with a silky, unstained remorse against the side of your face
and the dogs sweat panting under the bed
whimpering because they hear what's inside
twining inside my head
my jaws are clenched bone white at the edges
from holding back the breathless, exhausted, endless bleats
of something dying nearby in my neck
which still points to the white roses at your feet
a serpent sluicing in our shadowy breath, at your beck and call
we've always welcomed death
I'm your love, my sweet
the killer of doves, I'm all
you can feel inside, the damnation, a darkening swell
I'm a student of hell
down in the silt where the water isn't especially warm or deep
when you sewed me up and held me out again to sever
whatever was inside that needed out of me
tears no more than mountains of salt from the shores of the dead sea
no more than that what you usually weep
while listening to our ghosts on the other side of the room
who like to croon
with my hand massaging your open heart
making it beat forever
A COUNTENANCE MORE IN ANGER THAN IN SORROW
You find the guy hanging in the back yard and know it was bad
he must've dangled there for hours, holding back screams, trying
hard
not to scare the birds out of the feeder
your dog won't glance up though, she's shaking under the porch
he's got razor-wire intricately tangled under his chin, over the
elbow,
under the shins, he wanted to make sure he took his face
completely off as slowly as possible, going at that pace, taking
his time to catch every scar, eyelash, each sound wrapped inside
his ear
a prettyboy, really, even the ice cream man loved him
that face like every inch of your heartache out of place
it's on the ground, staring up, still trying to talk
you want to be nice, but it looks angry enough to go out
and swallow your sister's tongue
then pull itself by the nose, go out for a walk,
to the playground to watch the kids
It's Nick, for Christ's sake, the putz from next door
who's been banging your wife for six years, leaving his fear in your
bed
hell, your youngest boy, five-year-old Timmy, has the same red
hair
but it's never bothered you before, not even in the dark
but he's still pissing because he wanted the lightning world
like you kept it from him, by loving your lady, your son,
now it's crawling with its lips, tongue on your toe
hissing
you shake your head and take it to the park
and feed the fuck to the ducks
SOFT AND SWEET COOL WHISPER OF REVENGE
These curses are too complex
for such a sweet pink tongue and baby fat cat
like you
this takes skill, all your frowning
compounded into bone, another skull
to take to bed inside your head
Not everyone can live with that
You're getting the hang of it without any rope
the rabbis can smell your anxiety and sweat
the Pope, he's never been one to notice
the darkening winds, it's the hat
it cuts down his view
I've pricked my thumb and thumbed my prick
it's no simple trick what we're about to do
let them shake their heads and mutter and stutter
and give insipid smiles along the circular miles
wondering who it was who might give her diamonds,
leave poems at her feet, do the dirty dishes
who might gut her,
who hummed all the love songs to death
We step up to another stair
and another, to a different door
their grins can't hide their petty wrongs,
the smarm and bitter charms, their squealing rats
how they stare at the closed windows and the white walls
waiting for a fist to come through
Hear the thunder come tearing asunder
I'm on to you
a thumbnail groove between your eyes is deep enough
to hook and hold you on the edge
where there is no longer any kind of ledge
now you slip between sheets of their simpering defeats
and glossed over losses and screaming retreats
Her hair is falling out in handfuls
upon the softest pillows and silken scarves
he's going out for blood tests
their shingles come down in the rain
of their anguished breaths and rocked bed little deaths
your duty is done, now rest
SPONGING MY SYRUP UP OFF THE FORMICA
Stick your nose in it
my syrup and sins are fanned out on the Formica table
in queens and deuces, between toast,
bacon, morning lovemaking, and tomato juice
that red leaking down your head, this black
no blacker than the other places you've been led
This rope here is where she hanged me from the chandelier
and this rickety stool is where I stood unbalanced
for over a year
hour after hour because he told her, slick, kempt,
crooning with gray nose hairs how he was the man with power
glaring at Gus who put her on the bus back home
How I've been killed for nothing
Ease the edge of the blade across the fleshy web
between thumb and forefinger
where you can still get stabbed in the kidneys and not fall down
not even linger, with the lamplight bleeding
I've been crawled over in reverse, parked on,
