#100/100 Window

This photo was originally published on YB Poetry blog in June 2011. All other photos--the ones taken by me--I've posted here were created for this blog, or images from my personal albums that had not been published or posted in any lit zine or my other blogs prior to their appearance in this space. All prose pieces and poems posted here are original materials, though some parts have or will find their way in my other writing.

I'm using this image for my #100 post because it was one of the first photos I shot after moving into my current apartment. I took it on my second night of living here, a few days before I started the 100 Days 2011 project. I didn't have a proper desk yet, and my piano was still at my old place. For those who know me in real life, on Facebook or from my personal blog, you know that my recent life has been a little 'rocky' in practical terms. Which means I've spent a lot of time alone, in my solitary space, not knowing what the days would have in store for me.

I still don't know what happens next. Things always turn, sometimes at a frustratingly slow pace; unless, of course, you're one of those folks bound up in unfortunate constraints which you have little chance of breaking. That is the truth for many people. For all the not-so-good times I've lived in this life, I'm not fucked. I write, take some pictures, and write.

Pace is an illusion I'm learning to live with. This blog for the 100 Days project was my focus for much of the last three months. Instead of pulling my hair out at the edge of an imaginary abyss, on most days I sat down to create something. It reminded me what I'm here for: to be an artist. Without such conviction, I could have drowned.

So, here's a big and heartfelt Thank You to those who've been following this blog and left kind comments on my work. Really, thank you.

#099/100 Exit (III)

...and I'll find my way out.

#098/100 Ancestors

My grandmother and me browsing through some old family photos. From four and a half years ago.

After I wrote about my ancestors calling me through my genie in this post, they gave me a couple definite kicks. First the Fok Luk Sau statues got knocked over and, after I put them back in their places as if nothing unusual had happened (after all, it was hard to tell and I'm not a 'suspicious' person), my phone slipped out of my tight jeans pocket during a 5-minute taxi ride. 

Excerpts from my phone conversation with Grandma the next day:

Me: Grandma, do you believe in spirits....like getting messages from the other side?

Grandma: I believed in dreams.

Me: A friend of mine...it's hard to explain but let's say she can see things...She told me my ancestors are looking for me. I've also got signs in my daily life. 

Grandma: You mean your friend is a nun at a temple or something?

Me: She's a spiritual medium...Last time I said I needed those photos of your parents to write stories...The truth is I need their photos to communicate with them.

Grandma: That is really...strange. Did your friend tell you what your ancestors are trying to tell you? Have you got any ideas?

Me: No, that's something I have to find out...I guess it's just that they're looking out for me but I haven't paid any attention to them. Now they want me to get to know them. 

Grandma: Ancestors...Shouldn't it mean your grandfather's parents? 

Me: That's the Chinese way of thinking...In the West, and in the other world too, things aren't defined that way. I'm guessing it's your mother coz my friend said she saw a woman. 

Grandma: What if it's your grandfather's mother?

Me: I don't think so...Grandpa and I don't get along so great! Plus there're no photos of them that we can get hold of...What do you think we should tell your family? That I need the photos for writing or to communicate with Ancestors? Are they superstitious? 

Grandma: They're more superstitious than me, but still...

***

Five days later:

Grandma: We don't have to visit my family home anymore. My niece brought me the photos already! She took some shots of the portraits in their living room and made some copies.

Me: What? How did you do that?

Grandma: I said I wanted the photos for myself.

Me: I never knew you'd be so cunning...Okay, maybe I did. You stole those photos of Grandpa and his girlfriends from when he sailed around the world.

Grandma: He went to take a shower and I snatched them...

***

I'm getting those photos on Monday, which means I won't have a chance to post them on this blog before our 100 Days are over. And who knows if they want to show their faces to strangers? It's probably bad enough that I'm telling on them here already!

