lorca-inspired poem

here's a poem inspired by federico garcia lorca's "romance sonambulo" (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/romance-sonambulo/)


Red. How I want you red.
Red pulse, red exhale.
The empty envelope on the floor and
the hand on the doorknob.
When the outside air hits her face
She burns dry ice, pockets the smoke.
Red shiver, her mouth red
Sucking in yellow and exhaling green.
Red, how I want you red.
In the Brooklyn night,
the shadows are sewn to her shoes,
hitchhiking.

Red, how I want you red.
The streetlights are blind policemen
Baking her footsteps into quiet
and wrapping the horizon in like a snowglobe.
The trees are sorcerers of movement,
every branch shaking slow,
beckoning naked stars
to rip off the black bathrobe of sky.
But who is waiting for her? And where?
She is standing on the porch, twirling red hair
like an ambulance siren and humming.

-i want to sew parachutes
into her rust-filled hangovers
be the vodka
and the water
my blood drips static
spiraling like a conch
for her to crawl into.
i am spinning. this thump,
this whisper
this anchor
dropping.

Red, how I want you red.
red blink, red grind.
every busy signal stretched to a solid hum
i am whispering white flags
into my veins
and sleepwalking home
if you want me,
unravel this shadow and shake me.
i will not crush
red to red anymore,
i just want
to be happy.

apoem

when i spin
heels to dirt
and language crushed to skeletons
of sound
i am lost and found
a passport stamped
'third blue mailbox on the right'
that's where i've been
all this time,
my chest knotted in home and my feet
crushing miles beneath them.

700 miles away in west africa
i am a patriot act.
i am patriot acting.
there is a woman across the table
with burnt trenches sunken into her face
like cemetaries for what will never be buried
and she is teaching me
how to sew
while she tells me
how every day for two years
the soldiers pressed fingers into flesh
until the bleeding stopped
and she went home
to bury her son.
god carried me through that
she says

and i want to peel myself like cellophane
scratch down the white noise
i've been blasting in headphones
and hand her my breath like an apology.


she is sewing
used trash bags into purses

to sell to the foreigners at the airport
i ask for purple and green
and she thanks me
she tells me she is a business woman now
and when she smiles
i am swollen
thinking
land of opportunity
life, liberty and the persuit of happiness
this woman is a constitution

her town is called anomano
which means
inexhaustible waters
these shores that once held slave ships
now hold thirty women sewing baskets
singing as their fingers origami sighs into exhales

i am watching
fireworks in my heart, ashes in my shoes
thinking
ive got to be trying harder
i'm learning my american work ethic here
i'm learning how to pray
for land on the horizon
when you've seen nothing for days
i'm learning the break and sway
the cross stitch and stop
to take the trash you've been handed
and make it into your livelihood

my mother never learned to sew, either
and i think she would be proud to see me
outside myself, and so far in
passport stamped
'third house on the right'
she is there with eyes like mailboxes

and i am alright
i am all home
i am america,
in the moment she burned
to be so
much better.

the prettiest girl

The prettiest girl in the room is a shadow bullemic, coughing up the night and wiping her mouth on the satin horizon of her sleeve. Her hair reminds you of sunday, you could sleep right through it, you are an acrobat on the tightrope of her attention and you clear your throat and think about the backbend of her thumb, her hands flex the knuckles flash white lightening and you pocket the static, think of what those hands could do, how once her fingers folded in on yours like muslims bowing to mecca, you think if prayers can be origamied into prophecies then fuck me if i'm wrong but i think you want to love me, your eyes are hotel maids dusting out the silence, you are so stagnant, you are the dust that hovers, and she is the shadows, a cannibal glutton, a grayscale goddess, a fence you can never scale.

the shelter in my skin

Watching the sun rise
On grayscale security screens
I would sip coffee and wait
For the women in the shelter to wake up.
To them, I was a part of this house
There when they woke up and back
Every day
Bones of frayed wood and eyes
Too fluorescent for morning.
I liked the quiet of 7am
When the women with jobs would creep downstairs
To iron their shirts and ask for bus tokens.

