LOOKED LIKE LAUGHING

I take it you know a few things about women!
there is a woman I know who listens to Christmas music in May
she can will a taut fleshy orb occupied by child into existence —
her legs are strong, her hair is fine and dry
and, truly, she drives me mad but she is mine

some women swear they’ve been dying for twenty years come June
they wear long skirts that sweep mazes of dog dander within the homes
of other stronger women because, my word, they must commune —
I’ve been in houses where there are four generations of them
and so long as the cream is served and the froth stirred they get along fine

mothers, I’ve read, must see to it that their bandoliers are loaded
so when their children fire bullets made of plastic and foam
out of their blessed Nerf rifles onto floor lamps and portrait glass
they are ready to retaliate and restore order in the ranks

some women are smart and feign surrender
they lame their pace and chant ‘one of us one of us’
so they may coax these smaller, pretty nifty humans beings into laughter —

I revel in their laughter.

daughters like me can hold your hand and make you weak in the knees
they will ask you to pass on the ol’ hickory and brown sugar sauce
on this fine Memorial Day weekend, and depending on their size,
they will wrap their arms around your neck and nod in thanks —
because we’re happy to be here; happy, truly, to be one of them

she asked me
does anyone ever fuck
the portrait artist
at knott’s berry farm?
 
(i met a vampire named Shantelle)
 
she asked me
will you do it like this
with a pillow under my hide
and a fist in my side?
 
(a hidden witch called Shannon)
 
she asked me
what would it be like if
i never fucking met you?
 
you’d probably be happier
but more naive.

(no one fucks the portrait artist at knott’s berry farm)
 
somewhere an oscillating fan
sits still in a stagnant apartment
staring at the empty blues
swirled from carpet to ceiling.
 
(not going outside again)
 
i get claustrophobic in crowds
and ghosts they stand so close.

the winds are high today, 
blowing my ghostly visage
in a westerly direction; 
all i can do is breathe 
deep in my torso, 
asinine smile 
and remain silent. 

Read More

does vivienne del rio ever
wander bakedly through
downtown los angeles
giggling in silent pockets
of crisp concrete
whispering street names
with a smile
flickering through
bar doorways with their
shadows turned inside out?
.
i want to give some ghouls a call
and see inside her apartment freshly
will she let me give these ghouls my all
entirely i am completely in love with the fall
but summer’s gonna gut you nicely.

A few times I have indulged a fragile curio
with lending my hand in prayer, my shoulder to collect.
Those were necessary falsities.
 
Alone, however, I spark ember-woven prayers
like I till the land madly in a zig-zag.
 
I pray at pages of Virginia Konchan
and feel the utterance tangle upward
to the only heaven I have known-
 
(trees!)
 
I pray on Lexington while surfing
the magnificent concrete who lies down before the sun
and is eternally thankful.
 
I pray into the faces of my brothers and sisters
and they moonbeam back at me with fury in their hearts
wearing fabric made of helium.
 
But usually, when my eyes are shaded,
and my simple lips are trickling,
I am only counting palm trees.

to gather within yourself the strength
to release these dusty panelled visions
to subsist in perfect silence
to stare wide-eyed beyond these tongued mirrors; 

how many sundays have passed
how many cartons of milk

rotten in the fridge.

there is a place in my heart for Alina Vargas:
it’s filled with gratitude
and amazement,
             and gratitude, yes, but this time
         for living up to such a strong surname

I first thanked you, since you’ll ask, for fostering a fine
raptor for nine months 
about short of a score ago;
         it’s a shame, that, with such strong legs 
    and a face that holds the full plight of womanhood,
you gypped me from befriending 

                      twice
                      thrice
             four times a dolphin

happy, happy, happy, Happy Happy to you

She says psychics speak too soon, of course,
and I’ve been partial to premonition.
It is too early in the morning for a
mother’s day-
I can tell by the burn in my eyes
which I’d rather not subside while
ribbons of smoke tangle toward me.
This apartment is a space that
makes me containable-
I flirt out your window to tussle
the crisping day I say:

You are perfect in your sagging ways!
You are wonderful while you crumble,
while you crumble I can mix!, I can
strip so satisfyingly
rectangles of quartz from your smeared sky
all the while doing the watusi-
existing, twisting right on the volume knob,
eternally staring west.
 
Swinging trees high five and bark madly.
We are ascending hills golden and glad.
You have power windows and once again
it is a parade of hits weekend.

Kansas City 1 & 2

(1)

when the summer is at its quietest
when it bows down in exhaustion like
the rest of us:
it is in still and muggy kitchens
that i love you most
with brittle yellow light bulbs
like shining grinning june bugs
like green little flies of lightning.
the linoleum sweats like
the beads on your neck
and the heat hushes back and forth
the side-swept salt-sweat hairs
hug your forehead and the clink
of one more bottle cap
dances in the museum of moments lost
and humidity.
it is only nine p.m.

(2)

Straight teeth
blonde hair
blue eyes
smooth thighs
long legs
long hair
pouting lips
twinkle toes
tinkered brain
cali forn ia smile
broken ribs
carotid erosion
exhausted tear ducts
valet stubs
unread books
salad fork
in the sink
unclean
sheets
when certain
numbers burn
on her alarm clock
particular arrangements
she gets aroused and sad
simultaneously
and no one
will ever know.