#097/100 House

we left each other in backwater to forget
the staircases you can never climb to my
room where i put on an armor so rusted in
your faulty vision that you hide from those
you come across for shame & fear of the
losing side of music & flame i run toward
the tunnels you speed through at dawn to
the blocks of sleepers born of your hatred
at the world your house it doesn't love you

#096/100 Nightmare (III)

image: Janelle Stone's 'Desolate'

we speak between spasms & the train compartments' throbbing 

past fragmented visions of each other. if you're not sorry about

the silence, at least say you're sorry about how i moved into &

through it because of you, i say, standing underneath an ironed

cry that arches across the ceiling. but you're weighed down by

hair uncut from not loving for years & the wool scarf spiraling

around your neck. i walked through too many icicles along the

way to the train station & now i can no longer move, you say.

then you turn into green stone, tall & slender in a pool of water

running down the crack. & i see that the only thing left to do is

to push you down the railroad tracks & to walk into the cold...

#095/100 Sleep

 inspired by Kevin Calisto's Day 67

never let me brace
     the vicissitude of grey
i'm a tumber amidst
     a vanishing waterfall
paint me yellow to
     your calls my cradle
sleep blinding light

#094/100 Proposition

image: Dorothee Lang's 'Shifts'


better than Ezra you read my proposition at 5 a.m.
rained bike by your fence, fallen glove on ice &
broken doorbell to the fine prints of my fingers.
you expect a gust of warm air into your room
if i fall through frames to die. to die at dawn
& to circle your steps in black streams till
you open the gate to leave home & enter
the future. everyday. without me.

#093/100 Drawing

From a very long time ago. By one of the many men who married the next women they got involved with, after we exited each other's lives. 

Most people learn what they can and cannot seek in this life--& I call that my contribution to the world's male population. As for me, I'd never learn.

#092/100 Slaughter

On the anniversary of the slaughter of a group of Hong Kong tourists in Manila.

They tell you that they're sorry for your son's death

but we can't apologize for the slaughter--it's the 

gunman's fault, not our government's. It'd have

been the same tragedy if it'd happened in any

other places in this world, like Norway.

Elsewhere in this world a group of tourists would 

hold their breath until the gun in the gunman's 

head went off after eleven hours on a tour bus.

From day to night from silent pleas to fury

at the permanent loss of one's livelihood:

Why does the government not speak to me but

lock up my brother? & the brother's panic 

on a tiny TV screen. Pull the trigger now

& blow these hands & faces & brains 

into pieces, the ex-police officer had

nothing more to lose. Everyone else had their

lives & dignity to shed as the SWAT team

flaunted broken guns & hammers--oh so

handy to break into the vehicle to find

a hand dangling in blood out of the

car's smashed door. & they tell you there was

nothing more they could have done to save

your son or the others whose spirits left

their bodies to become ghosts in that

foreign country, or the ones whose

faces would stay disfigured for the rest of their

lives. let them walk down the streets like the

living dead with mouths that wouldn't close. 

you can get US$1150 for compensation

for each person if that's what you want.

& that's what you get for weeping to a photo of 

your son at the slaughter site. that's where 

you always will be until the end of time.

& your son the tour guide consoles you, 

mum, it's ok i know my way in heaven.

#091/100 Cage

...because some people will always live in cages. Photo taken in Manila.

#090/100 Waiting (III)

i peer through the night's blinds
     when there is no more strength
                                             to carry on

#089/100 Drive

inspired by Sina Evans' Day 86

the drive is born of my body
where night is a lantern
of headlights in rain
that quickens

#088/100 Fingers

inspired by Jim DeCesare's Drawing #75

all my life i've borne the fear of losing a few fingers at 

sudden blades protruding from air. blades gasping

hello to slice me of identity in blood gushing

wounds. now the hammer calls to ask: 

what about my weight does it not

matter in your existence? yes

it does as you drop every

day every hour in my 

head onto the grain

of my hope so

dusty & 

gone.

#087/100 Horse

inspired by Carol Mack's Ghost Horse

the ghost horse gallops for its sweet love for the field where
ribs sunbathing through invisible flesh it taunts & thinks
i must run before black & white takes over my purple
contour. for it's always a race against blanks, dots,
shadows that don't connect on a lilac tapestry.
ghost strings carving their marks on bodies
to pass into drum beats so glorious.

#086/100 Stars

Click to enlarge. From left to right: Fuk Star, Luk Star and Sau Star, Chinese Gods of Fortune, Prosperity and Longevity; Tsai Shen Yeu, Chinese God of Fortune. By the window above my desk.

