Mesh Matched

Today I released 1500 lady bugs onto my garden. Shook them from their net bag like a salt shaker all over my plants. The little buggers went to town on the aphids! So I sat, rolled a smoke, and watched them crawl around getting away from each other. Spreading out. Finding out how big the world is. And eating something other than dead brothers and sisters ain’t half bad I imagine. Then the miraculous. One sets to fly. I see him buzzing his wings like a boy discovering his first erection. A wondrous new feature unfolding. Up he goes. Hovering at first. Then like an experienced pilot he flies in a large loop around the garden, slowly spiraling upward with each pass. The whole time I am cheering. Saying yes. Giving his voice over. “Oh my god! You guys! You have to try this! It is so much better than I ever imagined.” I exhale smoke and remember feeling like a bug in a mesh bag many times in my life, and then I smile at how well I can fly now.

Yggdrasil

I am the old Oak Tree on the hillside

with roots called parents

and branches called children

where friends are welcome to build nests

and lovers carve their names into my trunk

spending my days

living against the weather

reaching for the unreachable

Boxer Spots

and the clits get tickled to tip-toes

and how this story goes, is

a man once peddled petals to roses

slowly rolling the slip up

and holstered his gun

quick with his wit

and young with his tongue

at the end of which—shot stars— from simple nibbles

only the poets know of the lips to lips kiss in the middle

a place of quivers and arrows and bull’s-eyes

ached, he did, to bring some warmth to her cold thighs

feeling around in the dark

for the last piece of her spark

Gamble

Zing. Click. (laughter)

Zing. Click. (laughter)

Two gacked out gangsters play

woops-I-shot-myself-in-the-head

I leave because I don’t believe in luck

I need red vines and a cool breeze

too many fallen angels these days

littering the sides of drive-thrus

no boxes to fill in

no thesis to conclude to

not another round of orally ovulating the dead horse

fuck

pretend you’re not trying to say anything

and you slip up and say something anyway

does that belong to you?

lilacs always dry darker than their mother’s day brightness

we hung them in the windows, by their ankles in the spring sun,

White roses veining blue with food coloring in the vase

waiting patiently for some sort of solution

a solid if not stable way to end all this

happiness churning around inside me

this mass of unused happiness

mere fruit rotting on the counter

I blame Mother’s Art Supplies

pulverized not so much this time

this mind, a sack of meat, won’t work someday

I am in a hurry

to tell you all what happened

but new shit is happening

happening all the time

and one day

it will have all happened

all of it.

Happened.

and perhaps I am insane

why wouldn’t I be

I must write to find out

digging and rooting around in the soil

building books

cordless books for the cordless people

bring all your lead-based paint-chip children

suck some warm kool-aid down with me

and remember Chernobyl day

shaving our heads to look like cancer kids

handing out fliers on dying to the already dead

and enjoying the multicolored

pain filled rainbows

one last breath at a time

because I don’t believe in luck

Angry Angels

and I'm angry at myself for getting angry again

just another piss-off marring the day

kicking my house down

creepo-breathing into my ear

a moist voice slithers inside me 

while tied to the chair of resentment

wrangling the last stallions

from the endless prairie

here comes the wild fire

hands like old orange peels

shoveling coals into the blaze

rage as high art

strangled, gutted,

a broken-toothed angry anger

angering the angels of heaven

maybe that makes us even

one fingernail at a time

 

Community

Share with me

those blocks on carpeted preschool floors

where we sang “ashes to ashes” together

like we were all dying

share with me

how to fall down

scabs and scuffed knees

pain is a language we all speak

share with me

pieces of your timid tenderness

some kisses and some giggles

and so much of something else that has no name

share with me

the ear to your imagination

and sink yourself

into the stories of how we make it out of this

share with me

the warmth of your home

when the weather changes to misfortune

and let me thaw, there near the hearth

share with me

your vast patience

and I will show you

that not even the birds are born to flight

share with me

the simple things

when I grow hungry—break bread with me

and I will always nourish your soul

share with me

your suffering

and I will show you

my love