Requiescat In Pace / Releve d'Identite / This Too Shall Pass (hymn to the leftovers)

She wore a cameo in her hair,
and mourned her unborn baby on a Wednesday.
Knee deep in concrete, she wished she could play the piano.

Wistful of hand prints on the wall; I leveled
Fist full of smeared reflections- in the glass, rainwater
in the coffee, petri-dish turned ashtray... Evolution.

Warbled out another note, singing-

"I saw. 
You haven't written anything in a while.
I've been playing Tom,
On the stereo and standing in the closet. 
Dreaming.
My hearts afraid of taking 
chances. I still remember 
Your hands around my waist.
Hope the crops come up... 
healthy 
this harvest. 
Wishing you well. 
-L."

Same old song and chicken scratch.

Whispers called her heart a graveyard.
Rumors said, "Cemetery." 
She said, "Well,whatever, it's where my lost are dead and buried." 

And dashed out in her ribbons, fraying, to the old church yard 
for praying psalms over those cold love letters
Inked up in red: "Return to Sender"

True Story

Looking back now I can taste February like it was last week.

The acrid flavor of winter rises in my throat and miles and millennia have passed away. These hallways haunted with dreams and failures. What a small corner of the world for such epic nonsense and leaving. The place is ripe with leaving and crawling with the bedbugs of change.

This was never forever. But we settled against our better judgement and started taking up the notion of home.Wherever we hung out hearts. Strung out like laundry in the alleyways. Pinched and soggy, flapping heavily against a meager breeze. All around the cards are falling like leaves of September.

Now for the disbanding. Now for the disarming. Now starts the countdown. The annihilation of the camp. There will be nothing left but an empty fire pit and a lost group of ribbons tangled in a tree limb. Plastic bag in the wind. 

We will all go from here and when we've nailed our hearts to somebody elses wall we'll look at the shadow of a beer can and weep for what we couldn't keep and where we couldn't stay.

Perfume of cigarette smoke and lashes of ashes.

Sets of dirty hands around the last supper table- All the white linens gone grey. I will miss you. Many moons from now I will remember how our voices bounced off the bricks, how the music was always too loud and the dirty dishes sat on the kitchen floor with mice running over them. How there was always piss on the seat and never any toilet paper and the angry look written in Spanish on the cleaning lady's face.

I will remember the tags on your walls, and the fingerprints everywhere, and the dirt. The smell of weed smoke and stale liquor, spoiled milk and bleach. Old mildew. Bad raves, fairydust, drugs and pipes. Flip flops in the shower with no curtain. Flies in the hallways. Hot plates on fire. I will remember the hungry nights, and the bellies full of wanting, and the eyes full of dollar signs and all the endlessly empty pockets.

Pale light up on the morning-after sleepless night tableau. Hipster eyes adjusting to the sun, Nosferatu rubs the hangover from his temples and walks his pit bull up to the corner bodega so he can buy some smokes. This is the future and everyone wears Elvis Costello frames and rides their grandmothers bicycle with no brakes. Doughnuts are vegan. Pizza is free. PBR has replaced the water in the East River. Williamsburg has swallowed all of Brooklyn. And we're all moving out.

I get to weeping- thinking about everything left behind. You and me and the Mac truck. Rusting, rusting, rusting, and needing proof that we existed. Ancient History. That there was purpose and meaning. 

Or maybe not...

You know that monster on the roof? Well he's lying in a pile; King of the Meserole skyline, now dismantled and nothing but splinters and kindling. Last night we sat waiting for the slow burn in your absence and he gave me good advice. He said, "Somedays you exist, Kid, and then maybe one day, you don't anymore... But we were here."

Missa Pro Defunctis

I'll bury your ashes out back-

Between the wheel barrel and the old Mac truck.

Where we started.

Among the spray paint hieroglyphics and busted glass.

I'll bury your ashes out back.

Dust in my eyes and clay under my fingernails, 

I won't stop digging til the coffee can coffin

is a true six feet under. 

I'll bury your ashes out back

and lay you beside the unmarked graves of children, 

and a cat named Christmas,

and all of our good graces.

I'll bury your ashes out back,

under the pile of trash in the corner

where all the weeds grow thick

and wild.

