clean poetry : laura- marie marciano

Bianca

2012-02-01T00:17:00.000+01:00

the women came in and out the room,
sharing and shaking,
with varying hair and lip shapes,
and one, with dark hair, cried
five times a day, and would
question the lack of sacrificial
love in the world, or why marriage
had become a business contract between
those who had waited too long or let
the opportunity slip in a college dorm,
or at a first job in the city, or in the coffee
shop, five days a week with the young man
behind the counter, because they were
busy with things more important than love.

everywoman

2012-01-03T18:35:00.002+01:00

in the aftermath of
the Christmas season, the quiet,
emotional women who
pretend to be stoic or
aloof in french provincial sitting rooms
, filling sadness with
laughter, and laughter
with question, or sitting
close to the train tracks in
Pittsburgh,
waiting for the pale flowers to
grow. or now, in the
homes of the wealthy
in northern italy, kneelers
besides the beds, prayers to
a god that does not only not
exist, but would hypothetically
rather listen to someone else.
her eyes are sharp with black
liner, her body shrouded
in designer nonsense. her lips
are as pure and delicate as a
raindrop during a drought
in middle america. she is salvation
where salvation is not understood.
she is standing on a milk truck in
a blue dress with red hair, or huddled
in the early spring next to her grandfather's
tombstone in Stuttgart, waiting to be undressed. her blonde
locks covering her large, unyielding breasts.
she is pink skinned and plump, her bottom sneaking
beneath the edge of her red shorts in the summer
with a brain as quick as the bikes that ride by her
in the new york city heat. she is laying in a hospital
bed in Tokyo, cuddled with hello kitty and the memory
of a cheating Scottish husband. she is lover, mother,
daughter, sister, slut,smut, whore, bitch, wife. her eyes are
so god damn alluring, so god damn happy, so god damn sad.
she is wrapped, and unwrapped,
she is only for a day, but her taste lasts forever. she is
truth when someone wants it, and a lie when they'd rather
get away. she is weakness in leaving, and strength in having.
she is every woman on earth.

everywoman everywoman everywoman

2012

2012-01-02T21:57:00.004+01:00

In 2012, stop confusing sex
with love.

Christmas Eve

2012-01-02T21:57:00.002+01:00

my mother had bought
a 300 dollar jacket for
her son from zappos.com
one of the buttons was missing
they spent an hour deciding
what they would do to fix it

i realize the hour was well spent;
my brother works hard, and gifts
are important.

2012

2012-01-02T17:10:00.000+01:00

i fainted in the gynocologist's office,bright lights on and off behind my eyes;
the nurse brought me to with a johnny
soaked in ice.

on New Year's Eve,
i stood with 50 people in a park in Providence,
waiting for the fire works that never came.

i hope that isn't an indication of the year to come,
and that the blood on the floor in the kitchen
is just strawberry jam.

2011

2012-01-02T17:09:00.000+01:00

not all of life is bad.there was that time
that we laid in the flower
bed on New Year's and
my white shirt was stained
with rose petals in the morning,
and i was happy that you were real,
and that friendship was wild and lasting,
through the spin of the washing machine,
breakfast, and everyday tragedy, like
the slow drip of hot chocolate on my lap
in February.

12/8/85-12/30/86

2012-01-02T17:08:00.000+01:00

"how old are you turning?" i asked

"25," he replied.

then we are 1 year and 6,000 miles apart.

say it

2011-12-16T16:11:00.001+01:00

why do you say things that
don't mean what you mean like

maybe we need space/should
be friends/

say i hate you, get away, and
you have grown very fat.
fat.fat.fat.fat.fat. i hate how

your flab now hangs over your
skinny jeans. it didn't use to do that.
also, you don't smell as good
as when i met you.

and true love is cosmic, for sure,
so i guess, this isn't true love.
and i guess i mean i know

i don't love you anymore.

You Killed Her

2011-12-14T04:39:00.002+01:00

There is a very sweet girl that you might know
She isn't that attractive, but people find her beautiful
She will buy you cookies and invite you deep inside
before you deserve it, and she'll bleed for days
when you leave.

She's too fat for you, you'll tell yourself.
You have to sleep with the skinny girls.
She's just nice to have around, to lean
on when the bean poles are slow or busy
or absent minded.
She's sturdy and she'll make you feel like
a man. You'll love her somewhere in your
black/blue heart. You'll use her up until she dies.

When he tells you about her

2011-12-04T01:09:00.002+01:00

and your breath becomes
very short, and you can barely make it to the grocery store
because your heart is literally
cracking and breaking behind your fragile skin
and you try to still smile or listen to what your
roommate is saying about her problem with so
and so, you can be sure that you are human, and
that the pain is real, is like grass, wind and spit.

sex education

2011-12-03T15:07:00.002+01:00

sex is not something that happens all at once,

but gradually, over minutes, hours, days or years.

it will sometimes leave a laundry list of medical problems,

particularly to those who already feel repressed, and often stings

a final time weeks later when one finds a car magazine in her

sheets that her lover, whom she has not spoken with since,

has left behind. she may laugh this off as the biggest joke of

the season to whomever is available at the moment, that she

was with someone who had a car magazine to begin with, mostly;

but her knuckles

turn white in the night as she clenches her pillow and soaks it with tears,

dull pain rising to a peak,

turning to her side to face the wall.

Babies

2011-11-30T00:39:00.002+01:00

the sun is dripping on my face, on

the orange lipstick i am wearing these days.

it's leaking, too, the sun, on my white t-shirt,

black lacy underwear, and dirt-caked fingernail

beds.

i remember how you found all of this

to be quite beautiful, and how we were quite beautiful,

laying on the floor, without touching,

imagining a great slice of cheese pizza or

other ways to make humanity better off.

we were well off, you and me.

America and the Universe

2011-11-05T16:47:00.001+01:00

Max Shepard ate a McRib yesterday.
Jeremy Roye sold his acura.

Lenny Adler bought a $1.00
chocolate bar from a seven
year old in a Catholic school
uniform on the Q train. I ate
it for breakfast.

Last night, on the History
Channel, there was a show
about the universe exploding.
I'm sure America won't be
effected. And besides, that
sloppy kiss I dreamt of last
night was enough to take
the pain of mortality away.
Anna Carnochan told me
they make
shows like that so we'll
learn to appreciate things
such as popcorn. Bianca Martirossian
was wondering, at almost the same
time, if my Nonna had been killed
by the floods in Northern Italy.
If this doesn't seem like a conspiracy
theory to you, as intense as the wet
noses of Europe slurpping up the
fate of Amanda Knox with a bendy
straw, then I don't know what does.

integrity

2011-11-05T16:29:00.005+01:00

one day, christopher john joseph nicolas marciano and laura marie immaculata marciano were

driving in christopher's blue acura integra around the city of providence, rhode island.

they were listening to music quite loudly, and they were about to cross in front of the state house .

christopher started driving faster and faster, until laura screamed "what about the speed bump

coming up?!"

too late. christopher and laura went flying into the sky

as if they were in an action movie like the fast and the furious

or speed, or whatever, and then they landed down on the ground,

sans front fender.

two weeks later the car was stolen by Asian thugs on the

South side of the city.

About 11 years later, Laura marie immaculata marciano

meets this young(ish) man named Jeremy Roye who

use to own a Red acuara integra. He had to sell it after

his world travels because quite frankly his friend didn't

want to have to deal with it sitting in his yard anymore somewhere

in Texas, where Jeremy is from, plus

the city was going to tow it. So he sold it. But he's still cool.

And Christopher is still cool too (he drives a GTI now ). and

of course, laura was always cool.

crotch grazing

2011-10-28T04:50:00.001+02:00

As my favorite poet wrote "when I am with
you, we stay up all night, when you are away
I can not sleep."

Tonight, you are away. I lay here with my hand
grazing my crotch, starting at the stars the absence
of light has created on the dark ceiling above. An optical
illusion, comforting I suppose. You have been away
for most of my life.

I am recalling rapture, the memories of putting socks
in my shirt and staring at my nine year old body in the mirror,
the pain of actual breasts growing, my current breasts held only
by small muscle strings that could snap at any moment, or be released
by your hands, which would be worse.

I am alone all of the time. Sitting in crowded places, I am in jest,
more beautiful or less beautiful then I imagine myself to be. In this bed,
I am alone, physically. Every so often I turn over to kiss the pillow; sometimes I
even touch my tongue to the fabric. Your tongue is not there to greet
mine. Years ago I would punch myself whilst I slept in the absence of
you. Now, it is true, I hug myself instead. I hug myself and love myself
and know I won't leave until I die, and I'll be gone by then anyway.

