This is how a face changes
How smiles are stomped
This is how corn rows
become the fault lines of a skull
how a skull becomes a puzzle
tectonic plates shifting over
swollen brain
This is how an eye bursts
How a retina bends to accept
the force of a Nike swoosh
This is how fingers break
how blood bubbles over knuckles
of children, how hands become
skeletons never to flip the page
of American History again
This is death recorded
This is humanity’s close up
Bleed for the camera
This is the last Timberland
his body was awake to feel
This is his nerves firing
in a furious trill as his soul shakes
free of the carnage
This is a graduation cap
waterlogged in the Styx
A song clotted to a child’s
splintered ribs

Holiness is finally drowning
the last prayer to a starfish
before joining the bones of brothers
I am a barnacled reef thatched
across the floor of the ocean’s palace,
a chalice of blood and damage
I am Atlas, this grave is just a pressure
point on my third vertebra, I am the velocity
of a mother’s prayer, the sun tangled
in viscous cables of horizon, lightning
that veins the fog, I am the amputated
ankle, the raised blister of a brand,
I am sand and salvation, I am
piranhas pressing against a colonial thigh,
I am why horses humble themselves,
I am an archer whose quiver
is ringing empty, I sing the silence
after lost battles, I am mausolea and
memory, I am hyacinth and curry powder
I am not synthetic – I am indigo dye
and indigenous death, I am the native
heiress standing when no one is left

In my perfection, I am unafraid. In my perfection, I flow through the world like Light and it flows through Me. I hum yellow and yellow appears. The sky turns violet and so do I. My muscles are relaxed but strong and I am a physical manifestation of Love. My teeth are Love. I breathe Abundance and my bones are filled with it. Every day I make my Legacy and it is Creation. I collaborate with the Divine Energy of the planet and make my divinity manifest. I am the idea of Manifest. I am grateful. I use each moment on this planet, in this skin, on these ankles, to become my Highest Self. Each moment I am closer to Her and I thank the trees and my mother and my elders and my shoulders and the sun and my father and the bricks and the signs and the shells and the ink and the gates and the blades of grass and the grain that grows downstate. I thank the souls of birds. I bring my mind to its limits of comprehension and seek remembrance. I believe in my own Perfection. I nurture this temporary vessel. I say Thank You to the people that love me. And the cars and the artichokes and the leaves of deep green spinach and the planets and the kittens and the spiders in my bathroom. I thank them all for Loving me. I become and unbecome them. Each day I find a new way to Remember. I sing the limitless heights of my being. I believe in my safety and passage and growth. I claim my own perfection and become it.

II
It is easiest, and therefore tempting, when misfortunes accumulate, to ask why bad things are happening to you, why the Universe is doing this to you, what have you done to deserve such difficulty. I strive on this day to ask instead “Why have I created these circumstances for Myself?” “What do I wish to teach Myself? How much stronger will I emerge? Faster, wiser, sharper?” Of all of the things to stress about, money should not ever be one of them. Money itself is a tool to uphold an illusion of Universal lack. It symbolizes a limitation of resources in a Universe defined by Abundance. If there is a Hell, it is only an ascription to the illusion of lack. And if there is a paradise, it is perfect acceptance of Universal abundance.

Therefore, in this moment, I need only breathe. Everything I need, I already have or have the ability to create. There is nothing that I can imagine that I cannot claim as my own. In this perfect belief, there is Peace. And in Peace, there is a vast plain awaiting my acts of Creation.

If I can find a way to teach these things, then my work as a teacher will be more meaningful to me. But how do you teach a sidewalk that it is air? I trust that as I continue to seek, Knowledge and Understanding will be revealed to me. I am grateful for my face and my eyes and my hands this day. I’m grateful for growth. For my ability to love.

the black cables of her hair into bone
marrow, burned her fingernails to crust,
crushed the song of ashen atoms twisting
in the thimble of her throat. I wanted

you to save her, to hear her when
you mined me. I was only silence
for you to plumb, air too thin
to womb for your songs. When you stab

a brittle matchbox with a staff
of dynamite, something is sure to burn.

