Luminescence
I
sit on shore on a windless
night
where the sea of glass
comes
alive, the luminescent
green
of ctenophores rising
to
the call of the moon.
I
applaud you for this daring
display
for I know the tiniest
movement
will rip your fragile
bodies
to shreds. You must
trust
the waters to be silent.
Tonight
I will stay with you,
be
one with this stillness and
pray
the stars will be the only
things
that move.
Wish You Were Here
On
this blood warm night when
swamp
waters caress the roots of
cypress
trees I will cast off all my
inhibitions
and dance naked under
a
moon softened by ghosts. I will
make
a mud pie for you and feed
it
to the stars and wish that you
were
here.
A Force of Nature
Struck
by lightning thirteen times
her
smile has an unearthly glow.
For
fun she wrestles with bears
and
teaches the wolves to howl
at
the moon. Her words are the
force
of hurricane winds, her hair
the
color of rainbows. She gave
to
DaVinci a secret code and
taught
Mona Lisa how to smile.
With
a sneeze she empties the
lakes
of water and rearranges
landscapes. At night she stitches
the
stars together with the threads
of
spiders and creates her own
galaxy. While she sleeps, her
snores
send the tumbleweeds
tumbling
and set the canyons
on
fire. Her dreams cause feral
cats
to stagger and opossum to
play
dead. She plays hopscotch
on
lily pads that float in the river
and
she travels the oceans in
the
belly of a whale. On nights
when
the sun never sets she
will
fly on the back of a dragon
and
embellish her own myth.
At the Edge of Death
Write
the motherfucking poem.
The
one about how you wanted
to
dig up the dead and steal the
secrets
buried in their pockets
and
write them in the dirt.
Tell
us how you have wanted to
shake
death from your bones,
place
death's ashes in your pipe
and
watch them rise on tendrils
of
smoke that ricochet off the
moon
and are reborn as stars.
Then
tell us that all you really
wanted
to do was sit at the edge
of
death, gasp as what remains
and
bury it in a simple poem.
(After the line “write the motherfucking
poem” from poem “Threnody” by
Diane Seuss in her book “Modern
Poetry.”)
Rattled
Behind
the peeling green door on Bowery Street
is
the Den of Hair and the stage of Medusa which
she
opened after the snakes shed their skin and her
eyes
lost their demonic glow.
Stoners
and punks are drawn to her, hypnotized by
her
weirdness. They know for the cost of a few
scary
moments they can have their hair kneaded,
twisted,
frizzed, fried, wind blown, beaded, coiled
and
more.
With
her flair for experimentation she sends them out
the
door looking like they have just been through a car
wash
in an electrical storm, transformed and transformers.
After
hours the bands plug in ready to shed some skin.
The
crowd begins cheering and chanting Dylan's anthem
about
“everybody must get stoned” when Medusa herself
walks
on stage.
Grabbing
the microphone she screams her latest hit:
“You thought you broke me so I played
along
I let you believe you were the reason
for this song.
You used me, abused me, kept me alive
until my
eyes saw through you and my hair began
to writhe.
Betrayed by your lust, you gave me
snakes and
stone but I will shred your evil and
make it my own”.
At
closing time when the venom of snakes and sweat ooze
ringlets
around her face, Medusa puts on her sunglasses
and
watches her adoring fans slither out the door, their hair
rattled, her lyrics carved in stone.
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