The summer air was stifling
Gritty with the prickling yellow brain fever of anticipation
Tossing and turning on my bed of stone
Expecting each day would be more death-defying than the last
Teeth bared against the world
It was a summer for teeth-baring
Lips curled back over a mouthful of anger or birth pains
And the heat
They always complain of the heat, the old timers, when speaking of summers passed
But this was electric, the asphalt puddles
And burning oil odors of traffic in the city
White noise and radio hum
Infant screams and occasional shattered glass
body electric balanced on a point
toes arched on a pin head and
integrity threatened
by the arc of white light love
glowing from her pores
head full of marabou and
candy red gloss dreams
fabulous
spinning straw to gold
beyond the obvious
insides into mercury
come with me
take my hand
how can I
breathe your madness
descend into spirals
spirals of pleasure
on another plane
go there weekend
it falls apart
sugar into gold
gloss cherry red
lips like candy
to outlive the manic episodes of the soul
because in this world we do as we please
and can do no less
when I look at you I see a puppet holding hands with God
Daisy
she had the look of someone who's done too many drugs
far too many poisons pushed out through that moist skin
sunken-eyed and crawling with not enough sleep
like a hash party in Tangiers
one of those lost manic episodes of the soul
stars in your eyes, she said, and on your cheeks
dripping from your tongue
and throat all full up with them
choking on the happiness
and all I want to do is spin and sing
paint your cheeks with kisses like fairy dust
a slick of red nail polish sanguine sweet confection
darting across my path and doubling back again
such perfect blue eyes cherub girls with gap-toothed smiles
dart across my path no more just stay
transfixed
stay
the epic unwritten that lost drama
with sailors and knaves and queens
and ribbons, lots of ribbons
and gold chains enough to fill the Caspian Sea
played upon a stage moth-eaten mildewed and strewn loose with straw
tamped down by the miles of footfalls
eyes peeking through the greenery
catching on rose petals drifting like snowflakes
bells dancing
and jewels, jewels enough to dress the nightingale's song
venom dripping from the dragon's teeth
that tastes like raspberry wine
stream stream through the water
sugar rush and honey breathing
through the nostrils hooked and
gulping hard oh the sweet air
veins pulsing drive me over
and across the living rivers
lines of black and gold threads
dancing across the fields of azure
the sound just before blood wells
to the surface and welts on the
skin is the life the skin is the life
and this epic one long rambling
stream ... a stream if images
cascading over the rocks sweet
and warm like copper confection
dancing on the points of my
toes and hoping to stay afloat
I'll play ... I'll play if only
you will stay behind in this
sadly sadly dancing with death
one long beaded rave dressed
in diaphonous cotton candy sheer
angel wings and fairy smiles
and treasures in El Dorado's halls
starlight shining down on everything
casting it all in a honey-coated
glow basking in the firelight
of burning souls and spinning through
the ashes kicking up a flurry like
snowflakes gently drifting down
it always comes back to the snow
and the storms its all about the
storms ice and fire sleet and thunder
biting gnashing with slivered teeth
the dragon's teeth - remember the dragon?
