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.
Gomorrah
Excellent tornadoes rip through this city of ruby blood and ivory bone. With precision, they cut down every den of vice including mine. The ravens used to visit me daily, bringing their gifts of scrap metal and creepy stories. The city is toxic now, like a lover that beats you and you stay because there is nowhere else for you to inhabit. The world is inhospitable and layered with the soot of all the good things the people have burned. The ravens do not come – choosing to eat the popcorn God throws for them as they watch Gomorrah burn.
Sail Away to Paint it Black
My personal cloud plays Enya as it leaks across the middle years of my life. I can’t say where the road goes, but this packet of ambien and tourmaline justice is going under my tongue. I danced on a blue velvet stage once for a hunter who at the end of my dance decided to kill me. But when he shot his arrow the stage collapsed under me, and I fell through to a world where the crimson edges of knowledge fade to black. Light a candle for me on the lip of the conquering darkness. Take my life and paint it black.
Party for 2
The balloons have had enough of me and my parties. Their pity is gone, replaced with fury, and they begin to bob up against me on purpose. I don’t like the attitude, so I slip on my brass needles. Now they back off. Helium makes real cowards. I examine my rib cage. The contents are a box of instant photos in an old violin decaying in the rain. Have I really been a ghost this long? Is that why no one but Desire comes to my parties?
Miniature Moon 