Lemon, Yellow (Revision of "Grandma")

When I was four, in Grandma’s kitchen,
she stood me on a chair, so I could see
to help her frost my birthday cake –
lemon frosting – everything was yellow.
There was sunshine, and wasps,
a lemon tree in the backyard.

Her stories spilled out in living color:
The swollen red sun that rose on Panama
the morning my father was born;
the wet, choking air that hummed; bats; houses on stilts;
Officer’s Balls with her young Air Force husband;
the old turquoise Chevy defying dirt roads;
oh! the flowers that grew in that rain.

Now I see with adult eyes
a bowed old woman with herons’ legs,
hands soft as balsa wood, eyes pale and sticky,
martini always close by.
I watch her dry up;
shrink;
skin sucked tight to bones as her cotton hair
pulls back and disappears.
She sits stiffly, listening to the television,
winces in pain, and fumbles for her pills.

She rocks methodically in her chair,
swallows her gin, and quietly says
in Panama, lemons are orange.

Hombre Fierro

His name is Fierro.
It means iron, and it fits –
he is metal,
soul of steel and polar spine,
absent of feeling.

His horse is an extension of himself,
moving without motion,
and under the morning sun
not a hair stirs.

He is rey, he is king
and today
he has three hundred men to kill.
But no, less than men –
colorados,
traitors.

His offer: loyalty or liberty.
Those who join him are given guns
and the others are set free
in tens,
to cross the corral
and climb a fence to safety.

He stands, feet apart,
a pistol in each hand,
and picks them off one by one
uno por uno
like pájaros –
as if they were birds.

Afternoon illumines
a minefield of cadavers.
Three hundred becomes one hundred
becomes twenty, becomes five,
and the last man falls,
arms like twisted insect legs,
a bird with broken wings.

The Iron One will sleep well tonight
as the sun sets behind
three hundred traitors stacked Everest high,
built up into piles, of flesh, of hands
carne, manos;
monuments to death.

And under a faceless moon
it is he who is silent and still
and the dead men
who, eyes open, limbs stiff,
are trapped, forever, in motion.

Holes

there is not enough blood in me
to make up for things.
i thought there was,
i thought
if i got through, if i got deep enough
i might find something pure.
but
between,
past flesh and fat and next to muscle,
the ceaseless rhythm of artery
sings out nothing but
stain.

i thought
if i could bleed long enough
i would be cleansed,
that dancing with death
could lead to life –
it’s funny, though
death keeps its own company.

take from me
my razorblade
and you also take
my only hope
of redemption.

unless.

your love
can wash the taste of blood
from my mouth,
can sew up my openings,
can fashion snow from scarlet.

i am holey
you are holy
pour into my holes
and make me
whole.

Return.

So I am going to attempt to use this more, yay. I have been quite poetic recently. Always up for comments and criticism, constructive or otherwise. Hope someone gets something from these.

This Is What She Does

pills click together like dice
white and smooth, in her hand
and the bitter taste left in her mouth
has nothing to do with
their flawless skin.

this is what she does,
this rent burlap of tar and organ
wrenched from the bed sheets each dark morning
to swallow clicking pills,
yellow sticky-note reminder on the mirror:
“eat breakfast.”
sometimes she forgets.
a wardrobe of long sleeves
pulled carelessly over
arms that open here and there
to tell the story she cannot;
silent mouths of crimson.

the haze starts to clear
from her thick and weary mind
as her gray apartment
slowly plumps with color
like a mosquito drinking blood.
swings a backpack up
to replace the globe on her shoulders
a fumble for car keys
and exit.

this is what she does,
pulling herself through
each molasses-heavy day
even though she sticks here and there
like a neglected wind-up toy
sooner or later
she goes on.
she picks the flowers she cannot smell,
drinks the wine she cannot taste
and watches the picture-show
no one but her can see,
faces etched in death and painted in gore
and the jerky clockwork that means
it’s just another empty nightmare.

after work she comes home,
drops the backpack and straps on the globe,
burden familiar.
she pulls up her sleeves and applies
a new blade like a salve
to calm her festering heart.
she tucks her nightmares into bed,
a kiss on the forehead,
and then
in front of a faceless mirror
she swallows pills,
clicking like dry bones, like
emptiness,
loud in the haven of noise.

this is what she does.
and then
she replaces her marionette carcass
into its welcoming coffin of sleep
to dream dreams of
sweet elixirs
and fragrant sage.

