Yellow reads the Kama Sutra
to write a new edition.
I admire her.
She admonishes me.
Lately I have rotted like wood,
muddled like a puddle.
Where is my orgasmic frenzy of doing
and being done?
Diverging Paths
I’m miles away from my dreams.
They have been hunting for valid reasons.
The humor of how we were born in the same year,
It really needs a song,
And she did many things right,
While I have sat as dust to the left.
Successes and Failures
Your ambition is so close to you,
your success made from your rib.
In a novel you are the hero.
I am miles away from my dreams.
They went hunting for more fertile grounds.
Funny how we were born of the same ferocious year,
The same want song,
and you have done so much
while I have settled like dust into the stillness.
Hell
In the indispensable dark
A radio waits
Fuzzy with signal.
Can you hear my hunger in the static,
The sound of my teeth gnashing overlaid
With the crackling
Like music?
Church
Church of memoir
of discovery
of chants.
Cloistered in my name are ten lives
I did not live
in favor of a sublime 11th.
What is better than best?
What can joy can be discarded for ecstasy?
The taste of salt lines my mouth
when I look back.
translated to Xhosa, Afrikaans, and back
Church of Love
I find joy
while I lay cloistered in my ten lives.
Auroras swirl beyond my reach.
They will not live.
There is a reason I am so inordinately fond of 11.
What is better than a lot?
Why have I ignored peace?
It tasted of salt in my mouth.
Power lines guiding me back home.
Church of Love
Separate the gaiety from the joy.
Lonely in my ten lives,
they live,
it is as though they live without me.
How do I dispose of gaiety?
Of me?
Desire
Gangrene sweet, my room
is awesome.
I catalog dust,
evil,
flowers.
The watching window would melt my shy desire.
I stoke the fire.
Behind cold glass I burn.
Jealous Sky
The quality predictions
are grainy.
My name used to be July.
My clothes want butterflies.
I was born to rise.
The sky,
jealous,
buried me in his mire.
Diary of Radiation
The color of water, I race slowly and win.
See how I die without fanfare,
taking millions with me?
I adore the breeze.
I covet the air but do not need it.
At the crest of unbelief my candle bobs along
on an inflatable saucer.
22 Pounds of Wishes
I have 22 pounds of wishes hidden among the weeping wisteria.
The flowers by the pond have been melancholy a long time.
I drink with them.
Look at Lily’s tattoos.
Kind of abstract, don’t you think?
I’ve been told some people are really into that.
But the roses and I share the best laughs because we know it is not about pattern
but all about color and that soft, sweet texture on the fingerpads.
Meanwhile the snapdragons do deep, twisted math at the waters edge
and I drop a wish in the water.
End of Time
I wear a necklace of thirst.
My forehead is emblazoned with
The idea is in the umbilical cord.
My shoes light up.
I cannot walk without marching,
Dance without dreaming,
Scream without reading.
I carry a satchel of books.
The first one reads,
In the aftermath are bunnies and prose.
The second reads,
Math is Armageddon.
The third reads,
Armageddon was yesterday. The aftermath
Is bunnies and prose.
Miniature Moon 