October has come to
share its banalities again;
another year since we lay
dormant in our bed,
entangled in a slip knot
of infallible futures,
the world stitched into
the cushions at our feet.
We dropped with the hangman’s
homerun swing, necks entrailed
like rock em sock em robots;
they buried us the day
you left for holy cross,
reefer perfumed with a
burnt popcorn hickey
drowned in concealer.
We reappeared in the usual venue,
the empty parking lot where
brick confectionaries met
looping red and yellow playgrounds
like condiment bottle kingdoms,
the usual operatic drones
mixed with chirping rock and roll.
You were waiting under a plastic torii
licking dust with gruesome eyes,
smacking velvet lips like
a medium speaking to the dead.
Muffled love songs muted
viscous tongues, umbilical
friendship bracelets
worn like candy nooses,
were we making love or pretend?
It didn’t matter. You served me
imaginary meatloaf for our
anniversary, plating salads
made of wind on a
table of black smoke.
Incendium
The night they
doused you in flames,
you stared piously across
a concrete river,
an American flag
hoisted over suburbia as if
Christ had fallen from heaven
and landed on a fencepost.
You walked away from
the grave like Joan of Arc
praying at the stake,
washing ash from your skin,
the shower perfumed
with anxious breaths
smelling of cigarettes
and mahogany ember;
Looking out a window,
the setting sun was almost
green across the fairway.
Lazarus arrived at group
therapy while I was
reddying the getaway car.
My Frankenstein’s monster,
a candy stitched
mass of rumors and imagined orgies,
flaws buck naked in each whisper;
I’m lynched by the grapevine,
tantalized by copacetic
previews like bargain
signs plastered in shop windows.
Today I replaced your eyes
with eight balls,
gave you a tail from
the Rottweiler next door.
Darling,
the rains wrought the
color from your cheeks,
you’re sleek white like
a lioness slipping into death,
cupped in manufactured
angel hands and
artificial grace,
I feel the weather
changing, sleepy shadows
seeping into pores.
My livers black with
unanswered questions,
artifacts of paradise,
sleeping pills and
emotional pesticides.
Last night I dreamt you’d
come around again,
wearing subtle misery
in a long grain smile
that meant you’d soon be
swallowing my face.
You tiptoed piously
across my shoulder
as if dripping hot wax,
white lace gripping
debaucherous curves,
face scorned in silver,
taut with a playful innocence
I had seen only once before,
gleaming from tinseled eyes
train tracked with liquorice veins,
screaming amorous obscenities
to a God you never believed in.
Dinner scraps fingered sunsets,
spread pink lipped clouds
like drawn out confessions.
Apathetic adolescent galore,
Moses at the back of God,
pale as a bottle
of Grey Goose,
veiled in regret like
an unfaithful bride,
a perc thirty and
a shot of vodka,
almost weightless,
virgin love preening
ruffled feathers,
intertwining
mink lips, soft as air.
Ruins harbor
water spouts
time
rebuilds disaster,
laying bricks like
broken promises,
spring, winter, fall
summer, a black pickup
reverses
into present past,
brake lights pulsing
through darkness
like broken hearts.
Darling, I’m in the crowd calling for your crucifixion. Just yesterday, I stopped in Jerusalem for a pumpkin latte with Barabbas.