Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Travelogue

The city
(or was it the other one?)
spoke through house ducts
terrifying children
with consonants of dried leaves
and dead rodents
who couldn’t beat back
the rain's current.

If you're wondering.

II.
The apparitions didn’t appear
until I got sober
at my parents house
near East Glacier.
Then every night
-all night-
memories flew.
Living too fast,
in the wombs of stranger women,
than I could.
The booze the class the books the smokes
the lanes changed pedaling
to a two bedroom home
I and a man
live and try
to succeed in.

III.
Sleeping in the bed
I lost my virginity in.
Its weird,
you know,
that I sleep here all the time.
Curled up to the dress she wore
and the corset I never took off
my senior prom when I got drunk
enough for two people
and the four who weren’t even there.
(She cried that night
I heard.)

Dance with me now,
take a walk.
Maybe to the portico
off the red brick and white banistered building?
You know the one,
it’s over there;
inside the tragic auburn trees.
Really,
what happened to the pines?
Children will grow old
in Helena and not know
a full pine except
for in a photograph
like southern temperaments
know a northern winter
because of Hollywood
and greeting cards.

This night
moves forward.

IV.
Mad women were thought
to harbor their mania
somewhere near the crotch.
Scientists, civilized
with modern medicine,
morality, and sanitary conditions,
removed labias
and placed leeches
near clitorises.

The blood flowed
with unparalleled speed
and didn’t cease
for days
and days.
In and out of heavy breathing
with moans pleading the unwrong
accomplished
to deserve such ferocity.

V.
The mountains
are waiting
for the train here,
the same train
that has gone by the intersection
of Dillon and Armory
for a hundred and thirty years.
Unfathomable amounts of people
have witnessed it
who were stopping in town
going east
to go west
back home again.

VI.
A bicycle takes me
to a state park on a lake
with a beach
that overlooks a pine-lined
mountain range,
the Grain Belt taste,
and the last woman
I woke up with.
She liked me
for what she thought
I was
and I didn’t mind
the me she created
in our tonal situation
where black
could have been white
(if paying attention
were important).

VII.
It was dark
and our state was gorgeous.
The moments knelt
before a thunderstorm
and however brutal
the dawn was,
it calmed thought
then forgot…

Where am I again?

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Trailing

Mythological D-I-D; or Damsel-In-Distress
Gonna lay down and die now,
With no one left to impress?
Fuck that, she’s an Empress
Bleeding irrational smile
And triumph: Greco-Roman style
More to her tragic power
Than to get in bed and un - dress

Spitting in the face of the Gods
She became The Receiver
Of men who clung to her ruby ridges
Like the blood of Randy Weaver
And they would feed her
For a time, for the walk to the river
To the verge of sublime
Where there’s pain and there’s madness
Left to lay on her tables:
With those nickels and dimes

She’s blessed
With a red sugar heart
Underneath her soft breasts
More or less
Entreating her pleasures
And the copious stress
As wide as a mile
And full of tiny bird’s nests

Room enough for him
With the rest of humanity
Cracks in the side-walk:
The slow erosion of sanity
Behind the velvet rope
The human tribute to Vanity
And just to your left
Her little four-star calamity

She’s got nothing to lose
He was standing beside
He would strip her of her panties
Her dignity
And her animal hide
No question remains
No decision left to decide
Choice and Commitment
Calm thoughts of suicide
A masochistic urge
She will no longer abide
Ashes in their urn
A bright cigarette burn
And FINALLY
Shoving all curtains aside:
She’s passes through cosmic doorway
Baby,
Watch her hit it high

Friday, September 3, 2010

Dear Motherfuckers; Don't touch my laundry.

The light is gleaming on your car across the street
It is like John the Baptist in forest green
With wheels, no parking permits
It shines with the modest righteousness of an
In-animate
Object
Let it radiate before me so that I might remember innocence
And hopelessness and martyrdom
In the things that do surround me
Symbols of
And allusions to:
Things
Besides my personal relationship
With you

Of the non-Catholic sinners
With their dressed-up
Insecurity
I know we make you blush with the frankness of our language
And our pettiness
Our alienating conversations
Glistening rock-hard ovaries
Clashing
The partygoers, full on
And not a thing to celebrate:
A beautiful/disgusting perpetual motion machine
All bending like so many willows
To serve all needs, and take complaints
With grace and gritted teeth
So un-modestly chained to our addictions
Reading your reactions classified
I easily place your varied revulsions
My eyes attracted to “Garage Sales”
I lose focus,
Changing the subject

I remember, at the time
I hated not waking up together
It so depressed me when he slept
Like a teen-aged drunk driving causality
Desiring so much to see the dawn together
And being raised
To wake in time for a rural school-bus
I would let my naked body meet the morning
With an embrace, while you
Were dead
To me, and everything
‘til noon
It almost ended our relationship
What a joke
We came to live through wars together
Now I think:
I’m so grateful you gave me time to write