Carpeted flowers

The room had lavender walls. And it smelled like old,

beautiful ruffles, linen, and new history.

The old screened windows could unlatch like the great maws

of long-abused beasts silently roaring their challenges to domestication.

Sunlight streams past the hollow carcasses and

holographic wings of flies

Fatefully drawn to the oxidized stonefruits Their lives hold,

sparkle, and suspend on dusty drifts of

me.

In that room I’ve become dust

and carpet glue.

My hair and my skin have packed into the Coarse fibers of the

carpet Cracked and mirroring my palms. For eleven

years Movement, bent knees, crooked fingers, and defeated flops

Have formed a drag-path

The impression from an overladen bookshelf

Its contents lay Elsewhere.

Just outside packed into boxes Ideas categorized in my heart

Yet another linguistic pile Waiting patiently to disintegrate

And become wings.

No, that room is no longer mine.

But, Now I am the

house.

Annual desert

Summer is whiteout

The minuscule particles of glass beaming back at you

from the top of my head

To the inside of my shoe

In the early days, I didn’t notice

I lived on black tarmac

And green, mossy, pavement

Safe in the shade of the white birch tree

Now everything is white,

And smooth,

uncracked

And warm

No, white hot.

Burning.

White like ashes

Like the top of the mountain

Where last year’s storms melted down

In fevered tears

White like the walls of home

No more brick

No more putrid,

Black, Rotting

Frozen walls;

instead, I am surrounded

By billowing canvas

White, like the soft embrace of

Steamed dumplings and

miles of noodles.

White like orchids huddled in a parking lot

Fallen feathers of an angel's wings

Royalty banished

to live amongst the

string beans,

Dusty grapes,

and stalks of sugar cane.

Summer is:

White like peeling skin.

White, like handwritten letters

White. Like. White.

whiteout is drinking

Glacial melt in a field of sharp

golden grass

A cold so pure, its imprint will remain in the back of my eyelids

And a pain so simple

All set to light ablaze come Sunday

whiteout is when

there will be no more water to drink,

or sand to take,

or stones to rub smooth as perfect water droplets

Someday.

Summer is whiteout because we forget

And we remember

Summer is a blinding haze

We suckle

Till it runs cold-

And dry.

Hang nail

Hey! mr president!

give them back.

I want my words.

I hack

out a hairball:

my heavy heart.

A wet plop.

Another swing.

Freeze at the ankles,

forget how to stand—

This is more important.

give my voice

back.

I wack,

knuckles pop.

A breathing sac

dribbling drops

make only bloody fingerprints

I want them back

what I gave freely

I need to crack—

my own illusion

To claw my way out

to rip them off

to scratch

Inheritance

I walk where sidewalk cracks remember it,

beneath the drone of thousands of voices.

The trees are trimmed in their parts of the town

we get the kind that die before they bloom.

A girl was lost near the corner store.

They said she lied, or ran, or should’ve known.

I leave my keys clenched tightly in my palm,

Each step wears my shoes.

A hope I kissed was buried in the fall

they said “a fight,” though it was one of peace.

I lit a candle. Left it by the tracks, so I could make a blow torch.

The wind, too kind, refused to fan the spark.

mother scrubs her rage out of the grout,

While father and brother lay flaccid, we must feed them

We march with signs the rain will turn to pulp.

And still, we are the protected ones.

I tried to run for office once. I failed.

They liked the voice, but not the words it was.

Too sharp, too soft, too loud, too new, too queer, too different, not mine

they said it should’ve smiled when it refused, and I should have picked the other side.

The garden by the freeway gasps for air.

The ivy coils like hands around my knees.

I grow tomatoes none of us can eat.

The soil remembers older tragedies.

I’m told that patience is a kind of strength.

Yet the clock on the wall is rotting away like my grandparents’ teeth

This house is built on backs and a chipped tooth.

a chandelier that swings, but does not sing.

What can I do, except not look away?

What can I change, except my shade of purple?

Each year I vote, then watch the towers rise,

and write down all the names of all the dead.

And yet, I carry on. I braid my hair,

Two Dutch braids, and I spit on the mirror

I want my voice to drown.

I plant a seed and tell it not to hope,

I keep it tame, but I still can’t cope.

Icarus’s death by his sister, the dot

Perhaps

Those perfections

Proportions of very existence

We seek so fervently day and night

Is simply failure. The only flight

Worth anything at all

Is the final

fall

Barbed wire

A crown of thorns

Circle: A tortuous ecstasy

The whip flies, full of love, of life,

Choices between limitlessness, and children

Man at the center, a transparent room

A glass-bottomed boat in the sea

of our tears. He will drown

Last bubble up

HER first

Dot

Boxed in

To a glittering cage,

Skin peppered with round suffering

the material: cosmic in stillness: women listless

dot — a facade of communal sight,

feeding a system that is

Always, forever – his,

unbroken.

We

Are Marked with

possessing supreme ability

to dream the scythe that drew

blood from the heavens. Four years,

two centers: polka dots, navel,

genitals — Man as cosmos.

Get me a cosmo.

Drown-

We are the dreamers

Without believers

Their gaze

Dribbles down her chin.

Then swoops down, upward, birds flock

blind in power; like Icarus, sketched

in endless circles, the flights built

to fail. The perfect circle,

Empty eye sockets are

HER second

Dot.

Vitruvian

Man, lofty Christ,

A glorious fruit fly trapped

in a self-built dome, of power,

a public heist of generational cycles.

The perfect imposing circle,

The wheels in her mind

HER third

Dot.

Four years

to perfection, a connection

of dots, men who built society

pushed; it all tumbled. Left to

the professionals.

HER fourth

Dot

Vain concept,

no fee, system disintegrated

by the son, yet still his. Hurtling

from the heavens, the perfect circle,

Cyclic backwards, all perfect

The final Dot. . . . .

Chipped Tooth, 2 A.M.

The knowledge hits hard, thundering in my wrist,

mania and sweat ignite the fevered air.

My spine dissolves, another varnish to encyst,

The night is young, why should we care?

Cords tremble-chomp. Stilted humming.

Voice trembling

Tongue, ready and waiting

about to stomp.

Blood is meant for Painting.

We laugh like stilettos on shattered glass,

Voices tangled in a reckless storm.

Each heartbeat drips in the moment’s lash,

The dark must flee for day to form.

crunch.

The night tastes sharp: like gasoline and wine,

I catch the whipping wind– you smell like salt.

The sea is patient; the cliffs, divine,

But now I dance, with the night’s sweltering cry.

Bruxism is steadily taking over

To crash, to burn, this moment’s mine to hold,

Until the flakes fall, and my wrist stops throbbing

then the tears will dance on

Ash or snow–pink or gold