you were a reckless tearaway arriving
to take the heat with a debt reckoning
in Sunday skies marked for duckbill clips
of dark filled entries on its balance sheet
a challenging force I felt I had to account for
a raincheck that I wanted to cash in on
before the heavens opened and blew me away
knocking at my door for a riot of rebellious
adult licence needed
love to be let in

you agree we meet outside in the gathering storm
for there's a multitude of conflicts to be resolved
stark contradictions and that's what excites
with you there's upsetting imbalance involved
upending equilibrium with blunt direct questions
and reactions like a Luddite with the mind of a librarian
so that I never quite know where you're coming from
but know the answer is next
written bold on the sheet
which has your signature on
I predict with a scrawl
but that you think
is kinda neat

"throw me every strain of emotion you can pick up"
and you do and your wake never lets me down
propelling a wet film wind machine
should I withstand its crazed delivery?

those sheets of rain that blew in
off the bay
you always try
your best to tear
across
I feel them shooing the air
into my lungs
winding up branches faster and faster
like a toy plane rubber band
dancing in my hair
this way then your way
until it stood on end
scared
to not go on and on
the way of so many plucking ideas
drawn from the spoils
of let's-play-chicken arts
found on the tables of tattoo parlours
when the shades roll down
and pages flick quickly as dices roll out
extremes in exfoliating salon sport
close shaving loose leaves off every hairpin bend
and scratching the bald patch
ever more bold
as if you liked transplanting bulbs
follicles in deep crimson beds
of eye poppy temperatures gone wavering

impossible to ignore in a flash of eye shadow
from a bouncy bobbing weaving
pony tale conductor
keen to take on electric vaults
showing me a pair of high heels
whatever
I ****** at your scurrying reins
my grasp like a wind slipping
through a shake of tussled vanes
black curls of wild abandon
whipped up into a shift dress
in shades of grey flight
centred in misplaced miss red
lipstick outline worn to a fade
over the top of the roots
rushes **** the breeze with pollination
as full on as a full Brazilian headdress
collected from a gazillion dipping flowers
a rainbow opening to shower off
it's end in privacy
high pitched screens

little cover in those shorts of ours
from a summertime blanket of rain
which you turned up to cloud my thighs
always thrown over and folding your way
ace-of-***** cards played torn
and ragged with bare laced love
thrown down with on-the-river sneers
cornered with those winking semi-colon smiles
open ended to point out the end will be fun
but I get your gusting gist in the mean time
determined to wheedle the worst in me out
which looking up is on its way now
and when the lightning will stop dancing
is a rough reckoning I'm not ready to say
but in the eye of this exciting storm
it's clear
not tissues not anything
need wipe these slate skies clean
from our trail blaze
my tearaway

the sun is exfoliating
my skin for you.

just give me a minute,
my love.

i am shedding the dry
past away.

A 70th Birthday Poem

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     to keep my brothers and I from fighting
         fighting to cause star-shaped pain,
two-dimensional and primary colored, like on Batman
         fighting to cause welts from
rising like tectonic plates heralding the end of Pangaea
         fighting to bring forth blood
     red blood
      red blood
       burgundy and green and iridescent blood
she said,
         “As long as you’re laughing when you hit them,
it doesn’t count,”
     and it became true
     as the forced, adrenaline-driven guffaws
           tumbled up and over one another
            like rocks shattering one another
              into pebbles exfoliating one another
                into sand
     white and soft and meandering
seaside to tomorrow and forever.
         Know what I mean?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     to keep from clashing
in a fashionable/unfashionable dissonance,
it’s important to remember:
     “Just because two things are red,
doesn’t mean they’re the same,”
or blue or white or black
     that when held together like paint swatches
each holds a different value,
         and the painter tries to make the best choice
because a purple shirt can be pretty,
     but . . .
“Nobody wants to live in a purple house.”  
         Right?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     housecleaning should be done to a polka,
or not at all
         joyfully or begrudgingly
as best suits the cleaner
         and the polka,
     because . . .
“Doesn’t a little accordian make everything better?”
         Well, doesn’t it?

My mother had a series of rules
     by which we lived
And by which I think I still do

For instance,
     today is the 31st anniversary
         of her 39th birthday
     just as it will soon be
            the 15th anniversary
         of my 29th birthday

Of *course, it is.

one night or midafternoon you fell asleep
and snored lightly in my ear.
i stroked your hair (it was longer then)
and thought of my love-lorn words
hijacked by this impermanent sleeper.

i started to laugh and you got lost in my chest
but you said it'd be "a good way to go."
and i heard the sincerity, cheap as silence,
like the first time you drunkenly called me darling
and it was steel wool exfoliating my atriums.

i would rather write about the frivolity
of a cigarette in a hot tub with strangers
and the absurdity of dripping sinuses
or a manifesto for the exasperatingly mediocre
but my words are full of you.

With every scapegoat,
      I fed the grass of  perjury.

Then I'd be a distortion,
pealing the fragmented
              façade from me...

Walking away from the wreckage.

       Leaving them trapped
and broken in the remnants
                                         of my echo..

                                         Hi I'm Judy,
   I always like names with J..

