so yeah. i haven't written in this thing for quite some time. so i figured i'd update it. here's a bunch of poetry that i've written since january, i guess.

HELIX (unrevised)
My life loops in these sickening spirals
until I am unsure what the date is
anymore. Torn pages from calendars

ressurect themselves with all the glory
of Christ's second coming, flip back into
my life from inside the stony hollows

of garbage cans, from underneath rocky
paperweights. I go on making the same
mistakes, oblivious to the bluster

of withdrawing date books and the static
noise of pimples clearing to their childhood
softness. Sisyphus says to me in sleep

(the only time life trudges forward in
soldier steps), it's what you've got to expect,
I'll learn to ignore regrets and repeat

them with the serious eyes and vigor
of children and of their pregnant mothers.
The maternity ward's full of women

who whisper "let's have the whole thing over"
in the ears of baffled sociologists
and surgeons, of new borns who scream "every

body's doing it," in the midst of their
incoherence. The maternity ward's
full of wilted flowers, perpetually

replaced like its patients, over-watered
by new fathers. It is full of flaccid
flowers and tired people giving birth

to more tired people, to little girls
whose ringlets spiral, tangle into each
other, peter out.


JACKLYN PREDICTS THE RESSURECTION (III)
We touched each other, blind
in the middle of the night.
Neither of us know how it
happened, but He tells me
He works in mysterious ways,
that only He can appreciate
the true, deep irony of immaculate
contraception, of the murky,
sex-thickened baptismal waters.
He tells me that after, all
my sins will be wiped clean,
thrown away with condoms
and empty beer cans,with dignity
and incredulity alike. THey will
wipe clean if I am willing
to give them over in the thrust
and throe of passion, in the deep
kisses that search my mind, body,
for imperfection. He will make
a new me and new Him if only
I let faith take over, let it
move me, hands on naked hips,
guiding me There and back,
There and back. He tells me
He loves me and I say, breathless,
beside Him, that He loves
everyone, that He would do
the same for any girl.
He knows it's true, and as I dress
and stumble back toward my own
bed, I know our covenant is broken,
that the mystery is too mundane
to stop attempting to solve
on my own.

NEW PASTORAL
There, in the rooftop garden, are two children,
Unaware of the rushing traffic that awaits them downstairs.
It is there, in that floating Eden,
Lit by the life that flickers, soft, from their tongues,
That I see him reach out for the first time, touching her
Fat baby arm in a gesture that still
Means nothing to them. They are still bent, they still
Lean, like the leaves of the transplanted rooftop trees,
In the wind that blusters their hair and branches.
Sin has not found the Red-Line that leads
To that quiet spot, but it will, later, come
Through the lobby doors with their mothers
Who are already marred by loss,
Who are always siltenly lamenting the soft
Cries of their ringless fingers, but who
Smile at their children, just to show their teeth.

GREYHOUND TO AKRON, OH
On the Greyhound, I learned that anybody can grab the slick
fat of your inner thigh, if that's what he feels like. When I picked
out my seat, he was the only man who did not smile at me, and after
I sat down next to him, I looked into his wasted, bloodshot eyes
and he looked into my sober ones and he asked, voice all liquid
romance and erections, if I wanted a quickie in the tiny blue bus
bathroom. He believed in love. I asked him if I could move
to the aisle seat and his hand, slow and real as melted ice cream,
clamped right down on my thigh, clamped right down and locked.

UNTITLED
My indiscretions fall flat and pack into each
other, flakes of snow that drift down and disappear
into themselves, each containing a cold, hard, core

that touches, solidifies, the ones next to it.
They hit hard in my face as I walk your long drive,
forcing my head down in wet shame. You wait for me,

patient, in your sinful basement, the site for all
my regrets. It is eternally chilled and damp,
forever smelling of mildew. You sit, drinking

cheap wine from a tall plain juice glass, and expecting
the clammy casualness of my hands on your skin
for which, you maintain, you owe me nothing. I turn

the corner by your garage. My forhead bleaches
white in the florescent light hanging there, my eyes
dazzled by each diffraction that falls and freezes

into the persistently mounting drifts. Clothes cling
to my cold limbs, uneasy in the wind, dreading
already the detached frost of separation.