I'll bury your ashes out back

as mourning prayers fall from my eyes,

I father, son and holy ghost you 

into the rocks and the roots and the brickyard run off.

Ashes to ashes and rust to dust...

Out back- Hipster graveyard.

Covered in covetous vines.

I'll bury you.

PLAGUED

Slap in the face and one more door to slam.

End of the rave, end of the day, start of new noise and rage.

Sound and fury, one kick to the solar-plexus, and

"Vengeance is mine saith the Lord".

I sit on my hands.

I sit on my hands. 

I SIT ON MY HANDS AND I BITE MY TONGUE.

A plague on all our houses and we are the enemy,

the battle-lines being drawn. 

Slight me not, and force no hand.

I want no quarrel with you.

But do you bite your thumb at me, sir?

Children bearing the sins of their fathers

with drooping shoulders and shitty posture.

Down on me..Down on me...

Down on Desolation Row.

We row-row our little boats

upstream, uphill, both ways

and struggle struggle struggle.

Go on and fight til all the piss and vinegar

have worn you thin and sick.

I will pretend to ignore the call of war.

I sit on my hands.

I sit on my hands and I bite my tongue...

And I pray for our grace.

TATTOOED GYPSY & THE BURNING BLUE EYED GOOD BYE BLUES

Scabbing tattoo gypsy heart;

Red around the edges-

Raw and aching to be scratched.

Try a little tenderness.

Don't baby it too much.

Stay and go and come away again soon, with me.

Down these halls

Painted over words we let slip

Then slide...

You just go for the ride and I stand behind you

watching you walk away.

It's the smell of piss and shit and blood on a Saturday morning after;

Someone stole your shower head and it's too cold to do laundry.

It's "Thank God the bar's across the street" and  "Are you gonna eat those fries?".

It's a heavy bass line that makes you wanna take your clothes off and dance and it's too cold to sleep alone.

52 card pick up under the back stairwell.

Inky finger print bruises on my hips.

Angry ruby wound;

tight around my wrist like twist ties 

and the ties that bind, and the rope we wind up with 

like a noose turned neck tie.

We run. We hide. And seek. 

We find. And blind eye turn on each other.

While we huddle together against the

concrete chill of warehouse heater blues

hit the snooze button one more time

Before out the door we stumble.

Mumble into our scarves and the scars

we carved into our arms.

Dollar coins and subway rides to work to work to work

We pray this will all just work.

And I'm done with I love you's from far away lips

On this unwashed Monday, but at least my clothes are clean

even if my mouth is dirty, and my mind is dirty and 

my fingernails are covered in war paint and I'm down in this trench of a gutter

with just a hot plate and some styrofoam cups to raise up

and rally myself against the day.

Scabbing angry tattooed gypsy soul;

Those sour words at the back of my throat 

Let loose and I let them. 

Bite and burn like acid on that loving heart.

To break those chains and break myself apart 

and find the marrow worth saving,

Braving this skin that I'm in.

Freezing, bleeding, needing and believing 

I can begin again-

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow....

TRIGGER FINGER

Stupid little fingers

don't go tapping out your morse code heart

to the one on enemy lines.

Didn't you get the memo?

Brain says we don't feel that way anymore

and She's got Heart under lock and key 

for insubordination in the ranks

Now confined to solitary...

Stupid little fingers

wanna give it up quick like lightning

like virgins in backseats

taking back promises they crossed over hoping for

Stupid little fingers

picking at the scabby plastic suture threads of

open triple bypass surgery

patchwork blood letting

Stupid little fingers

tippy tap dancing 

on the keyboard of regret

you don't hit send til I tell you to

Stupid little fingers

think they run this joint

but I'll cut them off

if they don't stop straying.

Back To Basic

DISCONNECT.
I spent two months in self induced solitary.
I had no internet service and only basic cable.
I didn't frolic wildly with friends, or obsessively check my emailfacebooktwitter.
I worked, and counted my pennies, and tried to climb out of debt.
I hung art work on my walls and curtains on my windows and unpacked the last of my boxes.
It's only been four years since the move.. Feels like sanctuary again.

