and so we dance (throw back)

we wonder what will happen today,
what tears will be cried tomorrow
and what pleasures we’ll soon know.

the table was set for one, among the ashes of my old pages
i can see what i will become. black ashes and black tea,
black coffee and red roses.

i wonder if she even cares or am i just there,
because what it is to me it it not to her.

too high, that is my preferred flight pattern,
i wonder, imagine eating pieces of broken sky,
and then watching our bodies turn from us to it.

we’ll walk around with clouds floating across our brow.
i wonder about the cards cast last night, the queen of hearts that
upside down and right side up. and the king of diamonds that
did not want her--does she feel?

do we question?
no so we dance until we all fall down.

Digression

Food
1.

To a suggestion that I make amends with myself.

To you I say there is no justice,
Without heels on, with no lipstick and no perfume,
And to you who knows nothing of the woman I know—chic,
cheek and all of that—
it’s so hard to talk to a woman
who left me in a graceless world of pretend.

And as I hesitate to speak,
I am so quiet, these days,
I am so hungry, these days,
But in my hands there is never anything to eat,
There is never anything here.

I tried to take a bite out from (of) our lady,
Only token virgin of a common sermon,
And so I hesitate to speak,
Mary tasted of motherhood.
She tasted like stale wine and coffee beans,
And Perry Ellis 360, your kind,

Mary, Mary, will you marry me?
Through you I can bear no child,
For I still am one.

Back to you again,
It’s all to you,

Call me a sadist of the mind?
Point out my dike tendencies—
Do you know what a dyke is—
It’s part of the game,
Part of the game,
So what if I’m a bit like that,
I am, I am, I am,
And a mother should love me unconditionally,

Feed me,
For beauty is what you eat,
The things you can cook,

I’m hungry,
I’m digressing,
And I’m done for now.

nightmare chronicles

Bless me father, for I have slept.
It has been two days since my last trial,
And these are our confessions—

1.
she walked deep into a room,
hands feeling around in the air
though she knows there is nothing there but
stagnant life. She moved without looking around,
Only noticing the boy, her boy, so concerned
With looking down that he could not see
That she combed her hair, or the care she
Took putting picking her clothes out of vogue,
he did not look up!

The light trickled away from the sky,
The angels reeled the sun back up,
And she took careful steps on the dark floor,
Trying to catch his eyes, but he kept playing,
Playing, playing, and would not catch her eye.

Such portrayal, he said.
Exhausting, she said.

2.
He saw no room. He was in a parade down main street,
A thousand feet in a thousand rhythms on the dirty
Concrete where chalk and spit and oil and water drops
Culminated in cracks that were too numerous and
Smooth squares so few. Yet peace lasted only
A second or two before something rose up from that
Dirty rock and waved it’s large arms loudly,
Making even the horn players crumble like paper planes,

He had a gun that wouldn’t shoot,
He had legs that wouldn’t stand,
He had a heart that didn’t take on demons,
He had no Vegas hand,
He had double sixes, no aces.

Did It end, she said
Could you end it, he said

3. Interlude


She tried not to speak of what happened next, and
He kept rotating in his bed to get the images out of his
Head and she wished to peer behind the sun to see if
Angels were really there then there were the things in between that no one
said, when she closed her eyes she again saw the shadow
moving, moving, moving
over her out of sync, her voice fading faster than she
could blink, but the shadow hard lined—these things that were in between
they did not talk about. He remembers moving through people,
breathing, breathing, breathing,
demons finally down but so are the people they
dragged all the way from the town hall to the grocery store,
and all he was looking for was a little hand to connect to
the human puzzle that he— she remembered almost tasting
the struggle—and these things in between their dreams bits they
could not maintain and so they took reign.
Killing them, killing them, killingly them,
Steadily—
So what to do, she said.
Check under the bed and in the closet, he said.

