Month: May 2016

ingenious

I’m laying down
my arms. I suppose
I must admit that
I’m not entirely
free of fault here.

I could have retired
from the field gracefully
when it became apparent
that I had picked up
the wrong kerchief. to fight
so fiercely for the favor
of someone whose eyes
and heart were elsewhere
was my own pointless
misadventure.

sometimes a windmill
is just a windmill. the
Fair Dulcinea is not really
a ragged peasant girl under a spell
that requires me to give myself
three thousand lashes
to break it, she’s just
otherwise occupied.

burn all my books
of chivalry, then
and let me swear off this madness
for a year. we’ll see
if I still want to pick up a lance –
or a Lance – when my blood
has cooled.

fables II

newsflash: I haven’t changed.
if I’ve become yesterday’s news
to you, it’s only because
you realized there was a chance
to have an actual adult
relationship with someone
you seemed to like just fine
until you found out she
wanted to be
with you. that says a lot more
about you than it does
about me, frankly. you
might want to discuss that
with your therapist.

you’re that dog
from Aesop’s fable, the one that
had a bone, but
when he saw his reflection
in the water of a stream
he was crossing, was jealous
of that other dog’s
clearly superior bone,
and in opening his mouth
to bark at the interloper
dropped the actual real bone
into the stream. a bone in the mouth
is worth three in the stream.

well have fun forever
chasing what you can’t
have. I’m no man’s
bone. laters!

the agony & the ecstasy

well done. with a single stroke
of your pen, you defused
the bomb in my heart. with kindness
you snuffed out the raging bonfire
burning inside my soul
as if it were but
a guttering candle.

see, the furnace that feeds my art
has only two starters:
the pure immolation of love,
or the furious conflagration
of rage. everything else
is just wet kindling, the dank despair
of smoldering coal
that lurks and murks and smudges
up the air with its stench and
nobody wants to read that shit,
myself least of all.

I can set myself on fire
and burn everything down
in the white hot, purest savagery
of protesting every fiber
of the way things are,
or I can let the delicious agony
of love purify me with
its transcendent ecstasy.
if I had the choice
I know which way
I’d rather burn.

that ass

I was so incredibly
wrong about you. a lion
is a majestic beast, the King
of the jungle, a noble carnivore
that has no choice but
to be what he is. you’re no lion –
so far from a king, you’re a peasant –
a pissant, a donkey, a braying ass
standing in the street
kicking people in the face
because they saw you
at your worst and refused
to run away, always craning your neck
to try to get at that greener grass
on the other side of
the fence behind which
you put yourself.

my mistake was clearly
hitching my wagon
to the wrong beast of burden.
you’ll never move
an inch, you stubborn mule,
so I’ll leave you to your rotten
straw and hay. go ahead and
eat your words. it’ll serve you right
when they make you sick.

the Lion

I’m at 125th street, waiting. in an
exhausted daze, took
the wrong train
again. story
of my life. next to me
a woman clutches a pamphlet
with a crudely drawn cartoon
of a lion on it.

“There’s a Lion
looking for you,” it reads.
it’s just some creepy
Xtian tract, but the phrase
haunts me. I’m reminded of
the Tarot card for Strength,
and of Narnia.

where’s my Lion? has he
found me yet? will
he eat me already, and free me
from this hell of my own
making? or am I already
inside his belly – is that why
everything feels so very
dark?

Continue reading the Lion

self-care in a time of self-loathing

today I was supposed
to have physical therapy
at five, but I
didn’t go. I was busy procrastinating
leaving the house, I couldn’t find
the perfect necklace
to match my outfit, and also maybe
part of me
didn’t see the point. so what
if my neck has been killing me
since Monday? it’s only pain,
and it’s only me
who’s feeling it. no one else even
knows or cares,
except the people at PT, and
I’m paying them.

Continue reading self-care in a time of self-loathing

Roll Call: Lila

Lila is the girl
who was bullied in elementary school
and camp, who was angry
that those girls were so vicious,
who wanted to fight back
but didn’t get to,
because it was all
so very petty, and maybe because
other parts of me thought
we deserved it. after all
my own mother told me I was
useless on a daily basis,
who’s to say
she wasn’t right?

Continue reading Roll Call: Lila

mother.

what does it mean
to be a mother? you gave up
20-odd years of your life
for me, for my sister. it’s not
a sacrifice I myself
am willing to make.
even though you fucked it up –
your true charge, which was
letting me be myself, and
teaching me that I was okay,
good enough, whatever –
you carried me in your body
for ten months, were in labor
for twenty four hours
(on Labor Day, which is
an amusing tidbit and
a great icebreaker
at parties) and managed
to keep my sister and I
adequately fed and clothed
for fourteen years
despite crippling depression
and rampant alcoholism. for this
I owe you a debt
I can never repay. without you
I would not exist
this time around. for that,
I thank you. you didn’t have
to do that. happy
mother’s day, for what
it’s worth.

found in translation

to thank you
for everything you did
for me today, I made a little song
for you. in creating it
I had to contemplate
some very interesting
philosophical questions, like:

what does distance
sound like? (a laser
sound effect, reverberated and
run through a ringshifter.)
how does touch, both wanted and un-,
translate into music?
(a 1970’s arp, warped and pulsing,
afloat over a subsonic bass
like an airplane taking off
from very far away,
with some delicate bell
synths and a ghostly steel drum
plucking out a distinctly
creepy pattern.)

Continue reading found in translation

the worst

yes, that movie was just
the absolute
worst! except for the parts
when it was the best.

if I could edit out
the bad parts,
the parts that made me cry
and rage and storm,
I’d buy tickets
again and again.
I’d buy the DVD.
(it was better than CATS, better
than E.T.!)
if I didn’t remember
the good parts, I’d think
I was crazy for not walking out
of the theater
within the first
five minutes.

what do you do
with a trainwreck
like that?