Practical Magic

There is a witch living in my neighborhood.

I don't know the house she lives in

but I can hear her chanting to the full moon;

casting spells into the darkness.

Perhaps the witch is the cat lady

living down the street,

surrounding herself with claws

and inviting ivy onto her gables.

But she keeps her words to herself,

and only stares blankly out to the street.

Maybe she's my next door neighbor,

complaining of sleepless nights

as she fetches her mail

in her pink fuzzy slippers every morning.

Does she lose her sleep

by finding herself in the backyard

muttering pagan rituals under the stars?

But the witch's voice

is not coated in catnip and smoke,

she does not sound like sleep deprivation,

only velvet,

pillow murmurs and cool comforter cloud dreams.

Sometimes she whispers in my window,

wisdom leaking through the screen,

saying things like,

"Do your homework, girly."

And I know she's right,

but still I sit at my desk,

night after night,

drawing hearts

around the names of each my beloveds.

The first time she did this,

I was so startled,

I ripped the paper in half!

And I knew in that moment,

that boy would never be the same.

Young girls are given chains and leashes

without knowing how to use them.

And even my tortured ignorant mouth has uttered the words "Boys are puppies that need to be trained."

But we need to learn to soften the whipcrack of our tongues and loosen the collar around their necks.

Young men's hearts are such fragile things:

made of

china,

porcelain,

venetian glass.

waiting to be broken

--asking to be broken.

But I can't help but wonder,

who at such a young age

asks for that kind of pain?

Having been wrapped in poison arms

and my ears licked by silver tongues,

I am no stranger

to the incidental invasion

of a trickster practicing his sport.

She knows that we all have tricks of our own trade,

waiting to test them out on any innocent passing our front door.

We're hoping if we shoot the right game that they'll stay for dinner.

There have been countless nights that I have spent

coughing my own ceramic beat up into someone else's hands,

knowing down to my bones

that the only protection for it

would be solitude.

I have been the duct tape girl,

trying to piece together each eggshell frame,

to put those damn horses and men to shame,

even when those around me insist I am just a peasant.

Still, I've tried to untangle those mangled clockwork pulses

without understanding I am wearing the same uniform

as the ones that carry a cat and nine tails

and have cramped cage waiting in their basement.

Spinning a cradle to trap those who have been hurt

makes for a lazy hunter

and simply re-opens any poorly sealed wounds.

Instead, I turn to the witch's words,

insisting that weaving a hammock for broken bones to heal

might leave enough space to quell the bared teeth.

Some nights, I whisper back to her,

"Does this make my ass look fat?"

But mostly questions about the heavens

and the chatter of animals and spirits.

She always answers with compassion,

icing bruises and patching up misunderstanding.

I asked her once,

after I heard her final prayer

why she prays to the moon

if the man in there

looks so sad

and she answered,

"You would be sad too

if embracing your closest companion

would kill millions."

Originally performed on 3/28/11

Originally written on 2/24/2011

Originally slammed on....

Backdraft

I read this less than an hour after it's completion. It wrote itself, mostly.

The fireman's wife will tell you,
my limbs were on fire the night we met.
dancing in the breeze
and licking the air
with a raging passion
that set your hands in casts for weeks.

My skin singed a new trail in your mind,
a path you walked carelessly
with no other shock than the delight

of setting your newly charred feet

on the earth that

would soon foster seeds for another wild disaster.

My eyes filled with a blaze,
an eruption of hue
so brilliant
that I swore you
were the cause for my blindness.

My mouth sparked with every breath.
I could only speak in verse for the months
that we traced each other's flesh suits,
mapping out possible futures
and fantasies
that came to suffocate
in the smoke rising between us.

An unlined chimney is the difference
between a cosy living room
and a devastating heap of rubble.
When I promised to burn for you,
I did not expect it to be an everlasting smolder,
a pile of lumber,
or a wisp of ash floating across the sky.

I made a promise to the cold brick walls,
with the hope of wrapping myself around you,
enfolding you safely from your own consuming flame.

But you never hear the ticking

inside the chamber-head of a murderer,

claiming it was all in the heat of the moment

as the world world caved in.

We had no way of knowing that cotton sheets

and terrycloth could catch so quickly,

and we were fools for even thinking they wouldn't.

The fireman's wife will tell you,

that no room is safe.

There is always a fiesty stove,

a zealous fireplace,

or an over-working furnace.

Don't get heated floors, your convenience could end you.