CELEBRATE.
My Aunt died of cancer over the holidays.
Made me appreciate my appreciation. For everything.
The wonders of life.
Fresh produce and clean dishes, a cold glass of wine, early morning sunlight.
Running in snow with dogs, laying in bed with someone you love. Chocolate.
A good cup of coffee. Working the body hard. Letting your mind dream.

SIMPLIFY.
Life is too sweet to be filled with the bitterness of worry.
Life is to preciously unique to be compared,
one individual to the next.
We all march steadily to the grave. It's not a race.
Overflow your numbered days with the deliciousness of things you love.

PAY ATTENTION.
You are missing all the beautiful details of this magical exsistence.
We are water and iron and electricity
and we are spinning through space towards our destiny at the speed of thought..
And that right there is a miracle.

LONE WOLF & WILD WOMAN

For a while there, I had this wild stray dog,
This lone wolf,
who'd come sniffing at my yard every so often
To lay in the grass and play with my dog
and eat my chicken and do his laundry in my basement.
He'd tell me ''Someday'' he was gonna rent us a cave,
to settle down and raise mutts in.

And I wondered how that would work.
Lone Wolf and Wild Woman take up cave dwelling
Somewhere in the asshole of Idaho.
It's almost like a Joni Mitchell song..
Made me nervous, you know
those never end well.

We'd raise feral little children
who spit and scratch and we'd tell them to
Knock it off!!
Like our parents did to us.
Somewhere in the hills of the asshole of Idaho.
In caves for $25 a month.

I wanted to tell him
Go on along without me to your cave
That's not my style.
Hard labor and my manicure don't agree
and I'm too busy dreaming about tempurpedic mattresses and sterling candelabras.
I'd only be in the way.

But everybody knows wolves and humans don't speak the same language.
So the last night he came sniffing,
I chased him off my property
for pissing on my flowers one too many times...
and he never came back.

I wonder if I'll ever see him again.

Conversation with Jesus

I saw Jesus walking up the hill,

He said, "Go on without me, I'll be here when you get back."

and then he climbed up on his cross, one limb at a time

and hung out, waiting for the return of the crowds.

And we all went back to college, 

to tiny apartments paid for by our middle-class parents,

where we hung posters of 60's icons up on our walls and

burned nag champa and drank grain alcohol til we threw-up on our tie-dyed tapestries.

Then we stayed up past our bedtimes around open refrigerators, 
letting the cold air escape, 

and discussed theories about foreign policy and oil and capitalism 

and other things we didn't understand,

and we passed the joint around until it was nothing but ash in our hands.

But me, I turned my radio up and rolled down my window

and shaved off all my hair, started calling myself Diane and

tried to go somewhere I wouldn't recognize myself for a little while.

I waved to Jesus on His cross and He said, "See ya soon."

In the fields under the Moon

trying to find myself amongst all those exploded little particles of light.

I thought I saw you in my reflection, out on the edge where the tall grasses whisper against the wind,

but you were just a trick of shadows and air.

I returned hot on your heels, like a blood hound on the trail 

and without missing a beat, ran face first into a brick wall of sorrows

with your name tagged all over it in suburban child spray paint.

With nothing but time on your hands, and me with never enough time on my side.

Jesus was still chilling, called down to me from His perch, 

"Why don't you try something different?" and I told Him 

I didn't know what I had, so I didn't know what I was missing.

He said to keep looking, and He'd let me know what happened while I was gone.

All the while the people were dancing in the square

banners flying, flowers in their hair, the band was playing brightly

and the hours wound down to nothing but fire and sparks and

me and Jesus, we were no where to be seen, but they were all still dancing in the streets.

And in the morning-after light, on our way to coffee grounds and 

The Grind, and the grim of the grin above the rim of our ugly mugs, 

We shuffle like ghosts in the mist, in the midst of what we missed and

who we miss the most. The Father, Son and Holy Rollers...

I rolled over, and pulled over, to pump my brakes and stay awake.

With a fist full of tears, I rest my weary gears.

Feels like we've been walking away for years and years at a time, 

never quite yours, and you were never quite mine.

"It was a gamble," said the thief at His side.

A couple of Dudes with nothing left to hide, I honk as I drive by.

Jesus waves at me from far away and I pull into the parking lot of my local Mom-and-Pop-Shop. 

Under the street lights, He tells me, tonight, it's alright.