Freak Hiss


I freaked my way
through the space
between your heart beats
and the stained sheets that
lay on your dirty floor.
Unnerving I know,
but my supernatural pulse
would not permit me
to stay in these
rundown bones of mine.

Dragonflies lost on the subway,
I never quite felt
the sense of belonging,
rolling my eyes at the sputtering lies
I heard in coughing crusty crowds,
sighing to the tune of my
senses dulling,
dreaming damned,
I hissed inferno and magic
which was misinterpreted
as snake songs and graffiti.

Frowns of forefathers
and sobs of our earthen mothers
in the time that passed silently
backwards,
we habitually settled
for hasty hiking up of skirts,
dungeon detail,
gravel eating,
and the sour tastes
of ghosts in our pained periphery.
I craved instead-
staring holy hallucinations
in the eye,
taking the metaphysical plane
in our dripping mouths,
sex teeth glistening,
laughing at such a ravenous freedom
that could be ours if we so choose it,
birthing luscious melodies
and banging on the furniture
with frenzied fucks,
an eroticism
so intense,
so very deep,
kept me in a constant
state of orgasm
which I learned from the moon,
how to quiet my howling head.

I craved to have your skin
throb and ache
to the rhythms of my own,
feel my bones
wake up in the night and shake
hearing your voice
whispering me back to bed
when I went wailing and walking
in my restless sleep
through the ether tremors,
your subtle stroking
soothing the seizure visions,
soft and sultry,
stealing me away
from thundering nightmares,
lifting my body
up through the dark.
Wrap around me again
and hoist bright lanterns
above my wicked forehead,
illuminating even the creep places in my
screaming skull.
Show me any goddamn reason to give
this sorrow earth
another chance
in the morning
whilst I just
want to lay in bed all day
and drown my memories out
with my molten tears.

Yet as I cringe at the thought of the dawn,
another stifling day
without a hand to hold,
a glorious cold
swept in,
slinking inside me
through the open window,
I moaned
with the pleasure
she brought down,
my brain alive
with predicate possibilities,
sizzling desire
ricocheted through
my bloody veins,
reminding me
hope can always be found,
even in the murk and the mire.

Desires of the Phoenix


September came with
a sting at the back
of the throat
and such a harsh longing,
deep,
vibrant,
kept me up tossing
till 5 in the fucking morning,
hungry for
the night’s sweet touch,
for she was the only one
that seemed unafraid
at the prospect of my
fire skin consuming her,
phoenix licking my wounds,
even though sometimes
she couldn’t find me
through the storms
I formed and
circled round my eerie head,
hiding me from view.

Slithering through
the open window,
you flitted over
my aching body,
I sigh to the
north and east,
patchwork paces,
haunting on a continuum,
re-tracing soft footsteps
of my childhood Michigan winters,
magic frosts flowing to the rivers,
through the trees
we gather together
our senses,
hot sex rhythms
thumping the
top of the skull
to the base of the spine,
echoes repeating out
vibrations from the vocal chords,
sounds that came
up through the belly
to the head and
bursting out the top
of the brain
in moans erotic,
top hats taken off,
roughly thrust
to the ground who indeed
got a rush
from the thought
of hands and
fleeting frenzy fingers
stretched out to the angels,
gasping in pleasure,
casting me out of my
sorrow bones
which kept me
looking downward at
my bloody toes
most evenings.

And then there was the Sphinx ,
ever watching,
woken up on a Thursday morning,
to feel a sandstorm
round her waist,
and she thought to herself:
the wind seemed angry as of late,
a tinge of tabasco on the tongue,
vinegar dripping down
the earlobes.

Frenchmen leaning
out their windows,
shouting down
to the ladies in the street,
they turned and
gave him the finger.
Seduction should’ve been
a sultry swing,
Thelonious Monk
on the phonograph,
candles oozing and winking
in the cool twilight,
tender lips run along curves,
breath slow but then building
to heavy orgasm sounds and electric quivers
that shook the rafters
of even the most sturdy houses.
But in these tempest times
we settled instead for harsh tire squeals
and a short siren thrill,
pick your poison,
chug it down,
slosh around,
fuck hard and rough
without a hint of passion or embrace,
slink out from under him
when he fell asleep
and squeeze through the floorboards
before he remembers
what he whispered
to me
in the undertow.

You were a unimpressive liar:
women faking stupid,
men faking apathy,
the joker was the only one
found laughing
at the weary games we play.
I watched
cigarettes stain teeth,
apothecaries abandoned
with a shudder
for to bend and contort
to the idols of pharmacy
and forensics.
Media mayhem ate us up,
spat us back out
as gnarled stick figured blond barbies,
to mouth agendas for
Halliburton and Disney,
tango with the demons
of industry,
then tossed aside into mass graves,
screeching for sanctuary.

