good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
***
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide:
**** myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from?
books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my *** with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest
****
buy the cow with the biggest
****.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden **** of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on.
from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966

there is a certain comfort in the shape of his soft lips,
in the way his bones crack while we lay together,
in the way his eyes radiate

there's this poison that has settled into my baby bones,
splattering fat bruises on my pale skin

there is a certain comfort in the ringing in my skull,
like the long lost school bell of my younger days,
the days of Easter eggs and milky ways

there's this beautiful boy in my arms,
one who smells like rain and laughs like lightning

"I wish you well."
                                                          ­                    



                                         ­                                     (but not too well without me)

You planted galaxies inside me when we met
and now they're pouring out of my mouth,
stretching their curled limbs skyward from
the abyss of my stomach; they travel
up and up across the expanse between us
and down your throat like some sort of
invisible (and magnetic) parasite.

One:
Brown eyes remind me of Chernobyl,
                        but on you,
I see the Wilson Park Ice Skating Rink where
my mother first taught me to skate.  I see my
tiny hands wrapped around my first dog, Kelly, and
the Beluga Whales at the Shedd Aquarium
in 1999.  There’s a six foot deep hole between us
that makes me wonder if cataracs eclipse your
perception of me like they do for everyone else—
I wonder if you worry about
teetering over the edge
                                          like
                                                   I do.
Two:
If I’ve learned anything from math class it’s that
a negative times a negative equals a positive so
I guess it’s a good thing when it comes to you and I, because
how else would two equally bashful people ever work
together in harmony?  But then what about science—
positives and negatives attract, so I must
be the latter of the two in this electrical charge
         electrical attraction
         sparks fly
         fires rise
other cliched forms of saying that I just like
when your hands are on my hips and your
lips are on my neck and somewhere
in the back of my mind, I hope to God
that this new age romance is not all for naught.

Three:
I met the devil when I kissed your lips.
God was pushed out when the space between us
shrunk and shrunk until there was not enough
room for air nor biblical commandments nor morality nor logic.
We fell together, tumbling over the clouds like the
awkward first steps of a child, unsure and panicked;
our clipped wings, like birds in captivity, did nothing to
prevent us from ripping the pages of His thick book
and mixing and matching His words—
“burn[ing] with passion,” “two shall become one flesh—”
we folded them into fortune tellers.

Four:
When you first told me that you thought I was beautiful,
I did not believe you.  You looked so unsure of yourself—eyes
downcast, bottom lip tucked between your teeth—that I thought,
“How can this this wide-eyed boy think that he can
spot constellations that the Greeks and the Egyptians overlooked?”
Then I realized that the words that spewed from your
blood stained lips were stars of your own creation.  Somehow
you compressed and fused your perception of me with
interstellar matter and birthed a new stencil in the sky.  You
created a cynosure of me.  You look at me like you’re
gazing at Polaris, a perfect doll like Helen or Marilyn;
something I am not.
But I like it.

Five:
We make up Sirius, the Dog Star—
you, the primary, and I, the companion, we are
the brightest in the heavens.  Canis Major would
be nothing without us.  Circling one another in a far,
spread out pace, we take our time in dissecting
one another’s intentions.  You are my horoscope and
I am your zodiac sign; both born in the year of the pig
we display the raw, open wounds of altruism to one another.
I wonder when you look in the mirror,
if the reflection that you see is that of the Milky Way;
the barred spiral that contains
our solar system
our planet
my
      home.

If being with you would mean spewing galaxies
from my lips for the rest of my days, I would
gladly regurgitate a whole new universe
just to hold your hand.

The monster in my closet is not the
Lord of the Flies or the way I hiccup at
the mention of tombstones like picket fences
or the Bible I have sitting on back burner, waiting and
turning to ash as I switch my focus elsewhere;
it is my freedom, it is my voice, it is my vulnerability.

I have found that the true steps to being a woman are
        
        One:
To never say “no” to a man: he is right, he is infinite;
Man, with a capital “M,” is Right with a capital “R.”
I must find my place beneath his boot and be
grateful for the attention.  I must offer myself to him
on a silver platter and ****** my wrists back when
he latches on like leeches in ponds—
innocence is necessary but experience is a must.
I need only to serve him and serve him well.
Dinner will be ready by five.

        Two:
After snapping my fingers and throwing on an apron
I need only to make shopping lists and fold laundry
and wash dishes and dust coffee tables and
***** train toddlers and begin the ironing—I must
become a less troublesome Lucy, and as Sylvia said,
become the place from where the arrow
shoots off from; my husband will be the
        arrow into the future
        the bright light at the end of the tunnel
        the brains, if you will,
ask him all your silly intellectual questions,
goodness me, how would I know anything
outside of homemaking?

