Tag: august 2017

By on

11:47 a.m.

I crawled outside for a rare dose of sunshine. It was risky, another human might approach and slide mouth-first into small talk, say: Damn, it’s so hot I could fry a salmon on the hood of my Hyundai. What?

Heading back in to wrap myself in air conditioning, I caught my neighbor standing at his window aiming his phone at me. I raised my arms, palms out, but he didn’t take the hint and move. The intensity of his intrusion was admirable. So I smiled. Then I stared longingly at a sparrow perched on a telephone pole, held the pose far past what is considered normal. I was a frozen and forlorn philosophical birder. His phone tracked me like paparazzi at a movie premiere. The attention was unfamiliar, empowering, therapeutic. (more…)

By on 1 Comment

Thank you always for you.
For all of your Selves – your Hells;
if it indeed plays out that
we can burn alive in more than one –
let it conflag around us
for there is no other wound
I’d prefer to endure
than the hot kiss of a She-Devil
who rents us a room;
be it red-lit and ready for She-Rage;
I say Fuck to Repenting.

Our words are the aloe / our tongues the spit
that can seduce a million demons in one lick –
When God is ready for us, sound the alarm
I’m still waiting for Him / to donate alms (more…)

By on 1 Comment

     Every year on the eve of the full Capricorn moon is Saturnalia; a celebration of freedom, a display of unrestricted acceptance and unity. The popular and the pariah become one. The gods and goddesses descend from their lofty palaces in heaven to join in on the jubilation. Even Cronus himself takes off his crown for the night and feasts.

     Sofea finishes her daily rituals to her goddess, Aphrodite. Outside her window, the street signs are being decorated with homemade paper lanterns, and her neighbors are stringing fairy lights through the willows near the pond. The sun has not quite reached its zenith, and she realizes she finished her daily rituals much earlier than she has been the past several months. She is vaguely aware that she should be somewhere else—perhaps down the street—helping prepare the cakes for the festivities later on. She continues to gaze out the window, just for a few more minutes, and plans her Saturnalia, the night of spontaneity.
(more…)

By on

With great intended care………….no,
               let me start again
In hand shaky haste, I slid the package,
               all that I had left,
                             through the slot in the cloudy glass.
That chunky glass they want you to think is bullet proof.
Behind the barely transparent smudge wall,
               the man scrutinizes it with a jeweler’s loupe.
Taps it with a small file, snaps at it with his teeth.
“Not interested. Gold plate”.
Seriously?
Are you kidding me?
All these years I so zealously protected it.
Tenderly placing it in it’s velvet storage box.
Cleverly hiding it in a basket of dirty laundry
             whenever I was going out of town.
I had held onto it for so long, cherishing it as
          my most precious of possessions.
Keeping mine whilst my friends and associates had long discarded theirs.
All this time and effort, to find out it is just
              base metal and gold paint.
F#*king halo.
(more…)

By on

90’s

The high today
is in the 90’s,

sun beating life
into a salt-soaked frenzy,

liters of sweat sealing scars,
old wounds to never reopen,

save for those quiet eternities,
internal bleedings at 2 AM.

8 AM now and the shirt’s
drenched in heat and liquid,

messy start to a scorcher,
bodies of water beckoning me

to indulge in immersion
(they’d love to touch).

A day to swim through,
some stubborn lessons to learn

and forget, all colluding in
eventual bloom, the growth of ages.

The high today
is in the 90’s,

and the sun is too tired
to set, sleep, and slumber.

Blinding waves of gold break
through the discomfort of bare

legs stuck to the seats
of public transportation. (more…)

By on

The Differences between Caribou and Man

My boots feel stuck, attempting to grip the crackles of ice, as I take a walk through the bar strip off of Allen Street. I still wonder how Caribous feel, as their hooves transform into icepicks, trying to piece through the frost just to move a few feet each time. We are both walks of mammalian life, we both need the air of to breathe, but that is where the similarities end. The migration of the caribou is for survival, as they nomadically roam from home to home, not settling in one place for too long. (more…)