I have a genie who checks my connection with the other world from time to time and she has passed on a new message. That an ancestor of mine--probably a woman--wants my attention and they have been 'holding back' my luck  just a little bit lately to give me a kick. They spoke to me through my genie twice before and I didn't do anything. Ancestors? Really?

I suppose it makes sense. Why would I keep these statues of strange deities in my space, when those who share blood ties with me look on from a distance? As the story goes, the night I bought these statues at a funky Chinese store selling altar supplies (like Hell banknotes), I lost my wallet with a lot of cash in it, on a two-minute walk on my way home.

Now I'm on a quest to retrieve photos of Ancestors, which is looking to be a tough task. I'm only connected with my father's side of the family. Grandad's parents were blown into pieces during WWII, leaving no photographic evidence of their existence. Grandma was sold at the age of five by her parents, to live as the daughter of a childless couple on another island.

Grandma has stayed in touch with her real family. Now she'll have to make some phone calls to ask if I can visit a relative's home and bring a camera, so I can take pictures of those portraits that are hanging on the wall. It's hard to say if Grandma will manage to persuade them ("Granddaughter wants those images for writing stories"). Let's hope Ancestors will cooperate and let me do my job.

#085/100 Fever

inspired by Hayley Perry's #42

the heatstroke swirls in charcoal & i cannot recognize
the morphing sky above. what pavement what stalls
what flowers are hidden in these colors on my way
up the shimmering slope? a moment later i would
jump into the pool of forgetting & swim in fever
of what has passed. days on a blank roll to
vaporize in sight. my in-between hours.

#084/100 Token (III)

since you left i've been tearing
     dried petals off the roses we hung
          from where you rested & where
                                                   i hid
                                                      my slit

#083/100 Child (II)

inspired by Steve Veilleux's 'Invasion'

i'd put the small child i once was in a bundle of grass, rocks & mud
& give it to the river. the moment it sinks, a doll shrine will come
floating with its song about hands. endless, tiny hands gripping
grief over the departed while i walk through water, thighs cold
against red currents. where all want is lost. & lost again.

#082/100 Black

i'd pin a black mask against the black wall
until my face stops bleeding from my
tearing it off. leave me. leave.

#081/100 Trees (II)

inspired by Barbara J Lacuius' Day 48 'Days End'

in the dream my friend told me to look across the forest where my trees were supposed to be. i saw they had been fixed. the trunks were no longer bent & leaves sprouted where they should. 

but i couldn't understand: how did my trees come to look exactly the same as the ones on the other side? did my friend fold the forest like it was a hand-held, fold-up mirror, so that my trees became duplicates of someone else's?

it wasn't what i asked for. 

#080/100 Revelation (II)

inspired by Silvana Mondo's 100 Fildzana #78 - The Tragedian

there's no fortune to tell
     only twists of a fragile plot &
          sordid characters who drop like stains
               palette of dirt     smear it     over your eyes  
kill future     kill hope     kill void

#079/100 Train

because getting on the wrong train is never a mistake,
only a maze crawling down your throat to your lungs
like a train of cancer. go, shuttle & die everyday.

#078/100 Festival

when the ghost festival strikes in mid-July
                         (in the Chinese calendar)
red candles weep down the slope & leave
pools of dried tears. don't linger where the
spirits meet at the crossroads     they cry
as we move onto different lives everyday
not knowing
                  we've metamorphosed inside

#077/100 Sunflower

inspired by Julia Davies' Sunflowers

i'd put two cigarettes to my lips & light them
& blow smoke to the withered sunflower:
one day i'm gonna die just like you do.

#076/100 Metal

image courtesy of Mayang and altered by me

every time you leave
     i throw the shield i've been carrying
               to the ground

#075/100 Foil

#074/100 Mermaid (II)

we'll drink to crash the gate on the sidewalk past security guards/littered amid whores in their thigh highs & pimps with melting faces/neoned boxes of faded bikinis & chest hair through half-buttoned shirts/along the streets where women are men in fine bones & tattooed arms/past the butterfly at the opening of a staircase to the day/eternal through a shaking camera in aperture priority mode/a green taint around our eyes our irregular hearts splinting towards the window/rusted & greased we'll drink & we'll drink & we'll drink.