A stairwell or backstage
or a construction detour
Soundproof and damp
even in the thick of summer

I’m pretending it’s a coincidence
that he found me, an accidental
finger on his when he hands
me a pencil, a crowded room
that forces knees to touch,

deliberate perfume on my elbow
when I reach across him for the water
pitcher, the slow pour from its lip
to my glass, he asks

me to meet him after last bell
on the catwalk, and I am
merely writing poems, sneakers dangling
through the lighting grid when he arrives,

he asks me for a casual cocktail
and I shrug as though my humming
hadn’t instructed him. I’m a startled hen
when his strident feathers burst

iridescent like a manhattan opera
That we kiss is happenstance
even that we kiss again
That my knuckles knit to his

in backs of taxis, as though I hadn’t
scripted him pinning me over
and over, alone, in journals and bedrooms
At the end, I exhume my desire

It’s a common rock
from my mother’s landscaping
A secret I swear to keep

The throb of throat to fist
is like the antechamber of waking
to wafting breakfast smells, pop
and sizzle of bacon blending
with late dreams; the body shivers alive,
grateful for its many tendons. Let me
now give your mouth a definition.

I will call it hurricane, pouting
against the sturdy shore of my shoulder.
Jokes and promises splattered desperate
into the urn of my rigid hand, morning
is your only witness, no
one will believe you.

Let me now define the femur
rocketing against me, the low
shaky favor a clarinet asks
when it cowers in the corners of an orchestra.

The pawing carves me out.
I’m nothing. Confetti of voice
and fat, canvas to be bled and
scraped and bled again. Browning silver.

Watch my fingers become thread
with the linen, my face a pillow
case, my brains down, I won’t
even swat the fly on my cheek
because my cheek is a crown
of batting, seams unraveling
on the fault lines of the quilt.

Imagine a cathedral of bones,
her hesitation a chorus of brass, imagine

light bending through the mosaic
of her smile, imagine mornings

kneeling in her knotted curls, rocking
religious on the pews of her thighs.

Imagine salvation, a single finger
forgiving your eyebrow for every

dishonest twitch or frivolous furrow,
sing the cobwebbed hymn of her

beauty, silly scattered marbles
in the water at the altar, call

her cosmos, call her christmas
loose teeth and fractured breath

Let her be sand through your knuckles,
grit under nails, the pollen your shirt wears

home. She is the perfect language,
with no poem to call

her own.

I understand, in these moments, why people don’t like me. I am impetuous, demanding answers of the Universe and her inhabitants. I don’t relent. I only tug at the coat sleeve. Maybe in these hours, I rehearse the things I feel I shouldn’t say. Maybe my body won’t let me sleep until I get it just right. Maybe my body hasn’t caught on; I’ll never let it say those things. And I’ve got to sleep sometime. Someone’s got to cave. Who will it be? Me? or me?

My clock says 7:02AM. The sun has fully risen. There is a dull pulling behind my eyes, the polite knocking of slumber. Why won’t he come in and take me by force? What is he afraid of?

a freewrite

this is for the sleepwalkers
we who wander the wet streets
chewing our tongues like sand
throats warbling at a half decapitated moon

our nails are scythes reaping
beergrain flesh and our teeth
are drunk with gnashing
we spend the night smashing
streetlights with our poems
that stopped begging to be heard
years ago

we won’t ask to be fed
but we’re hungry, stumbling
curbside and ragged and prideful
we howl in the ears of vacant
lovers who roll the silk of worms
between fingers before plugging
and we don’t blame them
for the silence is unbearable

we break our knuckles
on our sternums drumming
out a war song and pray
tears are all the camouflage
we need

Here is a letter written on a Friday, an artifact of my tender thoughts at the ten oclock hour. This is time compressed to line, unpicked apples, unsailed waves, unswimmed reefs, unbought curtains, unbaked pies and turkeys and skins. This is a promissory note for hands unheld, a scream swallowed by pillows. This is the performance track, theatrical adlibs splattered like islands in the ocean of meter and snare. This is a combination for unlocking secret hatches. The lilt of words we know we’re too young to speak, tongues we suck for hush. This is a wordless plea for a throat throbbing under your fist, a grateful twist of swollen lip, a scribble cryptic of things I’ll never say. This is a gift. This is honest. My fingertips finding familiar the braille of your tight curls, my thumb on your eyebrow. I once heard a poet say that it’s unfair: that in the moment of loving, you become hard, and I become soft. That I must wet and open. That I collapse around you, that I cave around your fingers. Please don’t be cruel when I let myself be split by you. This is a letter. This is rare. Tell me what color your moon is. Ask me the colors of mine. Learn the shapes of my flag, the depths of my fear, the weight of the ash in my lungs. This is a Friday morning epistle, pitched at the sky.