        Three:
While living in the Valley of the Dolls,
it is important to play the part precisely because
anything less than the best is a catastrophe—
this isn’t suburbia this is su-Barbie-a  where
women are beautiful and poised, plastic in shells
with skin as cold as the freezers they keeps their words
in.  Your businessman of a husband will come home from
work at quarter to five and say,
        “silence is golden,”
as he pats your daughter on the head,
and you will not know to which one of you
he is communicating with because,
yes, of course, he is in charge of the vocal cords, being
stronger and smarter than the two of you; it is only
logical to accept his words as law.  Besides,
neither you nor your daughter really deserves the
right to not only speak when spoken to; girls have
silly and inconsequential ideas anyway.

        Four:
I must give myself up for love.  A woman without
a single altruistic bone in her body is
not a woman at all, but rather a shadow.  In order to
prove myself, prove my loyalty, prove anything, I must
first prove my heart.  At age eighteen, I will go backstage
for a costume change: graduation gown to wedding gown.
Don’t worry, Mother, he told me that college is overrated;
he told me that the only other education I will need
lies within homemaking skills—the easy life, don’t you see?
Love is my biggest flaw and greatest weapon, and
I must learn to wield it.

        Five:
But without a man, nothing is possible.  Catching
one like fish in nets is the goal, but in order to do so,
it is imperative that I realize that
beauty is not deeper than skin; beauty is pliable like bamboo
and is only prevalent when it is in paint.  I must become
Wendy, I must stay in Neverland, I
must
          not
                  age.
It is important to look young but not to act young.
It is even more important for my ribs to break
through my flesh—my beginning will be my end
but at least I’ll look good.

I am not afraid of the dark or of heights or
of storms or of doctors or dogs; I am
afraid of time reversing, I am afraid of
returning normalities.  That  fifteen-year-old girl
I saw post online about how she was
“born in the wrong decade” and how she would be
a “much better fit for the ‘50s” scares me to death.  
If I was expected to choose between
career             and             family,
I would sit at the bottom of the
fig tree like Sylvia;
              I would stick my head
                                               right in the oven.

I do not like this phase of a heart break.

When you purposely avoid love songs,
Or sometimes you play them just to make yourself feel like your hearts still pounding.

When the person you loved and hid from every waking soul is brought into a conversation.
Or when he isn't.

When you see other lovers who have made it years without the cruel hand of fate ripping their love from them.
Or when you see they haven't.

When you notice him writing you smaller, casual messages when they use to be breathtaking and beautiful.
Or when he doesn't write at all.

When I ask you if I am pushing you away and you say no.

"Alright, happy birthday! Text me later tonight?"

"Will do"

When every hidden goodbye ends with those two words. And my broken, belittled heart.

(i. r.)

You stab me in the back with a knife,
and I apologize for bleeding on it.

I wonder if you’d want to know
I named all of my demons after you and
they haunt me in my sleep

when I was 14 I fell asleep in April and dreamed of bones and
I’m not sure I’ve really ever woken up since

when I lost 5 pounds I never saw a difference

when I lost 10 my mother said I was looking good

when I lost 20 she told me to stop and handed me food
and I became anemic

when I lost 25 I stopped drinking anything because
I felt water had calories

when I lost 30 my mother held me on her lap
and held my bones together for me

when I lost 35 I started fainting every morning and
the doctors could no longer easily find my blood pressure

when I lost 40 people started to stare and food made me cry

when I lost 45 it hurt to walk and to lay down
it hurt to eat
it hurt to breathe and
I started throwing up my empty stomach

the mind plays tricks on those that decide
nourishment is not needed

Eat.

je t'aime said my first lover
France had given me love
Te amo said Spain
Still love wasn't enough
wô ài ńi i heard while eating sushi
China had given me her heart
ich liebe dich i heard in Germany
i thought maybe we'll have a start
s'agapo said the greek beauty
But i wasn't mesmerized in her soul
Doo-set daaram said my persian lover
i still didn't feel the warmth, i still felt cold
Ya tebya liubliu she said and kissed
But Russia was the same, still nothing new
ik hou van jou said dutch lady
but real love in this world was really few
Ngo oiy a  the cantonese beauty said
But i still kept searching for love
ani ohev otach by hebrew girl
But somehow it still wasn't enough
My bengali beauty said ami to make bhalobashi
but i wasn't yet satisfied
my arabic princess said ana behibak
But still i didn't have a peaceful night
When i sat back home
i realized which one is true
Arms wrapped around me, hugged me and said
"i love you".