Ultraviolet mafia
exacting private taxes on the air.
Oxygen is an independent element.
Yet shrieks when hydrogen is rended from it.
Hi.
I am a neutron.
Hi.
I am an imaginary number.
Hi.
I am dark matter.
Light blows this way
then that,
a cheap exotic dancer.
Contortionist.
Extortionist.
And always the ultraviolet mafia
is skimming some off the top.
The machine is a tap dancer,
is silver,
has nightmares of rust.
She wears the moon on her face in a chalk.
She glows purple when she is near wisdom.
She glows purple among the trees.
The ribbon in her hair is forked,
tastes danger on the horizon.
And the robot who has been terrified to bathe for years
clicks his heels ever closer,
curious and cold,
while the ribbon hisses poison in her ear
Soft flesh
Pressable everywhere,
Pleasurable everywhere
To be teased and tickled everywhere.
Cornerless,
Sublime,
Full,
Generous,
Gentle,
Forbidden.
I am her and she is me,
sashaying in a voluminous dress,
100 percent feminine.
I fall in love with myself,
a monologue of fingers and sliding and heat.
His height like the distance between me and the universe
musculature spicy beneath my hands.
Take me over,
woman as Kingdom to command,
woman as Empire to be appeased with bread and circuses.
Chocolate syrup and heating pads are bread.
Deftly his fingers will do stunts beneath the canopy of my dress.
Lines and lights
antagonize
each other.
Outside I hear a running leaf pronounce someone man and wife,
then run away before the explosions.
The buildings groan in death throes
and money leaks out with termites,
a deformed child with the eyes of the devil
and the mania of a spurned woman.
A line zigzags through the parking lots
a light right on it
illuminating where it has been,
leaving a shadow where it will go.
The shadow sharpens his teeth.
My organs are organza,
my greetings chiffon.
He liked me when he saw me I think,
except he seemed to peer right through me.
Her entire point in having me
was to turn heads with me and then discard me.
Tonight they will both have what they want,
the sun having set and the blinds drawn
so the neighbors don’t exist.
It will be quiet. I know her.
It will be forgettable. I know him.
She is Juning at a pale farmhouse table,
a gingham table cloth singing to the rhythm of the breeze.
Sunlight sinks sonorous into her dark,
scintillating hair.
Her breath,
her summer rainbow of colors,
her cornucopia of warm feelings –
joy, ecstasy, bliss,
and their pastel coated cousin contentment,
blend in a sweet yellow hum
hovering around her.
He looks at her.
this woman of glow and pure yellow sound
and he wonders how one can contain
heat,
happiness,
music.
The clock has gone awry,
running backwards and sideways
so that 3 slides into the darkness of nine,
and then back out to the simpering light of four.
See me between the seconds,
holding myself in a ball,
my 20s leaking out of me like sweat.
A ghost of light
passes elegantly through the room
and I see him reflect off the windows
the mirrors
my polished toe nails
Amendment 1
The closet is sated. 600 pounds of clothes
nestle on shelves and in corners.
What have you said in the cunning tongues of cashmere and cotton
that you have not said with your strategic absences?
Be silent. Be naked. You have that right.
Amendment 2
Do you feel your fears nuzzle against your ribcage?
It’s time to extinguish the dark, you skittish lover.
You have the right to vacillate, but no right to time.
Amendment 3
Burgundy secrets slink behind the columns
in front of the house.
Do you smell something February and blue?
Follow your nose. It is your privilege to do so.
It is your power.
Amendment 4
The committee decided you don’t have a right to this right.
Amendment 5
Monitor the horses in Chincoteague.
Paint their hooves red, yellow, and blue.
Climb your ladder.
Watch art born.
It is your birthright.
Miniature Moon 