pelican woman

pelican woman,
a sliver of the sky that lost her wings
or maybe cut them off herself,
no one knows but me.
but i have tied my shoelaces
to the roots of the belladonna
and i have braided my hair around these rotted trees.
i have been here
and i have left here,
and i have come back for the serpents.
they know that i will die with them,
in the dirt and in the sea,
they call each other with their silence
but they are here for me.
they are dances, as much as they are death
and they are cold-blooded but not killers
any more than they are livers
and they are not livers any more than any of us are.
so i cut off the feathers that presumed to terrorize my back
and i fell into the mud
like a real, living, breathing being.
how can you know what breathing is if you live in the sky?
you don’t.
you don’t know
until you’ve lived submerged in mud
like some slithering, slinking something
you’ve never lived a minute
and you’ve never breathed a single goddamn breath.
but when you have,
when you’ve been a legless so-called nothing,
then and only then do you know what flying is.
and then, and only then, can you be your own being and your own wings
so i tear open my many shells
and i wait for the blood.
and my veins open to the snakes
but i, too, am a quiet poison
and my venom can swallow theirs like
a lake can swallow rain
so i sink down, among them
and my poison becomes theirs,
and their poison becomes mine,
and suddenly, or maybe not so,
there isn’t any difference.
poison is poison, in thorns or in deadlines
and maybe i die, with them; then again, maybe i don’t.
maybe i grow old and live to see stars fall.
maybe i get to watch my kids play baseball.
maybe i just go crazy, like old general stonewall.
but either way, i lived here
either way, i had my years
either way, i spoke sincere
and that is, really, the only way i ever wanted to have wings.

you guys

the pelican gods have returned. and this time, the toucan god is in a battle with the sun.

the natives are restless.

bandits

bandits

we’re bandits, wearing painted masks and stealing compact mirrors
stealing life, and all the love we can, and matchboxes, and lilies
until we’re wanted criminals, celebrities of the living
and unburnt pyres of the dead.
but we are no suicide, instead
we are vandals, breaking in and carving our names on our neighbors’ bedposts.
we’re scientists and cynics, we are therefore we think
because we write our love letters in lemon juice and lace
and we believe in all the colors, but our favorites are shades of gray.
and we taste undertones of summer peaches in everything we say
and we make love to yesterday
and we welcome the decay
and so they call us
irreprehensible
uncontrollable
typical
invincible
by which, of course, they mean that we are alive
and we know it.
we live,
and living maybe only means we know that we are closer,
every hour, to our death
every moment, to the edge
but we are not afraid of dying
because we are everything
because we have kissed too many rings
to give ourselves to any deity.
because death, it seems, is a game we’ve all made up
to account for our misunderstanding
of where it is we are.
so we inhale oxygen and cancer and we’re dying by the minute
but we dance with the gypsies and we exhale fire and pearls.
and our mothers love our childhood ghosts,
but we love little fish instead
so we dive into the ocean
full of life and blood and death
and we open to the caverns and we whisper them our names
and we are real and we are free and we are rotted old doorways
and all we want is to abandon the ground, to feel the depths beneath us.
so we dive, and we open, and we feel our selves leak from our veins
and we know that soon, one day,
the sharks will find us,
but we are not afraid.
we are the least inspired of prophets
but we are prophets just the same,
and so we prophesy our self-made destinies
reading each others’ palms and laughing at the tall dark strangers we find
in every single one of our left hands.
and we laugh because we know it’s true,
because we know we are all doomed, we know
that all of our dark strangers will appear one day
with pretty eyes and a thousand teeth and forever in their kisses.
and on that day, when the sharks have caught up
with our blue-black, trailing blood
we will cry and scream and sing into the sea.
and our screams will be swallowed by the minnows
and they will think nothing of it,
but our songs will wake the sleeping whales
and they will remember things they long ago forgot.
and when our limbs are all torn off and our lungs go limp and drowsy,
our salty tears will realize that they have never been more at home.

all the way around

all the way around

it was the fifth grade the first time she learned about circumference.
and it was love at first sight; she had to have them.
all of them.
so she started with circles that she drew herself on paper,
but that wasn’t enough.
she measured every one of her superballs
and then every one of her brothers’
and then every pogo ball in the 5th grade recess stash.
she kept the measurements in her log book,
careful numbers with careful illustrations next to each one.
the log book was really just a reappropriated diary that her grandmother had given her for her 8th birthday,
one of those little white ones with an angel’s picture on the front and a tiny lock and a tiny key.
it was a trick, she was sure.
what kind of person would keep their darkest secrets in a clearly-marked SECRET DIARY?
that little lock could be picked with a paper clip.
obviously grandma was up to something,
or somebody was.

