heart shaped box

thanks, cobain, for the title.

water has gathered on the windows
whiile we slept; its fog mutes baby
blue morning sky, dog shit covered kelly
green grass of the house next door.
i draw a heart in the center
of the upper panes of both.
it looks childish, non symmetrical, more
like an actual heart's imbalance
than valentine perfection. i consider
drawing an arrow through each of them
but i don't want to make prophecies
that need to fulfill. love hurts, yeah
but i don't want to court that bitch.




*//*




















after fights  i must scroll up
the  page to find whtespace, silence .
shadows of palms waver , a caged bird
calls help help help, traffic
out on sheldon road picks up. you are
in your office or dead, panic attack either way.
i try to muster up reaction to either of these
scenarios and find i can't imagine the second
not really. no matter the brutality of your attack
it wasn't physical so i can't see how badly
it hurts. sciatica wins that battle every time.
any way they say scar tissue has no nerves
so my past training in marriage serves me well
when it comes to whiting out the ways
we should not be together. your arms
your hands your caress washes aches
from my body like a sacrament.
i savor the addiction,























*






the day warms. mist melts
from the panes , outside becomes
 more clear. the heart melts.

cat scratch feverish
i need a shower. day starts
early, without me.

could i choose, a box
would be escaped, recycled.
the lid won't open.

i wish you'd beat me

in the aftermath
i'd gently finger
the bruistes, caress
broken bones, hug shoulder
harness tight
but  you punish with words,
disagreements and contentions
marked only by psychic scars
i always question my memory, surely
i love you and
you cunt
didn't come from the same mouth?
i'm left wondering which i
imagained , maybe it was
both and there never were lovers
here at all just a shelter seeker
and the door mat you walked in on.

canned food drive at the hospital

suddenly , he's not that sick anymore. if luis hooks up with his supplier he's lost his middle man status. he came in yesterday with enough general pain in his abdomen to warrant admission but the phone call came after the heart and liver tests, cancer screens, blood draws. normal. or mostly. probably a damn ulcer they said, see a colonoscopist they said. dad even came by, contrite, looming like an overweight scarecrow, a crow pecking on  mortality. whatever you need, he says. whatever you need.  he needs something to bring back to his baby girl, his reason for even caring wether the pain in his gut will kill him or not. most days he'd rather it would. stop drinking they said. so he will. he quit crack, he can quit beer. shit. wrestlin a gator was harder than that. he asks jarome, the orderly, for a box, shows him a photo of his daughter, his sweetie. jarome smiles, leaves the room.comes back with a box from the snack machine half filled with snacks. these are from the staff, jarome winks. the man has promised jarome some business after release. this man is always on the make, always working- what are a few packs of crackers between friends. he leaves his room, stopped by a physical therapist and phlebotomist. they donate their canned soda to his daughter. everyone here knows her, they've seen her innocent gerber  face, staring out from behind the glass this man holds in his hands like a sign on the side of streeet. he nods in a few of the rooms on his way out the door, more orderlies high five him, donate donuts and apples. by the time he gets to luis' car, he has enough snacks for his bambina's to put in her lunch box all month. and luis, he best be a sittin cat like he wanna swoop on my source, he chuckles to himself as he gets in the car.this dawg gotta few tricks left.

misunderstood catechism

in latin, in sonorous tone, the priest

of whom i'm not privy

chants to the faithful, a state to which

i'm not privy, hail mary full of grace

an idea of which i'd like understanding.

meh. begin again. hail mary full

of grace intercede for me on my behalf because you know

god's been too busy to answer my questions and the last time

he did it was with a curve ball to test the reach of my bat.

i'm still in the strike zone with that swing, rounding out the last

35 degrees of very nearly contacted.

 like a harvest moon as cookie on a nightsky plate.

(i'd rather 

most times

make a line break where i'd put a semi colon

a habit picked up

i bleeve 

from some pole dancer in a box)

no matter. life is full of at bats. the question becomes how long

you will play the losing game.  god laughs from the belfry

pealing light as cirrus clouds high  above, sunday after service.

your granddaughter, a toddler, spins out her poodle skirt, black patent

leather shoes skipping above gravel in the new parking lot

built recently for easter overflow. we stand, waiting for the confessional

because we don't know we can enter heaven as easily as joining her 

in a rousing game of ring around the rosie

till we all fall down. 