Am I insane? Sometimes people stop me in the street to comment on
my beauty. Are they insane? Do they know how I am at night, crotch
grazing, thinking of pre-adolescence, making out with a pillow! These men
that desire me, do they know how I often imagine the small red school houses
of their mouths on my nipples, the rising and falling of breath on my sheets.
And whoa to the men that I desire. I can't even write of my thoughts for them
for fear of the paper burning up in unrequited, almost, sin.

I don't mind my moist pillows, my moist sheets. They are comfort where
comfort is lacking. They won't desert me. And to shorten the length of
my ramblings, to lengthen the hours of dreams, I will reconcile that one day
one of those men on the street will be able to replace you, run his fingers
gently along the lines of my life, listen to my inner voice, meet my kiss before
sleep.

true love

2011-10-13T06:42:00.002+02:00

The examining of your deepest heart is not done

on your own. There is an envelope of hurt stitched over you,

pricks of ruby blood where your skin is breaking,

the wounds of childhood and loss still ripe. Then you step up to a mirror,

which is your true love,and you see the reflection of tears and bruises and

you find them beautiful for the first time.You stretch out on your bed and

your breasts are perfect,your body is gorgeous and raw and filled with babies. You

aren't afraid to put your hands across your chest, your lips,

to run your fingers through your own hair. This is your true love.

Freedom is a overbearing philosophical debate, or exactly

what you are experiencing. The tattered ropes of your entire

existence have finally snapped. There is nothing to hold onto

any longer. Someone now carries you.

absolute beauty

2011-10-11T21:06:00.003+02:00

I have traveled enough to know
that I like finely drawn legs and
sincere smiles, my own, and yours.

I am deserted now. My body tastes
like ice cream, my heart is swollen
with sodium and I have no glamourous
pictures to offer you for your wallet.

I think that if I wrapped my arms gently
enough around anything, it might come
home with me, lay in my bed, talk to me
about toe nails or times tables.

Could I put my legs, that aren't as well
drawn as they use to be, around your waist,
and rock myself in your arms, after we'd made
it there?

I am sorry. I will say it thousands of times. I will
see you walk by me again and again, noticing
little, carrying on. But I will still love you. In
every moment, each day of my life.

on the farm

2011-09-23T17:36:00.000+02:00

we are on the farm.
we are on the farm and
the corn is growing.

i just saw forty years in your eyes.
forty. can we boil the water on
the right side of the stove and
listen to the children breathing
in my stomach.

discrimination

2011-09-03T01:27:00.000+02:00

the volleyball net was above their heads,
like equality and leisurely Monday mornings.

I don't mean to romanticize a reality; I too
see the practical set backs of being a little too
short to score.

wondering if you are going to call ever again

2011-09-03T01:13:00.001+02:00

i was wearing a pink shirt
and black pants and shoes
that were broken and i had
been crying for most of the day
and then i saw a drum circle in the
park calling in the new moon and
i chuckled but then wanted to join
it and mostly it was because
i missed you and you would
have liked the drum circle.

nothing happens ever

2011-08-15T17:12:00.006+02:00

You put it simply to me,
right below the rain, near the cotton
candy , wanded, and the shiny red ticket booth,
speckles of gold dust painted within its body,
appearing edible to me, and your plaid shirt.
What were we all doing here?

I can see the skin your mother gave you
gnawed by the sun, and now, the sunset.
I am not ready for this day's funeral, or
your, or ours, or coming across a middle-aged
woman who wants nothing more than to be called
beautiful before boarding the same roller coaster
she rode as a child. To have you be the one to tell
her sort of hurts me because I know, from personal
experience, that you are lying, but she doesn't, and
maybe it matters little either way.

When we met, I was leaning against the edge of a pool,
screaming at you to stop throwing the balloons into the water,
worried about the bar manager, the performers, the time everyone
was having, and you. You just took my breathe with your personal
statuary, your handsome eyelashes and little tennis ball muscles.

Do you remember what it was like that first moment that we met?
I wasn't clever to or aware of any of what has happened since then,
and yet it seems as if nothing happens, ever.

Put it simple. We are capable, of more.
I, too, you know, notice the glow in
people's eyes.

homo normative

2011-08-03T21:29:00.006+02:00

I woke up crying to the small of your
back. our parts did not
fit in space or time.

I had felt your hand holding mine
in the woods between the Pines
and Cherry Grove on Fire Island,
a strong, definite southern hold,
just minutes away from where Frank
O' Hara died. This is, after all, a city
of ghosts.

You are both a pre and post
ballerina. I imagine that your toes
point while you are napping, and
that you wouldn't mind the rot in
my mouth or how I always forget
the keys but remember when I get
to the door. Actually, it was someone
else who points his toes while napping.
Actually, it's the remembering that is
most important.

I want to, objectively speaking, hold
your hand longer, and objectively
speaking, rub against you
near the water and end
up with space aged children
who have super powers and who
remember the love they were born
from.

Sometimes I ramble and listen
to Tori Amos at loud volumes and
think about going to law school and
want to know why he always looked
straight to the corner of my eyes but
you just look straight at me with the
moons of the earth aligned.

this to

2011-07-16T15:49:00.000+02:00

I would put all of the words into scrambled eggs
if you had any, peering through the bathroom
window to see you in the yard at 6am, not
sure if you had risen early, or never gone to bed.

What has brought me to this moment, recalling
now a pink rug below a green ceiling and circling
amongst the threads to a heartbreaking song screaming
from the small white boom box my mom bought at Walmart.

I am not getting any younger. I convince myself over and
over that you are someone that I could love. You and also
you. And you as well. Any of you. But really, not one, not
even one of you, is capable of loving me.

I am scarred in the bathroom mirror, my cheeks are
sinking in, I am addicted to scales. I am addicted to measure.
I am addicted to saying just the right thing to make you respond.

There are so many friends who will tell me that I am perfect,
my sense of humor is what gets them through the day. There
are so many friends who will tell me this, but not one you.

for all those following a dream

2011-06-30T19:30:00.001+02:00

there is a void trembling for fullfillment, unable to be filled. and there you are, in a dream, opening a locker, seen in the corner of my eye. i don't know you now, and not then either. but somehow your tiny words to be through the atmosphere were enough to acknowledge the truth that the reward for having feelings was great joy.

championship

2011-05-15T20:28:00.000+02:00

the brown sandbox and white
powder lines below brother's
cleats, his lip busted open like
a ripe grape, blood on white
ball with stitches, rain pounding
the late summer grass.

pursuit

2011-05-12T19:32:00.000+02:00

how long will it be until you call me beautiful
so that i can take off these heels, one at a time,
and feel the floor below my slightly callused feet.

fight

2011-05-12T19:24:00.000+02:00

i can't stop looking at that scar
across your nose. the centuries
of fight welded gently within it,
the desire to kiss it well, as old
as the notion of love.

summer

2011-05-12T19:22:00.000+02:00

if 74 degrees is a lover, the ocean becomes the in and out.

i defy your expectations of myself. and i know
you aren't from around here, i can smell it
in the way you love.

a poem for the morning

2011-05-05T15:21:00.000+02:00

this is to the woman i knew, who,
despite that hair was always in her face,
she never hurt anyone. not her whole life.
i know what love is. find that shell you can't
leave at the beach, imperfections carved like
singing angels to the surface of its soul.
she wondered: a mid-western man lost
at my front door, trying to hide his charm
under an alcoholic smile and too many
filth caked days in brooklyn.
his touch gave him away,
the undercurrent of lake michigan
mixing with the delicate oils of her insides.

passing

2011-03-11T06:46:00.002+01:00

in summer, we sat in front of la nonna's house. someone ended up laying in the road.
the headlights illuminated our raw faces. i don't remember the first time he made
me bleed, but i remember fainting in the shower. he apologized for days, as if a
doll had broken. la nonna threw plastic fruit at me and called me a whore through
sand covered blue blankets.

in fall, the radio was always on in the dentist office and someone outside was screaming
bad romance as my mother wrote a check for my rotting gums. i wanted to take the chains
that hung from his pants and strangle my heart in two. one piece for the woman behind
the desk, and one piece for no one. escaping up the brick wall was out of the question. once
someone invented brick walls, and so nothing mattered unless you considered its history.
in the school yard, their legs dangled delicately below short pleated skirts, their lips pierced
in anticipation, their insides plump now, like the purple necks of peacocks. this can't be dangerous.

three

2011-03-11T06:38:00.002+01:00

I remember the thought of taking the train to Manhattan to
undress for him, sit for awhile on his bed, topless, with
my jeans still on, in a strange 1980's inspired pose that I was purposefully
portraying to feel attractive to myself so I in turn would be attractive to him.

