This collection was compiled between 2018 and 2021. I suppose the writing has changed since then but I like the noise these years made on their way out. I thought I was writing about the world. Turns out I was mostly writing about learning how to write. Though, maybe, not entirely.
First Space: Compathy
Second Space: Geitonia
Third Space: Plays of Agape
Fourth Space: Solar Solaces
First Space: Compathy
I
cheap scratched records roar from after hour bars
red haired waitresses sing you the specials with a smile and a sadness so still you can kiss it
another lover cracks his shell
spilling onto the canvas the blood of nighthawks and orgies
never-ending gutters filled with wonderland
and at the very bottom, a train that never stops
Keys dangling from the hands of seven different people three steps away from their front doors
a deck of cards spread out on a table in the middle of a road where cars line up to play
the immense pleasure of a nurturing poem from a mother s breast
never-ending sorrow turned into an angry ode to the dead
beauty rises from the stomach breathed out by the armies of melancholia and futility
beneath the gates of truth a page buried deep unwritten, unread
the song of disillusionment, a five act play on despair
II
Candid beauty from an underage hooker’s naivety
A petal-less rose in a dark midnight tunnel
(Have you ever seen a petal-less rose?)
Candid verses from a dirty drunken crack-head
Chopped off fingers of a man who s grasp of sensibility is stronger than that of his bottle
are you still dancin’ baby
swiftly, happy, smiling and snarling
I’ll watch you carefully and prepare us a couple of drinks
Your lips were never so tempting, dewy, honeyed
You parted them and I stopped speaking waiting in anticipation to see them move
Death in Lisbon,
tantalising snarling, sensual animals
subliminal messages in-between crooked teeth
a hidden kiss, sinful, beautiful
Forever trapped in a royal bal of evil creatures
Never piercing to the marrow
Bubblegum popping Leah
Leah or was it Layla, Lily..
My little Lilly of the valley,
Half naked, Half smiling, Half a woman
almost like cannibals
naked, hungry, mesmerized with each other and ourselves
every other minute our eyes would go dead to let our souls come out and press against our
cheeks
We hear hourly bombs go off
good thing, now we have something to talk about
Immigration, defecation, erotic anticipation
stab all sensible hearts, bite down on sense ’till all taste is sucked away
III
Blandly Leah
walked away from the helm
Walked naked letting go of contempt
Wake at noon, shake your regrets from your head, the sun melts down on you from it’s highest peak,
solar noon, high noon, noon.
Burning hungover cheeks from it’s meridian
And when asked why she never understood what they meant
She saw demons and said Kaddish to the dead
She meditated and loved what should never be loved
Oppressed but happy, blandly, Leah walked away.
Melodic melodic
Frantically through the walls that hold us in
the sound of a million times obscene waltz of madness, hysteria…beauty!
beauty is obscene, beauty is holy
holiness is obscene and obscenity is holy
Leah, a soul to love, Leah a horned Angel, a demon, a personified sensation
under the sun she’d be like a Tibetan monk grazing at eternity’s paw
On warm nights she d feel like an eagle sitting on a neon sign outside a bar
Whenever it rained her soul would freeze out of her body and whistle away carelessly,
Mephistophically
And when she died, she laughed, just like a jester at all the clowns, cows and cursed of the earth
that would never know real beauty if it dressed in furs
IV
My star has died
Put out on an ashtray like a cigarette
squashed bent and rubbed
watered down like all unimportant things
blinded in the machinery of night
unwilling to contemplate what they won t let us forget
My star is dead; stripped tucked and lost
into a bed that isn’t her own
V
My head hurts when it rains
Laced wire falls down from the sky and grabs onto my ears for twenty four hours
but twenty four hours have gone by and the rain hasn’t stopped
the sky isn’t cloudy and rowdy’s the rain beneath my feet
Perhaps it’s you, perhaps its me
or perhaps there’s nothing left to say you see
but admit that it only rains when my head hurts and not that my head hurts when it rains
Second Space: Geitonia
I
On the lowbrow you got your tenement tenants with their tenement smiles
And then the birds
pigeons
with their euphoric melodramas heard twice over before noon
low class replica lovers whose hearts all eventually melt into constellations of “fuck” that pile up
at their doorstep.