No goats this time,
                                   just sheep ready
to follow me to the slaughter house..

I bathe myself in preparation
Suds of lavender & honey
lathered over my smooth summer skin
I even shave
just for you
Moroccan oil pours over my scalp
exfoliating extra well behind the ears
ah the ears
my favorite spot
Gently dry off
Making sure not to miss any spots
above the knee
where usually a stubble island lingers
make sure the *******
are like starfruit
ready for your suckling
Lather cocoa butter
on elbows and around neckline
sensual, a paradise for you
My argan oil tresses, your palm trees
drown lashes in bat black
curl them upward towards cloudy head
I pinch already flushed cheeks
nice and baby doll pink, just the way you like it
All the while staining lips vamp scarlet
so that you may think their sole purpose
on my face is for
circling around your ****
I tweeze brows into crescent moons
over a Bette Davis eye sky
And I won't dare forget to bleach each pearly tooth
picket fence white
So when I flash my counterfeit grin
a twinkle may appear
and blur the emptiness
lurking between both corners
Now for the *****, bra pairing
of course midnight lace and twin
You, my dear get to unwrap this body of mine
How will you choose what to unravel first?
******* or ****?
Decisions. Decisions.
All of it for your
heartbreaking ***** machismo

I arrive,
just as those perfect hands
of your clock
strike the moment you wanted them to
You dine
licking your fingers after each dish
You breathe cigarette breathe
Your pungent odor wreaks over my body
as yours climbs aboard
Hair, greasy hamburger follicles
Skin, porous with choking chemicals
And there is nothing to unwrap
nothing for me to find
Except an empty chest
The gold had been in my pockets the whole time
I must bathe you off.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.*

W.B.Yeats




In a time such as this, in darkening days
        Without screeching witches
Frightened banshees, buggered old men
Searching for solace, eyes streaming with icicle-lust-
Gangrene facebook: torn-up, shredded twitter

The cries of the disconnected,
Wailing!
Wailing!

In a time like this, in darkening days,
The disconnections come in waves!

Searching for reason amongst the unreasoning,
Hunting for sanity within the insane,
Identifying the dead from amongst the living.

Wailing!
Wailing!

Email excreting venom
Internet exfoliating lies-politicians wrapped
                         In deceit-
A cold time of it, a wretched time of it.

Only within our hearts does hope lie.
                      Only there
Away from conflict and disorder
                             Away
From the capricious cacophony of biased debate.

Wailing!
Wailing!

The lonely moth sits perched on the shower wall
Raindrops fog up the mirror quite unconcerned
Shampoo drips and stings my watchful eyes

The lonely moth moves between my lashes onto the faucet
Scruffy loofahs exfoliating my ***** limbs fall to the side
Water pools outside the hair-clogged drain

The lonely moth flutters– gone in a trick of the mind
Hair cream coats dripping, bouncy locks of curls
A fresh towel becomes soaked and softened

Not like a figwort but not an aster, either. Could he be a buttercup
with sepals, no petals, but sepals like petals? Alan is a bluebeech,
an ash if his books sell. Quick shake hands. Zach's bald ok, a
magnolia, cone-like fruits a bridge to his Neanderthal father.
When did Ben become a chestnut lover? It's said women are practical
but there's much variation in their leaves, ovaries. Many are older,
stumps, snags for peckers and porcupines, teachers, feeders, seeders.
What did the wood thrush sing
                                                      teachi­ng its young thrush meanings?

Sometimes a mushroom. Did you know such fungi are mostly protein?
Mushrooms could replace meat, and the dead, the dead's feet, white
as pyrola, could replace the living. Well, we worry. Will we, bad luck,
be extinguished. Denizens of convenience stores think who cares, will
I beat the reaper? Hope sempiternally springs. Things rarely clear
as sun among the sundews. Eating huckleberries from your kayak.
What Paulinaq says is live your life and then your death until nothing's
      left.
Then thou shalt be bereft
                                            of the heavy sackcloth of the soil, soul.

Said to Mrs. Buckthorn: good poets imitate, great poets steal.
I think she's more an apple tree. Or pear. Good to eat,
amenable to loving. Rose or Ericaceae, the differences make the
difference. Emerson and Rylin Malone are dead. The dead
are dumb, the dust won't speak. And this deep, dull and dark
blessing's a horizontal reserve. Moonlit. Mr. Hickory is actually a
      yellow birch,
holy and exfoliating. Busy spilling seed on the surface of the snow.
Teaching essay
                       writing, algebra, earth science, branches of government.

I would be a cypress, cedar, branches calligraphy brushes, divorced
      from desert.
It takes a divorce for one to know one knows no one, not only one's
      wife
but your very sons who will always choose the open flower bud.
Good, as they should. Their bones are your bones, strange bones,
      and a
strange selection of their words. They are Uvularia sessifolia (wild
      oats)
and Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon's seal). They outlast the
      holocaust
or not, they're made of matter. These windows need a good
      cleaning.
Leaf-raking. Dusting for ghosts. Ah, sweet peace, perfect rest, there
      are
no ghosts
           adults are trees, teens are shrubs, and children are herbaceous.