Then I stopped, because I also remembered that you'd
been dead for three months.

initial steps

2011-03-11T06:34:00.001+01:00

Because we need to be loved by our mothers:

It is an envelope with my mother's writing on it. Material possessions don't matter unless they are attached to people. I slept with her sweater when she was away. No one calls themselves an artist unless they aren't an artist. My ankles are often sore in the morning, as were my mother's. She called me her daughter. The warm air is liberating and sweeps away depression until depression gets use to the warm and the rouse is over. I look at him for every minute he is near me and I have no reason to stop. I love him and biting my tongue will only leave me with a mouth full of blood. I could and would and do admit that I am absolutely insane. But someone can feel the sincerity in me, and they have accepted me. He asked me once if he was the anti-christ. I feel as though he convinced me that i was.There is something that I lie to everyone about. Several things. My mother doesn't ever lie.

Because we want to be loved by our fathers:

I feel warm between my legs when they are crossed. At fifteen I slept near someone six years older then me and there was a police report about it filed near the ocean at 12am. My father is not a stern man;he created a dream land for his babies. We rebelled but never left the nest. He always brought us to the ocean to live and ultimately die. I have two brothers, one who has cut my skin, another whose skin I have cut. Our blood is all the same blood. I've never tasted it, but I know. When the birds are close by it is alright to laugh about the absurdity of life, and they are often close by. Sadness is a prison with no windows. My father cried, but he was never sad.

inconspicuous

2011-02-08T17:01:00.002+01:00

please be gone by morning would
work if you had slept here.

and now you are drinking my coffee,
pressing against my ankles while I
walk to the bath, insisting on covering
the window with your hands.

i should be thankful for feeling anything at all.

what it feels like to find my confirmation name in a poem about exile from Chile

2011-02-08T17:00:00.000+01:00

my father sounds like an old man on the phone;

I know this because I use to listen up to him,

and now I listen down. I can picture him at

a community meeting and the women in their

forties thinking that his wisdom is endearing

like that of a grandfather, which he also is.

i was going to do my own laundry today, but

I think ultimately, that i'll have it sent out.

smut

2011-02-07T07:02:00.006+01:00

credits:

"compra" by monica o rossi

short starring marisa-maffeo robinson

i see you
staring at my juice
from across the subway car
sm
ut
whore
bitch
black eyelinerseduction
i didn't fill up for you.
if you could touch me
would you be clinging
to my thoughts--propelling
us forward to the next century--
would my touch open you--
bleed me through your pores,
a slow drip--would you be convinced,
in sliding your hand further up my thigh
that my body is merely the container
for the spiraling gardens of babylon
and that the seven secrets of pluto
were sewn behind my bottom lip and
that ripping them out, one by one, with
your teeth, could be the fate of this.

i see you staring at my juice.
smutsmutsmutsmutsmut
sm
ut
leaking all over the dirty floor.

gapped teeth are not enough

2011-01-23T21:16:00.002+01:00

It's absolutely true that I do not love you anymore.
I found this once before, meeting you by accident
near the office of a favored mentor of mine, one that
you despised greatly. Since that time, I grew to love
you again, and we met in a bar, where you
annoyingly squeezed the very tips of my nipples
while I tried to say something serious to you, my back
eclipsing the eyes of your girlfriend who was trying to
find you in the mix, your inebriation taking presitence over
your loyalty to her, and I, some how the pawn in the middle,
digging a stake into her heart that had everything to do with you
and nothing to do with me. nevertheless, the woman is somehow
always to blame.
then later, that same evening, you told me that I was the meal ticket
for our generation---- even though I could barely
express to you how there was absolutely no room
left for another prolific voice in the history books
that nobody even reads anymore.

In the past, when you would gawk at my sophomoric
statements, I would lean into your sarcasm with the lust
of a teenage boy in heat, but now, not even your precious
subtle blushing cheeks can ignite one piece of fire in my
groin. And its not just you growing up and taking on responsibility,
or embracing the idea of loyalty to the point of it being a religion,
but it's also me, pulling away from something that I know will
never be mine.

It's sad. I can clearly remember one evening in another bar, when
we were younger-- I was barely 22. I stood in a line with your friends
and the conversation was about how the night would progress, and
what food would be ordered. Everyone thought you had all intentions of
staying, and they knew you far better than I did. Just as I took a breathe
I felt your lips on my cheeks, and you walked out. Everyone was confused
why you had left, but I knew. Later someone told me that you were scared
you'd break me. Later you told me you hoped I wouldn't go crazy. And that
I shouldn't touch you.

But now there is only a numbness. I sometimes recall that day we went to
a diner with another friend, and you were broken up with her, for a few days,
but you didn't tell me, because you were depressed, and I was even more depressed.
Had we both been happy, maybe another life could have started. Your dog had died,
you spoke to me over the phone about it. Nothing is the same anymore. I don't love you.
But I did.

celebration

2011-01-23T02:32:00.005+01:00

What is it that one can actually be sure of?

Here, the sun is coming through large windows
in a white paneled ballroom of a former silent
film star off of the Whitestone Expressway in Queens.
This is the reality I am describing to you.
Earlier, there was a child dunked in an oversized
silver chalice to erase her of original sin. Now,
there are people sitting here, dressed up, celebrating
a birth and ultimately a death. I am honest, you
always tell me.

Existence can be anything-- when I say
I was most alive at eight, he tells me I was
never eight. He tells me I was my whole
life, especially at eight. I try to pawn his
genius off as my own in this good company,
assuming he won't mind. Who is he,
anyway? He's not present, so maybe he isn't
real anymore.

Still sitting here, children with multi-colored
face paint sift from their mother's arms to the
dance floor, not so much like birds taking flight,
but more like ants scurrying around the farm their
mother built, serving her, but mostly serving themselves.
I am celebrating, and wondering
when it is going to be okay for others to
know the ultimate truth: the truth that I am unsure
of. That I am unsure of everything. And i know
everyone else is also unsure.

I remember, someone once told me I could write, so I believe
that because it is beneficial to me. Someone once told
me I was ugly, but I won't believe that, because it
won't get me anywhere.

Also, these words are meaningless. Nothing matters.
Once you know that, it is still hard, because you can't
convince others of it. Maybe I am in a constant depression.
Maybe I am absolutely filled to the brim with ecstasy for living.

Now I am still here, the sun is in my eyes, and I can't stop looking
at yours, blinded by an unnerving smile, which I am sure is at least half
natural by now, entertaining the good company, red lipstick reflecting
off the mirrors abound the room---those eyes, how they have changed these
past too many months, with tears, and insanity, and purity, and mourning,
and knowing what I know. I know you
know, beautiful. We don't have to talk about it anymore.

(unless you want to)

acid disco

2011-01-12T20:55:00.003+01:00

there are pores on my face that are intricate
and different than your pores, and our teeth,too
are different, as well as the reasons we are sitting next
to each other and sharing this drink.

i have the flu, but you don't have money,
so also, we share a disease.

(this is someone they wouldn't let me talk to for too long,
and now as age presses, i tell myself the same thing.
the wild ones, become, just that,a few shared moments in a
life we wish could last forever, but can't stand it any longer just the same.
I am not focused on the scars behind his ears and elbows, but I could look at
them all night if no one told me to stop.)

but listen, you are beautiful.
and i don't care about much else.

Mae

2011-01-10T22:33:00.001+01:00

This might be stupid of you,
at 25, after spending
a night reading old
journals and looking
at ugly or cute pictures
of formative years,
and texting current friends
, finding
out that people who
were friends back then
(are still friends), and sometimes
you even fall into that category,
and think of pink rubber pools,
or that super hot kid who lived
near your beach house who once
ate a beetle and had curly hair,
and then we grew up and now
some of your friends are no longer
around really,
or some of your friends
are right now teaching teens
how to use condoms as a profession
and some of your friends are thinking
about when they really got into figure
skating and sort of forgot about that
guy and some of your friends are
applying to medical school and
you are doing something, probably,
but mostly you are sitting on
the couch and crying because

your grandmother will die soon.

six thirty

2011-01-07T01:15:00.000+01:00

I had a japanese meal with you
in an American city. You looked
at me squarely and said "I'm not
a hard ass. I have feelings."