Money by Primeridian, Rashid Hadee, Pugs Atomz. from Pugs Atomz on Vimeo.

Check out the new music on the page:

“Eva and the Supastar” – 16 year old Eva grows up too fast when she gets
involved with megapopular R & B singer John Forrest

“Kayla Walks In” – Kayla Forrest, stunning and seductive wife of R&B singer John
Forrest, enters her penthouse suite for her first meeting with protagonist Ellison Parker

“That Night” – with adrenaline and passions running high, Kayla and Ellison find
themselves tangled in a dark and dangerous game

To hear more and find out how you can READ THE BOOK check out www.isaacperry.com, www.allfallsdown.com, and look for Isaac on Facebook.

eventually we shatter
glass fractures bones snap
snapshots crumble to dust
and scatter on breezes
razor as rapture, eventually
we’re captured – batter
our knees on the last words
of captors, straining against nets
meant to strangle our pastors
and after we fall silent
and stillness sweeps the rafters
is there a reason to afford ourselves laughter
we breathe under sheets
pulled to cover cadavers
cavities of calamity calming the caspers
that crisp on ovens crusted with jasper
why hope for an answer
when hope is a cancer

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This time
I’m going to keep it to myself
This time
I’m going to keep me
all to myself
–Bjork

…..m’f*cka

i remember this feeling
only
it used to be a sledgehammer
shattering the marble
of my carved cheek
a semi truck
balanced nose down
on my sternum

but now
there is a hard swallow
a dull ache
and perhaps a timid tap
on the shoulder reminding
me to take myself home

i do wish
i still knew how to cry

Question: What if there was no niggers, only Master Teachers?
Answer: I’d stay woke.
–Amerykah

Thursday, May 1st, 2008 — You are already eager to move on to your next phase, but today it’s a smarter strategy to stay with one experience longer. An entirely new perspective can open as you settle beneath the bright lights of surface distractions. Even if you are scared of the dark, pushing through your fears can bring love closer to you now.

Kristiana to Horoscope:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck you.

“the bright lights of surface distractions”? who writes this crap.

I thought of killing him
or moving him away
from where I sleep
But his presence
in a bed so often empty
was a comfort

I talked to him
He may have seen me giggle
or let a little moan escape

And even though two mornings
in a row I wake bitten
I will let him stay
I am tired
of sleeping alone

[don't let the line breaks fool you -- this is not a poem....yet]

closer. I want you
just like that.

lovely knife the wrist
little blood of sharp paper
red crescent to spell

twenty-two

Teeth rip through
bright pink gums, swollen
Wisdom hurts

Clearly, I am like ten poems behind. Birthdays are bad for my creative process.

I cannot and will not continue to trust so willingly, to love
so thickly

Love say
You best watch talking like you big stuff, saying what you
can’t and won’t do.

You got no clue the things you can and will do.

You want to see what all you can endure?

Keep living, child.

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

You just have to love. Love love love love love. It’s all over our nucleotides. It’s all we are here to do.

after the last piece of crystal was fastened to the chandelier and it shivered resplendent over marble. a galaxy of glass trapping the light we smile in the quiet. dripping constellations shimmer we suffocate each other. fist away the little sweets. kill the timid whispers. you climb the winding stairs your hands caress the banister lacquered and cherry warm. i ask you to come back down but the prisms pull you up. methodical surgical you hack the wreath of glass rain of diamonds shatter. scissor through still air. nick my frills of flushed skin dribble face. and i instantly forgive. even eat in the broken crystals. so as not to leave a mess.

10

every day i
puncture the web
of flesh stretched
from thumb to fore
finger the wound
sneak a smirk
When we take our
evening strolls
on the beach, in
the park, we hold
hands.

– 9/30. Seven and Eight aren’t worth posting.

So never mind the helixes we braided in July,
the shades of the Euphrates we created or the five
concentric circles that he traced inside my thighs
Forget the triple valenced song he sparked to charge my spine
and the fusillade of fingertips cascading down the vines
that spiral brown around my cheeks to veil me from the lie.
They pale in the brilliance of my sun, so dim the sky.

—
Hey. Perhaps my gravest error is my willingness to trust. I want so badly to believe we humans learn to love.

—
And I know I’m still two poems behind. I’m trying to catch up.

