Calle de Desnudas

Where the Street of the Nudes
meets the Alley of the Dolls
there is a bookshop.
Its owner is a ginger man,
with ginger hair and a ginger voice
(in the Calle de Desnudas, his tastes turn to ginger).

Where the Calle de Desnudas
meets the Callejon de Munecas
there lives a tailor.
He is a blue-blooded man,
with blue eyes and a blue soul
(In the Alley of the Dolls, he drapes a hundred tiny bodies in blue)

Where the Alley of the Dolls
meets the Calle de Desnudas
there is a butcher.
He is a russet man,
with rust-red hands and a red-flecked smock
(In the Street of the Nudes, he hides his scarlet shame)

In the place where the Nudes
are converted into dolls
there is a growing crowd.
It is a pale crowd,
with clutching white hands and pale stares reaching
for the Nudes and dolls, displayed in pale.

When the Dolls come alive
and throw off their old clothes
there is a drunken revel.
It is a purple frenzy,
the purple of life and the purple of pain.
The Allies and Streets flow purple with spilt wine.

Pancakes

I make you pancakes every morning.
Every morning you eat them
In good-natured silence
Never thanking me.

I put a little of my soul
Into those pancakes
But you never notice.
You just go on chewing.
You’re consuming me
Bit by bit
You pour syrup on me and devour me.

Bitter Root

On the night that I first saw her,
the sky gave birth to a thousand flames.
Or was it flowers?
I can’t recall.
Flavors? Philosophies?
Perhaps the sky gave birth to them all.
Now it is gone. The sky is just the sky.

Love, my enemy,
has thrust her bitter root
deep through my ribs.

Oh, love, take pity!
Cut my shadow from me,
let me cast no darkness.
Cut my reflection from me,
I cannot bear to see it.
Cut my thoughts from me,
they are crueler even than you.
Cut my emptiness from me,
cut the ache.
Cut the night from the day
and the sky from the earth.

But unless you can take the root, please
don’t cut yourself free.

Your Headphones are too loud: A Quick Trip on the 6

Tinny, tiny, tachycardiac cacophony
assaulting my coffee-addled, overcaffeinated brain
salt on the wounds of my overcrowded workday commute

Headphones, clanking gears, hushed voices - I’m all ears.
More ears than I can take, in this clicking ticking crate.
unstable collection of specimens, a mess of them
in a dirty silver bullet shot into the city’s gritty
arteries. Don’t look at me!

Tinny, tiny, tachycardiac cacophony
assaulting my coffee-addled, overcaffeinated brain
salt on the wounds of my overcrowded workday commute
Like rain on a tin man’s hollow head,
your iPod drums are driving me inSane!
Adding to the arrhythmic rhythms on this overstuffed…
burrito? ..train.

The rhythm of your drums
the rhythm of his drums
the jazzy tootling of that guy’s sax
the rhythm of the sex that I’m imagining
with that girl, over there, with the ribbon in her hair
Jingling, jangling,
bumping, thumping,
grinding gleaming screaming
make it stop! make it stop! make it -

It stops
at 23rd street.

America the Colossal

Give me your tired, your poor
your French Vanilla,
your huddled marshmallows
yearning to sizzle for me.

Not like the brazen giant of yore
with conquering limbs astride from shore to shore
Here at our flickering neon gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a deep-frier, whose flame
is the imprisoned essence of desire, and her name
is America.

From the bacon-grease beacon
gleams world-wide welcome.
"Give me your people,"
she begs with swollen lips.

"Give me your hungry, give me some more
the caramel, chocolate, the milk and the cream
I'll spice my melting pot with the best
ingredients from your teeming shore.

I'm America, I'm hungry, and when you get here
You'll be starving, and begging, you'll clamor for more
For money, for glory,
for golden-fried chicken
for streets paved with pennies and peanuts
shells and day-old daydreams

Send these the ravenous, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Babble On

Babble on, young tigress,
after the flood, after the act.
An eye for an eye
an ear for an hour
in your fertile crescent

I settle, silent as silt
on the riverbed, while
you fray these
sentences into syllables
riddles unraveling
in the muttering deep

Shell of bronze, heart of heat
your skin's an isle where golden apples
hang in gardens. Tigress!
Your babbling breaks
my code of loss
my mouth content to breath
My heart content to hammer

I'll be settling down, down
tired of hunting for answers
gathering fruitful clues
your words shred sense into softness
build us a nest
sink us to sleep

I Gave You A Ring (or, Stick it in Your Ear)

Put it in my hand
the pinprick
the single drop of blood

It shines forever red
the gentle wound of your indiff'rence

Put it in my head
the throbbing
the sleepless tossing doubt

It wakes me every night
the steely ring of your nonanswer

Put it in my gut
the poison
the kicking, clenching pain

It brings me to my knees
the sudden certitude of knowing

Put it in my heart
the dagger
the gaping, gushing hole

It severs all my hope
the slamming door of your rejection.

Our Secret is Safe

Our secret is safe
our secret is safe
the night knows nothing
and the day is mute

But, oh, how it glowers,
the towering sun!
And, oh, how it murmurs,
the slumbering moon.

A horizon of baying hounds
couldn’t give us away
but still the wind hollers
until it’s blue in the face.

Rivers, rage-white and roiling,
are mocked by the cynical stones
By moonlight they calm, and a carpet
of frogs croons a lullaby

Every grain on beach
grabs at ankles in vain
The lazy stars shine
light on the deed like a pillow

Our secret is safe
the night sees nothing
Our secret is safe
the day cannot speak.

Straphanger's Ball

Lonely dancers
in this straphanger's ball
I'd like to dance with you,
but it would be rude to ask

(rude, even, to look)

But there's a swing in the stride
of the train that we ride,
there's a clank and a clank
and a whoosh in it's stride.
There's a gleam in the dank
and it's us, it's the train
We could turn inside out
and start over again.

We could whoosh, we could sway
we could clank, we could spin
We could open our mouths
we could speak, we could sing

We could ... clank
We could ... maybe grab a coffee sometime?
We could ... clank
We could ....

With your nose in your book
and mine in my magazine,
we sit, still
hurtling under the city

separated by inches of space
but miles of memory.