions. Jagged cliff edges tell tales of desperation and the flecks of gold in the sunrise blind me momentarily. The atmosphere is thick with a silent chaos and I am still. Time melts slowly through my fingers but I do not long to grasp it; I am content with a solid and perpetual unknown. There is no sequence to my thoughts as they run rampant; in the land of the surreal they were just as fleeting and free.

vignettes of a night i have yet to forget

The wind whipped my hair yards above ground in a plastic vessel intended for
entertainment and panoramic views of The Lake but
when you kissed me all of these things fell into the pile of
Me Not Noticing
and you were the wind and the view.

——————————————————————————————

You grinned at me from across the table and
I’m pretty sure I blushed though neither of us had much to say.
My chair wobbled a little.
Then again there were your eyes–keen and penetrating– as if you were reading
the words of my soul from across the tiled tabletop. I wanted
to crawl beneath that lofted table with you and seclude ourselves
from the world because when it comes to
seeing without speaking
I suppose I’m a very selfish person.

——————————————————————————————-

The first thing I saw were your legs dangling from the parking lot ledge
like a child at the playground, a stark contrast from
the cigarette dangling from your slightly parted lips.
Out of pure reflex (and genuine concern for your respiratory health) I told you
“Put it out,”
and in your nature you flicked the cigarette into the street where it briefly glimmered against the
peppered grey and black of the asphalt.
Our shadows cast human-shaped patterns against the Campus Construction walls and
you looked straight ahead to examine the path I’ll be living.
Double-stepping to match your pace, you seemed enthralled in
our worlds that had finally paralleled.

beginnings.

The leather backseat brushed against my flesh and
we touched.
My heart was a cave and you were
my explorer
examining all the cracks and crevices.
Your hands were waves crashing over me and
I stumbled into the crests and troughs,
navigating the ocean that was
Your body.
I was lost in the bliss of new passion
like a candle that burns
unexpectedly
through the night.
I tried to show you through my eyes (eyes
that were half-closed in a hazy
vibration)
that you were The One
while you unbuttoned my blouse in a
calm frenzy–
my chest expanded with raw, unadulterated love for
Your hazel eyes and solid embrace.
The kisses you adorned on me were brief visions of a
future paradise and I
basked in them for as long as I could while the
threat of separation loomed overhead.
And we were.

to my mother on the fifth of may, two thousand and eight

The beginning began small. You were a small woman holding a small child, apparently oblivious to what could become of birthing something so fragile. Then as I grew, you grew–let’s face it, everything did. The space between us is figuratively increasing as I write this and in three short months, that space will become quite literal. It kills me to watch you self-destruct, but I can only stand in your way, pushing you back and protecting you from yourself for so long before I am stampeded by your addiction to self-pity among other things. At the mother-daughter luncheon, I almost cried  while speaking to you from that podium, but not for the reasons you think or want to believe. I was choking on the fact that I had to listen to my friends tell their mothers how much they will miss them next year and how glad they are to have been so close these past four–and deep down I knew that as much as I wanted to, I could never truthfully say those things to you. I’m not even sure my lips could form the shapes necessary to tell so huge a lie. It’s gotten to the point where I’m no longer concerned with protecting you although per your most recent hospital visit, you are now hiding behind  your own  arsenal of painkillers. You dumped them from your purse in an almost-threatening way, as if to show me what could happen if I hang up the phone on you just one more time. Pretending not to know what hydrocodone is was a nice touch, even though the word “vicodin” was clearly printed beneath it. And tomorrow I’m driving down to see you because it’s Mother’s Day and, frankly, I have to.

a few words straight from the mouth of my diary.

Just beyond the edge of the woods there lies the body of a man I once knew. Entangled in moss and the musky aftermath of autumn rain, his skeleton shines porcelain white, bleached by the summer sun. Skull gaping wide, trying to utter those last unspoken words he falters for lack of a tongue. Ants travel through his eye-sockets: the unchartered territory of an unconquered land. If they were more complex beings, they would wonder how this stony mass of uncertain material came to appear in their woods; but instead they use the hollow shell as a barrier against the elements, a cache of broken off leaves–leaves that are dead too and crunch as they rub up against his used-to-be. Squirrels and other woodland creatures have long since disturbed the natural order in which he decayed; by now several of his polished fragments are scattered beneath the twigs lying feebly as he on the ground or lodged in impressive redwoods, providing structure in birds’ nests along with strands of his luxurious hair. Whenever I walk past the horizon of trees, lush evergreens standing tall in the dead of winter, I picture the way the corners of his eyes folded softly as he laughed and his image in my mind fades from the vibrancy of his youth to the dismal gray and white of what is left of him. The ants on their parade through left eye-socket-mouth-nasal cavity march proudly in exhibition of their natural resourcefulness and I smile to myself because he always hated bugs.