sat on, stepped on, rumbaed on,
where they've kneeled and snapped their fingers
under my nose, not quite remembering my name
Once I was lame, and once, perhaps,
I think, maybe, that I even had a little shame,
but the bones of confidence slowly re-knit
you get strong throwing these don't-give-a-shit
all-fired-up serpentine fits,
where your neck meets your ankles
Keep your nose out of it
Get your spine back in line
If you didn't already know it, now, see,
now, licking the stale sins
and sugar, it's time to take what's mine
WHEN THE DELICATE FRAGRANCE GROWS TOO GREAT
This system, this house, is coming all apart
and most of it has to do with refuse, with rejection
it's amazing how it can build up in so short a time
to this kind of head, this bad form of art, this resentment
two feet high, three, six, until I can't see the girls
how they toss empty nail polish remover bottles over the dogs
flinging pearls before pigs, flipping their curls, doing little dance
without any life
looking up at the swooping black crows
chasing cherry carrion under the bed
her prom date has been lying there all this time
just how long nobody knows, but we listen
to him humming still, doing jigs in his tuxedo digs
I mention refuse and get nothing but remorse,
some sneers and rolled eyes and the tip of a tongue
I'm going to kick in her mirror
That'll douse her fire and turn up the fear
wondering if her eyebrows are too long, the hair
in order, lips p
ink enough
the prom date is still waiting, of course,
his meat, as you'd expect, if you cared
is drying out and getting way too tough
I'm making a stand, I think
I'm not taking the bastard to the corner
Girls, you both, take a turn carrying the plastic bags
this delicate fragrance grows too huge
The heaped terrors on this languished side of the room
will forever be mine, along with that stink
no matter how hard you cry or large you loom
or sit in the corner and growl and stew
I've got a river of hellfire coming through
and it smells a lot sweeter than you
A DULL BLADE SLICING OFF A PORTION OF PRAYER
You're still sticking your head in my closets
studying the quality of dust, the texture of ash
the pools of blood, wondering if they're mine
or not
some are, believe me, some are
but you'd better check way in the back
as if you could pack the darkness and torn paper,
clinging spirits and fading children
and re-comprise the promise of my whispers and whimpers
and all that I lack
You don't get it yet that the locks on that box
are meant to keep me inside
more than to keep you here
There are murderers holding their breath
patiently waiting for you to walk by in the wind,
to giggle instead of whine,
to put a finger to another's lips
rather than staggering past in fear
there, you can see
sinners sleeping themselves to death,
a sort of sin no longer heard of
You can't awaken one without taking them all home
to cuddle in the dark, if you must
and you must
bearing a new hideous guilt, not quite mine but with my face
each beautiful line and luscious curve just
another failure and more raw back-beating
and those stilted words of disgrace
you can't find me there anymore
or there or here or over there
especially there, anymore
opening the closet is opening the coffin
from one end to the other the martyrs of myself
have died for us
up and down in your face, in your lust
atop the breaking rock
catching you off guard
where divine intervention means taking
a dull blade to your prayers and twisting hard
TAKING THE BULL'S EAR BETWEEN MY TEETH
There have been two mercy killings this week
my guilt and my pride, both leering just a little
lying sideways in glass jars settled side by side
My sister knew no vowels, they said her brain was wet
my cousins with no tongues, my brother so ugly
he has to run and hide, his eyes too hard
my sister's hanging bottom lip
covered with spittle, my mother
patient and more than willing to speak
the home with no rooms, the back without a spine
most of the books have been read
and there are still more jars on the shelves, too many to fill
with pity, with rage, with sorrow, with my good intent
with my fear
with the small pile of flower petals I had to sweep
out of the corners of the yard
If only I could have seen my gray hairs at eight
and known who to let pass, whose hand to shake,
and just who it was I was going to hate
when the ice wouldn't be enough to cool my forehead
I've been in the ring too long, the bull is dull
my hands are weak, there's no need for a sword
its eyes are glazed, it's down on its knees
and can't be raised
There's a nice breeze here swirling everybody
around and around
and around like wedding dresses,
like the whirling and dried
but still dancing, driven dead
You can't stop me this time, I'm taking the bull's ear
