Lipstick on my Window (The Waltz of the Nameless)

the rouge line outlines the white

white, white clouds in the photograph. what is

the material? what is the inspiration?

each wavy line sneering, laughing, frown-

ing to its own music. the narrow rustic pipes

claw their way up the brick wall proving

once again that that which is

stagnant is impossible. motion

in every red stroke, every contour,

until you realize, in a series of four

each vivid photograph

dances the diabolical tango, commemorating

the languishing effects of hyper-stimulation

& instead, instead, instead,

focusing like a war rifle

on the steady decline of avidness.

wafers, water salad, and wretched men

Wafers, water salad, & wretched men.

Wake up you over-placid zealots!

Laughter works and perniciousness doesn’t.

Swallow your tongues, political octopi,

and delete your chafed files from

the computers of acronyms.

Google any type of fear and you

will be found, hounded & sprawled

blindfolded, for future aim

on the frigid backdrop of firing

Your wails are what lemmings

evoke upon their self-reliance for

suicide.

the tyburn jig guitar poem

I

wrote

a poem

about that guitar

in the shape

of that guitar

with only six key words

repeating themselves

like the six strings of that guitar

but the 6 critics of that poem

sitting around a table

in the shape

of that guitar

didn't like it

because

they couldn't wrap their heads

around if the words

burden

point

slide

finger

praise

wrench

were either verbs or nouns

artemis

tabby, tabby, tabby, — one word

for each time i forgot to feed you.

you didn’t meow like the other one;

your method of saying hello

came through waves of licking.

how awfully dry that was,

the pink sandpaper of your mouth

edging my fingernails,

going and halting by some

some unimaginable force

you held a kangaroo’s pouch

for a paunch — the furry, meaty

wad jiggling like baby fat (when you prance)

or a bowler’s triceps after a strike.

tabby, tabby, tabby.

when you fell sick with a virus,

you were as lame as when i found you.

i nurtured you like a child;

for some reason, I nicknamed you,

kitty-dumpling, and when you rallied

the name forever stuck.

when you died, (i’m so sorry)

tabby, tabby, tabby,

i wept like the mother of a soldier.

under the lemon tree i buried you,

a refuge from oncoming traffic

of my own car.

Mother to Child (read with care, may be disturbing)

not delicately defused, my blind bête noire,

not resistant to water yet lavishly gluttonous

and carried by monied pupils, flounders around

the tin can rain of yesterday’s roof, laughingly

unforgiven, seething, and blue.

misguided trance-like squid, why do you spill

your guts quietly like earthquakes on mute? fill

this vacant quandary with something akin to

dead bodies, at least, so I,

your prosecutor,

your defense,

your judge,

and your child,

feel some sense of remorse for what you have done

and what I soon will do.

In Response to Naming a Beetle After Hitler

little, creative, american tommy awoke with fright,

in the suburbs of his own security,

hearing the tiniest of prickly noises

like an insect cracking its knuckles,

he looked, found a maroon beetle under his bed,

named it after hitler, thereupon deciding

any conjunctions all capitalizations

would be extinct, vacuumed, dusted.

red-headed, freckled, american tommy awoke with fright,

protected in the white picket, alarmed and ready,

glancing wide-eyed at the swept wooden floor,

saw off-brown ants moving in a line

towards one of his socks, feeding off his alter-ego,

swarming the circumference,

he noted this would change his opinion

of his mother.

you can buy a name, name a meteor,

an underwater chilean anemone, name

a throat that hasn’t coughed yet, spiders

with unordinary apple stems for legs, all

becoming you immortalized like god.

Ode to Megan Gibbs

not your average “she,” more the far-end tail of a lizard,

resolute, machiavellian, sometimes spiky and coy

she could dance like a magnifying glass in the sun, burning up

a bright, bright, floral red…

her pumpkin carving could have been a college level graduate course

and she would have taught, wearing some kind of Costello glasses

not needing to demand your attention… (because she already had it, of course)

she would have been strict but fair,

“estricto pero justo!” se dice

her voice could knock you out with one punch

the coup de grace viva voce

she could make the lilliputian feel significantly larger

simply by talking about it, for her voice could carve air

into words… she was a cowgirl without a ranch, she could,

after all, beat you at poker before the cards were even dealt

she made peeking at the infinitesimal

feel welcoming, a shower of love for all those who, too, were willing

to view like she did.

she could stand on her toes like a ballerina, no, just the big toe

exactly like a ballerina; she could and would cast anything aside

simply for a moment of purity, stripping away all the (bacon?)

nonsense for that one, tiny, seemingly trivial, moment.