The Job

dear dad
i think it’s safe to say i didn’t get the job,
it’s been five days and my cell is quiet
like our long distance phone calls.
did you get the songs i sent you?
if you can get past the foreign words
i think you’ll really like it,
i want to learn swedish just so i can
sing along
maybe you can too.
i don’t dream about anything these days
like i used to, like the dreams i had next
to the blue bookcase you built for me.
i wonder if you dream still too
and what it must be like to know truly the phrase
‘after the war’.
i feel like you forgot to tell me something
the other day
maybe not
it’s been a while
and my desert body is incomplete and tired.
wish you were here last winter, could have used some help,
you would have known what to say.
did you ever meet karen?
i didn’t know what to say when i couldn’t do what
she wanted but she wanted
me to go so i said
i only keep you around because your pretty
and i’m dumb
and us dumb people can’t help but do dumb things
when they look so pretty.
she passed away yesterday
pretty as ever
and do you remember when mom would talk in her sleep?
always about the beach and there is still
sand in your boots
and i have some too.

when traffic is thick and palatable, 
the use of yr mind is naught. 

contemplations of dashing out
into the clogged road
and filling the asphalt
with my desiccated sort; 
making love to the limitless road; 
abandoning the olive branches and pale deserts 
where we join the firmament above 
becomes a corporeal notion. 

so i strike myself on a match 
of natural proportions 
and breathe deeply 
its indisputable fumes; 
watching it burn, 
tall and complimentary; 
an essence of my post-filtered ash. 

silence escape lips ajar. 
eyes leech off the flame 
modestly traveling 
the straight and narrow 
paper path. 

memories, out of focus; 
filled with large font adhesive text
and leering bully pulpits
and by g-d,
let’s get this show on the road. 

gridlock is steady, 
and i am restless; 
without restraints or facial hair 
or championship rings to brace my fall. 

i don’t think this is hell, 
but i’m ready to know what heaven is.

numerical repetition, endless dividends:

her name was valentina
and i loved how it sounded
when that last delicate A
would drift from my mouth.

it was march 13th and already sizzling
when i sat cross-legged on her carpet
in her new apartment
off rodney
babbling through our second date
when she asked me to hook up
her vcr.

i am not good at many things
but television and wiring
come naturally.

surprised at the speed
she had barely opened my beer
when the tubes cracked blue
and brilliant

and brilliant! her standing there
in the doorway of her kitchen
a sweating stella artois in her motherly hands
smiling and pleased
smiling in to me.

i just didn’t want to let that part go. 

We toss dice and assign names
to our most primal desires and designs;
all of them casual misnomers laced with crude infidelity.
It was in this boneladen moustache marked room
that I fell into the burn of your eyes
under dancing eyebrows when subtly, with calculated fingers
/you gesture/

Roses and rings and simple dollar bills;
I wait restless in the grass
while you grow vain and loveless;
listless in white shoes
past labor day.

Don’t worry about forgetting anything, 
the crumbling little shits are worthless
that we give and those lazy Sunday fucks, 
to watch you flounder across my sheets, 
evaporate in sunshine your winter-face ever-green
knocking against my more pleasant dreams. 
 
And yes you’re still in all my dreams
or sweat-panicked nightmares if anything,
see my filled-in imagination makes me sickly-green
when I see you filled-in by someone so worthless-
did you eat sunshine while supine on his sheets?
Repeating fractions, dirty remainders, careless fucks.

O! The meaningless are meaningful at least when we fuck
and the meaningless become meaningful briefly in dreams.
I felt so meaningful when you let me see your sheets,
I was a collector collecting your anything,
and these trinkets I hold now are worthless-
you were a silver ring that left my fingers green.
 
The summer approaches- lush, golden and green-
and we both will bleed condensation and fuck.
Fuck ourselves through sweat drenched nights so worthless,
pouring each other into our unfulfilled dreams.
Crippled with cocktails we don’t worry about anything
especially the volumes cranked out between sheets.
 
Finally washed the cries and shed skin from my sheets
but some nights I wander and tint myself electric-envy-green,
and these burning festering boils don’t mean anything,
glittered in glossy promises, those fake fucks.
Why couldn’t you flitter past rust and repair my dreams?
My only want was for my wanting to not be worthless.

And time can mean so much, don’t dare make mine worthless.
No more tangled tussles when I’m dark and three sheets.
This is the recorded stand for a ban on baseless dreams,
for things that grow slowly aren’t always natural and green,
not those sulfur-stenched firecracker-fucks,
no not everything has to mean anything.
 
You were not worthless you were only green
and these evaporated sheets came from not giving a fuck.
These silly shared dreams they could have been anything.

firstly, no, i will not keep calm and carry on
there are too many actualities of presence
in my way and lord knows we are perishable and will.
i beg of you honesty in earnest and i vomit completely
at the steps of your etsy shop when you tell me
in peach pastel paisley on eight by five with lethal lace
that everything will be fine, don’t worry. i worry,
does your set of water colors with brushes dipped in fancy
include the shades of want or regret or rent or
day in day out life long terror? you know shit.
while you were cupping cooly a mustachioed mug of
colombian coffee on graphic designer carpets in
graphic designer jeans next to your never-semen-stained eames,
someone, saccharine and soulless, stupid and smirking,
excreted this phrase at me: treat yo self.
 
So I did: promethazine, codeine, white wine chaser, and
twenty milligrams of melatonin; what a lovely gift
to myself to combat the stretching minutes and or

In a coma I saw her reading Carver on Chinaski’s grave, needlepoint platitudes abound, that robin’s egg blue dress, twisted mountain lines that heave from her chest.

This is living?