at any rate, the log book worked fine for her purposes,
her purposes being inches and centimeters and occasional pencil-doodled hearts.

her parents thought it was a phase she would grow out of,
but she grew up, not out.
by the time she was 22, she had married the equator.
the religious folks were outraged- “what’s next?” they cried
"pretty soon people will be marrying... chairs! and other household furniture!”

they were afraid and they were angry.
but she didn’t care what they said. she knew they had never been in love.

by the time of their divorce, she was tired of the tropics. he got the kids. they grew up in maine, of all places.
she was 29 and had given up on love. she had 14 log books, but not one of the basketballs or bb pellets or honeydew melons caught her fancy. she was tired of love and tired of looking. measuring, recording, first date, it was all too much.
and then she met jupiter.
she was at a business party held at the planetarium, and as she sipped her champagne and wandered listlessly, looking into various telescopes like all the other guests, he said her name. and she looked at him. he was so huge and round she’d never in all her life be able to record him.
she liked that.
she and jupiter went out for coffee a few times, she always got a large iced tea and he got a small cinammon latte. and after just a few weeks of coffees and fancy dinners and cutesy goodnight text messages, she pulled him in and kissed him. run away with me, she said.
and so they did.

they honeymooned in aspen, and after that they toured the galaxy so she could meet his family. they were all very nice, even pluto, who was sort of the family black sheep since he fell in with those asteriods. she spent a couple nights at their place, sleeping on constellations and playing with the little ones.
they lived like happy newlyweds late into their fifties, when one night he came home late and drunk, unhappy.
what is it? she said, and stroked the red, circular birthmark on his chest.
and he collapsed into her arms, sobbing like a child.
i am tired, he said.
the same thing, every day. no no, it’s not you. you’re the only thing i have that isn’t part of this routine.
i’m tired of the orbit, of the monotony.
i want to go away, to fiji maybe, or somewhere no one’s ever seen.
but you love the orbit! she said, trying to soothe him.
he sat up, bright-eyed, intense, and intoxicated.
don’t you ever wonder if there’s something bigger?
she had.
don’t you ever want to go there?
she had.
run away with me, he said. i want to see the universe with you.
she smiled
and her eyes lit up like they hadn’t since she was a child.

“can we go... all the way around?”

the afterparty

the afterparty:
a thought process poem

i have a juicebox.
life is the absolute pinnacle of insanity,
forget the preachers; god is dead
we’re all spiraling aimlessly to our doom
in the vaccuumy depths of an indifferent universe-
i’m not sure you’re understanding me-
i have a juicebox.
what kind of a fucked-up joke is this?
i don’t think you understand, i don’t have space for a juicebox-
i have a lot on my mind, i have blood under my fingernails and failed suicide--

but i don’t. i don’t have any of that.
instead
i have
a juicebox.
and i’m just sitting here, like an idiot
like i fell out of some other movie into this one.
you can’t just switch movies like that. it’s not the same at all, you’d have to be...
a different person. or something.
and there are so many questions now-
how did i get to this curb
outside of this house- my house-
how did this get to be my house?
and it’s not like i don’t remember, it’s...
it’s like one day, instead of walking home from school, you just up and flew there.
and then sat down. the question isn’t how do you fly, its how the fuck do you sit down once you land
HOW DO YOU SIT DOWN
and you remember flying home
but it’s just so nonsensical-
how did i—yes i know i flew that wasn’t my question i was asking how i got here.
here where flying is possible and the sidewalks laugh with you and not at you,
here where there are little yellow flowers but you don’t need them to survive or anything, you just think they’re pretty.
they’re pretty.
and what could i possibly do here, in this ridiculous pretend world of laughing sidewalks and yellow flowers,
i don’t have the appropriate skill set for this.
maybe i’m just out of practice.
but what do i do now?
i don’t know how
i dont know how, ok? i dont know how to sit on a curb and hold a juice box i dont know how
to be that girl.
i don’t know
i guess i could... have some juice.
it’s my favorite kind.
that’s lucky right? that i landed here magically with my favorite kind of juice.
and maybe it’s not lucky, maybe it’s something else.
maybe i didn’t fall out of the sky at all, maybe i just got up, one day, and left. and
walked
all the way here.
maybe the whole world is spinning on its side and we’re all just holding on real tight only we don’t know it because we’ve been gripping the planet our whole lives.
and maybe i should stop worrying about what i should be doing, because maybe this is the afterparty, and maybe i just came to dance.


