un-fancy

hyacinth

things that germinate and burst through rock,
growing, with red flowers. and how the rock
holds them down. and how they turn faces
to the stars. and how the wind tastes.
and how it is cold. and how the stars are nothing

but bright salts, chemistry in the sky.
and how the night is a sheath
and i walk through it a knife.

and how the knife is a heart.
and how the heart is a beat.

beat beat. how the heart is a beating.

--

gasping in the sun.
the rate at which the sore runs.

the rate at which the rain
tears the hair apart, strand from strand.

these things are sad, very
sad, and i don't know why:
a frame, pictureless. on a driveway.
in detroit. on sale for ten dollars.

stabbing at honesty, unskillfully, with some sort of dinner knife for children

one day he'll come along

the sun has gone down but not yet the light.

i think in why's and ex's--that epic night
we talked on the porch where the bugs threw themselves
at the light,

that madly uncomfortable breakfast,
slathered in sour cream, stiff and white, men i didn't know

everywhere. i wasn't drunk but i said i had to go.
what i had to do, though, was walk in dark along the path
i'd trod red-hooded with that other wolf,
gathering strange red flowers and watering them.

still seeing you. your hair down and lips lined. your eyes
and voice. the shirt you gave me. things i never had and
knew i'd never have, things i told myself i didn't want and didn't.
but wanted to want them. wanted you to want them.
williams' escaping rose: i twirled the stem.


memory, a leaf:
crush it and smell the deep scent
of autumnal nights.

little femocentric

proem

watching it spiral red down the toilet and im like, im all,
eew, but eews a blanket statement, a tarapulin for the soul
of the matter.

its a horror movie in the pants. death, rejected life, that is,
heimlichs essence--blood, blood--uprooted, exposed,
outfloooowing, outpoooouring.

its what makes women women. its what makes
lesbians so hard to date: show me a woman without mystery
and ill show you a blind idiot, and itll be you.

im thinking of ridiculous things: footee pajamas, shrimp,
and at the core of me still lingering a font
of mystery. how great we are.

freaking yeats

i'm sorry about the emo. i'm hoping to find a new point from which to depart, something in between concepts, utter nonsense, and stain'd lyrics. thus far i don't seem to have managed it...but, hey, not managing things is what i don't not do best!

i mean, i'm not a visionary. i do nothing if not ride the wave. and the wave currently seems to be telling me that emotion, and something representative, is more artistically valid than hiding from crap behind a mountain of words. but is this any valider than other such "artistic" "understandings" i've come to?

in some wierd way i feel like i'm becoming a machine--empathy churns out understanding, understanding churns out poorly chosen words, and the outside crust is made up of some unappetizing conglomerate of ego and fantasy. i mean, my mental lanscape will improve. but how? toward what? slouching, possibly, in the direction of some birthplace, and i don't even know it?

bizarre and emo.

symmetry.

like a woman
weaving her hair
into the water
of a stream--

it flows dark
over rocks.
the arc of
her neck, the

trajectory of
a thought.

break me, break me open,
split down the centerfold like
rock.
i'm still

so close to
what you
made me. break me,
break me.

encrustation: a song

i give out my joy, i give out my joy
i give out my joy to girl and boy.
i give out my joy to man and wife
i give out my joy to sheath and knife.

i give out my joy to north and south.
i give out my joy; it's given out.
i give out my joy like grapes off the vine
i give out my joy--it's not even mine.

i give out my joy like pen on ink
i give out my joy with the kitchen sink.
i give out my joy in the lengthy grass
i give out my joy somewhere up the ass.

i give out my joy somewhere black and red
i give out my joy in the wet wet bed.
i give out my joy on the corner street
i give out my joy in the sweet sweet meat.

giving out my joy so tell your friends
i give out my joy till the bitter end.

certainly very bad

a prayer

joy is not all that i have to give.
i have more than joy in me--more than happiness--
more than cloudless days, more than night
soft and liquid with moonlight.

fingers deep in earth. dirt to bear the dirt.
fire flickering on stone walls and a strange wide-berthed mouth
calling strange cries. small heavy eyes beteemed
with strange needs--i have more than life in me.


but i hope i gave you joy. even
a little: smiles like weak plum blossoms and a vapid laugh.
pieces, half-pieces of my parts--
embroidery, unmade easily, but yours...

my brain is hemmed with shadows. soul, heart,
all parts, hemmed in, woven in. sickness, wrong, shame,
fecund, sopped with overtones: a wail a dog would hear. but
this would have been a finer gift

than what i gave.
perhaps, though, less appropriate.