—
And I realize that I may be mistaking. Someone asked me once “Will you be open like a flower, or a wound?” And I so enamored with my swift unravelling failed to understand the difference is semantics. In order for a vessel to float, it must be airtight. Permeability may be the flaw. Fatal.

it’s not you, it’s me ::: three haiku

My gold pumps
should guarantee that
my bed holds

two brown chests
soft with shea butter,
not just mine,

but my strut
ain’t mean enough to
make him love.

an exercise

What a blinding blizzard!
Thick crusts of white
lining barks, sheets
of razor flakes caking
glass white, blotting suns,
breaking boughs, veiling white
the eyes of stars muddled
in the viscous grey of night
White sprays of waves
glacier from the lake, scrape
high onto the Drive, daring white
lines lining lanes to shine
up through the white as a flight
of cars break the curve
What a titanic storm!
So wholly blown white
I cannot see a thing
at all

holy shit

[this is important
i will have to revisit
these themes another
time]

You are ready to risk it all and ask for what you want, even if your request is a bit weird. It’s best to think twice before speaking, although you will probably go ahead with your initial plan anyway. Bold behavior will clearly make your statement, so be sure you are willing to deal with the consequences of your actions.

I kept the sunset to myself today
the coral coronets frozen
on a purpling horizon
the holiest strokes of genesis
and felt your hand
arched over mine on the brush
wanted to skate my breathless promise
of sunset over the glowing brick rooftops
of chicago, embers failing

in the fainting light
but would rather let you chill today
let whatever sickles i may have softened
with the fierceness of my light
mold themselves back into stone

i will let you turn in search of brighter suns
the cadences of more cherry laughs
a more potent spell than
my lips will ever conjure
my ribs have been too pliant

superlatives balm
on faithful cicatrices
and i languid trace
the veins of glass
spidering across
the smoky dome
of sky bleeding
the color of wrists
gold etchings mist
into nothing

and maybe this time
i will have the courage
to hurt

She says “You love running full speed into closed fists.”

Man never truly possesses anything
Not his strength, not his weakness, not his heart
When he opens his arms
His shadow forms a cross
When he tries to embrace happiness
He crushes it
His life is a strange and painful divorce

There is no happy love

His life resembles those soulless soldiers
Who have been groomed for a different fate
Why should they rise in the morning
When nighttime finds them disarmed, uncertain
Say these words and hold back your tears

There is no happy love

My beautiful love, my dear love, my torn heart
I carry you in me like a wounded bird
Those who unknowingly watch us walk by
Repeat after me my words and sigh
They have already died in your bright eyes

There is no happy love

By the time we learn to live
It’s already too late
Our hearts cry in unison at night
It takes many regrets to pay for a thrill

Many a misfortune for the simplest song
Many a tear for a guitar’s melody

There is no happy love

There is no love which is not pain
There is no love which does not die
There is no love which does not fade
And none that is greater than your love for your country
There is no love which does not live from tears

There is no happy love

encore, mais en francais

Rien n’est jamais acquis à l’homme Ni sa force
Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit
Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d’une croix
Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie
Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes
Qu’on avait habillés pour un autre destin
A quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin
Eux qu’on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains
Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure
Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé
Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer
Répétant après moi les mots que j’ai tressés
Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Le temps d’apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard
Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l’unisson
Ce qu’il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson
Ce qu’il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson
Ce qu’il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Il n’y a pas d’amour qui ne soit à douleur
Il n’y a pas d’amour dont on ne soit meurtri
Il n’y a pas d’amour dont on ne soit flétri
Et pas plus que de toi l’amour de la patrie
Il n’y a pas d’amour qui ne vive de pleurs

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

on repeat tonight

I am suddenly certain that the only reason I learned French was so that I could listen to Nina Simone sing these two songs and somewhat understand them without the English translation. On second thought, I could probably understand her if she was singing in Martian…. but alas, share my delight.

