ARTIFACT

Here is my father, his waste, his skin shed and there in that old photo, his smile shining out like a religious artifact kneecaps exposed like undernourished fruit
waiting to harden into knobby posts
to fit the bristling trousers
of work and surrender, thrust off for the sex that would claim my first breathe.

Here is the father I could have wrestled to the ground, taught curse words to by the blasting heat of the old family furnace.
Here is the father I could have raced left breathless and expectant by the oak tree
his smile spread taut, teeth glinting
with the words he almost said
didn't say, will never say to me.

THREE WITCHES…

…stand at the cross roads.

One holds a branch, the other a rose, the last a knife.
Our lips move from each to each.
It’s no wonder, the blood that comes when we finally speak.

When we finally say something, isn’t it always the least?

TEETH AND INSIGHT

I have grown to know the world was once water,
the Grand Canyon a trickle in dinosaur-times,
my teeth once fangs, my eyes sulfur lamps
scanning jungle ferns for the first hint of danger.

I used to hide behind naugahyde fringes of the living
room couch, to sneak the last scenes of Star Trek
while my sister and her boyfriend furiously tongued each other above. I was that close to the forbidden.

I saw how a man could dissolve in a beam of blinding white light.

A TUNE

Something was hungry in me, and I denied it.
I proved I could outlast the snow and the outrage.
Grasping the frosted bottle, I shouted, "Fuck you to hell, Jim-Lee!"
Strung some piano wire between my teeth,
strummed a tune on it, at first cheerful, later a dirge.
Got a cup full of nickels for it, because people
like to be reminded how quick the turning can be.

SIGNIFYING BLUES

I walk through these streets
where the shit and sapphires meet,
steam boat weaving through crowds abruptly breathing,
but I can't touch the ground.

I am trophy-hunting through this
disconnected shunting--frame to frame. There's an uptown matron, and there's a homeless
wasteling whose brain's in flames.

It's eye for an eye and I bargained my pride,
so--who's to blame?

Me and this town--
a Babylon merry-go-round,
going down.

ROAMING CHARGES

Across a prairie
In a cushioned doctor’s office
From the bottom of a chlorinated swimming pool

Waiting for your voice to come back

SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAVELING

(Part One)

I am convinced certain things need to be said,
or maybe they’ve been said already, or maybe they’re being said right now.
I am convinced many bodies are at work in the wires we cross to reach one another,
and with every click of the receiver
a blood vessel opens to let our voices through.

I am convinced the delicious red flesh
of the central wire (which holds our most important pulse) is really the long tongue of history’s deceased, which we must
borrow, just to say,

“I love you.”
or
“Fuck you.”
or
“I’ll be home late tonight.”

And when we plunge ourselves into the darkened places
to hear our voices flap as gulls or crows do
against a storm, we must feel strained
(in a sympathetic way) by the barriers
those wings now fight against.