Fuchsia
she carried a planter box of fuchsia
from 25th Street to 40th
where she met her lover
the tattooist
flyer of rocket ships
bearer of ray guns
gone to the dogs
five with gray muzzles
we are those who walk
from TV movies to
redwood backyards
where we soak
anchors and keyboards
in steaming
chlorine
cross broken side-talks
trade road-trip limericks
for backrubs in woodshops
where chessboards affix
glue to fingertips
steered a craft
a stolen vessel
across pacific waters
gravel frontage roads
from Redding to Prague
Copenhagen to New York City
Miami to Chicago to Seattle
where styrofoam tortoise-shells
fog eyeglasses with teargas and
walkie-talked codewords
no secret, this
love for a violet motorcycle
a velvet armchair
or a continent
wherever she wants to sit
we begin it
in new year's forests
shoreside campfires
peach cider and popcorn nipples
traces through silk and cashmere
these strange doctors glove our
conversations of tequila and tongue
where the pinata splits
and the samba breaks
under rope ladder bedspreads
and Fifth Street lopes
up staircase streetsides
to carpeted cubicles
or a quickie in the john
where rain-splattered windshields
crack carpet-bed wool pants
into couch comfort kneecaps
twist betwixt thighs, a
pepper-spray sting;
under this reluctance
we sing
twelve days of solstice
Cascades of rainforests
snow-capped pinetrees
not a new encampment
but a different path out
where the guides don't know
where to go
we dance
another story, this
porch-swing exchange
when mothers smoke
and teacups fume
under raspberry goulash
another poem, that
six-year old's birthday
trip to the watercolor shop
or twist of the swizzle-sticks
another tale, in which
funerals trade for invitations
frame quotations with magenta
paintbrushes splatter
fuchsia and chartreuse
across our upstairs mattress
tossed into two
we sleep
alone
solos
so we are those who shave legs and heads,
push lovers against refrigerator corners,
take advantage of sweeping views to travel
with broom in hand, ask permission to join
exceptions at a distance: wish to be an extra
in your movie, stage show, or phone call;
she imagined a new body on the new year's
eve with bike ride and boy parts strapped
into a wiggle on attic rafters with knife
blade in fingertips, nails clench lips -
when dresses slip on couch covers to return
molotov tours with reports of disappearance:
"where did everyone go?" sidewalks swept
clean of guiliani sweat, and shops filled
with our mothers and fathers, who talk
union bluster in decades-long arguments,
conclude lifetimes with flatlines, twice
thrice the doctor's age, a quarter the
nurses' pay for our rage cause "they can take it:"
we make up our days cause we can fake it
with the easy rhymes to counter teacher's laws
and it is just the same with our other parts -
sodden plankboard tables split into appendages:
"what remains but to take hold of each other's
bodies" which have been frequently captured;
which does not distinguish us but makes us
all the more valuable in the lemon orchards
and spaghetti wrestles of recording studio
intellectuals, prepare to be tossed:
we save it for later-
this is no time to
prepare for death.
The Science of Hair Metal
violent squalls
let's go
deviations will all be
equal to each other
i listen to preachers,
i listen to fools
a specimen of the form
sufficiently explains itself
from this time the wind was wish and control
How To Wear A Gas Mask
The more true love and care
that is bestowed on them,
the better they will thrive.
Avoid the shoals of tear gas,
but if you must descend
into the reefs, fight back.
A street is a place for people,
the traffic of play and labor,
the work of today, an entire life.
These avenues are not nearly enough
cultivated for active revolt;
forgiveness and promises may also
grow through the walls of strife.
The Rapture
We screw gypsum board across attic rafters,
cram loft mattresses into Victorian pantries,
craft backyard shacks into fugitive refuges,
but we still can't close detention centers.
Import stores scrape graveyard shards,
bargain furniture to discount ruin.
Stolen goods turn tungsten into deals,
but we still can't stop the torture.
The best forget our history, the worst
package it for markets; abandoned camps
line river banks where empty shops once burned.
Anarchist pavilions sold, then gutted and torn down;
Surely some retribution is at hand.
But when the quartered limbs were piled,
all is waste and worthless tillage
that arrives from bartered pillage
in the chaos of the global village,
where armored cars escort pens-for-hire.
Then churches rose over corner stores,
selected peasants ascended to heaven,
drew lotto tix as sacred writ against
martyred pilgrims at train stations.
Supermarts flew across the seas, praised
"better living through chemistry"
to feed the North with patent seeds;
suicides climbed, a swelling tide,
to match Monsanto with their pride.
The valley's flooded, the village cannot plow;
blindfold and handcuffed, marked with hidden scars
from cattle prods and waterboards;
men and women wait to be redeemed.
New slaves fulfill the tyrant's dream:
ten cents an hour, felons work the field.
What explosive breasts, their contents here conjoined,
wrap themselves in bomb-lined belts, the beast already born?