Il N’y a Pas D’Amour Heureux – There is No Happy Love

Man never truly possesses anything
Not his strength, not his weakness, not his heart
When he opens his arms
His shadow forms a cross
When he tries to embrace happiness
He crushes it
His life is a strange and painful divorce

There is no happy love

His life resembles those soulless soldiers
Who have been groomed for a different fate
Why should they rise in the morning
When nighttime finds them disarmed, uncertain
Say these words and hold back your tears

There is no happy love

My beautiful love, my dear love, my torn heart
I carry you in me like a wounded bird
Those who unknowingly watch us walk by
Repeat after me my words and sigh
They have already died in your bright eyes

There is no happy love

By the time we learn to live
It’s already too late
Our hearts cry in unison at night
It takes many regrets to pay for a thrill

Many a misfortune for the simplest song
Many a tear for a guitar’s melody

There is no happy love

There is no love which is not pain
There is no love which does not die
There is no love which does not fade
And none that is greater than your love for your country
There is no love which does not live from tears

There is no happy love

encore, mais en francais

Rien n’est jamais acquis à l’homme Ni sa force
Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit
Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d’une croix
Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie
Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes
Qu’on avait habillés pour un autre destin
A quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin
Eux qu’on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains
Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure
Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé
Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer
Répétant après moi les mots que j’ai tressés
Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Le temps d’apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard
Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l’unisson
Ce qu’il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson
Ce qu’il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson
Ce qu’il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Il n’y a pas d’amour qui ne soit à douleur
Il n’y a pas d’amour dont on ne soit meurtri
Il n’y a pas d’amour dont on ne soit flétri
Et pas plus que de toi l’amour de la patrie
Il n’y a pas d’amour qui ne vive de pleurs

Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Ne Me Quitte Pas – Don’t Leave Me

Don’t leave me
We must forget
all we can forget, all we did till now
Let’s forget the cost of the breath
we’ve spent saying words unmeant
And the times we’ve lost, hours that must destroy
Never knowing why everything must die at the heart of joy
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me

I’ll bring back to you the pearls of rain
from a distant domain where rain never fell
And though I grow old I’ll keep mining the ground
To deck you around in gold and light
I’ll build you a domain where love’s everything
Where love is king and you are queen
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me

Don’t leave me
For you I’ll invent
words and what they meant only you will know
Tales of lovers who fell apart and then fell in love again
There’s a story too that I can confide
Of that king who died from not meeting you
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me

And often it’s true that flames spill anew
from ancient volcano’s we thought were too old
When all’s said and done scorched fields of defeat
Could give us more wheat than the fine April sun
And when evening is nigh
with flames overhead
The black and the red,
aren’t they joined in the sky?
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
Don’t leave me ,don’t leave me

Don’t leave me
I will cry no more
I will talk no more, hide myself
To look at you and see you dance and smile
And hear you sing and laugh
Let me be for you the shadow of your shadow
The shadow of your hand, the shadow of your dog
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me

oui, encore en francais aussi

Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s’oublier
Qui s’enfuit déjà
Oublier le temps
Des malentendus
Et le temps perdu
A savoir comment
Oublier ces heures
Qui tuaient parfois
A coups de pourquoi
Le coeur du bonheur

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Moi je t’offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Oÿ il ne pleut pas
Je creuserai la terre
Jusqu’après ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D’or et de lumière
Je ferai un domaine
Oÿ l’amour sera roi
Oÿ l’amour sera loi
Oÿ tu seras reine

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Je t’inventerai
Des mots insensés
Que tu comprendras
Je te parlerai
De ces amants-là
Qui ont vu deux fois
Leurs coeurs s’embraser
Je te raconterai
L’histoire de ce roi
Mort de n’avoir pas
Pu te rencontrer

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

On a vu souvent
Rejaillir le feu
De l’ancien volcan
Qu’on croyait trop vieux
Il est paraät-il
Des terres brulées
Donnant plus de blé
Qu’un meilleur avril
Et quand vient le soir
Pour qu’un ciel flamboie
Le rouge et le noir
Ne s’épousent-ils pas

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas
Je ne vais plus pleurer
Je ne vais plus parler
Je me cacherai là
A te regarder
Danser et sourire
Et à t’écouter
Chanter et puis rire
Laisse-moi devenir
L’ombre de ton ombre
L’ombre de ta main
L’ombre de ton chien

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Boss to Secretary: “Yeah well, I once walked 28 miles with 75 pounds on my back in seven hours and twenty two minutes.”

Secretary: “uhhh…”

Boss: “….through sand”

Secretary: “…..”