#073/100 Mermaid

turn to the night's last sirena: scented flesh, neoned souls by the bar. mine is a gently rocking boat while i nurse a quiet storm on my shore. from the glass tank i emerge, my skin peeling off the edge, to piercing lust in the men's eyes.

i'm the girl they cannot buy.

every night i do my swirling dance in water, until the men drape their arms over girls smuggled from across the border & our owner counts his money at the cashier. run the comb through my wet pink wig. hear it smack to the wild, cluttered breakage before the mirror. 

in the dressing room i slip out of my tail & sing the mermaid song:

our waves would never birth the pod of love

when what's true inside us can only plunder

drink, before darkness withers into morning

we've been whores since Empress Dowager

#072/100 Exit (II)

now that i've choked on mud--can i go now?

#071/100 Mud

fill me with mud to stop my body from burning:
small, circular veins bursting down my thighs.
clad me in a cold, iron amor while i lose such
compulsion of colors, shivers stripped of their
shine on a lost night. the last snowstorm took
the locks off your gate & icicles slid down my
fingers. since then i've been running to where
the sun turns mourners into surf, dried traces
on sand & dirt of one's choosing. pick it up,
my new disappearance. throw it to the side.

#070/100 Trees

my heart is emptied & these long, weeping leaves will take my place.

#069/100 Departure

i have no words for this departure. we shall not meet again.

#068/100 Pussy/Empress

when our slit love rains down the solitary pole, your fate is burial in mud.
in a realm of moist suffocation: your eyes bulging in a toy princess's oath
of eternal love, her breasts her cunt a warped net over your bloody face.
breathe trash breathe death breathe the laughing skeletons, which hover
above your burial site to dance a curious dance. 'here lies a young man
who choked on pussy juice,' they chirp. 'see the scars on his back from
a candy-laden whip.' & i, now a passer-by, shovel dirt over your grave &
tread until the soil bleeds. your princess can come & clean it up like she
always does. spank you like a servant to her mother Empress Dowager.

#067/100 Search

'just checking to see if you've been lost' are my parting words with you before i tread water, dry grass & muddy dusk to the other end of the village. call it loss. call it departure from time long gone that is more than the sum of its parts: punctured despair, slit love in its wake & words raining down the roof. 

'where are you going?' you ask. 'you're always getting yourself into muddy water.'

it's a dark night while you watch me, a moving figurine of fearlessness. you'd stay by the fire in your house & i'd stay alone by the water.

#066/100 Burial

...because in China, you could get buried alive.

we've heard this all before from the prophets of the castle--

spread your arms to fall over the railway track, smoke veil for shattered flesh, blood-stained seats & windows. when dust kisses the ground, the wrecked carrier dives into the massive hole that has been dug by the police officers and workers. shovel it into the underground, so that nobody would hear the muted cries for help or see fingers protruding through the dirt.

in the realm of involuntary goodbye, a dead woman puts her hand on her belly & is thankful for the end. my child wouldn't know me if he was ever born, she hums to herself, feeling half of her head missing & her own words wheezing through the bloody void. 

her child is named Ocean. now it'd keep rocking inside her, while more & more bodies crash into her resting place, when husband is throwing Hell bank notes into the wind & calling her name: come back, my sun. but all that's left is the ocean raging within & she must shield herself from more dirt & blood, until she is resurrected from this place.

#065/100 Searchlight

under the searchlight i'm hiding beneath flowers 

     & the revolution will start. it will crack your shell & mine 

          oh such delusion--i'm only pressed against the floor to inhale

               dust in a shadow pantomime. the deep purple 

          will tear down dew to reveal your form 

     again & i cannot--i cannot fight it.

#064/100 Priscilla

inspired by Lisa Kaplan's 'Day 59' & Bryan Caroll's 'Entry 42'

'ice coffee is cheap when it's not branded with a green mermaid,' he says & slides the cup of coffee across the table. the aroma takes angular routes & changing shades of bronze & red. priscilla can't follow with her eyes wide open in twilight. she isn't used to such intrigue in the human world, or the kiss of steam on her new-found skin.