this juice is really good, do you want some?
it’s apple.

speak to me

speak to me in moonlight
and in moonshine
and in bed; give me
a cataclysmic sentence,
all monosyllables and nonsense.
i want no sweet nothings from you; i want
everything you ever said
and ever thought better than to say
i want your verbal shades of gray;
i want too-pretty death by your too-pretty voice,
i want too-pretty life by your too-pretty lips,
i want long-abandoned, crashing bridges,
i want my skin to marry your fingertips.
i want to take you to the desert,
i want to tell you stories about apple juice and guns,
i want to kiss you like an arsonist,
i want to sing your hallelujah til my sacrilege drowns out the sun
in some divine lightning's apocalypse
and, in the pause, while the record skips,
just speak to me, in silence,
with your eyes and with your lips;
because you speak too much for words
with looks out to sea at the birds,
with mythic nights spent in orchards,
and you know that i was long ago convinced.

old things

we speak in different voices, these days

glass shards, cookie cutters—
cut me up or cut it out.
there are
wild things, here.
drinking, thinking, clinking glasses,
linking rhymes and artful clashes
of everything we know we’re not.
she says he says it’s not worth it;
he says she says go to hell
and leave your fucking car keys here this time;
i’ve got to go to work.

pistol eyes, they say she’s got, and guilty gasoline-tipped fingers,
she is dangerous combinations,
all crescendos and minor chords.
her hands shake, her lion roars
and it is only
a matter
of time
before there is no time, anymore.
she puts the knives back under the bed
and decides today is not the day
she’s got work in half an hour
and he won’t be home til late.

pistol eyes, they say, and loaded, too, by the looks of it.
the audience laughs, nervously.


well, it’s not as if he didn’t have it coming.

to feel

to feel, as in love, as loved we ever were,
we were honest in strings and in mirrors and ceilings
and in conscience
and in confidence.
there were, if seen separately, nevermore birds—
they warned us in the night, but we made as if not to see them
and attributed our fear to the cold.

and so, when all that we loved we had sold,
we were further away than we ever were close,
we were too high for the wings we no longer controlled,
we were in the heart of the caverns we’d always echoed.

and that, i think, was the end of it.

living in america

people pass in front of me, ghosts from other countries, other memories.

visions of places i’ve never been,

memories, moments past, hover like fog

deep, deep in my mind. descend over the sun

and smother the blue paint in white drops.

lion garden

when I was a child, I thought like a child,
I dressed like a child, I ate like a child
A child sees in us no faults, a child tells in us no cold,
But what is untold is not unknown
And so
I slipped into the garden
Between the trees, between me
And whatever else i’m supposed to be
The earth and I like strangers, shoving love notes
Underneath each other’s doors
We planted flowers
Roses, dandelions, lilies—I love the lilies
And in this garden I, one night, took a walk.
With steps that would have mattered, long ago, and now I’m not so sure
Where we are going.
But walk we will, step after step into the dark
Into the dark.
And the roots take over, cover me in earth
And sprouts, tiny sprouts grow from my eyes, my lips,
My fingertips
And tiny petals emerged like fireflies, like stars
In the dark. Between sidewalk stones and under rocks
Living in the shadows,
We all live in shadows, either we admit it or we don’t.
And the tiny white specks of the flowers
Filled my to the brim of
Light and wonder, often of Forgetful
And of remember
And of everything remembering has ever been to me.
And the flowers, long anticipated, long awaited, long forgotten
And served too cold for revenge and too present for forgetful any more,
These days,
These days the garden was remembered, and when it bloomed, it bloomed inconquerable
As I stood there in the lilies, feeling earthquakes deep beneath
In the core of whatever it is I believe myself to be
Until the trees, together, grew to be a lion,
Between myself and what I am
A lion that was fearless, that was fear and that was everything—sometimes fear is everything
Whether we admit it or we don’t
And she was one who would admit it
And one who would live on
In all my broken chains and broken wings
She could fly, you know, but she never did
She found it naïve to watch the clouds
Naïve to count the waves upon the ocean
And I knew what she was, bitter and unflinching, and I said she was wrong
And the lion spoke, in quiet whisper,
Crashing, roaring, human voice
In every moment, gnawing, growling, growing, vindicated,
Shaking, stirring, reaching,
And in eyes of fire newly kindled,
We met between the trees and the roses that rule the east,
We were, we are the wind, invisible, indivisible, invincible
And it blew into us as we blew back,
Shaken, breakable and broken
Living, and dying for it
And in that moment, the sun went out, and we, the two of us, made our own
In a revolution
Of what we ever thought it meant to live
We were immortal,
We were everything, we were, if anything is, alive,
Alone, insatiable, and insecure
Like light from a fading flashlight,
And there, despite all of my misgivings
I drank the air the flowers exhaled,
And, throwing off the veils
I listened, saw, drank, danced, and spoke
And, spinning too fast, lost track of who I was, and what I was,
And where,
And which of us had said the words
The words I didn’t think I had, I didn’t think she had,
They curdled on our tongues before we spoke
But I looked up, and she looked down and me,
While the trees were telling fortunes
And one of us, or both, or maybe neither,
Maybe pieces of us all said, shouted,
Whispered, “I am woman”,
And darkness, vengeful, crashed upon us all.