Originally performed 12/23/10
Originally written on 12/23/10

Don't Buy the Hype

Remove the words from this sentence

and you'll uncover an ego the size of a pea

wearing the disguise of a Texas ranger.

Dig deeper,

burrow through the suffocating desert of rhyme and logic,

undo barbeque chicken smoke and curly fries,

slip past the beer soggen falls

and under the red clay chatter you will find me

--windchimes of unnoticed song,

hovering gulls of forgotten sky,

the quiet memory of a small playground

you never got to discover.

The little workbook you've followed this way

reminds the reader to pile the dirt on the side,

to be mindful that it does not slide down,

enter your throat or clog your vision,

lest you find this path a graveyard for your valiant efforts

of unwrapping the heart of that human girl.

Remove the aviator sunglasses from this face

and you'll find eyes that want to suck you in

and spit you back out at the next person like bullets,

cartoon lashes that beg for affection

and irises that desire the freedom of flight.

Push past the leather jacket armor and the denim barricade

and brush the sleep away from that overtired, under-whelmed face.

Tell those lips you've got a story to tell this time,

that it's an original-- a word-of-mouth-piece you're trying to restart,

about a girl in a room wearing a shirt

that says in bold green letters,

"I'd rather be writing/saving the world/wearing my superhero costume."

You're trained to believe that you are important.

Remove the you from that lesson

...and you have a grammatically incomplete sentence.

Your bowels are frightened,

your lungs are gumming up,

your hands are forgetting how to push your body from the bed

--and yet you've convinced yourself that you are planning an escape.

If you want to leave,

forget that you've heard this story or that song a million times before

and instead seek out new, stranger ones.

Get out of bed with a jump

and eat breakfast with the fervor of the hunt.

Sweep away the fluffed up pillows.

Stop watching your back when you walk down the street.

Quit defending the territory you haven't earned.

Remember that this life is not about safety.

Your id wants to always be coddled

but your superego wants fame

and no place is safe when you're famous.

Originally performed on 6/29/11

Originally written on 6/30/2011

My 30/30

April is National Poetry Month and folks in the pomeing community (I believe their called "poets" or something.) honor this wondrous month by writing a poem every day. That can't be tough, right? ...right?

If you really asked that second "right?" then only two things could be true. 1- You don't know many poets, do you? or 2- You don't know me very well yet.

T'any rate, 30 poems in 30 days is basically the poets' opportunity to show off good work, jerk off non-sexually, have fun procrastinating, cry and commiserate over poor writing and generally wonder how the hell we manage to ever write anything good, capture excellent brain farts in a jar and stink up a whole bunch of pages. We get to share (or not) what happens in our heads before we really get a chance to refine it. For me, it is actually the hardest part of the creative process--writing regardless of the possible result.

I considered making another blogspot or even another tumblr, but I'm already scattering my thoughts around as it is. I've decided, instead, to make this the home of my 30 poems for the month of April. Not the whole blog, but just this ONE entry. I've been a bit behind with typing up work and showing it (fuck it, I'll be honest, I'm doubling up for 10 days because I was busy staring at my toes for the first week) so I'll be updating this as much as I can with links to the various locations of my vile 30 poems.

Imagine it as an Easter Egg Hunt that you didn't even have to work for:

1/30--Angels and Demons

2/30--The Coffeeshop

3/30--Oh, The Places You'll Go

4/30--Oh God, What On Earth Is My Head All About?

5/30--Astral Projection

6/30--Sorry This Isn't a Happier Poem.

7/30--Escapism

8/30--Grow up already.

9/30--Mountain Goat

10/30--Good Ole Days

11/30--Pen and Parchment

12/30--All is Fair...

13/30--The Roaring, Sore-ing 1920's

14/30--Beat Movements

15/30--Icarus

16/30--Lovable Fuck-Ups

17/30--Stripped

PS--Yes, I know it says "pomeing". No, it is not a misspelling.

oh no, a list poem!

the house that dad built

or

i wish i'd known what i inherted

1.

it starts with a pinhole.

the walls have been silvery smooth since we moved in

and we'd never marked anything up

but there it was,

barely small enough for a thumbtack.

she stared at it,

studying the dark spot with the precision of a calligrapher noting a blot on parchment.

she reached her hand out,

as though to smear ink.

i asked her what was wrong

and she replied, "there's a bug on the wall."

before scuttling away.

2.

the next day

i found her poking her finger into the wall

the space large enough now

to fit double the radius of her pointer.

when i asked her what she was doing,

she turned suddenly, wide-eyed,

lip folded under her upper teeth,

then yanked her hand to her side

and stormed off.