Grandma

standing on a chair
to help frost my birthday cake -
lemon frosting -
sunshine; sugar;
a lemon tree in the backyard.

now I see with adult eyes
this bent woman with skinny bird's legs
red-rimmed eyes dull and sticky
gin with two olives always close at hand.
from her chair she hollers instructions,
misses nothing -
my grandmother is ruler of her own domain.

I watch her fade;
shrink;
skin sticking to bones
as her cotton hair
pulls back and disappears.
her body tries
to silence her.

but behind those milky eyes and the eggshell skull
is a mind not yet soft,
one that knows the answer
to every crossword question
that holds a hundred recipes, and remembers
the bats in Panama when my father was two,
each successive pet pup of childhood
this mind holds oceans.

one tissue paper hand in mine
trembling lips pressed to my forehead
love in human form.

Dirty

life.
give it to me dirty;
i want it real.
i want rocks under my feet,
rocks and sand – i’m sick of sidewalks.
give me air thick with incense and spice,
heavy with the stench of humanity.
i want my coffee black.
i want to bust out of my plastic skin,
dizzy with the freedom of shed restraints,
and see dust and spiders,
and soot, and bridges made of
tired wooden slats –
the beauty of imperfection.
i am sick of
my middle-class America
vanilla ice cream existence.
i want more.

cities are too clean,
new cars and shiny skyscrapers
and the self-absorbed bustle of the
average white-collar businessman.
i want to sit under a bridge with
some grimy specimen of humanity;
i want to know why.
i want to choke on the dust of life’s path.

give me broken glass
in place of razor blades,
colors more pleasing than
the uniform glint of metal.
trade me driftwood
for all my sharp corners.
i want life in an explosion,
like a punch in the gut,
i want life so hard that
it leaves a ringing in my ears.
no more pillows,
no more sunscreen for this white girl.

i want experience –
i want to know.
i want life to leave
a red handprint on my face;
i want it to leave its mark on me.
i want to eat rattlesnake meat,
i want to have sex on the dining room table,
just once;
i want to jump out an airplane
and know what it’s like to fly.
i want life to exhaust me.

i want to be used up and wrung out
stumble off the ride, lightheaded and nauseous.
i want to be spun dry.
i want to be caked to the neck in
this filthy, mucky mess called life;
i want it to suffocate me.

life is meant
to be lived,
mud and all.
so give it to me
dirty.

Hypocrisy

i am not
the gaudy plastic daisy
in the center of the table,
demanding attention through
shameless halfhearted impersonation

no, i
am the silk flower in the corner,
quiet copy that no one bothers
to affirm
save a very few

and then
when they reach out to examine
they find that i
am nothing but
a thin pretentiousness

at least
the merry daisy
knows she is
a fraud

Journey

days
....like dominoes
fall by in a rush
leaving destruction

the morning sun
makes my eyes ache
and each sunset
is nothing more than
distraction

alarm rings
forcing me
to drag myself through
another empty day
even joys are hollow

without you
each breath, every step
is of nothing
to nowhere.

....drip
your joy
upon me like honey
baste me in love
garnish me
with peace

my emptiness is
your everything
if i give my nothing
to you.

Desecration

I break
this sanctity
with words scratched in velvet

twisting
trying
to empty this silence

vacancy hurts
more than
a page full of shattered words

so scribble and scritch
until
peace is fulfilled