Trust Me
I know you-
I know your points
and I know the point when the pleasure of pain
begins to sharpen.
I can feel the sharpness
of my nails gathering your skin beneath them.
You know me-
you know my teeth, my tongue, my hands
and you know the swing of my body
as I challenge your nerves.
You love the sound of the cracking whip
almost as much as you love the sting.
I know that you stay up late to read vintage horror novels.
I know that you don't sing in the shower,
and that you treat your plants as tenderly as pets.
You're gasping now-
and I stop to touch the blaze of your beaten flesh.
I love you, and I love that you trust me to know you.
Blindfold- Submissive
Crack! Crack! - assault on flesh.
It rises up pink in fiery protest.
Fur lined cuffs nuzzle delicate wrists
and her knuckles turn white
against the rubber hand grips.
She hangs in the corner spotlight,
breaths thick with hot pleasure.
The faces around fade back,
blending with black
only marked by the blaze of a sharp
inhale on sweet clove cigarettes.
He steps deliberately around his captive girl,
watching her weary fingers uncurl
as his slowly gather the sweat
that has welled between her breasts.
She cares for nothing beyond
the barrier of the blindfold
but the measure of discipline doled.
Sensing the next stinging crack
she tilts her back,
and sucks another shuttering gasp.
Time Line's Command
The glass man's old hands
wing-fold foil around his work
as if preconceiving their masters plan
and melding one with melted sand.
He no longer notices the trip trip
of calloused fingertips
on the dusty towel
as he wipes a small amber piece
shaped to fit a garden birds beak.
He wished wished his life was shorter
because he's too soon lost his daughter.
He sees her in sunset-marbled glass
and all pieces past in which he's put her.
His hands mostly miss
his wife's soft softness
and her praise as she explores
his newest creation of dancing light and
the way she could make it brighten.
In God, in God's churches lies her heart
and each window's glowing piece, a different part
of his life fastened fast with solder
lines tracing from corner to corner
telling the sun, the colors to mourn her.
His simple work lamp is slowly dimmed
by the muting glass-powder blanket
seeming to come from within,
as if life's strife throws dust from him.
He's had the love and the pain,
backtracked countless lanes.
and every road sign has told him
the inevitable time line's command
will crack the glass man's old hands.
My Daughter
My Daughter wears roses in Her hair,
but She smells so sweetly of lilac.
She loves the way Her lacy dress blooms out behind Her
as She grazes the ground.
Her tiny toes part the dew before Her.
The edges of Her lips rarely dive,
for the heavens have a pull on Her.
She loves me,
because She knows She is a sliver of me.
My lovely Daughter has thick, shadowy curls - like mine.
Her eyes flash with an age farther than infinity,
and pour poetry without a single sound.
She allows sadness to show
when I hold Her,
because She feels my arms go through Her.
My Daughter dies.
Although Her heart is so vast,
She saturates, absorbing my drenching condition.
It infects Her with history and disease.
It fills Her with me and I am soiled.
My daughter dies now, and again, and again.
she died before she lived, because we know she will never be.
In This Stillness
My love is lying next to me.
The shine of his lids flick
with the lick of dreams.
His young face, folded slightly around the eyes
by a blue collar life,
evens with ease in the span of sleep.
The lull beneath the
surging waves of waking hours
has finally ascended
up to his shadowy skin.
I need to dip my hand into the
glossy span of his deep mind,
To blend myself in with him.
I want to moor him to me,
because I fear the future
and all of it's storms.
Chaos that disrupts destinies
and swills passion.
My love is lying next to me.
In this stillness,
I silently seep to him,
³you bring words to me,
spread ink upon dampening pages.²
For Moments
I dance for nothing,
for moments
for the glory of my body
becoming uniform with the
hot air- The hot
moments when everyone
is watching, and no one
is thinking.
I write for nothing,
for unsettledness
to delay rushing words
like arctic blood
one . . . after. . . another.
A butterfly from flower
to flower.
I live for nothing,
for open eyes and feverish flesh.
for dashing time
and stopped moments.
The tumble tumble from
start to finish.
I wish for nothing,
I have the dance,
the heat of it.
The words are mine,
from mouth and from heart
they become me.
I wish for no more than
than what is being written.
Lake Vostok
Crystal cracked, frozen glass
walls, frozen ceiling,
algae flecked floor.
Such darkness has never
been seen, but we ache to see.
Oh, how human of us.
Inquiry has us probing, reaming
our way toward a parallel of evolution
that is not us.
We need to see the ice breakaway,
thrust a hole through
the time-stopped gap.
Who is contaminating whom?
Will our sun soaked, bright-
sinned, disease planet drip
deep below?
Perhaps the distant gorge
caged in it's icy crevice
will introduce itself to us
with more or less than
a simple ³howdy-do²!
We are hoping to find God in blind
creatures, dainty and unnamed.
