Ode to Autumn

September

tempering the year

forever pressed between two lives

an Aster in bloom

confused for something full

and too soon plucked

red faced exile in an unused book

bleeding into the words of dead men

who denied you your due

I was born with the knowledge of you

delivered into the limbo of a seasons ungraceful end

to wait for the beginning of death

not as we all do

but as women waiting for love

sister, mother

I carried you in my blood

heart filtering everything

but the fever of my wild intuition

a knowledge of something more illuminated

than the stained pages of man's sanctity

my small female hands touched the Earth

like a baby, pushing out

at the walls of its mothers womb

never wanting to leave the peace

that comes from finding oneself fit

attached to the world like a vital organ

you and it requiring one another

a fleeting sensation when time insists on turning

wavering like the memory of pain after the fact

which they say, we retain little of

moonlight poured abundantly over sightless eyes

but with the knowledge that it is evening

everything moves

to the ceaseless rhythm of death

the maid dancing knows that she will end

as the crone

withered into nourishment

for the boot heels of next year to press

I caress you still

sister, mother

I am in love

with this

a moment on the wheel

briefly spun into life

the fall

allows us to become whole again

to forever find ourselves beginning.

For the children (those fortunate enough to show their corpses in the news, and the rest)

The world is faltering

pieces falling apart

the decline of infrastructures

unnoticed or mocked

well you know my show is on and besides so and so said everything’s fine

and I know that its my fault

as surely as our bones

are made of the same matter

stardust some fondly say

but alas I a romantic

must tearfully admit

we are but dead residue

remnants of something wonderful

and our initiative is failing

the evolutionary process

that decided

to choose me

and you

should have been more selective

genocide

is a well known word

but the images of war

are too grizzly for right society

(unlike that show

you know

the one your prepubescent

and highly confused son

masturbated to last night)

and callousness reigns

like Asma al-Assad

looking into the eyes of the devil

while she's made over at the mall

bags and bags and bags

I wonder if they recycle those

to store all the small bodies

plastic in children’s pain killers

day care centers

parceling out sedatives

I mean, why teach

these lousy little things

these play dough people

with love splashing out

from every eyehole

every place

capable of expression

into the miraculous world

every one containing

an avant-garde piece

inside their pure and sinless

(yes you insane disease, sinless)

souls

I say bring the world to their knees

if only to force them

to face a child's perspective.

seasons

Summers end approaches
and I am suffused by thoughts of longer nights
as faint tastes of Autumn mock the seriousness of his sun.
Winter is unknown
sleeping dead as the crone in the Earth, but still
I am reminded of four months from now
when morning gathers a chill around her
caking frost on all the flowers.
It is Spring who defies the doldrum cold
and in the months which follow and proceed her demise
I imagine myself making love against her soft belly
against the new growth bursting forth
from the Earth's reanimated corpse.
I will be possessed in the petals of a dream
an endless honey cream pouring hotly from me
a white bubbling stream
entering rapidly into the sea.

Dove

She sweeps through

this sweet muslim

practically ivory skin powdered

and from the side

I see past black lens

delicate painted eyes

saved for ala and both fathers.

Hair pinned and pinned and pinned

and after all hidden under soft silks

and avoiding guiles

I feel I know her otherwise as a dove

she never gives more than enough

a smirk hardly finding its way to a smile

saved like all honest things

for a vague and antiquated everlastingness.

I will remain young

I will remain young, white, full of love
tied up by ribbons in brown bound curls
drinking wine and come
green tea soaked through with thick fresh honey
and honeycombs pressed between teeth humming like bees
laughter will live happily in my lungs
and hearing great music I will sing
heart swelling up with christs blood
I will bathe myself in spirits
and bathe myself in love
sharing thoughts with the living and the dead
eternity wakened in my head
I will find the end
when I see life removed from suffering.

diving into tide pools

There are times
when I think
that I'm holding my breathe
mistakes
I plainly name them
a word that does nothing
to explain why my chest falls
so still

and I stretch and stretch and stretch
trying to burn something
into the blanks
which quietly engulf
like all those little tide pools
found at the right beach

my body is a secret creature
full of strangers
shaking hands
they leave my mouth
hanging on my face
like a wax clown
all the teeth protruding falsely
and the lips done wrong
grotesque smiles
plastic girl
with an led light
glowing behind her eyes

and I dance and dance and dance
cut through the air
like a pair of wings
carrying a snake
anything to reanimate
this corpselike state
plastic girl with the wax face
blank
the body is all hollow
prepared and stamped worthy
of being seen
in the coffin

they say she is as beautiful as ever
and never wonder
where all the blood went
and what about the organs
is someone else walking around
with a heart
that pretends to beat