Oh please,
break the veils of ego
honey,
it isn’t always
about self-promotion and
what you can get out of
every sinkhole situation,
vampires in their cages,
gnashing teeth together
in time with the organ pipes.

Poor dear,
I could tell
in less than
the time breath took
to sink into the lungs
that you still loved her,
a flash of thirst in the eyes
as she walked by
and didn’t even care to notice you.
I could always recognize
a face hiding heartbreak and
it tore at my insides
to see the pain
you hid
and thought only your nightmares
could see,
but no,
I wept for you
in my dreams as well,
kind stranger,
and hoped for healing
in the dawns to come.
Tis so strange and wild
the way heart valves betray us
and how we are really all the same,
wanting to hear our names
shouted out loud through street crowds
with love and craving,
and hands on my hips
in the early hours of the daytime.

Living in the Mind of the Alligator


Living in the mind
of the alligator,
I crunched down hard
on strings
that tied me down
to the underworld
as she grinned at me in my sleep,
tossing my brain,
back and forth,
oh so back and forth,
creating harmonies
from my miseries
that had a language
of their own.

My stinging head
lay somber and sober,
and an empathic stare
from a stranger
undressed me in my
well hidden despair,
understanding me more deeply
in that fading instant than
most people who pretend to know me well,
seems these solar flare moments
are occurring with gathering speed,
ticking backwards on a pinwheel.

Shrill screams
shattered windows,
glasses melted down
to their insides,
the mirror was the only ghost
who saw my tears,
heard my haunted moans
from the graveyard
while I danced the Charleston,
swung round and around
by the sly tombstones and trombones
who tried to get me drunk
so I would take them home
to fuck and leave quickly
with the guilt stained to their faces
in the middle of the dawn
who draped itself on our skin
without a whisper
or any explanation.

As the black and blue butterflies
flit to and fro
in front of my hindsight,
the only patterns
that seemed to repeat
were the reaper’s raspy tones
skipping on the phonograph,
and the steam that
enjoyed soaking and clutching
my windows
in the early yawning morning
when I took my youngest brother
to school
so he wouldn’t have
to ride the sticky seated
yellow jacket bus
with its scissor sting occupants,
bumping and smashing
into each other with hormones
and vengeance.

Though I tried to
choke down my insidious pain,
it seeped out of my aching pours
anyway,
not giving a downtrodden damn
or waiting for permission,
alchemy taking tea
with the monsters
I slept with,
watching the people
who I had been there for,
time and again,
wiping their tears away
with my bleeding hands,
they then to leave me all alone in my
retching,
howling,
sorrow,
to hitchhike back home
without even a hint of compassion
on their vacant faces,
just cold stone staring back at me.

So instead of waiting around
for you to be done with your cigarettes,
your lie stained teeth,
your liquored up false promises and
fake adorations,
I wandered away weary by myself,
talking with
the sky spirits,
singing to the tree limbs
in their waking hours,
mouthing words
to the water
flowing down
my temperamental skin,
praying with my face to the earth
in hoping reverence
that grief will leave me be,
even for just a breath,
so I can rise up
with the moonlight
in holy ecstatic pleasure
to forget who I am. 

The Magic and the Mystic Intertwine


Talking barbies
took the bait,
makeup oozing
from drowned pores,
bones and toxins
were all that remained
of the screaming soul
that just wanted
to be “pretty”
in a world where
plastic dolls
are lifted up
as idols,
poisonous mythos
of beauty,
funneled through
our bleeding ears,
taunting us in our sleep,
beating us down
to the asphalt,
chemicals and self-loathing.

Could I waltz
you away through time?
Kicking the empty glasses
and rusty newspapers aside,
tumbling down sultry staircases,
we dance
through the gaping eye
in the candle flame.
We may falter,
for a moment,
swaying too swiftly
in the grass
that softly licks
our ankles
with the dew
from the morning,
my tongue tasting
the energy
passing back and forth
between us
with an audible sigh
from the outdoor furniture. 

You and I
crashed together
like lightning striking earth,
as it zips and splits
through the sky,
thrusts himself deep
into her holy ground,
she moans low and rough,
responds with
shaking and resonating pulses,
her voice vibrating
the air like a fury,
the Magic and the Mystic
growling and grinding
into each other
so that the dawn
could brings us
to wake and rise
maybe one more day,
in the heat of the dawn
and death roaring,
slicing space
like a switchblade
cutting tinsel.