'what would i do without my tail?' priscilla looks up, alarmed. 'give it back to me.'

against the windowsills her skin grows paler by the minute, until it turns into a translucent glow that merges with the shine of her wet, black hair. when she touches her arm she stirs dews, ripples & rising halos. soon her eyes are the only traces of her left, sparkling like black crystals into an alien hollow.

he watches priscilla melt into air before him & takes a deep breath of joy. on endless nights he rescued her from the waves & embraced her tail, waiting to hear that she'd love him. all that she did was flipping to escape his grip. green is for fairies and dark blue is for him: a man with damaged eyes, floating down the water that is him, only him.

when priscilla has vaporized, he pours more coffee into his cup. he'd drink this coffee down to the last sip of the love of his life. that would be his ocean.

#063/100 Cemetery (II)

This was a dream I had on a Saturday afternoon. Edith and Arnold were my classmates in high school.

***

The playground glistens in late afternoon haze and my companions--Edith, the girl with a pumpkin-shaped head and Arnold the womanizer with rosy-colored cheeks in our high school days--grab me by the arms. My skin is dissolving while the playground wears a palette of grey: basketball stand tainted with grey and red paint dripping from the net; grey benches calling through a gust of wind; dirt rising from the soil in a grey fog, where silent lives of bushes drain out of their confinement. Flowing to me and my companions from years ago.

'Stay here and watch over the grave underneath the pine tree,' Edith says. 'The girl's parents want you to do it.'

'But I don't know that girl, do I?'

'It doesn't matter. You'd get paid for the work.'

I pull my arms away; Edith and Arnold burst into a wild laughter, their faces distorted in the fading glow of the sun against a grey sky. Soon darkness falls and erases their faces; there are only gaps and stale air where their throbbing bodies were just a moment ago. 

I walk down the playground. The concrete splits and starts turning into a swamp. I tread carefully--my job is to stay with the grave until midnight when it is time for me to catch the last train home. The trees are reaching out to stop me, to tease me with a low drone sound which I know, in my waking life, to be their late-night music parade. I must reach the end of the cemetery and take care of the tomb stone before the night ends, or the trees will leave their dwellings to bury me with their trunks and leaves.

At the end of a serpentine path I am brushing dark leaves off my face. I see moonlight on fluttering trees, then the sea, and a ferry at the pier. I have been transposed to a remote island; I have been rescued and I must now run to catch the ferry.

#062/100 Skin

uncross me i'm crawling out of my skin/tattered slices of your face unseen/
behind me soft landing/false shelter of our world divided/such aroma kills/
me & your shell unravels the hammock drifts/explosion by your window/
burn me kiss me as i run plead exit/green mud pond demise without you/

#061/100 Token (II)

to preserve my dream i hang it from a bedpost for a woman
platinum blonde to lift the drapes & say: 'come to my side
where we'd wither into a mercury color.' her ocean blue
eyes are the night's sirena. i cannot wake up or crawl
back into my sheets. she walls me in & kisses me
& now
               i'm hanging i'm hanging i'm hanging.

#060/100 Token

#059/100 Dwelling

 

related post: Little Mysteries 

#058/100 Thief

i'm weary of the prison of words & human presence--including my own--so i go around to steal leaves from different trees. their touch makes me feel alive in another world.

& i keep forgetting to sing or speak to them first. that makes me a thief.

#057/100 Cemetery

i stole these flowers & gave them to a 2-year-old toddler. the inscription on the tomb stone did not say whether it was a boy or a girl--the first and middle names were given in initials. i saw a little boy, upbeat with wild eyes, oblivious to death the moment it ripped him open to inhale his soul, to lift it from the destruction & darkness of war in a foreign country.

half a century later i gave him these flowers & wished him well. here, in my hometown.