*((*))

they become an affectation after a while. i understand this.

also a signature. no one else will take them if i get famous .

it's my time stamp, early twenty first century bushwacker

takin you back to the lost temples of  early twentieth century .

poets who ruled with iron surrealism.

e.e. 

lookin like eyes, sounding like   laugh.

how could i not go there once again

somehow digitalis poison turned to piousonne

woops that's a french for chicken typo

and we got stuck in the kitchen makin veggie soup

with someone else's leftevers , all there was anyway

by that time, what with global greed marrying global warming

producin interbred offspring so radioactive the ice caps melt.

sci fi is the shelter we want, filled with scientific priests

that only need data, not judgement, punishment usually a bell weather warning

reality show or some pauvich mediation therapy. 

watching that shit will make you feel better 

or maybe you have a desire to be a contestant. 

our retail priests can fill that order. listen a change

is coming. one day the pope will be a woman 

even mary full of grace accepts that. 

()**()

i'm afraid of you

i tell him. afraid of who you were

before. your reality pigheadedly diverse

from all the other participants' who were

there at the time. 

there is a wounded animal in the soul of the early model stay at home dad.

we bound its feet at birth, then told it to run; gave it a hole this string fits through,

commanded dance;asked it to kill in tenderness,  baffled its thirst for blood.

  maybe the wound  was  leaking estrogens in the drink bottles; from broken glass

amd plastic soup stock; or the incredible amount of ammunition it takes to make it bleed. 

 he ran with the bulls in barcelona's streets. the gash he wears with pride

it's the changing of the diapers that pushes him aside

how can a man be reduced to this small bliss

the tiny toes, the random farts 

the tenderness that creeps.

so he takes a knife and stabs it in its crib

afterward he stabs the baby momma been makin 

demands on his time, god damn woman im out

trying to hunt a goddam bison what you doin

all day in that posh office job flirtin with the boss man

i kill you both i'm that pent up, i'll kill you both and drink your blood.

*()  *

forgive me father for i have sinned

yes child

forgive me this sin father?

yes child, but you must tell it

promise?

yes,child. but first a penance.

first?

yes child repeat after me

. hell mary full of mace i prey on thee please inter seed the planet with the fruit of your belly which i call mine, as i am all the will of the world and yours as well, bear me sons to make me swell.

excuse me father?

close your eyes child. bow your head child. the hand of god is upon you.

*(()))****

when georgia met the new  priest at st. francis' feast day pot luck,  she understood the meaning,after thrity five years of marriage to a man who most nights demanded the same dinner served in front of the nightly news, what the word "engaged" meant. there was a reckless haste in the way his cassock hung, a hem caught on a snare, or the outline of underwear in a wrinkle. his eyes were clear, like a five year old, with certainty about the value of life. georgia had been feeling lately as if there were more things promised of life than the rounded rut of her volunteer job, grocery shopping and dinner in front of the t.v. she'd spoken to carl about it just the other night but he merely grunted what she took for assent, never looking away from the set, so here she was at this pot luck tonight. right out of the gate she meets this guy. karma? hardly. god has plans, that's what georgia knew

  

ego loss seminar

when it was you and i, dependent
on steel and power saws, undersides
of bridges, the seeping sea, when
it was us, i never thought otherwise.

streaks across the sky at sunset-
turning north in an arc that brought
us together through poisoned contrails-
were not binding thread after all.

we left the mending up to others,
a separate bargain made
with ourself before sirens chimed
the hour of departure. we left.

then it was all of us, you and i
caught in leavetaking, snared by a bauble
gritty in the night sky. we still haven't gone
despite the organs of intent- heart, spleen, kidney-

despite  announcements , caught
in memories rancid as meat. space. time.
you can't pay enough if you don't want to know
and if you do want to know, money is least. least.

so give it up, sweetheart. give in and give up.
that's what they tell us god wants. your ego.
to add to all the others we've collected
over these many many kalpas and then forget.

speaking of band names: ghetto bubba

on the way home she says
let's have a dance party
my disappeared friends
will be there.

so we turn the tunes high
wave about , bounce
chair dancing like her gramma
did in the day. like todays.

monday is doll day.
friday is mall day
sounds like breeding
american babe ay

soon summer will come
the pool's pull will sway
the cowboy kidnapper
will be put away.

we'll kill him eight times
with a gun made of rhymes
next week he'll return
with a bowl of green chimes.

we use playdoh a lot
make fresh fish we can catch
with our disapeared rods .
we feed disappeared cats

and the ones we can see
we feed them fish too
cut the heads off for me
they' cry with a loud mewl.