between my teeth, and getting the hell out of hell
out of here
IN AN EFFORT TO REMOVE THE SEVENTH SIN
FROM MY FIFTH RIB
A stairway seen through the trees, a hushed voice
too far out of the way to hear clearly,
whispering for me to come on up, so soft beneath
the dog howls, laughter, and screeching tires
already loud in the breeze, cherry blossoms sailing
among the scent, I'm moving towards the screen door
as fast and fluid as my merciless hopes and wants
and those knives in the weeds, the way my fists look underwater
the hunt is on in the dark, she's wavering in the night
now redheaded, now brunette, skipping from one to another
on the points of my sharpest needs,
with agony lips
drawn against my chest, hinges of my jaw firmly set
blonde now, and just a little sunburned,
with scraped knees
tough to keep watching her prance and shift this way
as if the dying light bulb on a string in the basement
had been slapped to set the world and shadows swinging
my hand on your ass rings louder than midnight church bells
don't you get it yet, I've faced up to my defeats
and made it out through the other side
of failure and sin and missed chances,
dragging myself forward,
sometimes even pirouetting through all this hell
I'm not here anymore
and neither are you despite the perfume,
back it on up and shut the goddamned door
I've taken all I'm about to from that smile
if I say take it off, then you'd better scrape it away
and when you dip beneath the dripping kitchen faucet,
swing your hair like this over my wrist, like that,
there's a whirlwind sowed inside my load
spitfire eyes too good for what's coming
hands the size of second-rate redemption
bend backwards into the silver of my seed
when these ghosts dance with me, I lead
JEALOUSY
They say that on the eighteenth floor of the nuthatch, an old
woman
sits in her filth and talks into her own scars
and wrinkles and gutted breaths,
her fingertips cleaved off so she could get by without any feeling
calling the names of seven dead children,
lobotomized husband, murdered mother
her face sculpted and split into thin tracks the shape
of nails' edges, the width of heartbreak
They have to hold her down at night
before she levitates on a wave of remorse and rape
her spine cracking with tangled tragedies
heaving her up to the ceiling
Who slid onto the train tracks? who caught it
in the ribs walking home from THE MAGIC FLUTE? which
house went up with three starving retarded kids
in their pink beds, taking time with the flames,
smoothing fire in their hair,
spreading it onto soft cheeks? They've torn veins
out of her legs and connected them in her brain.
She's in the rafters
and the attendants shriek with her, it's sort of fun
really, all the wickedness in the world
layered in her bloomers, stuffed under her eyes
the way she reeks, I can smell it down here
six streets over, where I'm changing a tire
listening to the kids cry, sitting
before their broken games, the toilets backing up,
steak gone bad, dog chewing my shoe
and shitting on the kitchen floor
they've turned off the phone again
Joggers found a pair of hands in a drainage ditch
right next door
Living all of this and looking up to an asylum shadow
where she hovers and her toes tap the top of the window,
thinking only, oh
oh yes,
oh, you lucky bitch
MY DEAD DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DEAD DAD
This is why the maniacs come out to play
because the juice has been drained off in the cells
of our dirty brain pans
the knocking at the windows has ended
the morning decrees there's to be no rematch
Clouds no longer form the faces of the boys
who broke your lunchbox
she's on the roof wrestling with screeching leaves
she's got hearts on her sleeve, she's got a hedgerow of scattered
torsos
across her precious toes
she's yawping about how badly the communion tastes
how the stations of the cross are gliding around the room,
who's showing mercy, who clings to a cat-o'-nine-tails,
whose throat bleeds
You talk of knives and sultry ex-wives
and the effects of your father's coffin upon your childhood
as if you've got one behind your back right now,
a switch blade date, a hated woman on her knees,
your dead Dad's rage pouring into your ass
How about we do this?
Let's check and see how much of the moon glints in your blade
and how much shines in my eye
and we'll fill this parking lot sewer drain with it needs
in the lapping ripples of our leaking lives
DRIVING THROUGH THE HEART OF KANSAS,
KANSAS DRIVEN THROUGH MY HEART
Holy shit, we really are in goddamn Kansas, Toto
we've been brought here kicking by the sneers of
our hustling peers, the girls who couldn't remember
how to pronounce our last names, going Pica Pickeri Pikkeel
when the bed was liquid with
passionless flames, the best friends
Futile Efforts Page 33