The moments were lingering between
what you were saying, and what I knew
you had to say. Your face seemed perfect.
It is.

I don't know what it feels like anymore,
to be held, to be told I am beautiful. Its
not sad. It just is. I am clouding my days
with meals to make those days meaningful---
really I just think of you. But I am almost
absolutely positive that you never think of me.

Trajectory

2011-01-07T01:06:00.001+01:00

Before you know it, you are

sitting at the kitchen table of

your brother, his own table,

with his wife, and their baby

is sleeping across the room

in a crib that your mother

bought with help from your

grandmother. Your brother

says that your father is ten

years off from being seventy,

and you know that ten years

is a little less than half your life.

Is this where the time goes?

Is it put in boxes under the

bed as a reminder of all those

good years and what was done

with them. I imagine father,

old now, the time he screamed

at you while you sat on a colonial

rug and played video games or

called your mother a worthless

bitch. No one ten years from now

has to know that. Or ever will.

Does he know of your silent

steps through New York City,

your new found independence,

the way they all look at you, think

of you, as if you will make it. Or

could make it. Or might make it.

Do they know you come from

that colonial rug, that mother

who needs her mother, that aging

father, that young couple, that innocent

baby who someday will visit you

in New York City and tell people she

has a very interesting aunt.

gloriette

2010-12-15T06:52:00.001+01:00

when i say i like your jacket it means

i wish you were kissing me under it.

end this fog

now.

put up your umbrella and end

his fog.

i am not going any further. until

now.

and the tiny holes in the black umbrella

were the way in which the starlight got through.

will get through.

the kiss is juicy and pale

and pink and so am i.

and so is us.

are we.

now.

is this.

don't remember

2010-12-14T06:58:00.002+01:00

Sometimes I can see you in my mind,

what you might be doing now, sitting

on a coiled rug drawing a sketch of

a building or an odd looking woman

that you saw earlier in the day.

I don't imagine you naked anymore.

I don't remember what that looked like,

or maybe I had never actually looked.

Except I do remember that your cheeks

always turned pink when you saw my

nipples through my shirt.

It's not healthy to remember, the

good friend would tell me between sips

of a coke and I'd wonder how I could possibly

stop.

And what's worse is the thought of what

you might imagine me doing right now,

what I am doing right now, how it would

be different if you had never left at all.

There were times that we would hope

the coffee would be hot because the

air was cold and we were outside

at 2am in a playground and we were

beyond the age of playgrounds and we

were talking about fantasy and stars

and we were beyond the age of fantasy

and stars and instead of kissing we would

just think about kissing and then I'd go

home cold and wonder if maybe you were gay

or I was ugly.

When I concentrate on nothing else I can

remember how wet it got between my

thighs the first time you held my hand

in a Days Inn parking lot. And that makes

me feel less sad. And maybe it makes

you feel less sad, too.

And that's good.

Or bad.

I don't know.

And now.

2010-12-01T22:09:00.006+01:00

1. 29 New Zealand Miners, dead

In seventeen years, the youngest of the
bodies had been born, the oldest had
been fathers.

Rusting and void of oxygen, imagine
their pretty limbs and blue blood scattered,
their pretty wives above ground
with balloons.

And now.

The transfixed viewers turn to their
gas stoves.

2. 33 Chilean miners, rescuedLuis Urza, 69 days, 8 hours,
escape tunnel to

champagne, confetti, balloons.

And now.

The transfixed viewers turn to their
gas stoves.
3. Protest Mountain Top Removal in West Virginia

An activist that I met once in Chicago
was volunteering at a high school, leaning on his car, and talking to me between bites
of a ham sandwich about protesting mountain top removal
in West Virginia, where he has spent some time,
and helped some people once, a dancing hawaian on his dash.

4. Wind farm vetoed in Cape Cod

Because those wind turbines
clutter the
land.

5. The birth of Natalia Elise Marciano, December 23, 2010
endless energy cascades
from the thought of new life,
of preservation,
of turning the t.v. off and
going outside, of spending
quality time in the smaller
corners of a suburban household.

after a few months and
gallons of the sweet bitter breast
milk,

transfixed viewers turn to their gas stoves.

life in 19 short poems

2010-11-28T19:18:00.000+01:00

1. brushing teeth in the dark, the war bunker

is in my heart.

2. they told me he was an orphan. i dreamt

i woke up next to him. no one told me that

love was a disease i could die from.

3. i saw my face in a photograph

and i didn't know if i was ugly

or not and i was scared that the

world would never understand

that my heart was beautiful and

wanted to be touched and wanted

to be understood and wanted to

live even if the world didn't want

my body-had spit out my body-had

told me i was unworthy of continuing

and it didn't matter how many men wanted

to lick my breasts or how many women wished

they had my confidence all that mattered was

that i had seen that picture and i had found it

ugly and for the rest of my life when i looked

in a mirror all i would see was that picture,

and sometimes, i'd have to brush my teeth

with the light off.

4. seventh grade girls need the entire world

to support their dreams. the entire universe

if they are fat and/or ugly.

5. if one has two empty beds in their home,

those beds should be filled with orphans.

6. the grass smells best in the fall.

the blood of children isn't so apparent

but the mums surely are.

7. if anyone could have told me at fifteen

that there was another suicidal woman

400 miles away who would end up being

a close friend of mine, and that we'd

laugh at how it all turned out: i would

still have been suicidal.

8. heartbreak is universal. so is

burnt toast. climb into the hole of

my heart and leak out through my

bleeding gums.

9. my mother called to ask me if

i hated her. i told her the opposite.

10. virgins are not so bad to have around.

11. dante's inferno is a video game for xbox.

12. chipmunk funeral lipstick palor

13. ray banned sticky noted gothic closet queer

14. i don't care what you have done. i care what

you are doing now. someone is dieing here, and

it is not you.

15. being catholic is not a disability. sometimes i

like to kneel and scream to God and watch

your crossed eyes burn.

16. crossed eyes are sexy. gapped teeth are god.

17. ugly is the new beautiful.

18. the lights are still off.

19. the war bunker is burning.

brushing my teeth in the dark

2010-11-24T23:09:00.000+01:00

i saw my face in a photograph
and i didn't know if i was ugly
or not and i was scared that the
world would never understand
that my heart was beautiful and
wanted to be touched and wanted
to be understood and wanted to
live even if the world didn't want
my body-had spit out my body-had
told me i was unworthy of continuing
and it didn't matter how many men wanted
to lick my breasts or how many women wished
they had my confidence all that mattered was
that i had seen that picture and i had found it
ugly and for the rest of my life when i looked
in a mirror all i would see was that picture,
and sometimes, i'd have to brush my teeth
with the light off.

a series of poems written in less then three minutes

2010-11-23T17:35:00.003+01:00

1.
the curious way she threw off her shoes
in her mother's foyer before peeing
on the floor told me the entirety of her
childhood. the rug near the door was covered
in dirt, the rest of the home immaculate. I imagined
her mother , the cleanest earlobes
in the neighborhood

2.
i want to make love to the man who lives in my
apartment.

3.
at night i can hear someone in the bath
whose nose is bleeding and whose ears are
ringing with celestial verse. this person is not
my lover, and otherwise, i live alone.

4.
she locked the key to her own treasure chest,
and blamed us all for not having the key.

5.
when i am done writing my book, i know
the pages will be blank, and the hearts of
those i tried to love will be bleeding. don't
take that as an excuse to cry. please laugh
in my absence---for nothing matters--and
nothing ever will.

6.
my backyard was the door to a pinball
machine, and dandelions always tasted
well.

7.
my brother's eye turned purple under
my shoe.

8. when i use your razor to shave the
skin of my uterus, i always try and
put it back where you left it.

9.
when i was seven, i made out with the
walls in my room. later i discovered the bedposts.

10.
i want to pay him to cut my hair so i can smell
his hands and think of our children. i want to pay
him to cut off my fat, so i can swim in a river
of blood to the alter.

11.
the seventeen year old who spins on the blue
mats at a karate school in brooklyn is young
and needed. i can't help but cry when he lands
and doesn't think of anything but landing.

12.
cut me like a star so the crux of humanity
leaks all over my cancerous hands and allows
me to accept this. all of it.

13.
the veins in her face were the color of the sky.
she never eats without vomiting.

