it's august.
you'd never believe things
would slow down as much as they have
sunrise and sunset and summer as a tv hallucination
i couldn't tell you what day it is. honest.
at night a red rose moon blooms over the horizon
illuminating suburban orgies bellow. i pray for a retribution
maybe a flood of some sorts
(...monolithic tidal waves painting a tranquil blue
over two-car-garage houses...)
but no. yesterday,
toronto used up enough water to fill a stadium. there's nothing left.
the mayor considers banning all watering of front lawns.. the grass is sucking
us dry
but he hasn't the balls. too many votes to lose, all for just water
about to be privatized by american corporations soon anyways
in italy globalization protestors have dissipated, their blood
still smeared on the walls. sleeping hippies looking for the 60s
beaten to a bloody pulp
their cries are muted.
the prime minister owns 90% of the media.
my dad comes home from work a foaming mouthful of fury
starbucks is hiring, he says. get a job! will you stink around your basement
doing nothing for the rest of the summer?
i'm writing, i say.
i'm writing.
he has delayed our visit to israel
by a month. too hot. a gunman opens
fire in downtown tel aviv less than a block from where i was born
israelis live in a fear, demand blood
palestinians are choked with dirt, demand blood
the newspapers are pages
of angry faces.
CNN shows almost as much violence as HBO
that's what it boils down to around here: entertainment.
the heat sashaying in drunken ripples
tires everyone. i hear my father upstairs
his anger lulled by the blue flicker
of the television set.
i wonder if he's entertained
living in the spaces between the seconds
in a moment now
i'd shave off
my taste buds
crawl through
the hulls of glass
ghost galleons, i'd sip butterflies
off your fingertips, suck on
the fog of your whispers
i'd
eat
the
floorboards
dig us
an exit
poem
i don't know what to say:
my dog sleeps on its back.
a moth finds the fluidity of the kitchen windowpane
infinitely fascinating.
my little sister, plagued by bad dreams
comes to curdle within the embryo-warmth
of my basement until my parents return.
i have no answers.
strip away karma for pennies
and you find us, poets, Poets
dumbfounded as the next.
mountains of volumes of verse
dedicated to Our Eternal Love, this masquerade
of universal understanding
see also: BEAUTY
see also: FLOWER
see also: GUTTER
as if the wrinkled colors of the petals
or the murky bottom of a beer mug conceal
the ineffable truth, anxious and moist to be
untangled by clever words
as if the pangs of love hold
more truth than solitude
here i am, sarah, all self-pitying and prettied up for You
singing of those scarlet hearts and withered roses
you have loved me for not mentioning.
my friend julio recalls
childhood blowing brown leaves amongst
his father's vineyards in 1930s portugal-
he's convinced things were different
Back Then
my six years old self pauses, smiles at me
with sparkling eyes and scraped knees
peering from behind a pile of bricks
in some construction site baked
under an august israeli sun, assures me
that they were
i've been here for four years, julio for fourty
toronto still whispers 'stranger' at both of us
(..alienation like a stray dog that trails you home)
poets as cord-severed marionettes
love-smeared lips smiling at the dumbstrucking
uselessness of it all
ah and look at me, hear my voice, a proud representative
of the next generation of clueless poets that you so ache to belong to
hear my voice, the yip of coyotes
echoing back the questions with pretty metaphors
hear my coarse voice
hear it crack
still fresh out of puberty
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