he leers across the lake his great
frost-rimed nostrils flaring
awakened from a winter sleep and
breathing hissing fire over the icy
shell that holds the fish below and
gives the terns a platform on which
to rake their nails but the flames
are hardly enough - it was a long
winter, stern and bruising, and
not a sound did the mountains utter
not a murmur from the ground no
whispering in the trees frozen solid
wooden stone blood like honey
thick syrup and brittle to the touch
until the sun struggles through
and a dragon's exhalation upon the
mist sends the hard shell crackling
volumes I could produce on the
precise nature of the fire its origin
and projectile arc temperature and
hue particularly in the morning sun
but far more vital and compelling
is the tale of the old man broken now
from years of guarding the mouth of the
cave, his bones fragile, brittle as that
honey and tree sap blood left to dry
on a plate of glass, his skin ashen
translucent milk and water but splashed
with a young boy's fading freckles
Daisy, Reprised
She had the look of someone who's done too many drugs in too short a lifetime
sunken-eyed and hollow licking ashen lips and rubbing the darkness from her fingertips
"You have stars on your cheeks," she said, and so I did, and in my eyes
and I was all full up, choking, on the cloying-sweet of sugarcoated raspberries and chocolate
and the tire tread taste of kisses from the tank
you can always get more high, I thought aloud
and for your birthday, a pretty handbasket trimmed in yellow ribbons in which to ride
It's all about the once upon a times
And the lifelong dreams abandoned, picked up again on the next go-round
Corporeal dancers
And conversations that make no sense
Pricking my thumb on the brambles of non sequitor
Mastering single entendre
It's all too beautiful, so full of the world am I
A shimmering ghost with white light spilling through my seams and burning in my veins
I know you
I know you, she hissed
Her voice like gas escaping whispering fading
To a fine line of dust across the cellar floor
Shaped by a draft in the outline of an open hand
Reaching out of the shadows
Towards the lone shaft of light
Spilling down to the foot of the stairs
Lonely sighs of the trees whispering across the water
Glowing affirmations scalding condemnations
The wrath of night when slipping from honor
Into evil insincerity and finding
That the darkness fits as comfortably
As a worn boot or an old leather glove
That the blackest heart is the purest form of luxury
An opiate in the bowl of the golden pipe
On cushions threaded through with silk
Surrounded by slave girls with jewels in their navels
That the wince of a drawn breath
The curdling scream half-caught as a whimper
Before it can spring into full bloom
Is a choir of angels, a seraphic chorus
Engineered in hell for the leisure of the mighty
Hesitate and count yourself lost
Strike first with the silver needle draw blood to well up to the surface
Look overhead
Quickly before all the shooting stars fall
Breathtaking as the dawn of a new pleasure
That first gulp of sweet air
To fill my lungs and send me reeling
Breathing deep of everything will be all right
When I looked in the mirror the morning after
The lines were gone and the first thing I saw
Was the glitter of my own smile
And it was a beautiful smile
That star field overhead is you
Especially bright in parts but sparkling all over
Scattered to the four winds - but that is as it should be
A handful of diamonds tossed across the sky
With the abandon nature intended
it was almost like touching the sky
here I stand face to face with absolute devastation
like staring down the barrel of a gun
all he need do is look through me once
glance past me and let the daggers fall where they may
sheer frozen stilettos to wound to wound
it could feel like making love
just running my fingertips over the contour of your cheek
brushing by with a whisper across the surface of your lips
while the bells of forlorn hope peal in the distance
and it could feel just like dying
should my only destiny be stolen moments
fascination under cover of night
hands passing in the shadows
eyes to meet over a crowded kingdom
eyes that glance across one another in storm-cloud dreams
I'll dance that dance and serve my time
mere knowing that smile sheds light on some dark corner
mere knowing is all to set the world to rights
that you are I have new faith in beauty and bounty
if not truth in this sad universe of ours
how horrific the bliss a bittersweet bower
how exquisite the pain of please more
turn to kiss the clouds and leave me
satisfied in your shadow
with my slave bells and tired drum
with the creaking rusted hinges of the old playset
nesting spiders and besieged by the swarm of autumn leaves and
handbills rustling across the barren park floor
for the circus has long gone, left town,
and with it my illusions
oh the years what they have wrought
a collar of submission links forged in the fires of time spent waiting
those few brief traditions
we misread as lasting kindness
and elements of truth
are but the habits of our cowardice
kernels of hatred buried deep
within the layers of sweet pretense that bind them
I was only ever half as gentle
to the child offering up his hand
into mine frightened eyes betraying
this novice of the world
as I might have been
as I might have been
we are molded hard on iron rails
our teeth plucked out by time
loons and women wailing weeping
in the long, deep desert of the soul
arid burning to the touch
with a life that only feigns vitality
torpid footfalls sluggish leaden
are the hearts weighted by so much loss
as the years drift by windswept
and scattering their grains to the four corners
with an omen on every street corner
the burned man staring through his scars
his hands like putty
his cheeks a ravaged leather purse
staring me away with golden eyes
I dare not tear him in two
if this be madness, then madness let it be
I can make a happy home with my lunacy
and furnish it with ravings
and throw brain fever upon the fire
May 1-June 20, 1999