*))))


ok so ghetto bubba

you know he a redneck
but he be all hanging down
low belt to the last hole
and them jeans still be diving.
no jiving, he got a knife
on his skin wen he ten
 his daddy left home
way before then.
 but he came back see,
he be  running pills for free
for his old man, o g
for ghetto, o for omg
wat is this you tryin to be
tj showed me a video
yesterday of a southren baptist
preacher dressed in a butternut squash
polyester suit and his margarine tinted haired
wife singing a bad rap with the refrain
jesus is ma nigga to the people
gaping open mouthed across the interwebs
and there on tv. not to mention
the congregation. and i thought of bubba
taking a nickle bag to school
then fighting the teacher who caught him
i thought of bubba failing to grasp
the concept of security except in the breaking of it
bubba on the borrowed microbike, downing
a beer, heading off to fish the polluted marsh
on the lee side of the landfill.







)))))



well, you know what i mean.
it's a hard luck life.
i wish my doll partner five hundred
more innocent days if the math is right
that should take her safely into
next decade since we only come here mondays.

semaphore

the rails run through
various landscapes, coal and rock
scattered all along the route;
  unscrewed double helix
demarcating an occasional
 steel and iron  river, positing
divide. one side from another.
wrong side. right side.
grandaddy worked them when
they were relevant, unionized,
arisen  from swampland,
varicose veins running across pine hammock
an ache in each lonesome whistle .
these days they snarl traffic
the occasional morning
lowering red or black
 and white  striped  arms
 holding cars at bay
stronger than a riot police line;
 or wail ghostly and far away
  mild late nights
through open windows.







*(*





gabrielle was given his first job
at infancy, just as the whole thing began.
maybe a mote of millions coalesces into a now
maybe dinos live with humans after all
the timing is irrelevant. full blown,
authentic, he grasped the weapons
in both hands,  appeared before the fallen,
 banishing ,with golden flame, re entry..
  thus   fire between  crevasses to the east
and west, limits light, closes confidence
looses the demons of blindness.





*(***


i'm trying to find mythos
in the daily, trying to majik
a word back to mystic.
granddaddy worked the rails.
great great granny was raped
and pillaged by them.-two different
kinds of work, but capitalism
got its rocks off both ways.
a black and red stripe
runs over  wall street's spine
its peaks and valleys a demarcation
for exploitation.

i want to reverse the mythos, give
the apes back to the jungle
put the swordblade towards the kings neck.
keep the iron bull on the track
segregated, limited, later.

drain the whole sea

she says it's what the goddess demands
but i say 
i think he says sheep. and bring. doesn 't matter
i will steal it either way.


calm earth on the battle fire tonite
gearing up for whole new future.

senseless is what you make of it
form giver, meaning bringer.

after all the waiting,all the leftovers
flung from racist scraps, this is reward .

  benevolent bone. slurp it up don't bury it again.
use it in that stone soup kettle on the hearth.

call a few friends back from digi world
or mobius book or faceless hood where ever they've gone.

tell em bring a carrot. or a stick .
we aint picky here.

he calls it gentle. he calls it sin.
she answers in tide's retreat
and something shiny.

o! my old fashioned blog

i would write an ode for you
but i'm not into it. you keep staying
here on the same page even though
you're all mobile now, if anyone
wanted to cruise thru the hood they could
read the first three sentences and decide
to continue or bail. which makes the hella
bad first three lines i always write
be all the more importanta. we couldn't want
any body else actually peering into the portal.
don't worry my sweet i will not monetize you
or embarrass you by rolling you
across groups you don't know. i understand how
sensitive you are, given the cave you've lived in
for coming up on ten years now and four
was it four? that sounds about right  lovers ago..
you've been here for me when i could find no one else.
and we've never had sex, no matter how intimate we got.
i think that probably is one reason we've lasted so long
that and the way we just don't seem to fight
even that time you were all, hey listen, no really
we could be BIG but i had the key and refused
to use it. you've always done right by me.
hope you don't mind this little webnode you occupy
it fits so well with what my diary would do.
xo
lynz

reams of sponsored

narrowing focus, hyperventalated masks
make triumphant appearance at protests
now let's have a law. there's no reason
for us to be less than we were then

unless you count aging. which i have to.
time collects its tolls even as i write.