This hidden, hard crack in the earth
may not know we're coming.
But oh how human of us,
we are coming anyway.
Try Me
What makes a winner?
My report card, my A's B's, my studying
hard until I'm drained
from words drained from my
own thoughts my own ideas drained
fucking dry?
How about smiles,
I tried that, I smiled,
I agreed, oh I agreed
where agreeing should have
disagreed.
I giggled and talked
with perky, jerky eyes
all fluttery all. . .
agreeing. . . and I didn't win.
I tried the turn around, roll
my hips spread my legs suck
on dicks, I tried that too many times,
but I still didn't win.
How about the bitchy tantrum
throwing over
demanding over
opinionated over
³I am right! I am right!²
Wrong.
I tried the bottle.
I tried the needle,
oooh I thought I was a winner.
The minute that hit my head
ooh I was in first place...
oooh this is what winning feels like . . .
Oooh, whoops! Lost again.
I tried love.
Clinging, gushing
hold on tight!
love me! love me!
³don't you love me! me! me??²
ahhh me,
hold it!
me. . .
I tried me.
Got to stop here folks,
because I tried
me, and I'll tell you,
I may not have a metal
around my neck,
but I'll tell you that right now,
I am loving, being me!
Thorn Apple
What anger causes such aberrant behavior?
What force ceases blood,
causes icy fingers,
negates nerves and hearts,
yet seethes the anger and passion
of a volatile mind?
What sudden slip off. . .
Where can we find an edge
to slip or step suddenly from humanness?
From what garden does such a colorless,
deaf flower bloom?
A Datura to aid the fall,
push the leaper and numb the wit?
As a child laughs,
elsewhere the echo returns a scream, a sob
a plea and a mother forgets
the bond of same blood through veins
forgets that the pain in her fists
is matched tenfold on tender flesh.
A fathers kiss good night
is a rain of red and blue
and knuckles lacking the softness of lips.
Where are these droves of fractured souls,
that leap sometimes directly,
or diligently
from rectitude when eyes are averted?
Are they taking a bow beside you?
-EMH '02
In Reverence - Blood
I've never liked artificial light
the light bulbs make everything orange
like living under dirty water
maybe like living in my veins.
I've always dreamt of blood,
even the night before the morning
I first found it on my panties and
called my mom at work.
Later, I cried
because I got a bloody nose
and was too overwhelmed with blood.
I cried, ³why me!?² as if this didn't happen
to all girls.
That was when blood came dark and slow.
I always see blood in my dreams
sometimes it's disguised beneath flesh
but I know it's there,
I will never forget that it's there.
When I was 15 I had a sometimes boyfriend
who smelled like the earth,
and who called me a whore
because I wouldn't sleep with him,
but that was because I didn't love him.
But I did love someone
when I was seventeen
for a little while.
Later he told everyone that hadn't been a virgin,
because I didn't bleed.
This is when I started to discovered
what hurts more than physical pain.
and that it is not hard for love to change,
but sometimes it is hard to quiet
what your heart wants to scream.
Finding blood can change things.
After that, I didn't care about love anymore,
only about dreams and blood
and the deep simplicity of everything,
too simple to figure out.
And I found comfort
in the simple complexities of my blood.
I learned that tiny edges can help me feel human.
Those tiny paper thin razors
Can help me to find definitions.
And I became comfortable,
as if the meaning of strife lived in my heart.
Love again and again turned to loss,
that hard emotion,
to pain and then to blood -
To close the book,
my way of making sense.
This would happen slow,
fast fast and unpredictable.
I told everyone that I was writing a book
about love and nonexistence.
And I would discuss it with opposers
and in the end they would nod and agree-
it is friendship and lust that are rooted
in our blood, and those too need a book of their own.
I dreamed hard of blood,
until one night it congealed
and stuck fast in my veins,
more physical pain.
That is when I took down my dusty dream catcher
from above my bed
because I am afraid of all the needles
and the colorful pills that are constructed
to soften my blood.
I am tired of dreaming and of the doctors
warning about how easy it is now,
to find and lose blood.
Everyday at every flick of a minute
I can feel the life and pain,
The orangy water beneath my skin.
I dream it and I know it, blood is life.
-EMH '03
Be Nice To Spiders
In this small rented room,
the whirling fan in the window
seems to do nothing but confuse the flies.
The vulgar heat makes
the curling fly strip,
taped desperately to the ceiling,
even stickier.
I almost feel bad
I nearly relate, to those flies
stuck by their wings to the inescapable glue.
Struggle to free a leg,
and instead, tear a wing.
I almost relate to the buzzing around
this insignificant, sultry room.
But instead, I loathe them.
What are they doing in here?
What am I doing in here?
It isn't big enough for all of us,
almost isn't big enough for me.
There is no room for pacing,
and the choking air,
no room to breath.