Boss: “And I used to shoot people”

— Staceyann Chin
(unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this one)

because last night he took away my bowl of water too early
because the shape of the faces and the smell of the bodies
because the gleeful pour of palm wine and the cool smooth of the gourd
because all the laughs and light spirit cannot be revived in the microwave

and how many ways can a poet describe the yam crusted on her nail polish
and how many ways can you plead with no words
and how many thin spears of bone must you swallow
and how many must pierce through your cheek

because on my cluttered kitchen table there is no bowl of warm water
because alone in my dining room there are no dark eyes gleaming
because i ate all the plantain at the restaurant and there is no sweet left for my tongue
because i wanted to write a happy poem because happy is more attractive than the sullen and numb

because i woke up to plastic
because now i prefer it
because i’ll wait
because the train stops running after midnight
because i’ll wait anyway
because his face when i mixed in the coconut rice
because i’ll tell the truth until my tongue hurts and then i’ll say nothing at all
because i should have worn the august armor
because i should not have called should not have told should not have done
because i have no regrets
because what i ingest becomes a part of my body

because i should have ordered peanut soup

because i should have known

because i knew

because i pledge allegiance
because i hum elegiac

and how many shades can a poet paint
and how many days can she blink away
and how many hearts must she offer
to make the perfect stew
and how will the fufu dry on my fingers
and how dry must i be

Sometimes I do not understand. I was so earnest, so sincere.

And so what that I refuse to glue back the glass that shattered?
I am prismskinned remembrance staining days with my refraction

” sultry samba fronds woven rooster song
coconut water
the morning of the carnival is the saddest morning

except the mourning after

black boys play their flutes
i finger the hay snaking golden from my pillowcase
it will never be this sweet again
the syrup has hardened on our lips

the candle of the sun pushes up through the dark
dawn means the empty space
the slow cooling of sheets
once warmed by your body

we exist
only under the canopy of night
puffing in toward us

I want you with the gold of daylight
dusting your mahoghany cheek
slick on the slope of your face

May I suck the dew of morning from your brow?

or must you
always vanish
with the approach of phaeton’s fleet?

Stay.”

lately, i’ve been asking myself why i post my frantic ramblings here. do i want you to read it? who is my audience? i expose some of the tenderest spots to complete strangers and the not-so-strange. what for. right now, my answer is that it’s an easy way for me to document and recall what is going on with me. and being on the world wide web, i can access it from anywhere, if ever i am need of an answer to a question like “what was i feeling on or around september?” i am the filament of stars. i am the filament of stars. i am something.

in the workshop I led at YCA before my feature, I asked the students to write something inspired by the poems “Things I Could Never Tell My Mother” and “Dangerous Subjects” — what the kids wrote were all much better than this nonsense that I scribbled, but I’m bored and I need to move my fingers over keys, so here it is

You don’t know my middle name
or my favorite food
the reason for my scars
my shades of brown and gold
You have never seen me cry
although you have
You have never seen me bleed
I never bled
You cannot recall my collarbone
the summer rain of my laughter
my birthday
the day of the week
we last touched
You don’t know the crookedness
of my middle fingers
which necklace is my favorite
my mother’s name
the color of my eyes in daylight
the drizzle of freckles
under my left eye
the teeth marks
under my right
You never asked my favorite book
never heard my favorite song
and only read the poems
you knew were about you

and on a mostly unrelated note

a slight purge

something about a cube and a horse in a desert or maybe i made up the part about the desert, i’m not sure. something about tumbleweed. something about the fingers that fall languidly through my hair then to my face then to the button of my jeans. i emit sounds walking against the arctic gusts that slice down michigan avenue. i talk to myself. against the stone of the cultural center i say things like “what is the matter with you kristiana.” i know how it is to be on the other side. aren’t we always on the other side? someone thinks about me, doodles ‘kristiana’ in the margins of textbooks, texts me “good morning,” someone remembers things i have said that i don’t remember i have said, someone is invested in the minutia of me and their existence barely registers. i know how it is to be on the other side. i wonder, hovering on the banks of annoyance, how they could not have so many other thoughts whizzing through their minds, as i do, that so many of them land upon me. and yet, then, i am the one. it’s an everpresence. it’s adolescent. it’s repellent. i trace the slope of cheek in notebooks. i doodle eyelashes in heavy black ink, cascading from the shadow cast by the brim of a hat. i recall the scents with arresting vividness. i yearn till i feel my bones will bust through my torso. i chide myself for the absurdity. i date other men. i am courted by many men. i ignore phone calls. i swallow with finality and do all the tidy reconciling things that grown ups must do. yes, this was that and that was then and this is now and there is no more. and there never was. don’t be ridiculous. don’t be 13. and i’m really good at that for a handful of days and then i hear a song or a horn or see the tipping gourd of the moon and its milky reflection on the ripples of lake michigan or then i see the sun bleeding hysterically into the horizon and i am convinced that something absolute was there, that beauty exists, that there was an aching beauty in the spaces between us, that proximity charged the air with goodness, and i can no longer blame it on the overzealous neurotransmitters of adolescence and i wonder if i can blame it on simply being a woman, and i know that i cannot.