14.
to sleep next to you is to sleep next to eternity.
i wish only to here your final conscious breath,
and to place my heart in your feet.

a shell of who i use to be

2010-11-23T17:33:00.004+01:00

in the delicate street glow
at the end of your block
is the cemetery where
i realized i would love you
beyond that minute, and
our first kiss lingered on
in my memory as nothing
but a hardwood floor in Maine.

and someday i'll be in a cemetery
at the end of a block, and someone
will stand above me and realize
there is another someone they
will love beyond that minute.

and maybe nothing matters
and maybe nothing ever will.

4am

2010-10-27T01:34:00.004+02:00

Sometime between looking for an open nail salon,
and smelling the mums sitting on the porch, I realize

   - not because I am bussling around and pretending
    to be busy.
                  I am busy. And I am mentally engaged.
     And I find
    at least four other men attractive within the hour, two
   of which I am probably close to being in love with-

I miss you.

And when my phone would ring at 4am,

       and I'd pick it up, despite the hour, to
pretend that I wasn't tired, and tell you that
your idea was magnificent,

and that you should get
some rest.

We are all still wet in America

2010-10-18T03:36:00.001+02:00

America is still wet. Her
galactic dreams flow from her
moist vagina to pamper her
aging skin. Fucking is no longer primal,
but a performance of and for the future.
At night she talks to her dog who sleeps
at the foot of her bed.

"I am 45 years old today,
but I still feel like an 11 year old
girl inside. I am not mad."

then she whispers,
pulling her year into
a sentence,

"it doesn't matter which way you vote, you
are only a dog."

Her plump breasts come quick across the
urban terrain of Brooklyn, the know it
all New Yorker who has no time to eat,
sleep, breathe, or answer the question
"are you Jewish?" can stop at the peculiar
site of wreaking purple panties left on the
subway seat. What will Fido think of this?

That night she curls and says
"They say you die three times;
when your heart stops, when they
bury you, and the last time someone
says your name." The dog doesn't
seem to mind or care.

Her perfume causes acne on her wrinkled back in
autumn. Later she'll see a feuding couple
near the coffee shop and feel like its okay
that her husband hasn't kissed her in three
weeks. Later she'll see a child, not her own,
without a winter coat walking against blister
inducing winds and know she is a good mother
Later she'll see the epitome of what homeless
is and she'll cough in thanks to God. Later she
will scrub the custom made foundation from pores
and cry for no one particular, and then remember
the tea she left on the stove.

giving poetry to the universe.

2010-09-24T02:00:00.004+02:00

one of my collaborators, izilia, and i,
made small pieces of art that combined,
skillfully, her drawings and my poetry.
one such work was a ring. we both took
a number of pieces and left the works
in varying places in the world for others to find,
including placing the ring in an exhibit at a
museum in NYC, and watching museum goers marvel
at our work.

here are a few photos to go along--taken by izilia--
--i have more to come--as soon as i find my camera cord-

oh and, good luck searching for our works! they are out in the universe for you to find!

Where We Live

2010-09-14T19:55:00.007+02:00

On the hill, pass college students

running in black and white shorts,

with red and white faces.

These women athletes,

with unnative books,

look like men to me.

This city smells like a town.

The pastel homes of school teachers

and police officers are hidden behind

a church steeple in the campus courtyard.

The wrought iron fences protect students

from the neighborhood.

At 3am, my father asks a pair of co-eds

to stop having sex on our porch.

Somewhere close by, a doe-headed girl

yanks her shirt over her head.

Now it is daytime and the drill of academia

covers the stench of virgin blood loss.

Italian flags blend with American flags

against the absolute blue of the sky.

The migration of residents from

the half way house past Alumni Hall

produces a chorus of cigarette pleas

and curse words.

The post office is small,

parcels of varying levels of lawfulness

going to everywhere from here, and next door,

the last sticky lemons scraped from

the ice-coated blender at a favored ice cream shop.

The high school is adorned in four places

with wooden or brass crosses,

the occasional creep driving by

in his Volkswagen, peering through

the bone yard of achievement at tiny women in pleats.

These women, their delicate body odor,

their chariots of yellow,

the soft apple of their cheeks,

years away from running on collegehill,

are brought to anointment by a wet kiss,

obscured throughthe fences,

rushing visions of the purple necks of peacocks

to their plump and tender chests.

This can't be dangerous.

visceral response

2010-09-06T16:06:00.001+02:00

I wonder what it would be like
to spend three weeks having sex
with you, multiple times a day.

I'd be slow to warm. You'd
have to suprise me from behind,
in the kitchen, and push through
my giggles and insecure shrugs.

Maybe I lay awake at night
and imagine that your home,
somewhere in Paradise, USA,
amongst flowers and chickens,
is really the fortress to my
long time coming sexual revolution.

Maybe I pretend that I don't always
think about death, or slap my hand
hard against the wall when visions
of those I have lost come prancing
into my afternoon fantasies about you,
as if to guilt me from the act of self
pleasure.

You already know I stand too close,
and rip up napkins in painstaking haste,
the physical manifestation of my frustration
and desire for you.

And know, sir, it was hard to hear you talk about
the future, fisical responsibility, or our
daily tasks, without imaging your pink
lips between my own.

morning

2010-09-06T15:49:00.003+02:00

I drank the milk from the
quart plastic carton. It
was so cold I felt it right
below my breasts swimming
to my stomach.

Grandma called the house
to ask where I was.

either or

2010-08-22T04:46:00.003+02:00

i wish there was a field
somewhere that when you
stood in it you were standing
with everyone you've
ever known or loved
even if they don't talk
to you anymore, have
become famous, addicated
to drugs, or are dead.

*my friend eleni tells me that
i channel the poet Rumi. she
sent me this poem by him, which
i had never read. its beautiful.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

i don't know how to fix the world, i'm sorry

2010-08-20T04:03:00.003+02:00

i don't know how to make tragedy go away.

i don't know how to get all those people
to stop staring at the homeless woman
drooling barefoot in front of Old Navy.

i don't know how to get the father to
take back "dirty slut", what he
called his thirteen year old.

i don't know how to get life long
friends to stop fighting in silence
about things that don't matter at all.

i don't know how to tell you to stop
checking your email, because whatever
your waiting for isn't coming.

i don't know how to hold you and
take all of your pain away and make
the stars bluepinkpowdery and real,
the way this is real.

i don't know how to make the classical
music start playing, and the movie scene
to change, and the hero to win in the end.

i don't know how to bring him back.

i'm sorry.
i'm sorry.
i'm so
sorry.

loss

2010-08-19T16:12:00.005+02:00

I find myself lying between two babies on a beach blanket, because I'm reluctant to be too much, or too little, for you, as you take in the sun through the lenses of something fucking awful a few yards from me. in your bright red shorts. and breathtaking bone structure.

you are absolutely beautiful. honestly, the kind of beauty i try to write about but can't ever express in words, because like i always say, words are not enough.

i crawl over to you, with a full heart and sweaty armpits, and you ask for one of my fries. then you try to feed it to a seagull, but he doesn't want it.

we walk. we walk and you cry. and that's okay. because i want to cry too. you grab my hand suddenly (the way you grabbed it in rehearsal in the winter) to see if there is a line on my hand that indicates that i am psychic, because your palm reader told you you weren't, and it'd be nice to have a psychic person around in case he tries to visit.

but i tell you i think he's always visiting. and i tell you i belive in collective consciencouness. and i tell you that its alright to cry. alot. and then eleven hours later when we are still together in the driveway of your aunt's house, and we've talked abuot all the tattoos we've noticed with his name, and i give you the book my dad wanted you to have, and you show me the card that you found in the park with the moon and the clown and the telescope looking down from the heavens, i tell you that you are the sweetest person, so good. and that you and him made me believe in so much. and that you make me believe in so much. and i mean it.

build your friends to the heavens, make all their dreams come true

2010-08-07T16:39:00.003+02:00

a manifested destiny of why
doing bad things feels so good,
spiraling into an afternoon of
daydreaming about stealing
her man, because he wants it.

offering of thousands of
dreams in small bills only
to be interuppted by the
tears of a man i've never
met before telling me his
brother is in jail, despite
the coins now collecting
dust in his bank account,
still co-signed by their mother.

the music was better
when they played the
old tunes, nostalgic of
a time before innocence
broke to pieces.

i felt his thumb stroke
my breast in his embrace
goodbye, holding me behind
her back,sending me
into the balmy night.

the stars above the highway
make me realize what everything
means, that my future is not
about fulfilling dreams, but rather,
perserving the dreams of others.

the future is meeting with loved ones
in less than glamorous living rooms
and making sure they are perfectly
happy and capable of getting through
the next day, despite the tragedy
seen on the news.

the future belongs to those who
believe in their friends.

solarprocess

2010-08-07T16:35:00.002+02:00

does anyone ever ponder
that the hinge of all existence
on this planet is a star?

hive

2010-07-25T00:30:00.003+02:00

the chair became him,
i was still alive.
endless vines grow from my fingertips,
tears unearth the tireless pain.

washout thunderstorms on the freeway
eclipse the sun with thunder.

i am a tiny bee in the ritual.

becoming gallactic.