And the hummingbirds, God they’re beautiful
but like doe eyes they make you trick yourself into passion
“Give me time” but after all these years, time is on a swing.
Time is on my side. My quiet motions could kill the Birdy on that old tenement porch.
I sure hope so cause it’s got the quietest motion of them all.
II
I feel alone with the gods
It’s a slow day
but it’s better to drink.
Isolation is a gift
moving me into a slow night
giving me time
cocooning me into perfect laughter.
III
There’s a hummingbird that visits me every morning
Red, green, yellow
an apple
she’s young
with a smile that catches you off guard
She nevers sings the same song
She never sings like a bird
Birdy
Birdy sings with baby blue eyes
– scourge window panes
– whiplash
I saw a hug to replicate and held her like some Brando impersonator
– tribal
We walked down echoing whatever we could so it would be alright
and the raindrops missed us
Third Space: Plays of Agape
I
I lie naked on a hot tin roof
I lie
I lie
I lie
You let me act
I let you bleed your looks
I hid my heartstrings in my drink
And I was someone good.
II
I hold a gun up to infinity with you on the other end
I wait
You wait
What mattered in the end?
That I shot? That you stood?
We wait some more
It was all pretend when he was gone
Now he’s gone.
III
I wish to weep
to let you out from under my skin
but I can’t
I give in too easily
like you, I killed the things I love
dumbfounded that you already knew
but I did it openly
IV
he folded up a paper heart and used it on her
She wasn’t it but he didn’t care
As long as there’s paper, there’ll be hearts
Let’s set fire to it
And build statues out of the ashes
It isn’t much but it’ll be closer to it than she ever was.
Fourth Space: Solar Solaces
I
I sobbed like a little girl last night
and I felt such affection for your breast behind my head
and your lap and your hand
and in spite of myself, I held on
kissed your hand, your lap, and your breast
II
I warble at your window
the sun in mind
a few moments ago I held your hand to bed
and I thought to myself “that’s all there is to it”
III
My mother had a heart-shaped womb
she kissed my eyelids when I cried
she always held me with velvet hands
and I wasn’t allowed to know they weren’t real
IV
I tucked jazz and warmth into her blanket and hid her from the light and the darkness. I thought she was crying.
I came in but when I found her behind a drink her eyes were dry and bright.
She was laughing with her dimples and each crease on her face
then behind her lines I saw her with
the jazz and the warmth and we were too high not to share it.
V
Tuesday night in the world.
I mix up smokes between worlds, between tenants, dear friends, jumping from apartments on each side of town
airing out poetry, psychology and philosophy
like ingredients from a box of holies
wholly influenced, attached to mystery and curiosity
my curiosity
my need for something other
an intuition maybe
an image of fragmented something stringed together
like a necklace
I air it out, I air it out
Highly approachable
in Sam Vale’s layered apartment
fragments of his mother’s identity and multiple others spread like nostalgia for a culture
never mastered like all others
attempted at multiple tries
disobedient to ourselves in search for others’ attempts at new curiosities
always curiosities, secret heroes of this poem
Bearded heavenly Ginsberg
see us not in harmony with it
but in the harmony it is in with herself, itself, ourselves
I look up at Sam, second secret hero of this poem and I think of all of what we miss in a moment when present is no longer holdable
and understand why I hold it like a baby
VI
I am a repetition of myself
not chronological or routine
am I not supposed to be the repetition of my actions…
there’s no such thing
I’m a repetition of something that nevers repeats itself
a repetition of actions passing chaotically, bowing to order
a single note suffices for another to repeat after it
Here; whether I repeat after it or it repeats after me – each morning, something new – It is as I am and I as it is : Resplendent