I examine my bruises
hope to slip
stub a toe
accidents that have never happened
reenact themselves
in my mind
so perhaps
there is something
behind my
wreck provoking
recklessness
slice a finger on an oily knife
at the least
onions will make me cry
lift things too heavy
hoping my muscles will rupture
and recoil
like the thin rusty metal
inside an old measuring device

there are times
when I think
that the answers must not be intrinsic

just before I remember
that I am smart
enough
to know
that I am the only person
who can fix this
plastic
fill this body
with something like blood
but sweeter
like the juice that runs
off of every happy experience
and wax melts
to be remolded.

The Bull Frog

When the air thickens
and the house becomes a cage
I press my ear to the window
and listen to the bull frogs
breathe

they use without taking
a necessary symbiosis
which leaves the Earth
naturally sighing
in relief
as the tadpole wriggles free

while many creatures
devour the multitudes
of future frogs
and for a time
reap the benefits too

they do not begrudge me
my grand conscious life
oil stain left where skin pressed
fervently against the glass
attempting to experience something
relevant

I reverse evolutionary roles
and wonder, frantically
with a hope that enfolds me
in loneliness

if they see me
with my eyes hungering
across darkness
hands hovering on spots
I never find with the sun

metal fence twined with vines
of sticky fragrant flowers
overgrown grass
moving across palms
as if consciously imitating
all those small things
that inhabit it

oh but I do envy the small things
their swamp
their simplicity
acceptance as an obligation
an instinctual staple

nothing to bear out
between the teeth
the burden of every mood
lying with someone else

nothing yours to keep
but useful anatomy.

The Backdrop

I wonder where the dragonfly goes

when the sky moves by low and gray

and things refuse to stay closed

I wonder about the green tomato

that rots before its ripens,

happily used by all the insects 

multiplying and dyeing in a new home 

full of nourishment

Such small lives

I leave them where they fall

until reduced to something

unusable even by decay

I think of you and where you go

when the sky opens and the bottom falls out

when things rot before they come to fruition

if you will live a full life

or devour quickly the one you're given

for need of sustenance

I think about myself, attempt objectivity

and decide which I am more like.

He who doesnt

Don’t you know me

I am the sound

that small fleeting sound

that echo’s in your ear

as you stretch out

in the morning,

in the moment between dreams

the one you live

and the one you sleep

I am the hands

that flutter through air

like feathers

like a hacksaw cutting through metal

call me tornado

I can not decide what I am

beautiful or horrible

but always trying

to be known, to be understood

I would rather be the breath

that passes from your lips

into another’s

giving life to love

or something like it

who am I to judge

I imagine myself

as the sound that echoes in your ear

in the instance of creation

that joy filled prideful noise

that begins as nothing,

requires you to hone it down

If I were that happy noise

I would be so pleased to belong to you

I would wrap myself first

around your arms

so that you could not forget to play me

eyelids closed and feeling all the lashes

the fine bones that surround them

cheeks and jawline

I would sweep down the curve

of your clavicle

paying careful attention

to the column of your neck

and I would rest in the hollow

above your heart

Keep me there

like a locket

and when you need to remember

that you are loved

open me up

You know me

I am the sound

of palms finding, of fingertips

and forearms, pale as a swans long neck

of bones moving under the skin

of sweat that turns to sugar on the tongue

and callouses, most beautiful accoutrement

it was you who taught me

to imagine the lives between the layers

memories, of all the strings touched

or caressed or pulled and plucked

into new life

if you’re quiet you can hear me

I am a whisper of skin

a song sung between bodies

I am a beat

bombom bombom

I am the blood

and the bone and the flesh

of something certain

You will never hear me

from someone else.

Africa or the moon

There are times

when I feel I might burst

with needing to expel my thoughts

to effect something

I’m hesitant to disturb silence,
the dust that forms on our existence     

when we remain the same

stillness is effortless

usually I am afraid of being heard

because it is synonymous with being seen

and options become so finite

when Im being perceived by you

your mind, it is almost unbearable

that I exist inside you

I feel the pressure

to be in action, to acknowledge

that I am alive

I rush to the drain

and force my abdomen

until my organs agonize

empty they scream

you are they whine and always have been

a revelation I can not comprehend
  

oh the ache of my moral plight

how laughable

if I were an insect

I would be called conundrum

and I would fly by your senses

and rejoice at my inability to be seen

as anything other than

what I am

and least of all I would miss

my burgeoning empathy