2010-07-17T15:34:00.001+02:00

they'll tell you to stop crying after a week. eat your heart out right in front of them. it'll taste like mom's home made chicken and smog. don't let them see you cry. go to the back of the church and weep. run with conviction into the parking lots. run faster as you feel their breathe on your heels. remember reality is a relative term, and no one ever promised you a rose garden. run until you are running on a star.

needed sapling

2010-07-14T05:20:00.009+02:00

My high school english teacher called me
the next William Faulkner, a statement
that would have no relevance for years.

Unbeknownst to you, the people you
need to know walk casually into
bars, and the people you want to
know , slip away.Without breathing,
you collapse between the two.

Growing up doesn't happen until
you hold a woman who has lost
her heart inside your own, and dry
her tears with her hair, hoping to
make sense of what is inevitable.

I'm just a dirt bag. I am swollen,
watching you break down in front
of me, and hoping that you'll do it
again, not out of pain, but out of
promise. I am selfish in my touching,
but with sincere and pure intentions
built upon histories of misplaced love.

Can this many emotions live
within one person, within two,
within three, within hundreds,
mourning the same life taken from
us like fools, and far too soon.

Driving thousands of miles to
and from my heart.

Buried 6 feet below a rose of
blind innocence.

Damnit and all other words meaning
so.

How important was it when you
sat next to me in a dark room, in
a less than stellar art gallery, and
breathed the same air as i did?

How important was it when you told
me that I was so much for just being myself?

And now your friend pulls his perfect
lips from mine. his troubled, and spoken
for, and perfect lips, like the way i'd imagine
the finger tips of angels to glow. are they your
fingers?

and i can only think
of her lips covered in tears
shed for you. do you want
us to cry?

and i can only hope he
returns, and you return
and we all return to
before.

i am just a dirtbag.
i am swollen.
i am alone.

clown

2010-07-02T18:43:00.004+02:00

i will build a wooden box
and lay it near the train.
i will tap dance on the box,
with a rubber red nose.

i will laugh with the stars,
because if you are on those stars,
they are laughing. and i'll hear
your cosmic humor floating into
my insignificant bedroom on earth.

i will laugh out loud, even in my sleep,
so the world will never be without laughter.
so the world will never be without you.

r.ip. adrian mejia

i will always miss you, my beautiful doll--

rocks

2010-06-24T19:15:00.003+02:00

I was laying almost topless,
my suit resting loosely under
the afternoon.

I saw you stop, and stare.

Later, you apologized.

O Villian, Villian, Smiling Damned Villian!

2010-06-22T15:35:00.004+02:00

Moon,
you give a gift of light, orange
on the smoke sky above the parking
lot where they fell, and then fell again,
in the darkness.As the villian smiles,
a river of tears and oil shed for
his abuse, trails behind, and some
fools sail their tarnished cardboard
boats back towards the beginning.
I but swim away in fear, but
someday, with intention.

Not always,
Earth

bird cage

2010-06-15T18:13:00.000+02:00

i see the ashes
of a dream
that dictated the world
as a home with no walls
---love as a home with no walls----
no matter how pretty those walls were built.

i was the dark haired girl,
your cage was laced with the
moments of our lives, but,
it was still a cage, bird, it
was still a cage.

burn

2010-06-12T16:39:00.002+02:00

You don't expect to not be able to go to the funerals of those you loved, but
what if they are only dead to you? What if the funeral is in your mind?

Walking around here is like being in a ghost town, a pitiful feeling in your stomach that
hurts increasingly more near bodies of water, particularly the ones that we swam in
together.

The dreams are hectic. You are always preaching in them, or dead. And when you are dead,
, everyone knows it, and not just me. Which is the opposite of what it feels like when I am awake.

But that seems to make it worse, when everyone knows, because they are all allowed to mourn, and I must act like I never knew you at all. Which is similar to what it feels like when I am awake.

Sometimes people ask me what its like to not talk to you anymore, to not have you there....

I try not to cry when I answer them, or rather, I try not to punch them really hard for asking such a ridiculous question, or worse, punch myself for feeling bad at all.....

Anyway I ususally say something poetic like

" It's like living with a ghost"

or if I am feeling extremely prolific I might say..

"its like someone burned the library---no trace of memory except what i could run out with before the fire--------"

perspective

2010-06-08T20:51:00.001+02:00

it rained and rained in the city until we swam through the windows until we saw God until we knew what loved meant until tying the shoes of a child on the train was the only way to capture the smile of the lovely young woman sitting next to us.

it rained and rained in the meadow until we swam through the flowers until we became gods until we forgot what pain meant until tying the hair of each other on the drift wood was the only way to capture a smile of the lovely young sunset sitting next to us.

be

2010-06-08T19:30:00.002+02:00

I had a dream last night. you were on a hill holding your tummy like you always do
with long hair and dirty clothes and smiling waiting for me to come up to you and you
were next to someone who can't stand the way you are now and then you became
that new person but i could swear you were still the old person and i'd meet you
in the backyard at your going away party and everyone would hold their breathe
to what you would yell when you saw me or when i would start crying but instead you'd run to me,
you'd hold me, you'd put my breasts against you, and we'd scream and then we'd both cry and everyone one who was hoping this would happen, or never would happen, would exhale, and then the next day
you'd get on an airplane but right before you left we'd meet up at 4am at a playground
and say sorry sorry sorry a million times and know that everything was going to be just
fine as we tried to save the world and we understood and we had many personalities
and charaters that were birthed within each other and it was love and and it
was true and we loved loved loved loved loved the world and we still do.

past.

2010-06-08T04:50:00.004+02:00

all of this energy
to say or think
or believe
who is more important now,
more loyal, more real,
more capable of forgiving,
more worth coming back to.
all i know is what was,
and what was,
was beautiful.

i remember you
running to my car
as if i were the sun
and you were the morning..

thunderstorm

2010-05-28T01:18:00.005+02:00

morning when all emotion
suppressed for weeks under work,
comes rushing to the surface,
and all that matters is that you
scream "love" or "hate" or
"live" or "die" at the top of
your lungs until it sounds like a
whisper to the person who
needs to hear it,
the person who is oceans, or miles,
or rooms, away.

Isadora

2010-05-04T00:48:00.002+02:00

young women place their feet
inside her heart.

new york papers
report her timely death.

"ballet takes captive bones
that should be free..."

her legacy.

ninos on dean

2010-05-01T14:20:00.002+02:00

on the playground,
skin colors ricochet
into nothing.

the owner of
the rubber ball
is Queen.

honorable discharge

2010-05-01T03:20:00.002+02:00

to see her hips swing
from one side of the cereal
aisle to another, touch the
place between her
navel and breasts.

a woman, missed,
naked from the waist
up, spitting love in
a letter to her solider,
is the first and last
miracle of the military.

flood

2010-03-31T18:05:00.006+02:00

There was this mystical energy
floating in the streets and parking
lots , this sense of companionship
only possible when people actually
come out of their homes.

There was this mystical energy
floating between our bones and
muscles, this sense of companionship
only possible when people actually come
out of their minds.

Did you see all the witches and rabbis with pink cheeks
swimming in the rain water, while staying dry.

Did you see me, helpless near the river, waiting for
you to hold my poisoned skin in your own.

Berlin til København

2010-03-21T21:42:00.004+01:00

the blue blooded Germans turned pink
watching a foreign frau having an anxiety
attack on the train tracks over failed everything.

the tourists watched you lean away spying the
ocean, neglecting to tell a bus driver to wait for me.

imagine bricks that can be seen through,
like stained glass illusions covering up
reality.

its not about you going to see someone,
a woman duped into distrusting me,
or your cowardly moves to appear strong and free.

its about betrayal, neglect,
a friend leaving a friend, a dead dream.

it was a fall, fifteen feet down,
from an innocent tree.

Freddys in Brooklyn

2010-03-21T19:37:00.002+01:00

Believe it to be true
that the love of your life
will walk into a poorly lit bar
and at first you will think them
to be nothing.

Than slowly, with the right song,
tilt of the head, corny theatrical move,
they will become everything.