They checked nightly,
religiously, and they prayed:

Our father,
Who art up there, somewhere,
Hallowed was thy voice when I dreamed a dream,
Thou kingdom was dark,
And thy house was stark,
Thy angles craved liquor.

she prayed:

give me this night,
a dreamless sleep,
and forgive my laviciousness,
I asked my shadow no favors,

He prayed:

So lead us not into our nightmares,
But deliver us from evil,
This we pray again,


Amen.

between now and when

Between now and when you left me
my head has pounded in that
Uneven rhythm to the semi divine
Vision of when you poured coffee in
My garden and made the flowers grow,

Sowing things that only I should sow.
But I don’t blame you.

It is the woman in me who keeps brining
about these irrational tendencies,
pulling on my thin heartstrings with
her teeth and bringing me dreams of being,
just being, without meaning or fear.

Yes, simply being, just being,
And having you near.

But the fantasies that she brings,
Only happen in the spring,

And winter is my weather
So I’ll put on my black coat and wait,
Pound out frantically about this standard fate,
Of being caught up all over again and why the rose stems won’t sever,

Dreaming of being, just being,
Simply being, nothing less.

She talks through my own mouth,
Straighten up and fly right-
Throwing even my darkest dreams into a forgetting light,

For he wants me to take off my coat and admit,
That your coffee really is sustaining the roots,
that when I put on your garden boots they fit,

and that’s it.

Nightmare Chronicles

There was always a maze,
a door she knew.

Solitary windows that
Anne peered through.

Walls with gaping holes,
floors with no strength.

Sweat that gathered on her neck
for Satan to wipe away.

They were always amazing, she said.
Damn crazy, he said.

But his were of repeated things—
angels lined up while he bit each wing.

Destructive things.
big black trombones.

His mother in hysterics,
him locked outside.

Southern sun blazing,
eastern promises nothing at all,
the western lullaby in her tongue.

Trying to reach her on the phone only
to hear her breathing with the other one—

He could here that rustling,
her faithful theme music weak,
that old racist swing she loved.

Repeated things, he said.
Sweet things, she said.

He wiped the sweat from her neck,
Letting Satan stand and watch,
perverted nightmare theology,

angels still waiting their turns,
watching too, but she never let him
in and the show fell through.

He smoked away, he and his
father in their man like ways.

Flipping off the economy,
cupping themselves to democracy.

Confessing, digressing, until
his eyes were again wet.

He wondered how he could forget
that he couldn’t bring him back with Newport cigarettes.

He told her this.
They needed one another.

They slept, and he had another nightmare.
She dreamt of a mother.

Spoken Lullaby (East 56th Street)

Time keeps ticking as
cars keep driving past my window as
girls keep laughing on my bed as
the playground on east 56th stays young.

But it’s not—there is no more
innocence unless you are talking
about that which lies in those little
shoes that come play by day.

Because then the bigger boys
come lean by night, they slap
palms in exchange of goods and
blood and they roll the dice to
what they would call in Rome “dogs”
but here with the good old boys it’s,
snake eyes peering up from the dirty concrete.

Time keeps ticking as
the suits straighten up their ties as
stories creep through my head as
I have had enough noise.

I climbed into my closet just to
be alone with myself for a while
so that the noise from her story, and
his story and hers too wouldn’t,
couldn’t keep chasing after me.

I fell asleep on the floor dreaming
a world of fantasies where I’m no
longer eating bowls of travesties—

but time keeps ticking as
the dice still rattle and peer as
the playground with the children,
the— blood,
the—good old boys,
those—snake eyes.

The exchange.

Time keeps ticking as
my voice spills out sweet and
I speak this lullaby about
east 56th street.

love letters

Sometimes pen scraping paper
sounds so harsh it has no soft
overtones, only dirty implications.

But this is a love letter that I write
with the best intentions and
thoughts worthy of good soap.

And there must be days where
you wonder if i am to full of
words to speak to you-

There must be days where you
follow my shadow through that
door and when it closes on your
foot, you good shoe, when I do
not answer the bell-

I cannot answer the bell because
it’s an elite society that only lets
the few through.

There is no room at the
table for both me and you.

But I love you.
Really, I do.