KATIE FALLS FOR SPRING
Spring falls, soft, amid my black humor.
Hidden buds bloom their tremulous blooms,
wear their fresh half moons of blush under
croon of doves. Thunder calls to the seeds'
lumbering growth, leads them to water,
needs them to drink. Father plants roses.
Mother supposes that the blue sky
noses as rain. I feel I could fling
my arms at it, sing it like plants did.

ANIMAL

Cat ripped
wing tips
off, out of control again.
we know rhyme and reason,
know season
and time, the satisfaction of soft
skin in mouth and salty taste of blood
or sweat
that inspires wild craving,
the shaving of logic from bone,
soft instinctual mutterings,
uttering meaningless coos at the moon
or son.
When done are never satisfied, wait
for next land locked fowl
to answer howl
of nature and tear itself
wing from wing.

DONKEY

Maybe this is religious writing.
Maybe I am writing the Bible over,
more flawed and in my own words
and with Jesus as a tiny burrow
with a broken back. "Cut me some slack,"
He says, "who do you think I am,
anyway?"
Always knew His speeches weren't so grandiose.
He wasn't soulless, after all, like God was.
One day we all went into the backyard
and felt the notched ridges
of His spine and knew He was useless.
You clubbed Him over the fuzzy head
until He was limp--long jaw slack
and silly, legs splayed like an unconscious
child's-- and I dragged Him
behind the barn and sawed off
His hooves--like the indians
we used every part-- this is no useless
death.
We all did our part to shovel
Him tenderly into a shallow hole
and cover every inch with the damp
farm dirt, a mound that rolls
over His belly in waves.
We pat Him down and plant flowers
to cover the smell of blood. Next spring
the flowers are dead, but He bursts
from the ground, eyes bloodshot with maybe
rage. He knocks on the farmhouse
door with His hoof-absent stub
and, when I answer, says "Oh
how you've used me up." He is
dead again in seconds and I
have to move the decaying body out
behind the farmhouse again.

LOVE AND DEATH

There are a million tiny tubes and chambers in my heart
that concurrently are filled and emptied.

I do not expect your understanding,
even as you give me looks in the hallways and bedrooms
of old houses.
The blood that is there and then not
is never the same blood, with each respective beat

it becomes more tainted with traces of the world.
You may never know me,

not until the stillness of limbs, the coldness of skin,
relieves contention

and in its lack, stasis.

from myspace blog:

NIGHT HALLUCINATION 1

Ghost dog
stands in middle of dark street
warns me not to speed.
Meanders, white furback hulking,
haunching, over forelegs
stands panting, staring into headlights
like they're eyes.
He is wolf-mutt,
mix of everyone and mangy.
Dog glows like past relationships,
like broken lovers.
I swerve and flip cigarette
out my window at him.
"I get it. Slow down."

NIGHT HALLUCINATION 2

Hallucinate on rainy nights,
dead sober in the car,
avoiding construction that isn't there.
Miss being awake for daylight
and miss everyone's phone calls
because I sleep through them.
And I hate Indiana more than any
other state, more, even, than
I hate Tenessee.
Swerve through streets avoiding
cats that aren't, imaginary
white dogs and fake raccoons.
Have not smoked pot.
Am not drunk.
See Cleveland on this street.
Never thought I'd miss Cleveland
or the stupid guitar I sold
that I couldn't play
but am growing up.

NIGHT HALLUCINATION 3

Am done with hallucinogens.
Don't need 'em, can see
everything in a clear straight
empty line, my life lined
up like kid's blocks, my life
stacked like-- sure-- hot girls.
Things that aren't there are--
am seeing deer that don't exist,
deer that walk up to my car
window and tell me I'm crazy.
Am seeing reflections on highways
that look like the cratered
faces of old men, reflections
that make me panic and swerve,
panic and cry, panic and leave
my imaginary husbands.
Am seeing deer that I cannot
avoid, deer that I hit and kill,
deer that cry out with the voices
of children to "please, slow down!"
and there is no answer for them
except for my bloody bumper.