The last slow dance of the single life,
the other half of the blood
on a delivery room table,

the hand that distributes
the gems of your will.

2002

2010-03-21T19:34:00.001+01:00

its only in moments
that we remember
melted popsicles
swarmed by ants
in summer.

or leaving notes
that offer sexual favors
under the guise of
love poetry.

at 15 my boyfriend
was 21 and we played
silly games in his
hot living room
near the shore.

Queens (4 versions)

2010-03-21T00:58:00.004+01:00

if you need a second opinion, lay your back upon the Brooklyn street. breathe. ask God or the air or the picture of your mother's smile to tell you yes or no. the yes will come like water from a hydrant, splashing between your thighs, as cars scream by. New York for me is a peach sunset over Long Island City, Queens, PS1 dance into the night, and all the dogs waiting for their owners to get home.

----
if you need a second opinon,
lay your back upon the Brooklyn street.

----
if you need a second opinion,
lay your back upon the Brooklyn street.
breathe. ask God, or the air, or the picture
of your father's smile to tell you yes or no.
the yes will come like water from a hydrant,
splashing between your thighs, as cars
scream by.

-----

New York for me is a peach sunset
over Long Island City, Queens,
PS1 dances into the night, and all
the dogs waiting for their owners to
come home.

overdrawn

2010-03-18T23:21:00.000+01:00

Strange potato bong, a fortunate gone.
I see this Mexicali Greek dance,
this accordion player, clown princess.
There are hundreds of bank accounts
being overdrawn in this moment because
we or you or they or i are too busy thinking
about love and screaming
"hold me against your perfect body,
deliver me from evil,
marry diverse cultures
until the world bleeds a
peaceful blood!!!"

Words

2010-03-10T22:40:00.003+01:00

its never enough

the words that mean i love you.

they are short and gruesome.

the words that mean "don't go"

are angry and sad.

the ones that mean "i miss you",

hopeless.

words are never enough

to convey the waves of our hearts.

how much we want our loved one

to succeed beyond anyone's belief,

while still somehow keeping them

nestled under our wing

in a selfish act of love.

love is irrational.

but that word is not enough.

you make me irrational.

Grandma

2010-03-02T15:02:00.000+01:00

I wonder how the world reacts when blessed hearts die?

Perhaps not at all. Perhaps its just the other hearts they held

that skip a beat, than life goes on.

Are we the most important thing, or is there something bigger?

I imagined a perfect utopia and I lived there for years with you.

If you are gone, does it still exist? Is anything bigger than us, than this?

The Spider Bite

2010-02-26T17:00:00.002+01:00

A spider bit me on the forearm this week.
My arm swelled up to the size of Texas,
with a white ring around the puncture.

In the hospital, they put me in a white room,
and connected me to an IV. The cold
medicine swam in my veins, squares
of neon light bouncing through my retina.

That is the last thing some people see
and feel before they die.

I hadn't thought about you in a long time,
anger surrounding the mention of your name,
but in my time of danger, you are the only
one I wanted to be there.

The Prince

2010-02-18T19:43:00.001+01:00

I could have cried.

A check for one hundred dollars arrived in my mailbox. I was living in Chicago at the time. The check was from my friend Andy in New York. I had no money, but he wanted me to be able to go home for my brother's high school graduation. I don't think he realized I was also going home to see you.

For five months before that moment, I was mostly dead. I spidered in my room in Chicago, barely leaving the bed, spending Saturdays alone in tears, while my roommates quietly encouraged me to explore the walls beyond my misery. As dramatic as it sounds, that is how it was. I had lost my best friend. Yes, you were only a phone call away, but I had lost you.

At some point, I thought you were coming back. I thought this because you called me in the night, upset, about something unsettling that happened while trapped on a spiritual retreat. I comforted you, and shared visions with you. I was certain that this was the beginning of our fresh start.

You told me I was your best friend, and that you trusted me more than most. You told me I was talented, and glorious, and that what we had shared was sacred.

I guess I expected too much, because after opening my heart completely, letting the prince back into the castle we had built, serving him a grand banquet, delivering him the gold and rubies of my personal treasure chest to make up for my own misgivings in the past and then some, he squandered, ate, stole and left.

And then he left again. and again. and again.

All the subjects of our kingdom seem to take your side. You must have told a harrowing tale of me to them. But all I know is the story of love.

You left a final time this November, after I expressed passionately to you that I could not and would not walk away from everything we had built, from everything that you made me believe in, from everything that was sacred.

That was the stake that closed the coffin, your own words to me at midnight, November 30.

I don't know why I was shocked. I'd seen you do it countless times to other said princesses and companions. And I also knew I would not be the last. But shocked or not, the pain stabbed me in the chest like a million swords hitting my last beating vein.

And the pain persists, through smiles, through good grades, and better times.

I sometimes wonder if any of those other princesses are going to come out of the woods and tell you to stop, their blood now dried on your hands after years have passed.

Or is your reign of terror going to continue indefinitely?

I know of your heart. I've seen it, felt it, kissed it and nourished it. I just wonder where it is now.
I wonder where it is now as I sit in a bookstore and watch you walk by me without a word. As if
I were a ghost sitting near you, and not a long lost, God given friend. Another human. Anything at all.

I'm not brave either. I don't say your name. I don't even cry. I just sit, and turn my head back towards my work. And pretend, convince, believe, it wasn't you at all.

And maybe it wasn't at all. Or maybe it's just easier that way.

"The kingdom is destabilized, the watchtower unmanned
The bedroom lies abandoned and the future is unplanned
But we've got the past to remind us of love chivalrous and grand
And hey i'm sorry 'bout so much baby but i know you'll understand."- Mirah, we're both so sorry

Rhode Island

2010-02-10T18:23:00.005+01:00

A series of short vignettes for locals
to be enjoyed separately.

Nothing more picturesque
or queer, the old woman
on Scarborough beach wearing
gold jewelry and a black bikini.

_________________________

Jamestown trail parks.
a small corner convenience store
conceived as a state.

________________________

I'll drive the bridges with you,
walk across horse farms,
collect wasted art works from
the dumpsters and
drink lemonade.

____________________

Revolutionary libraries
in the Capital city, the
shell of a man named
Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.

______________________

Lacrosse in the spring
with Catholic high school
spirit Gothic tweens
of Situate linger.

_________________

New york tourists
inhabit our beaches,
block the most breathtaking
views hidden in cliffs.

___________________

Burrow in cemeteries
on a South County trail,
sail boats catch the wind
of yesterday.

______________

And the Islands, from
Prudence to Block,
energy driven and
old as the sea.

_________________

Try to hide from anyone
or anything in this state.

______________________

the magic music temple
where I leaped from one
fated love to another. he
said i had fantastic breasts.

________________________

strange white vans driving
about and the Indian Elephants
prancing with dinosaurs in the zoo.

________________________

Like a secret I keep in my locket,
worn casually at Jackie's Galaxy
restaurant of Johnston.

__________________________

the most
magical of dreams are dancing
at the Bottom Line of Warwick.

_________________________

Cumberland, Burriville
filled with ice skating fools!
Dunkin Donuts cups
lay in their cars until June!

__________________

There is no place like Cranston,
or its neighborhood school.

Garden City, Solar Process, the world's largest
outdoor swimming pool.

_______________________

I add r's when not needed, and
drop them with ease. I go
to the beach when it's 60 degrees.
Oh Rhode Island, Rhode Island
A home by the sea.

Little King

2010-02-08T20:52:00.001+01:00

The name given to me
was perhaps a mistake,
a young actress on a day
time soap my mom liked
to watch while eating
cottage cheese and
saltines.

She says no,
I was named after
the little house on
the prarire.

The dictionary
believes it's a
derivative of the
Latin word for Victory,
and in modern times
is associated with
romantic themes.

All it says of his name is
that it means, "Little King."

The End

2010-02-07T08:08:00.002+01:00

I still think of you.

This city lives and
dies, and I think of you.

You're a horrible bastard,
but the only man
I've ever loved.

I am just a woman,
one woman in history,
of billions of boxes of
women, packaged like
a bad spell cast in the
wood of burning trees.

I drove you to the edge
of the cliff, but you
took the wheel and
threw me off.

Didn't we predict
this in dreams of
burning irons, bird
cages, and unfulfilled
schemes?

The universe never ends;
its an electric current
that moves
the human race forward
and ignites the chemicals
in the wired eyes of mice.

I remember you held my hand
gently in the parking lot of
Day's Inn and I almost had
an orgasm. That is grotesque
reality, and I'd do anything
to feel it again.