The Secret Death Ritual Of The Cherry Pepsi Supernova

pop. clink. i've got to think

that the rhapsodies are out of sync,

that the rabbit's eyes are a bit too pink,

and the cracks in the walls are eavesdropping--

waiting, patient, for the fall.

our eastwind grasses are crackling

our thermostat temples are crumbling

and to make things worse,

like a damn cutpurse

determined to cement our curse,

our straight incomprehensibly pretend

fuckcounterfeit figmental radio friends

have fled, in anticipation of the end

from we who made them first.

my ears have got that particular ring

that screams our bones into breakable,

speaks our words into corners corruptible,

that whispers our doom inevitable,

inevitable,

inevitable.

but there's still a plink plink in the kitchen sink,

there's still life to be lived in the spiderstrings,

and the wind stings hard like a pelicanwing-

flies us higher than it all.

so gimme a wink and let's have a drink,

a drink

to canon desecrating

to dogmatism depreciating

to etiquette abominating

to life accelerating

to love re-re-recreating

to truth and beauty waiting

for us,

but not in the wings,

fucking christ, who makes things like that wait in the wings?

so let's sing, let's have a drink

to circumstance

to unrepentence

to ruthless, undulating chance

to our entangled disaster-dance

to passionate irreverance.

to the letters that keep us coming back for more.

and now i'm running out of ink

so let us leap before we think,

let us feel before we know,

and let us speak before we breathe,

because there's not much time

til our stars align

and our windmill wings resign

themselves to the deathly, ticking seconds

that make us matter hardly, if at all.

hitchhiker

if angels were fishes

and fishes were wishes

and wishes were horses,

beggars would ride.

and i'm sure we could catch a ride with them if we needed;

beggars are really very generous people,

probably because they've got nothing to hide

and

nothing to give;

well, "nothing," that is,

except things real, things uncaptive,

the things you'd expect to find on your way to wherever,

things 

things like dust

and love

and dirty pennies

and boxes of baby clothes nobody wanted to look at after emily died.

elephants

the elephants walk in slow lines
towards maybe graveyards,
maybe schoolyards.
she walks, in slow circles,
through maybe crossroads, maybe through stones
that sing of deities, as promised.
but we walk far enough, there are no roads, here,
only empty fields and singing spheres
that fancy themselves planets,
orbiting around some nothing
they presume to call their sun.

but we, we have no suns--
we laugh with our eyelashes
and dance with bullets in our heads;
eyes gouged out, we see with our bones instead.
and we tell stories in fire circles
of the living, dreaming dead; it seems they are, these days,
the only beings we understand.
so we squeeze our lemon juice
and we write secret messages on our hands
so that when we die
they will know
we are like them.
and we pray, with broken fingers, to our ancestors' gods-
they are gods we don't believe in, but we have nothing else.
so we build them stone temples,
but we sabotage the stones
so that they crumble into ruins of superstitious hopes-
slowly, making our own proof
that we are all there us.

it is sad, maybe. it is absurd.
but it is the only way we are

enough

for each other.

we walk, with the elephants,
toward maybe graveyards,
maybe schoolyards.
either way, we hear children laughing in the east winds,
playing hopscotch,
and, unknowing, we laugh with them,
walking slow into the dark.

chimney sweep rhymes

and i lay hollow in the water,

writing love songs in the dark;

drunken love songs on a train, a train

taking me past watermarks and bloodstains

taking me, slow and steady,

through cross-legged harmonies

and singing, stinging, gallivanting chimney sweep rhymes.

lost

machetes clink together;

blink once,

twice,

and then they're gone.

what and where: we think we saw, we drink, we rob 

our mothers' purses,

go to breakfast, fuck,

and wake up in the middle of it, realize:

wait.

this is preposterous.

we are tiny wooden ducks that fell behind the piano.

"lost" doesn't even begin to describe.