Your Smile

Your smile is a wound.

Your smile is a ragged, jagged pus filled thing
a rupturing boil that squirts disease into my stripped nerves
and infects my brain
and sends me reeling in a Amazonian malarial deliruim
until I feel like bending over and puking
on my shoes.

I walk by your smile every day
sometimes four times a day
sometime five
sometimes more
and each time you turn your head
and the bottom half of your face aviserates
like severly chapped skin
it takes me back

to the night it was just me and you
and ten gallons of sweat.
The night we invented electricity and took turns shocking each other
until we were both shivering,
slick like we were turned inside out
like raw and tortured children giggling
on that majestic slip and slide that was your bed
a slip and slide of pornographic proportions
and you know, I am still sliding because
I don't remember you smiling
at all.

I walk by your smile every day
sometimes four times a day
sometimes five
sometimes more
but the one night I can't forget
I don't remember
you smiling
at all
that night I gorged myself at your fleshy feast
and drowned myself in your oceans
I don't remember you smiling

maybe I just didn't look up at the right time
maybe I just wasn't that good

Your smile is a wound.
Your smile is the scab I can't keep from picking
the blister on the webbing of my thumb and index finger
I just can't keep from pressing with my nail
trying to pop but hoping it doesn't
your smile is the canker sore on the inside of my mouth
I just can't keep from tongueing
hey I didn't get this from you did I?

Your smile is a wound
Your smile is a ragged, jagged pus filled thing that drenches me
like a germ ridden kamakazi sneeze
Your smile is the mad love wink of a rabid horse's vagina
and ya know I used to really like horses
Your smile is my terminal illness
and every day
sometimes four times a day
sometime five
always more
I die
slower and slower

and slower and soon I will be finally gone
and I can't fucking wait
because at my funeral Michael Bolton is going
to sing a really sad song about your smile
and I hope he has bronchitis so his voice
scratches and tears at every single word
and I want my funeral to be attended only by
heroin addicts and poets
because they understand how it feels
to be ravaged by wounds you can't do without
and you hope will never heal.



Dance

Last night I dreamed
I was woven tightly safe
into the dreadlocks
of a beautiful tattooed sunskinned girl
smooth contours of skin and angles of beads
playing light at her temple
it was so simple
to be carried easily through wind
through sun through rain
so without effort
so light
her eyes misty with the smell of rain and the coming
of night
her eyes alive with children
full skirt of flowers dancing
hands and trees and grass waving in fields
the smell of rain the coming of rain in fields
the coming of rain in her eyes
alive

There was a tattoo
bright yellow sun
against her spine spindling fire like fingertips
I was reborn in the ink
pressed deep into her skin
there were no wrinkles in time or skin
there against the hollow beneath her chin
were secret places I explored
and there was no danger
in rings of metal in her lips or navel
exposed and peeking
there was no danger of walking too
slowly
climbing downhill out of breath
being covered by the thin blanket of age
shivering beneath the weight of cold eventual _____
there was no danger in being exposed
or asleep
or burning
burning
burning
into ashes

I awoke to work
the reality of whistling tuneless tires on
pavement
the unseasonable stoic hands
one second one minute one hour into the next
crashing together a run-on sentence
with no poetics
cadence of footsteps on office tile struggling
one thundering enormous unhealthy heartbeat
stand up!
take your seats!
all together now! orchestrating
the diabolic symphony of drones
let me not join the nonrhythm
of drones of drones
of hands releasing hands to clutch
cell phones
leaving warmth for midnight liasions
with car alarms
let me not waste the dewy grass with golf shoes
let me not press my body into middle age
crush my spent years into
the driver's port of sport utility vehicles.
let me not spend one moment, one single solitary moment
comparison shopping for cemetary plots
if I lose my way on this road or any other
let me not find it by jogging
bent into knots
bent into knots
hoping and praying my last breaths
are prepaid

let me not unravel
leave me safely woven in dreams and dreadlocks
carried by skin and ink into fields
where hands and trees and grass and children
eagerly await the smell of rain
the coming of rain



Jesters of Emperor Ego

We are all pretenders
anonymous authors
fabricating fictions written
in the obscure language of eyes
smiles and handshakes
this is life- hidden under an
overcoat like an embezzled book
from a high school library
rip the cover and plagiarize a page
we are all guilty of giving away
stolen goods

then demanding them back.
I went to buy new clothes
for the Emperor Ego
he drives a fast car and lives fast
he wears a suit sewn from continuous sex
wouldn't be caught dead in t-shirt and jeans
He gets all the chicks
He gave me eyes a smile and a handshake
He gave me a feel good thank you
He gave me a drink of self-esteem wine
and a mirror that captures someone else's image
I asked if I could be his administrative assistant
he said no

but I could be his jester
Take out your heart and blow on it like a candle
Take out your mind and see if it flies away
If you love something set it free, if it comes back
to you, set it free again, then hide so it can't find you
Take out your dick and go fishing
see if anything bites
if you don't make a catch put it away
you can't go walking around with your dick hanging out
it's illegal

and someone may see who you really are.
Write your life on foreheads; use a sharpie
in big black block letters so no one will forget
Fold origami into the shape of flirtations
Jump on one polished foot then the other,
carry your life like a shotgun loaded
with pop flags and impress the Emperor
with a Pulitzer prize winning performance
guaranteed a free admission to first person conversations
and all hearts too empty
to seek truth hidden under an overcoat.