read stuff from six years ago.
wow, i was on a roll. 2008 babee.
it seems when i hit fifty, the wall came down
the lights went out, the cliches moved in
and built a whole damn new wall.
fuck that. i wanna tear it down again.
but all i have left to build with is stale
rubble and bent piping. and i keep
losing all that whaddaya callit?
vocabulary
that i used to know. at the drop .
seems someone put out a sneak and destroy
directive. i'm the stooge gotta write it out.
insularity's the main culprit. i just
don't get out that much anymore
so the imagery of younger days
is the best i got. the pings of workshop
have silenced and i can't seem to get into
the new modality. so,
THIS is what all that aging talk is about.
shit man, and didn't i think i'd be
all about dancing with the void. seems
the void has two left feet. or juggles
like a three year old or just doesn't care
to dance, never did. i'm not buying it
but it's a sponsored message anyway.








you told me he said poetry
is way to make the day write.
paraphrasing as usual. talking
to phantoms as required. so i want
to make this day before i arrive.
when i look out my window i see
suburbia on the cheap. thank god
quietness is not a premium.
my small curve of the bayou
inhabited by mostly working stiffs
but next door marj has her fits
when the moon scars the sky.
she's stopped calling the cops since
the kids left though.
in a little while i'll interact
with traffic, punch a time clock,
cough my way through commerce
manufacturing itself. my day varies
in that it's always some problem to solve.
not unlike mostly life. so it feels real enough
but the canned laughter is set too loud


and here you come

fight fight fight

I left before you could call me cunt.
It's my house but you want to control
it, me, the world.

It's not your fault
I let all my friendships die
So that I have no where to
Go, half dressed as I am.
I couldn't take the time
To properly dress because
Contrary to your proclamation
I do not want to argue everyday.
So I waddle away from where
You are.

You and I have lasted longer
than I expected, shorter than I wish.
The expectation may be, as you claim,
Tinder to set the blaze.I have tried
To release it. But the inevitable
Eventually rises to the surface.
Characteristics you once admired
Or thought cute now incense.

I can change if I want to.
I did for my ex husband.
but you know,I changed back
To this for myself.
So, no.













The weekend pond it's quieter.
Less jet, less truck. A lone coot
Squeaks at the sky. Single crow call.
It lands on a branch beside me,
Barks again. I don't care,I tell
My ex.let him leave. You can be right
About that but I'm not ready to live
Under a bridge. My belly is too small.

grand resolutions

i'm not into them. as far as i can see
i rarely fulfill them and god knows one
resolution is to not behave likea politico
so why make promises i can't(/wont) keep?

it's the second day of a new year. i'm at my tippy tap machine
hoeing a poem on the page. that was gonna be hoping
but given my latest efforts, i'll keep the typo..synonym for shoveling.
shoveling associated with shit. shit as writing. mine.

but i'm not here to talk about my lacks or even a lactating moment.
nope, i'm here to eliminate lactose intolerance with my special formula.


a big blue recycle truck is outside. it lifts the neighbor's
childsize(comparitive) blue recycle bin to a dumpster riding
the vehicle's front. pats it on the belly a couple of times
till it burps, then sets it back down.  i needed to feed it
some construction materials i  but
the remodel waits for finishing touches. my bed
lounges in two spots while remodel takes its sweet vacation time.
the dressers went on a bender and spilled their contents
the day after christmas.
drawers are stacked like wise men, three by three
on the cedar chest. glad i don't have a tree to dismantle.
my mom always wanted it down on new years day.
any earlier or later was bad luck. i hope my
 evergreen branch/peacock feather/last year
ribbon arrangement doesn't qualify as tree
in her ghost eyes.  it's  pushed up against
an outside window,   blocked by the bedframe  bully .
  couch, chairs and coffee table feel crowded
it's been a week. like all good florida hosts
they'd like the guests to pack up, get offa my back.
i concur. the boyfriend is on the way home to finish the job
  bringing black eyed peas and gefilte fish
for good luck. now where the hell are we gonna store those?