(Lucky etchings)
And mommy cried as she heard
the sound of my failure,
and then I cried because the feel
of her tears against my blood
reminded me too much of the mercy of Jesus,
and I could barely stand the guilt
because I could still feel
the bar-man's beard against my thigh,
and I liked it.
The Holy Spirit moved between our mouths
as silent proclamations of faith and hope
and love were made,
only to be broken by that beautiful girl
with the red hair and freckled shoulders
that gleamed in the sunlight,
and I could do nought but stand there and burn my feet
in the hot dry sand,
as the weight of the world pressed down on my eyes
and squeezed a waterfall out from the tips of my
fingers that played a lovely cantata on the breeze
that moved my hair to the countermelody.
(And then I was taken up to heaven).
What is beauty but the elixir of the earth?
The little spear shaped blades
frisking our feet,
to the tiny stalks of the sun personified
as big heads of golden petals
from which little seeds and slippery sweet slick
emerges, mingling with the musty scent of
bulbous red skirts dancing in time to the
semen masquerading as balls of fluffy dandelion clouds
on the fingertips of the breeze that
hummed and hawed at the sight of the erect pillar
of thunder, brown veins crisscrossing until
they reached the mighty head of hair that jangled
until little cocoons of sustenance dropped from the
imagination that had nestled up in the crook of its arm.
What is beauty but a story told over and over again with our eyes?
Darkness outside,
darkness inside.
Funky etchings at 5:17 a.m. hardly matter to the world,
but I need to write something because something is bubbling in me
that I can't get out,
some sort of fierce passion and nostalgia
all churned into this one mass of throbbing
hurt and intellect
making my toes curl in their holey white socks
that were burnt from too much ketchup in the sun.
I only wanted to show God that my heels were indeed intact
and the teeth in my smile were furious at times,
although the pearly white smell never left, it was lying.
I wanted to tell God that I wanted them to reek of desperation
because my heart needed to the feel of hair against itself,
because that meant that another boiling hot
mind would be pressed against my own,
so that the sheets my mom had bought me on sale
would swaddle us in the throes of destiny
and some animal cracker fun.
These lazy hot summer days
never left my memory
even as you grew old,
pussy willow snuff growing on your upper lip,
and the soprano in your voice disappeared
and what was left was reminiscent of a
big rusted euphonium played by a grizzly.
Those long hot summer days
when I encapsulated your bony fingers in mine
and we went to the corner store for two dollar ice creams
and sat on the rock jutting out on my front lawn
as wasps floated in star shaped clouds around
the sickly sweet smell of our lips and fingertips.
Those days I will never forget,
as a black and white ball whizzed past my fat thighs
and curly blond flowers tickled our ankles
as we rolled around in the grass,
listening for the pulse of the earth
imagining that it sounded like the cars whirring by
on the asphalt, not ten feet from where we lay,
our skin getting golden brown cancer.
Now you have grown up
and your eyes seek girls and fermented grains,
yet never will I forget those long hot summer days
when the only worry we had was how to hide
our chocolate stained lips from the eyes of our
tired, money-making birthmothers.
