Some Poems by Me

The poetry here ranges back to 1995 or so (Bridge at the Canal, On Canada Hill). I don't write many any more. When I was married I wrote alot as a way to reconcile myself to reality or out of reality. I wasn't happy in my marriage and tried to see it another way that could help me survive, because I loved my children so much, and I really did want to love my husband. We were burdened by alcoholism, but I worried that my unhappiness was actually due to craziness, and that I needed my craziness to make art, two myths to drink by and drive myself crazy with.

The marriage ended and released some of the very angry poems you will encounter here. My best stuff I think was near the end of the marriage. I could create a suspended palace in the air with the ideas of my poems and keep it afloat with great effort and this let me escape the mess! Like in "Sunday Study" I was in love with my creations both children and art, but ultimately would "hollow out" my art for the sake of my children. 

I haven't written so much of late. "Genesis" being the very latest, followed by "Meamerican" and "Ode to a Shopping Cart" and a bunch of dog poems. I do love "meamerican" and there is a sculpture to go with it that I call "BTU SLUT".

My writing recently has been all on this website as I document Nina's Nook and my other little obsessions. I have been fortunate to create the palace of effort in a three dimensional way as it manifests in the ode to joy called Nina's Nook. Nothing angry about it at all, and finally i celebrate my madness without worries! (but, still, some welbutrin...).

Genesis: TFMA

It was a town of gravel and greed

Of rape-cut logs weeping sap into the river

Of Unholy rollers and whiskey drinkers and rollicking money men

Of law breakers and lone wolves and loan sharks

Poking their great sticks into the gyre

Spewing their spunk against the shore.

It was a town of machines

fighting sleep until dawn with a hungry hohum

churning time into dollars,

chumming dollars into time.

It was a town of  paychecks and strangers and honky tonk patrons

Of paper and cotton and metal,

 Bright pennies, sore losers, and children

Of Buckles and shit smears and liquor,

Of lovers and shovels and death.

It was a town of

suckers and sinners greedily milked

By those who were assholes by name and date and nature,

It was a town of the faithful and fickle, fighting and

clawing at their blood brimming eyes

 far from eden and hard of hearing,

silently, blindly, anonymously

sliding through the sluice gate of the 20th century.

It was a town that was randy and  red cheeked,

Burnished with drinking and dancing

its skirts hitched up with splinters

heels kicking dandelions and dirt

in the alleyways.

It was a town that was female and horny with the carress of trowels

 in brick crotches

And hungry and female under the gliding mouths of fish.

snacking on moss and stone and

female with its cascade of slick hope and sweet tricks.

The town was a big prick

turgid at the head waters,  ballsy with investors

 Jerked off  by trains and trolleys and

Time pieces, laughing, smashed,

And coming hard under the hammering

of 16 hour work days.

Welbutrin

I’m taking little purple pills. I keep

them in a sky blue glass box by the sink

Sometimes I push and push

(good mother, food mother)

but I can’t get out

of this house.

I am scraping these walls,

shaving them, smoothing them

blank as a page and ripe as stone

looking for a stinging cut,

a word, the force behind some hand

that strikes finalities.

I am not a good housekeeper.

flour moths

fly out of the cupboards.

I throw away the oyster crackers:

larvae are squirming in each hexagon

hollowed out by tiny mouths

to hold their young.

I’ve thrown away a lot of food

but I‘ve never gotten rid of them.

I  scrunch scrunch

inside the box.

The wall is sky cold

my thinking crinkles

as this blue slides in and

makes a static white of it.

I don’t miss a thing.

I’m taking little purple pills. I keep

them in a sky blue glass box by the sink

The Cure

           When you are nuzzle-hupfing my neck

I try not to think about the wild

and forbidden things that you have tasted:

the blood memory behind your dark eyes;

the deep secrets of the soil

translated huff by huff into the moist

slits of your nose.

I surrender to your rasp as it

tastes the grooves of my face,

imagining the oils of my industrial,

combustive day lapped

up metallic on your tongue.

Your eyes glaze with the rhythm

and intensity of your  effort

to tame and detoxify me, and

I obediently fall into your dumb darkness

of dust and dog pee and wind-borne gossip.

You take me to the entrance of innocent sleep

and teach me the beast language

in which suffering is cured by more suffering,

while civilization whines and howls,

indecipherable and distant

between the bellies of the hills.

Schnitzel

In the sungold, dusty,

Demoted afternoon

I let you roam

Nosing each leaf,

Curiously dappled

Like you

Light and dark

Your bouncing run--

Wonderful you!

Brings you no closer

To rustles and rainbows

Than I

In my wish to fasten

Your sinuous dash

In my mind.

O weinerdog!

You give me free smiles.