so i code and decode and smash the rosetta stone and code again. i think haiku in the shower. i blame myself for what was taken. i delete the number from my phone, then congratulate myself for having it memorized. only women do this. it’s painfully ridiculous. (the feminists will have my throat — whatever, i’m venting) and aren’t you, kristiana, laying a mosaic with the tiniest shards of stained glass? could you even be inventing the colors? were the pieces ever really there? we have an embarrassing and unattractive habit of concocting transactions that exist almost entirely in our imaginations.

well, the urn is empty now. ashes smear the computer screen. purging complete. i know i will fill it up again. it is only a matter of moons. a matter of lakes. a matter of time.

watching

The sunrise through glass blocks
bent and broken bits of light
falling on your body
painting you a slumbering Adonis in my bed

It’s 6am and your back is turned
I tried all night
pushed and pulled
submitted to your drunken lust
and laid awake

You don’t quite snore
A purr I might find comforting
if I were your wife

Tossed and turned
tried to lift the boulder of your arm
like the bicep of Atlas
to place it over my waist
I wanted to fold into you

but not you really
Because you are only blood and bones
Miles of chocolate skin stretched taut over muscles
like a drum
And that is nothing
emptiness when I want to be held

If I could pull you into me any other way I would
but I settle for this every time

…just some scribbles i found laying around

no

i press myself against the dragon’s mouth and warm my naked trembling flesh

no

i know i said no

yes

and so there would have been only one but i was guided by a collar of fist and then i had to erase it with familiar kisses and now i’m ripping cotton from my panties to plug my ears because the words are shrieking through the tiled halls and i am a little girl again

blanching my blushes

swallowing sawdust

refusing to open my mouth, even to breathe

He will call you queen,
sister, goddess – try to fuck
your girl when you leave.

You appear in dreams
breathing words your lips never
will speak. Back to sleep.

I.

“What are you doing to me?”

My fingers flit
inside me, searching
languidly
for the answer

II.

I fear my own sangfroid
after years of burning cheeks
My inability to cry
My inability to scream
My inability to cremate
and scatter the ashes

I have grown so silent and polite

I have forgotten how to,

like a phoenix,

fall

all ablaze

a fury of frayed feathers

and rise as elegant and reckless as before

I hover, stubborn

and bleeding

too numb and stuffed

with pride to finally die

Public Service Announcement 2: The more you know, the heavier the responsibilities of choosing.

III.

I feel so incredibly sexy

in my black stiletto boots

I feel so incredibly silly
in my king sized bed

Public Service Announcement 3: I am nearing the point of believing that the energy expended on cultivating romantic and sexual interactions with the opposite sex is a supreme waste of neurons. Surely, my neurotransmitters yield more for their work when focused on making art. The predicament is, if I abandon matters of the heart for more practical pursuits, I may find myself short on material. As my optimism parades its autumn colors, I must investigate new thematic movements.

Let’s forget the cost of breath
spent saying words unmeant.
–Ne Me Quitte Pas

|
wrists of other men
dashed with sweet oils and cologne
never smelled so stale

||
solitary queen
swaddled in smoke, kingly sheets
sleeps alone, dry cheeks

|||
a familiar jolt
voice cutting through cold speakers
ruining my date

||||
bitten lip, hands slick
seek solace in wet shudders
I stifle his name

|||||
Africa made me
I stare in mirrors, find Her
in my lips, hair, skin

they fear their meaning and tense in my knuckles
they fear their truth and huddle in dark corners of throat

i say memorare but the smoke becomes flesh
i say memorandum, a scientific thing
i say nothing but colors bend through glass

if one would smear my fevered face with fists of frost
stop my moaning mouth with rime
and my cheeks number than chiseled stone
would feel no phantom fingers searching
for my lips

my quarried cheeks i blush with wine
this is my blood
pewter lips rouged with flame
this is my body
this do in remembrance of me

this is not a poem
this is not

when we are finished
the coal burns out
and leaves a disc of perfect ash
that may blow away with a heavy sigh
or in the morning
i smear my lids with it
to shade my eyes
shadows blink

lotus swells purple
this is my blood
tongue reddens wet
this is my body
this do in remembrance of me

i want to ask
i want to say please
but the crimson question bitten before sounded
turns to ash in the carved urn of my mouth

but somewhere sweet unsounded
the sterling note of yes

My love, sun.
He looks away, hides
his eyes, face.