Donna was a late riser
But always woke up angry
I was the only counselor she trusted
And would shut the door in the other’s faces
To ask me my favorite dave Matthews song.
I love him. Do you love him? I love him.
She was manic, a coke addict with impossible stories
That were probably true.
When she came home at midnight,
With whiskey breath and bloodshot eyes
My boss wanted her to leave
It’s past curfew. Tell her to just go back to her abuser.
I said nothing, just breathed into the phone. I imagined her red faced,
In line at banana republic, sticking voodoo pins into the mental picture of me.
Joanna, you can’t get attached to them
She told me.
As if these were puppies
And not battered women
Whose sleeping bodies I guarded
With my own scrawny, spoiled one
Whose breath marked the growing shadows
On the driveway
Whose bruises cracked the grey and bled the screens purple
Hot fingerprints
On doorknobs
And panic attacks
At 3am
Dreams of angry hands on their necks
And their daughters
Who rode with me to the hospital
For their 7 year olds sexual assault exam
And to their own custody cases
Who looked at me like they knew
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing
But smiled because at least
I was trying
Unlike my boss
Who scowled in the corner
And told me I needed
To grow up.

Shadow bulimic,
Stop coughing up the night.
This subtle daybreak
Is a miracle of quiet.
I am someone’s solace
And co-conspirator
And if that makes me
A really bad social worker
But a decent person
I can live with that.

I’ve got only names
Under my fingernails
Women stitched into my framework
If I am still that house
I can feel them rattling through me
And I know
Donna was no angel and
Neither am i
But we tried
Wings rigged up from coat hangers and gauze
Medical tape and food stamps
Shivers of light from half-open doors
And children that sleep all through the night,
Like soft pockets of another life,
Before the bloody lips and bloodier hearts
Before the scars that make her flinch when hugged
Before the Christmas marking the anniversary
Of when daddy tried to kill mommy
This
Is a prayer of flesh
Of 7am
Of bones sloping across rough draft DNA and everything
Can be edited
Into something better,
Even me.
Unfolding my breath in sigh
I am the guardian of this empty hallway,
In that house,
Where I memorized the taste
Of hope.

poem

in memorium



after some time

it comes to a point where

nothing is easier, or better

only different.



when your entire world

has been flipped upside down

you flick the fake snow chunks

from your shoulder

and shatter the snowglobe.



you realize that

the things you always thought

would matter so much

like who came to your last birthday party

whether or not the girl from the bar will call

or your slam scores

fade from one year

to the next.



after some time

you'll only remember

the outlines anyway

shells of memory you can rub

between your fingers like rosary beads.



as for me,

i just want to know

that people will remember me

and smile.



like i am now,

remembering how you laughed

when i told you i liked your teeth

in that texas parking lot.



like i am now,

sitting by the south street seaport in manhattan

for hours

a man in a business suit

curled up in the fetal position next to me

as we both watch the water between here and jersey

until the street lights come on

and i leave

for home.

poems

Here
the water shines soft
all subtle horizon and
whispered rain mist and
here
baptize me open
skin to science
dissect me to everything simple
just pulse
your name out like a homing device
ive got handfuls of shattered light
to throw onto the blue screen
and make morning come
remember
when the walls hugged us
in my tiny brooklyn apartment
you were the first person
who made me feel like home there
reached in and tugged
the new york frost from my chest
held your hand there
till I felt it.
Shannon
my aunt dying ten years ago
made me stop believing in god
and now you
have taught me how to pray again
i'll believe in anything
that reminds me
nothing matters but who you love
so here
kiss my palms and touch my passport
i'll go everywhere
exhaling your gospel
how you sucked in life
and just held it there
til you felt it
and if words
become skeletons of sound
ive got drums
that echo your eyes
in brooklyn streetlight
ive got poems
as prayers and
here
I miss you like
ripping pages from
this holy book halved open
in my chest
my own heartbeat
is every amen and I can't stop thinking
of you
pushing up from under this water
wry smile and eyes flashing
ripples crackling and you can shatter
anything you want to
please crack this day to splinters
halve every memory I have
of hugging you goodbye at 4am
and watching the taxi drive away knowing
i'd be lonelier now, having had you there
and there is no soft brake
this crush in my heart is
just your hand holding it together there
til I feel it
myself.

wow...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3fnu7_bill-oreilly-lesbian-cutest-couple_news