When they dragged the victims of every bad idea out of the mauve river of industrial regret, I wept. The remnants of innocence lay decomposing in various shades of gray beneath the judgmental sun. Angels in this land are silent. Psalms transmutated to shrouds of golden cheese cloth. Housewives everywhere adorn themselves with moods of crimson and royal purple. Domesticity wears a mini skirt and teaches me to beat the devil at every arcade game. Innocence once wept with me when I buried my inexperience at the altar of fear. Now I watch her crumble and blow away along the banks of a river that will claim my grandchildren.
My Love and My Lover
My love and my lover are opposites. My love is a plump, juicy, neurotic thing encrusted in velvet and peridot. My lover is stony, imposing, a boat fighting currents deeper than fate. When I wake in the late, crumbly hours of a scrumptious morning, covered in a concealment of love and merriment from my unwashed mind to my perfect thighs, I dream of his love. Leaning over me, his love whispers a realm of goodness into future legacy. What binds us together is stronger than ocean and faster than light. In the evening we swap blood and ghost stories.
Insanity is a Comet
Above the filthy hills of my insolent mind, a sun rising. Ideas are suns and stories are planets of diamond that revolve around them, cold and spectacular. This sun is chartreuse and smells vaguely of old valentine’s candy. My private planets puncture preconceived notions of orbital perfection. A circle is a key. Perfection is grift. I long to embody a sun so bright God will put on sunglasses and say, “Well done, daughter. Enjoy the thrill of uncontained creation.” But I am constantly dimmed by insanity, a comet that flies overhead and casts a long shadow into my life
Pink, Purple, White
The continents bicker and men butcher. Across the manic sea, who licks every port at once, an angel with my name labeled on a baby pink gift bag. Goodness is coming, in all her soft finery. Her song will echo through cagey canyons and unwilling deserts, over waves high enough to lap at God’s ankles, and give life to all of us dying of evil. The days are evil. So are the nights. Only evening, in its threatening purple aura, retains hope for a new dawn. The angel wears wings from Kmart, covered in sequins, and I love them. In the pink bag, a bandage and so much fluffy cotton in pure light white.
Fat, Frilly Sound
The fat, frilly sound of dream white clouds slipping and sliding across the cerulean atmosphere is a music that comforts me. By the dishonest river, the ghost of T Rex hunts. I planted my name in my man’s garden and now sparkling roses preen in the underside of his brilliant, turbine mind. I build dams with beavers when he is away. How many carnal valleys can I flood?
Love Poem With Death and Diamonds
Hard rock pours out of the rocks in this wilderness of whiskey and wishes. Why is my personal sky purple? When you embroidered your name on my collarbone I felt diamonds shine inside me. Now, by the river, the ferryman asks for my fare and looks at your name carved into my collar with longing. But that is the one thing I will not sacrifice to cross this river. Behind me, hungry trees with grasping branches watch me, ready to devour and dissolve me into music. The earth itself opens its jaws to reveal a hellacious plane of pain.
Parasites to Host
Graceful sapphire rivers are veins in a land that breathes and coughs us out as parasites. When the Earth is sick of malingering, pontificating bullshit, what then? The fish weave designs as they trace their way down river, ghosts of evolutions past. The sun, overly enamored of me, coalesces on my horrified skin, and I age like a campaign promise. Across the river banks, wolves teach their young the art of evasion. I will be removed by an immune system older than thought.
This Island
Clouds swivel and swim over me in ethereal shades of maybe and wish. The gentle sea glows pool blue. The birds on the telephone wires tap dance. Secrets here grow many fruits. I tend orchards in a black silk slip and the rain washes me like a baptism every day at noon. Sea monsters prowl my bathtub. Dolphins jump from the dirty side of my sink to the clean. This island tells scary stories in the light, and my sweat is green with fear.
Drunk at the DMV
I got drunk at the DMV with John Berryman, and we toasted to unkempt memory until the police threw us out on the murky street and the rats laughed. The only license I have now is license to kill. Houseflies mostly. I printed the certificate myself. Beneath a red umbrella, a demon watches us enviously – able to enjoy others carousing but never able to carouse himself. Berryman looks at me with a poem in his eyes and my mind records the wine dark music of his shredded sanity against the petrified blue screaming of my own.
Silky Pink Wishes
Silky pink wishes dab blush on my cheeks. Prettiness ages like fine wine. I cannot drink. Water clasps my throat like a necklace, and I remember running on the beach in nothing but my frightened girlhood and a few inches of fabric I called a bikini, darting like daylight away from the dark and desolate vultures who stalked me. In my mind, that girl strolls now. The sea takes a little over her as she lolls by the ravenous shore, but the vultures fear her and keep their distance. Layered in comfort and rest, she holds a pink parasol to keep the aging at a steady rate.
Miniature Moon 