#056/100 Rain Dance

inspired by Katie Bentley's 'Rain dancers'

the rain dancer has a pear-shaped tear at the corner of its eye,
crystallized mark of lost shine. dark blue hide sizzling on sand
so dry. my feet are starting to crack. the broken bird shakes its
feathers & looks to its companions, shadows at the far end of
the desert. crowns of joy, airy robes in a newfound kingdom:
grey clouds are born unto accordion music, a tapestry of rain.
i'm burning far behind. the lonesome rain dancer cries. come
fetch me sweep me into your whirl.

#055/100 Mountain

inspired by Sandy Blanc's 'Tree on Mt. Major'

we like how the trees are bent on our way up to the top of the mountain where nothing is ever what it seems. the heartbeat beside me, steps burning soil & rocks, skin peeling off trunks & bare-faced trees waving: 'leave. don't leave.' 

at the far end of an invisible river a tree god is playing drums & the water flows through our feet. crushed shells & bones & hide of a dead hummingbird to fool me. 'in seven days we'll reach our stop & you'll believe what i've told you,' you say.

i turn to look at you. your face is air--it does not exist.

#054/100 Nausea

inspired by Kelli Costa's '002'

she is the glow amidst the tree storm, waves brewing across the far end of the forest. no one reaches shore to look into her house through the solo window, where she is rocking in the nausea of solitude. drum it to the violent sweep across the table, to broken porcelain cups, a soiled bra & her hair on wooden floor boards. bloated water bride, gurgling hot agony. tap it on her tears. tap it shut it close.

the lullaby strummed on a flying guitar has gone shattered; it is emitting smoke all over the room. she throws her body against scattered pieces of furniture, screaming muted scream like a ventriloquist who has lost her dummy & can only mimic her soul. when all the lamps & chairs & drapes have fallen, she crouches underneath the window & weeps. she has no strength to set fire to the forest. she never will.

#053/100 Empress

inspired by Billie Williams' 'sand patterns'

for her you would breathe dry sand until her calves
draw you in. such concentric patterns of a dark hole
awaiting--scratch that black ink on paper, stamps of
a lifelong jail at the end of the maze. quill your name
your schizophrenia on her legs, flapping up & down
to squeeze you into a marital nest. it's growing thorns
& bloodstains are crawling up the wall, to next door
your neighbor Empress Dowager. the mother to end all
mothers, on duty to watch you misdeeds. she'll order
the burning of your quatrains--poetry you spun when
breathing dry sand was a drug, & you had no idea that
purgatory would not cleanse but fucking last forever.

#052/100 Shadows (II)

He burnt his shadow on the wall before he left. A silhouette of his slightly bent back, unruly hair & a small suitcase. The moment it happened, she was sipping tea on the couch with the day's newspaper on her lap. She did not look up when he gently closed the door. She had lived this scenario in her mind too many times before.

***

She burnt her shadow on the door. The contour of her hair fanning across her shoulders, bent elbows & a finger to her lip, a touch of anticipation forever frozen in domestic sphere. The shadow grew deeper shades as the day slid past, seeping through cracks in the wooden floorboards. No one would mind the abandoned ghost for a long while.

***

A child marched into the room with a bucket of soap water & a large yellow sponge. She scrubbed her parents' shadows while she savored the bubbles foaming between her fingers. She would grow up to be the girl neither of her parents wanted her to be: a destroyer with a cool, cool heart until she burnt her own shadow on someone else's wall. 

#051/100 Pussy

overhead     overhead     overhead
     her pussy a bass clarinet     echoes you hear every night
          the past stinking years     thump your marriage bed cold
               ice cubes splitting your testicles     so unused in the world     forever sucked
     into the same hole     go clap     get a rush of blood to your head  
          her lock & chain     curfew & scream     you can never abandon me
               surround sound through your bones     little hands protruding     her pussy trash
sign here     sign here     sign here

#050/100 Pond

we told you not to swim in the muddy water--lung smash in chalky bubbles, molten horns engulfing your descent & yet you scream: 'i can swim to stay afloat when every one of you weeps over what i'm getting, such poetry you'll never know.' so we begin to weep at the blood fountain & shards & shattered flesh erupting in the pond, while a serpent splashes her tail to seize you. colors drip from your lean, youthful body & you're now a grey corpse in a nest from hell. & we cry at the sight of your fingers through the ripples: 'we told you not to do it.'

