Green Boxes

Have you ever seen a poet perform
who turns the lights on for you?
her words laid out as a copper conductor
hot to ground voltages on a an inductor

the world is languid
therefore the artist exists
arc to my soul a high voltage
on the summer nights
          could you hear the transformer
          humming in our suburban back yards?
          I too, write poetry, drunk, beneath the stars

she uses electricity like a goddess
humming transformers in their green boxes

An Act of Worship

Maybe another time
Another place
I would've kissed every side
Of your face

I step with the intrepid
Love never unrequited
I'm a god among the insipid
Flavor of stars among the timid

It's only demons that dragged me here
They're having me over for tea and conversation
Such atheism needs no introduction
Like white fingernail tips they know well the art of seduction

And play vinyl records to dance to
sing romance to
Push me into a corner
And recite Shakespeare and Homer

A dark room with no pictures
Will be the death of me
A small table for three
A chair, red walls, and a cup of tea

Let the torture commence with dignity
My friend let the hairs on your head
Stand in solemnity
We don't need whips and chains, conversation is enough to hold my head under the
          running water basin that started innocently enough because your secrets are
          buried deep but mine are an open wound for all to see so keep me back in this
          low lit corner with demons and torture and work me like you had worked last
          summer the stalks fell down due to the heat, an act of worship to the coming
          storms.

Dear, "The Universe" (personified) 

You were supposed to hold diamonds for me
at the end of a star-studded sky
thrown like sand into the darkness of the sea
and every grain eventually falls, no matter the strength of the wind

and we're drowning when we hit the waves
no salvation from the monastic or sage
midnight seas are like open graves
I too, sing rage

like Achilles in flames

You were supposed to give me sweet-honey bliss
but you gave me the bitterness of mind-numbing drink as a new friend
some say it comes as the wind and who
knows maybe it's honey and salt
but the salt has become bland
and tastes like dirt or sand

and dirt or sand is all I now have
no gifts or wine; Dionysus has died
and no one remembers but cold statues
stripped to white, made bare by time and tell me, oh muse

of Odysseus and the sea

You were supposed to be something greater
than all the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, the Tao or Christianity
laden in gold and smoke billowing up towards the sky, but now all is dark,
those stars once beheld more than anything I've ever known, they were full of magic and
we remembered them on a summer night, didn't we?

I was supposed to cocoon then become something new, but am I not just dying over again?

Something new to learn
might seem palatable
like the smell of school
linoleum floors and steel lockers

Can you tell me what a kiss was like?
Can you tell me what a day on bicycle with friends meant to you?

Those same green pines had transformed from trees we climbed in our youth
Into an escape from police in our teenage years

We didn't know it at the time but
Something was coming
to divide us
insufferably

A Shame

Did you know, as I did, that it was only instinct, darling?

and you worked it like magic

but so did I

I was

quiet, yet firm

kind and direct

my voice, solid and bold

and I didn't even have to smile

but you sure did 

sugar brown eyes 

I could've literally dived

right in

hip-width of a Greek goddess and you lifted your arms, tossed your hair and revealed the 

          flesh complimenting them

Well, we certainly know how to appeal to our base instincts, now don't we, darling?

Do you even know what the fuck

kind of dust you are kicking up?

I could fall beneath your palisades

and worship your beauty for days

and nights the two of us would do

we would drink of the rose 

and slice off the moon

I swear to the gods and every living thing 

our animal desires would light holy temple fires

a Dionysian cult would be revived

in an instant bringing all the fertility gods back to life  

but here's the thing

In a moment I walked away

went to the restroom to wash my face

and look in the mirror to see

my heart and brain

and they were completely blank

I mean, literally 

nothing, babe!

It's a goddamn shame 

Demons

My demons are a bit more dignified
They wear Dolce & Gabbana ties
They'll sit down with me
over a cup of tea
and they have such nice stories, which mostly begin about how this wonderful love, this
           dear spirit, was someone different, entirely. And the funny thing is, this corrupt,
           ignoble spirit of a person I met, they tell me, should be treated angelically. This
           is their joke and this is where they like to keep me.

Such charming advice for the bad, who turns to me and laughs

My demons wear clean, Italian shoes
and hand-tailored Italian suits
The Indigenous woman gave me medicine
The monk offered me medicine, too
yet I simply refuse, appealed to by a beautiful glass of whiskey and I have 1.75 more liters
          on top of the fridge
I pushed the Indigenous woman away and to the monk, I explained everything that my
          demons had to say
I was standing at confession and suddenly felt faint
and they smiled
When the monk gave me Holy water, they still smiled, they knew how we would flush it out
          later that day
When I had left the holy place that was filled with incense smoke and the prayers of the
          saints, I realized that I no longer light two candles, I don't even light one
I should've mentioned the Russian girl in confession
but my demons make me forget
Pushkin reminded me today
of love and dark skin
but no one's as dark as my demons are; I was researching female body types that
         suggest more room inside when I heard that I was Dionysus
but my own behavior is more dignified
I tell myself that and I make myself mad
No, I am a tree, firmly planted; I am at one with the universe and at peace
but these roots keep sucking up the wrong things and it's making me diseased; I
          should've listened to the Indigenous woman, or at least the monk because my
          bark is now showing from the roots to the trunk, tell-tale signs of rot from
          the inside
but these demons wear top-hats and have canes; how can I explain their subtle swagger?
          They'd have me dance right into hell on the edge of a dagger
but these gods of the ancient Greeks, ever dirty and never clean, and sirens' songs are
          my demons' gift to me

Folks,
I breathe sins

and tragedies.

The Odds

Between every strand of your dark red, auburned hair
I feel is magic
Your makeup is impeccable and smile is timed perfectly
I'm not sure how you do it

I know you know and I'm telling you if you keep this up, something will happen
but the timing was just missed
the magic was blocked by the gods
I would've had you tonight
if it weren't for the odds