salacious / salubrious

the sentiments you sent to me are disturbing
though inadvertently, I am sure

you make a wish in your foreign mind and in the english language:
to see me again, all “sexy panty and golden hair”

I haven’t got the slightest inclination to
share these things with you

I want to keep it clean and distant,
a postcard unsold
free from the misfortune
of words

when you meant to convey
romance and the scent of autumn
you instead recognize my superior strength
and voluminous size
and pillowy softness

unintentionally tasteless twisted compliments

I received sleazy covetous intentions and was bound by
your hazy tethers of garbled muddy desire

translation
how unfair are the brutalities of language transformation

ten

one finger crooked to beckon or push on the button of the chin

two fingers to wear rings of falsity, and one to wear a ring of hope

one thumb drawn smearingly through charcoal and ash, then across faces, making warriors
or committing others to Wednesday’s penance and grief

one thumb held in the palm for safekeeping

one finger long and lean, speaking of bone and ceremony

two fingers
catching up a thread
between them

one finger stuck in the mouth of the past
feeling the wet jagged spaces within

friction

heat can be produced
simply from the act of rubbing two things
against each other

anemone

whatever he said, it stuck
a blob of blackberry jam, just like that.
it’s always like that, in the beginning
in the beginning of everything
my brain is flat and wide open, begging
to be etched and stained,
and then
after a period, it folds up small and tight
like a note waiting to be passed. no more room
for words, however clever they may be. but
like I said—at first, he left vermillion splatters and
magenta smears, a cocktail of fantasy distorted
like a red tide of dangerous passion
all across my bleary (but appreciative) senses. and
now although I have passed, like an anemone, into the
epoch of closed tendrils
the interior lights up with a glow of warmth
like a love note
written on the palm of a closed fist

p's and q's

face creased
lips small like a cat’s ass
all for the sake of concentration
all for the art of beatification

send your words up
ask for
love/money/luck/patience to rain down
or don’t ask for anything at all

prayer is the same all over the world
the personal twist is
whether you commonly call up to ask
or to say “thank you”

what is it

whatever have we here
unreliable fullness of smile
i want to rest my head on the heart of
the heart of the world
i want the biggest reality to be
the fullness
of me

finished

August goes blowing by, so much cotton candy in the wind
warm air and hot sweet breath mixing to syrup
leaves drying and adding orange music to black branches reaching up
to the gypsy skies, indigo and ochre

my mind is turning to the tune of the sweeping
of the dust on the sundeck, the past days all glory and no substance
leaving nothing but dry granules and a cocked ear

I’m ready for September to launch