braggart

freda, you should have seen me in the dark place
where the fists sleep.
the dress i wore,
perfect for staining.

9.

i would dance with you
(ignore the hiccups of my heart)
smile and show my teeth
(though you are not mine any more)

i laid you down, cooled your head
with every illness
(GOD DAMNED IF YOU DIDN'T GET BETTER)
i washed your pants, your pants and shirts
(even when they smelled like girls, i dropped them
and retrieved them not with my hands but a broom handle
though this one was the last for you,
the girl with the earthen face who sits under her curls
with a smile like
poppies peeking through their buds)

i am relinquishing the starshine reins to her that
one day you will hold
for your own son,

four and twenty accepted this poem yesterday :)

laying hens
pink eggshells
in bits, under the peat moss
hanging basket, tilted by
the weight of laying hens

A prisoner, bound,
In wheat-woven chains
Roams the expanse
Of this golden grain sea
Patrolling the borders
For the amber wave thieves
Who feast on the reeds
Of this golden grain sea

‘Neath the old harvest moon,
Bleached in cold autumn night,
This prisoner mourns
In this golden grain sea
For the winter is coming,
And the amber wave thieves
Always have the last laugh
In this golden grain sea

See, the solstice, it looms
Like a grim evening rain,
Haunting the shadows
Of this golden grain sea
Where a prisoner, bound,
Shall finally be freed,
Never to roam the expanse
Of this golden grain sea

7.
i had a place here--
behind your heart here--
but the pain, chest pains
edged me out

got married last night.  choked
nervous through the first toast,
saw you in my mind.
with the DTs, in the ERs.
ass hanging out

in response to the nurses,
"this is january 10.
i am in the hospital.
it doesn't hurt
anywhere
anywhere
anywhere."

and fuck you, because
i am awake writing this
it is my honeymoon.

6.
i remember nothing about yesterday.
yet, yesterday was there--
the voice buried too deep in the clamor--
and then, the sweet smoke
and clear water,
a rowing-oar in an armada
saying, "hallo, hallo,
here you are making love in the first
for a long time, here you are shouting,

here you are (after a pause) happy

"
(that last one VERY deep
in the clamor)

and i, deaf, painted a
pretty pastel day,
a sludgy night like blackberry juice,
dogged by the
stoned intuitive memory
of a rowing-oar,

there are mittens these days, so many mittens that i drown under them, piles of mittens and each one weighs as much as a cold poor hand.  i am making mittens, mittens for charity, so many mittens and thoughts of mittens that i have started pulling my hair out again, and i go to the doctor and he touches the soft growing-in fuzz with a sad doctor smile.  i am smoking all day, and in the other room my love-partner plays the same riff over and over again, over and over, while i make mittens.

3.
even on the good days
feels like god
has an arm around my shoulder
and a gun against my back

2.
to be a rock face,
no beating heart.  no brain.
no sight, no soft touch.
moss like a lock of hair,
moss touching somewhere.
cold under the glacial autumn,
the mooney sun.