3.

i awoke and found her sleeping soundly in her room.

i padded down the stairs

and found a large crooked crack

leading from the hole to the top of the doorway.

i paused for a moment,

mourning the loss of the glassy finish,

but thought nothing of it after i walked away.

4.

the following afternoon,

while frying onions

and pouring hollandaise over asparagras,

i heard a crash!

followed by a rattle...that may have been in my teeth.

i simply stopped,

and turned to see the door,

defeated, laying on the floor.

and she stood on the other side of the threshold,

hands clamped to her side,

lips squeezed together,

no doubt holding back something of a shout.

her gaze was fixed on the spectacle

as though just watching

would place the plank back on its hinges.

as her eyes slid over to me, she simply muttered,

"i--i--i d-d-didn't mean t'd-do i-it."

before she hugged herself and ran upstairs.

5.

we walked past the fallen door on our way to breakfast.

we weren't sure if we should try to put it back

or leave it,

like a trophy of confusing domestic horror

or the unwanted gift the cat brought home.

it isn't an elephant in the room

if we were able to interact with it,

right?

i noted, that evening,

how she was now tracing her hand

along the twisted spine of the old frame,

from the now quarter-sized gap in the wall

across the meandering rift that worked

down and across to the floor.

she seemed to coo, and breathe secrets into the house,

the kind of talk that a bladesmith saves only for his forge and steel.

6.

just this past monday

as i went up to bed,

i found a large plastic bag

huddled next to the front door.

as though anything this week could get any stranger,

it drew me in until i had no choice but to peek inside.

the contents might've been curiouser than my own desire to view them,

my vision was filled with the sight of a tawdry estate.

she'd managed to collect

a fraying toothbrush

three t-shirts

a small bag of grease paints

five cds without jewel cases

a small box filled with various cigarettes

a hair dryer

and one sad looking teddy-bear.

i blinked a few times

in the pathetic hope

that it might make something useful appear.

instead, i turned to face the wall,

the incision was still growing,

creeping up the doorway

and crawling along the ceiling

with the determination of a undiscovered cancer.

7.

when i awoke, i was already running.

this was the day.

it was more than a crash

a boom

or a silent itch

stretching slowly into a room.

i found her,

silently screaming in a corner,

knees to her chest,

hair in her eyes,

nails clawing at her own feet and arms.

i shook her,

shaking with the house,

shaking in my voice

and in my head,

she was already as trashed as the walls around us.

her words were farther away than needed.

she tried pawing at the floor,

picking at the paint chips falling past her shoulders,

asking me to tell people

that she would have done it differently,

that she wasn't always like this.

it wasn't her fault, she tried,

but she didn't mean to make it so bad.

when i told her we had to leave,

only otherworldly moans escaped her,

a harpy cry punctuated by

"i don't know what to do"

"why is this happening to me?"

and the worst:

"please don't make me go."

it was then that the kitchen unleashed a roar

Lyricum Dentata

Last night I did a showcase at Zebu in Red Bank, NJ with three other lovely ladies: Ren Pomrink, Rene Rogers and MaryCae Vignolini.

We call ourselves Lyricum Dentata -- Poets with a Bite.

My portion of the set is listed (with links!) as follows:

• Opening Poem: Celebration
• Dream Job
• Encounter.
• Katrina
• Practical Magic

Enjoy!

The Highway

There's an accident on this highway every two miles. There's a mournful but light song playing on the radio and a matching smile on your face as we pass each one. The flames licking the sky and the frantic eyes searching the road give you a sick satisfaction. As if you're the one that caused them.

This is an everyday event as we head toward our not-so-final destination. The reflection in your glasses blocks out any understanding someone might reach. You shine back a cruel, malicious smirk carved into your mouth as you push your foot down on the gas pedal and switch lanes. I don't even try to look into your eyes anymore.

There's a disaster on every exit this time of year. you signal to the fast lane as if we were headed somewhere important and cut off the faster car behind us. The sun is blasting us with dying rays from behind the trees making a blurry sunset rainbow in the clouds. Your wheels hit the pavement with such speed the dashes become complete lines and I wonder if I'm just being overexposed.

With your hands locked onto the wheel, you murmur for me to turn up the music--it's your favorite song. I lean foward against the wind and bitterly turn the dial. I glare at you with your simple, free smile. I look at the cracks on the windows and remember the day you knocked them out because you were going to live in some desperately wonderful place. I wonder if you'll ever leave the state.


Originally performed for the slam on 3/10/11

Originally written on 7/10/05