I don't believe you've stopped
thinking of me. Because if
I know anything, it's love.
And we had it. In our fucked
up way of loving.

I don't want a job in an office,
or a Harvard degree. I want
to start a revolution with you.
I want to bite through
the bars of a prison in
Russia for you.
I want to see you on a platform
near the water and dive us
together into the water
and ignite the current
of humanity towards
the good end.
the good, good end.

Nationality

2010-01-09T05:47:00.003+01:00

the stars
the universe
the water
the majesty
the never
the forever
the neighborhood in the east of the US.
do they know how to lie in the street?
do they know what an east coast accent radiates ?
oh America! America!
i'm sorry i ever left you!
Oh America!
The country I love!
You foolish Euro-centric nation,
sprinkled with Latin sex
and Asian glory.
What are your sins?
Those mean New York streets?
manifest me!
this is all we have,
all we will ever be!

Tops

2009-12-28T18:15:00.000+01:00

My friend turns down the avenue that you live off of
and my heart skips a beat.

You are not a faded memory, and in my peace stiched reality,
this is garbage, unlawfulnness, and decite.

Remember spinning with me in a small road,
snow on the ground, a girl watching.

Remember spinning in me in a hot room of
fairy dancers?

My heart now spins, and life goes on, but
a little less, pain, promise, or certainty.

I live in the Pink castle. Someday, join
me for tea?

Motherhood

2009-10-31T03:41:00.005+01:00

"It is with great pleasure that I recommend my daughter to you"

Born beautiful, the ribbon to

tie a broken heart.

She grew inside a coconut tree,

laboratory, backyard pinball machine,

built in the spirit of sincerity.

Sins on her fingers, washed away

in innocence, and the promise of becoming

something different.

We all have our secret places to hide,

she was mine.

Love embodied, my heart embodied,

difficult, creative, glowing, exploding.

star! daughter! star! mother! star! grandmother!

! the favored miracle of chance!

Wheels of a white car squash the bones of my knees,

an after effect of puppy love, tears down the drain

of a bathtub. The accidental almost death of me.

Pencil, scratching the surface

of sentiment, five years, still no letter,

only to be sent in serendipity.

in the closet, hiding, a child, now romantic

chemicals have become her, her streaming

heart impatient for companionship, her desire

to achieve, her fast mind finds the truth in verbal slips.

Born imperfect, the ribbon to tie a broken heart.

"and I thank you, for all you have given to me."

Night Dream

2009-10-16T22:29:00.005+02:00

By the moon, tonight, she measures the height and length of her dream,

counting each star as a light that calms this child to sleep.

Imagine, a child, in the beginning of time, rocked by the same stars,

warmed by the same sun, her cheeks turning pink above bare feet.

Who are we to threaten the sleep of the innocent,

to threaten the amount of shine in a stars life?

Who are we not to save it...

*this poem is also featured here, number 20- http://350poems.blogspot.com/

Ago

2009-10-08T15:24:00.005+02:00

I saw myself close to the edge when I was twenty-two. There was a period of at least two years where I woke up and did not feel happy. I wasn't aware of it though. The last time I had felt happy was too far away to use as a point of reference. It was just a state, miserable, yet unaware. Dreams were more vivid, filled with loaded guns, but harmless ones. I was my own worst enemy, and then there was him, writing about German things, somewhere in the woods.

The motions were set for me to go through. I didn't set them, I don't think, at least not directly.

They were there. Three months out of college, I slept in a warm bed in Chicago, took a bus numbered 35 to a school for Mexican-American children, taught them about geometrical shapes and shading and famous painters, danced with them, and once, at least, sat with them and told them I was very, very sad.

Sometimes, in Chicago, I sat up in the morning and remembered my thirteen year old self in a red velvet tank top sitting on Jeremy's bed. He had a truck, and smoked pot at 9am. That was a big deal to me. He didn't go to school ever. Me either (I think I told my student's that too). But somehow my statistical outcomes were a bit more acceptable then Jeremy's, who is now more than likely strung out on one organic, and two non-organics. I guess. I think even then I had the urge to run out into the forest and engage in voluntary poverty and hack at my own skin. Or pull the triggers of cotton filled guns. Now it's not so voluntary. It's part of the routine.

Now twenty-three, in New York City, I am sleeping on an air mattress in the Brooklyn apartment of a couple. One from Venezuela, one form Japan. Neither of them speak very good English, and so I am constantly impressed by their level of physical communication. Its almost like a song, you know? He touches her, she laughs, pulls away, he pulls more in, they both smile. In between they ask me questions about what certain words me. "What are these?" .....Lungs, I say. We sit on the floor on pillows and eat Japanese soup, hummus, and South American candy. I smell both countries in the room, and then my own country. The roof above us is vast, I want to sleep up there, but they tell me the super will get mad. I think about Jeremy's bed. I wonder if this girl ever wore red velvet in Japan, or if this man ever wanted to pull the trigger.

I then think about the woods, and him, building German things, speaking German things, dancing German things, in his American accent. North American accent. United States accent. Eastern United States accent. Rhode Island accent. Cranston accent. I didn't know him at thirteen. I wonder if he knew me, wore red velvet, wanted to pull the trigger, missed me. Ago. So long ago.

I was twenty-one when he spoke German to me.

Encourging

2009-09-23T21:28:00.007+02:00

I have stared at the back of your head
for more than five minutes.

Love can't last, but marriage is suppose to.
Will I ever know the taste of your spit?

a prior engagement pulls you off of
the playing field.

So only in my sinful dreams
do you exist.

I want to get to know you...

to open, escape, pull through, kiss,

embrace, look into the eyes of,

realize existence is...you.

Phone Call

2009-09-18T03:49:00.004+02:00

You are an accent

on a fierce word,

I want to mount

your cryptic humor,

have you pull my heart

ribbon out, and wrap

it in my hair.

City loves, never mind

her picture bright and alluring

flashes through my gut, Paris,

beautiful, and perfect.

I could spend 100 hours

with you, unpacking your

secrets, wondering if

you are sincere, if

you could be just

as gracious in an

Indian desert,

or holding me

against your NYC

bed linen.

Kopenhagen

2009-09-06T16:52:00.007+02:00

What are street jugglers called in the U.S.?

It's not a conspiracy! An owl dancing in the California woods!
I see a culture house, a beam of dumpster soup.
Who is the girl playing the un-tuned piano.
Nothing like purple patch work shorts, new born enveloped in cigarette smoke.
He stole me an ice cream bar;
he stole my momentary certainty.
eat onions, apples, cinnemon sweet.
eat your heart out, NYC.
i've seen the roof-accessible-
no doors, your rules need not apply
here.

i see a speciman, great, so percise, by night,
the homeless black diamond.

fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

by the moon, you measure the height and length of your dream.
flashing camera light, rope bridge.
pressure, remember, one step at a time.
what a beauiful sight you are from behind.
forward-twisting-my mind collidescopes inward
and outward, thinking when i should simply exist.

raindrops, no paint

leave it to a young ruffian
one in the same.
i really miss him, but i do not know his name.

Firenze

2009-08-31T18:07:00.006+02:00

a tiny people, dance, pinholes in civilization,

scallops on pasta, old piazza,

i've been with you before.

she spoke italian, rounded, near gelato,

love in an ancient library,

sweet, tight, tiled floors of a train station.

the flash of the camera captures a falling ladder,

above the secret broken place of today,

1968 on newsprint, squinting for stregnth in the dark.

the purity of laughter bounces off

brick walls near a polluted river,

"what can you do?"breasts...fantastico...

tell them the sun is setting, dirt,

all eyes on two bright young ruffians,

spun wizards in italiano, spun words on

the backless drop of a cathedral by night.

wonder if street jugglers are the hipsters

of Pop Cafe, his words, one week from now?

2009-08-30T23:47:00.001+02:00

a walk on a path,

ages ago it seems,

forget the pink castle,

captives in a dream,

i just want to live here,

with you.

old

2009-08-10T13:24:00.007+02:00

apple, rotten

peel the skin

and stick it on

my muddy arm.

you knew the secret

of opening the trunk

of my car, while i

searched in the water

for my keys.

you knew the secret

of telling the truth

while i drowned in my

own tortured dreams.

flesh

2009-07-22T15:52:00.002+02:00

we are made to fight, persist, cry, and get up.

Future

2009-07-22T02:24:00.002+02:00

i want to wear hot pants across a Wal-Mart parking lot and chicka boom with the carriages to my rusting car, PhD card in my pocket.