Should I relate to the ants?
There was an infestation the other day.
Tiny ebony bodies,
papery-new wings unused.
They never found the struggle
of the sticky tape's glue.
But they never found a way out either.
By that evening, they were all dead,
Their broken little bodies popping
under bare summer foot
squashed, survival
of the fittest. I detest them too.
They went out with the trash.
Can I relate to. . . I don't completely fear,
the plump gray or the long legged spiders
With their bite equal to the adder.
Instead I respect their still patience,
their choice of feasts
and quick change of disposition
³Be Nice To Spiders,²
My childhood book foretold
of my comrade
whose silky homes
are now adorned with those I loathe.
In every corner and crease
their webs wait and glint
moist with humidity.
I am now careful not to disturb
the thin threads near the medicine cabinet
that the quick, dark spider punctuates.
It matters not how many times
that broom stretches to the ceiling corner.
They pluck another stunning home
from their bodies,
paying no mind to the dust or the heat.
The sticky heat clings to my skin
as if I am made of that spider silk
as if it is that strength that traps me here
to hear the flies grow unnaturally loud
as they bump about my ears.
I guide them with my eyes to the tape,
to the trivial window fan,
to the traps .
I imagine myself a spider, waiting
for that telling vibration.
Patience, patience. . .
When that moment comes,
I will wrap it tight
and no one will knock me down.
Be nice to spiders.
Patience and the first vibration,
I will jump, and this web
will yellow with dust
-EMH Summer '02
In Our Basement Apartment
There you are again
dancing fingers on strings
as quick, gentle and steady
as a stalking cat
Your strong arms
amplify the fragility
of the wooden
instruments curvy body.
As your hands caress
the neck, fast fast and slow again,
the notes pour from you
a river, mist and a waterfall
all from you
And here I sit
observing your
inward turned eyes
seemingly vacant
Do they see the surging
colors of intensity
and tenderness
hidden in there?
you are full
of electric emotion
coursing through your arms
your hands and fingers
you make love to music
the way you do
to me
-EMH Summer '02
Transitory
When I was a child
We used to hold sticks into the fire,
And then dance them through the black air,
Spelling out our names in cursive
With glowing embers and firefly sparks.
(years later, I saw an image of Picasso doing
almost the exact same thing.)
I once saw a plant crossed with a firefly
So that its roadmap veins glowed
In the dark.
I wish they did that to me,
So others can see the burning beneath my skin,
And know when I was fading.
My life is books, chapters,
Perhaps photographs
Left too long in the sun.
It is the shadow wall I'd seen when I was young
You could leap or pose
Or just stare . . .
But there, suddenly was your bold shadow
Hard against the wall.
When I reached to touch the frozen moment
It faded,
Like flame under glass.
I was thinking that maybe. . . when I die,
They could finally bath me in bronze.
-EMH '02
Stars On a Cloudy Night
I shone. . .
Blanketed beneath a timeworn sheet.
The more beaten chair was buttressed
against the wall,
and surrounded by two others.
A child's tent.
My sanctuary, my solace.
Hidden there, alone there, I created
a corner, and tales that even I envied.
I was gone.
No one could see the sparkling of a child's mind
underneath the light white covering, a flimsy shell.
I escaped into the spiral of my imagination.
Every so often I was a fairy, cat, or dog
or all three if so I thought it!
I would play house,
making undercooked cake
in the kitchen's toaster oven,
Because we never could afford an Easy Bake one.
I cut paper dolls, an improved family,
out of bright paper.
usually they were paper rabbits
and I would smuggle carrots to them
and talk in a mumbled whisper,
my voice hushed my the sheets muffled light.
I had countless conversations
on an aging plastic phone.
I called my father, future husband, a ghost or an angel.
The phone was never plugged in
outside of my head,
but everything worked my way
in that retreat.
-EMH '03
Night Terrors
I wake up in the wake
of the emotion of a dream.
I cannot shake it,
it did-
not
happen, but I can-
not shake it, I want to cry.
I do not know what I am
longing
for, but it hurts not to have it.
and before
the return of the
quick connections of rationality
I suddenly realize the irony
of how a heart feels
heavier
when it know it's
lost
something.
but in this clinging wake of
the emotion of a dream
I understand it.
-EMH '03
Untitled work in progress
Evolution?
we is animals- ah yessss,
but cat clawed its way ..
ahhhhh yes, - bitten, scratched,
slithered, shed and
goodbye
found ourselves some
hail marys
found ourselves some
our father who art
in prison...
goodbye nature
we have evolved
into infinite passions
our teachers our neighbors.. who killed
the earth,
and the eventual ..
we are no long witness
to survival of the fittest
- evolutions end
how am I made up of
so many tears and so few. . .
thimbles full of the periodic table
ooh but I've got a spark and I am willing share.
-EMH '03 and onward!
