La Femme a la Guitare

My hand is the hand of a woman
in a cubist painting,
la femme a la guitare,
an encrypted shape
groping for the strings
that are now a part of it.

The music is all modern jazz
and bumping off the air’s
serrated edges.

Where is the faithful, round
pluck of the guitar?
the hand’s dance
weaving itself into sound.

The music is now a ribbon
in the gut
around the thigh,
pulled through the ancle.

To dig or scrape,
obsolete.
Instead the hand
must learn a new way
of moving,
a new articulation
bending sound,
and blurting a backward call.

*A poem from 05

Dentist Visit

My heart throbbed
in the dentist's chair
so hard I could see
the whole apparatus
vibrate each time.

This followed an
injection that
spread like spilled
ink down through
my chest.

Numbness is a
commodity, he said.
It wouldn't come,
so he slid the needle
in again.

When that didn't work
the nurse said, Nitrous
for the love of God,
we are tired of her
squealing.

And they placed
the elephant gray
mask over my nose,
and the doctor said
you may feel queasy.

That wasn't the right
word at all.
Disoriented, I said,
loopy, not queasy.

It brought my eyes
and my thoughts
inward enough
for them to finish

scraping away
the blackness.
And replace it with
a bright and plastic
white.

*From a couple years ago

Idyllic

I confess
I’ve been corrupted
by the seduction
of the pale hand
of darkness
shaking like an old man’s
rattling with old smoking
and holding of coffee cups.

This dream is a lie
but a good one
told from a delighted tongue
at a dinner party.

I am both sexes
all races
all religions
in one.

There is an unwrapping
of a newborn
perfect as a doll.

Never mind the crawl
of the three footed cat
wobbling back
for food
in heat.

Nevermind the beads
of sweat inching from
your belly
to my chest.

I contend
I woke up humping the bed
screaming a name
in a foreign tongue.

Anonymous one, I said
love is but the clenching
of two pinkies.

*A fun one from my college days.

How To

Don’t you see, the materials for these poems
are the one gift our breakup gave me
freeing up my chest of that good
and wholesome love I had for you
left room for all of this black ink.

Loving you was so fucking hard,
because you were such a good man.
You never did anything wrong,
never looked at other women,
never wondered what life would be like
without me. I did enough of that for both of us,
and it was exhausting.

Now I poke at your fleshy parts with a stick
trying to provoke life from you.
I plead with you to be human,
to show me that our years together
didn’t just dissolve on your tongue.

I ask you to break my heart again,
because I was too shocked to believe it
the first time. Can you show me
the mechanics, exactly where did you
make the incision?

And please give me direction
on the way you were able to swallow
7 years. I keep choking, my dear,
I keep choking on those years.
They are so heavy and so sharp.
How did you swallow them so easily?

Toy or Art?

This new toy sort of bridges the gap between toys and art. It's a mini Munny DIY Toy that Tara McPherson, an awesome artist, signed and designed for me during her book signing at Kid Robot this week. I love the drippy heart. A lot of her works feature a cut out heart or some sort of other manipulated heart. While heart imagery may be cliché, there are always new ways of doing it, and it’s such a universal symbol that it’s sure to evoke some sort of emotion. And, that’s what art is all about, right?
Lately, contemporary artists are inspiring me more and more. I have zero ability to paint or draw, but I think some of my poems and ideas could be translated to a collage or diorama type format. I’m hoping to try this out some time soon and post the restults here.

Here is another fun toy from Kid Robot, not so artistic, but still cute and fun. [Yes, it and my other toy are photographed with a backdrop of poetry books.] It’s from the Cannibal Fun House line of toys. I kind of enjoy the irony of adorable little cannibal guys.

And so,

You died, and so
I can never beat my fists
to your stomach.

You died, and so,
I can never tell you
all those words and words,
grown stale and moldy.

It was so like
leaving again,
on the tenth anniversary
of the first time.

It is not so different
for the hand to take
the blade across
than to dial a number.

or to write out a letter.
I told my wrists this many a time,
and now they are useless tools.
And so, you are dead.

My memories are even a bit stolen now,
and so, you were like a father,
but so what, because you are dead,
so there will be no father talk
between you and me now.

So, you are dead,
you thought the leaving and leaving
wasn’t permanent enough,
so, you thought you would leave
someone new for once.

Not the same women and daughters and
small sons, so you took leave of yourself
For the first time a new feeling.
So, now, there will be no talk,
no sobbing letters.

And so, we will never brush
shoulders, in a crowd, I will never
look up to see your graying mustache and
dark green eyes.

And so, I will never say; and
weren’t you a stand in for my father?
and didn’t you get tired of the role
and run away?

So, you chose to die,
I can’t picture it, the bottle
to the mustache, the blade
in your hand.

No, I suppose I can,
and you selfishly took
all those moments and dreams
and dreams and dreams,
so many I dreamt in a decade.

Why would you steal them
Just like that, just like you stole
yourself from me before.


I can picture it, the hand placed
upon the blade, so like a telephone
so like a pen, writing this letter,
speaking this poem into our ears.

Painful Tools

They say I have a dual heart, you know.
With two compartments, one filled
with clean and wholesome love for you,
and the other holding a love fashioned from
worn out memories and old shadows.

I’ve heard this is a dangerous contraption.

But I am used to painful tools, like the shears
I used to cut myself away from my former life,
and the needles I used to stitch myself
into this new one.

Sharp objects don’t scare me anymore.

What’s frightening is when I can’t tell
the difference anymore between shadow
and truth, when I hear his voice in yours
and find my hands very neatly sewing
your flesh into his place.