#049/100 Rocks

#048/100 Bats

Can somebody tell me how I can stop cutting myself into two halves so that I won't:

                         a/run away                         b/stretch my wings

to brace you? At the gate of the cemetery I'm toppling--a lovely moonlit night!--& trees are sprawling into bats. You're the biggest of them all, faceless evil across the sky:

                           'you've come too late, my child

                           tada tada tada'

                          *                                       *                                        *

Spare me your pity as I turn half-human, half-bat & you sing:

                           'you look like a face shaking off

                           one mask for another to hit the party'

Since you abandoned me & escaped to the other side, I've been wandering in & out of trees, looking for you. I've never been good at begging; I wasn't brought up that way.

                          *                                        *                                        *

You rocked me on a rock until my spine was crooked. Then you burnt my little feet into hooks, hung me upside down from your forearm by the river. Until a pigeon flew by & squeaked:

                          'drop that pure violet, you black-hearted

                          murderess witch'

The pigeon was a messenger from God or some goddamned entity from above. They had been watching all your sins while I was reborn a black stone.

                          *                                         *                                        *

Your sins are a many-splendored thing, like the way you hopped into a boat with a tumbler & floated down the river. In that moment I knew that he, the tumbler with a cunning smile, had become your child.

                          'a river of blood, I'll feed on nothing less

                          than your sacrifice'

& I knew your waving goodbye was forever.

                          *                                         *                                        *

Nobody told me I'd turn half-human, half-bat in time. I've munched on grass & roots--I was a vegetarian--but the lack of love has ripped my skin. I'm a bird that has shed its feathers.

                          'in the dark I'm calling you, you 

                          little bat gleaming by the tree'

The metamorphosis has taken life out of me. Mother, stop your wicked laughter.

#047/100 Castle

image: Sarah Richter's 'day 43'

sequel to 'Maze'


entertain me with your words     garnished hatred you
     storm martyr     neighbors in concrete     castle lights wash
i'm out of these cells to drown    life unlived in vomit
     crack missile    ghosts shot splintered    stairways go round
flip the sound switch to fall        i'm creator orchestra 
     dipping curve    throbbing shine gristle    curtains glare wide
you can feed me what i need      girl pinned to window
     pronged exit     wind dive blown fast       destroy your pathos

#046/100 Maze

inspired by Sarah Richter's 'day 42'

astound me     you tumbler of dark river     flowing
     down my cheek i'm boiling     at close range soft corner
hustle me        born splitting space vibes     cutting
     me strings hang weightless     over you invisible punch
freeze me       cube heart on suede couch    melting
     hands strike down my neck     lapses mandolins on air
leave me        i'm solider melancholy hot     marching
     maze reborn hysteric ground    to brace your dead halo

#045/100 Fireworks

inspired by Steve Veilleux's 'Carnival Town'

his dream axis spins & shoots phantom fireworks into the sky, slate blue tainted by the last glow of summer. rebellion is the sweat on his palm, the call to the ocean: 'i'll cross to the other side where nobody knows who i'll become.' & the water laughs & chants: 'there's always the future for you to burn, my child.'

#044/100 Pollen

inspired by Cathryn Esten's 'You Belong Among the Wildflowers'

you belong where pollen drifts to seek its counterpart,
airy taint on whispery legs of a bee. you dart on hosta,
a hummingbird's song melting down the windowsills:
the colors drip onto charcoal, record with burnt edges
while i wait for you, all summer.

#043/100 Wings

inspired by Sabin Aell's 'I  felt yellow with the urge to jump...'

i feel yellow oozing from my pores: wide open, anxiously sucking up
the wind. the red rocks & the searing sun have nothing to do with it--
my run started a long time ago, in a house where somebody hummed:
'i'd fold you & fold you into a packet of indeterminable shape, & push
you down my throat to where you could stay forever.' shapes & lines,
they matter to me like white paint on glass panes, the dawning of soul
past our relentless shiver. to be born again i ran to the cliff. here, look
at me, glass-winged yellow goddess. how i shine during the fall &
you know i'd never regret a goddamn thing.