Category: Uncategorized

your fists
shatter mirrors
punch holes in walls

& you with
bleeding knuckles

slam your own face
into a door
to prove

what

(?)

that what breaks you
inside
to sharpness

is your heart
breaking
& you must
keep milling it

to the point
you suck pain
from an acid tit
& go look for more
still hungry

you grind

that glass core
further into flour
your daily bitter bread
that cuts
when you swallow

unmaking yourself
while trying to shake
the world
into something
as damaged as you

the doors you kick down
will never
open to anywhere

you want to be

so stop trying

***here you go, Jeremy.  Inspired (sort of) by Jeremy’s poem on violence, here.

i don’t want blood enough.
maybe it’s the mixing–
i wouldn’t mind smearing mixed
with soil or mud into a river
but is that enough?
am i dirt animal enough
to call myself wild, to pretend
i feel planted when
i have both feet
on the ground?

i want to be the girl with the wolf
in her teeth.

how can you know me
when i am not her
not tearing apart fear
in the forest
white flashes of teeth or the smell
of broken roan fur?

i do not forgive him for hunting me,
he should not expect it.

he should wonder then
when the killing season comes
why
i have been merciful
in singing his death song
loud
so he can expect dirt in his teeth–
the girl with blood on her arms.

arms are just arms, i can’t lay
mine like a track
around the country that…

 

I saw from afar

A man struggling to stand

But I saw beside him

Several bodies trying to pull him down

But there he was, not relenting

But so determined and focused

 

In his right hands, were 37 states

In his left hand, 774 local governments

And a total of about 170 million people on his head

Yet he still believed he could stand

Because his foot were guided

By several bodies of water

Thousands of natural resources but solid and liquid

And his foot stool was a green fertile and arable land

 

So with keen interest, I looked further

And behold on his head

Were great scholars, technocrats and leaders

Working tirelessly to show him the path

And provide all the encouragement he needed

But also, I saw clearly the bodies

Tied around his waist and pulling him down

Bodies of corruption, greed, deceit and misunderstanding

when you put trust in
the river good things start
swimming toward your outstretched finger-
ferns reaching digging pulling up
mud by the root. do you know
our names are written
on the tongues of earthworms
kept deep down inside
their cavernous bellies and
in the morning canaries
find themselves unable to speak
for mouths so holy fruit-full of earth?
do you believe me when i say
we must become this breathing
the riverbed we make must be our own
though wrought from the colors
that made us- murky browns blues and pale
woolen soft grays spilling upward
into caves
which are neither cavernous nor dark,
warm small brown furs of rooms
with a few spots to lie down
and rest?

my body is young for love but old
in the wanting
it measures itself by lengths:
blades of grass,
the iridescent trails of decollate
snails and snake skins,
draping…