And you, while your humming tickles my wounds, are startled how sultry and silent I die.

how dazzling the stretch of twine
i’ve braided tight around my eyes
how haute couture the shade of red
i clot around the knots
my nakedness is nothingness
my song a silly squawk
how righteous and ridiculous
my gold embroidered robes
armed with tongue and dagger
but the latter softer probe

Things are sometimes exactly as they seem

Things are sometimes exactly as they seem

Things are sometimes exactly as they seem

i would tear my mouth to cry
but my throat wound spills the scream

and
scene

111507.01
I ride the wings of demigods too heavy with pride to fly

I walk the wall to the gate of Ishtar
and cut my eyes on the sun
I sing the song of swallows

I style the coils of kings and line their eyes with kohl
and etch their lines in stones
that I skip discus on Euphrates
Tell me that you see me

naked in the hanging vines

squeezing my nipples
my feet on hardened clay
my hair is heavy in the evening heat
and the night is a thick wet tongue across my shoulder blades

I watch the wetting lips of emperors
murmur in their sleep

111507.02
When the moon puckers the silken shroud of the east

When it bleeds like a pearl into the dark oil sky

me and my sisters

there are eight

go naked to the delta
and cover our skins in silt
still warm from the long sun

We rip the serpents from the mud
and drag them between our legs

We cake our hair in rotting leaves
and blacken our grinning faces with river pulp

We chat the name Inanna
we are tall and dressed in silt

We pour lamp oil on our breasts
and beckon in the merchant ships

111507.03
thick sinews of sound
bend endless through yawning limbs
the temple welcomes

111507.04
I am no waiting beauty

I arrive with purpose,
a solitary bird,
against a desperate glitter of night.

111507.05
The Department of Antiquities in Iraq
has donated, has generously donated,
oil from leaves of mint
clear, thin eucalyptus
the heavy bulge of olives
their plumpest dates
almonds still in thick green sleeves
and virgin brides
with sullen smiles.

111507.06
At the feast of Babel
the girls with painted eyes
drank palm wine from the south
and laughed with their syrupy throats

They touched each other
with soft brown toes
and chewed their smothered moans

Then came the unshaven men
with scythes and sharpened wood and
copper banged to poison tips and straining
quivers and bows with strings that ache
for bloodsong

and we sang

and sang

and sang

bared red teeth
and sanded eye

till the last of us
bubbled out a sigh

till the bowels cooled
beside a braised rare bird

and granite cracked
with bearded cackles

my stiffened finger twitch

111507.07
now we fetch water
our regal flesh is caned
our daughter’s wombs broken by dogs
the stench of them unrinsable
our queens are choked
by the cocks of carpenters
river bottom kindest grave

Love, as the human brain and body experience it, is nothing more than an (arbitrary?) electric and chemical response to particular sets of stimuli.

It is only intangible insofar as science has not yet been able to measure, record, and analyze these responses.

It is only magical insofar as he or she who experiences it is susceptible to myth, superstition, and naive assumptions of causality.

Love is not a mystery; it is a natural narcotic.

Love transcends nothing. It is one of many base animal instincts. Fear. Hunger. The need to reproduce.

A rational being will know this, and subvert the byproducts of more mystical superstitions about love: heartbreak, jealousy, disappointment.

A hysterical being will renounce these facts, refute them vehemently, cling childlike to the layperson’s nebulous concept of a very concrete, scientific thing.

Love, like tears, is a mundane human occurrence,
like sneeze to the presence of dust,
like spit to the presence of food,
like blood to the puncture of flesh.

Kristiana Colón

a slick red ball breathes tight over leaves
peeks past owner’s stone
giggle flaps through willows
silver jacks clink against a rock
a ladybug
on Palmer’s tower
reflects Willard’s blue smoke eyes
in its lacquered shell
he was six
He giveth His beloved sleep
rocketh them on oaken boughs
on the bosom of a buxom wind
white with pollen and moon
He taketh His beloved up
their plump pink arms
and apricot pouts and glossed cheeks
soft bangs bouncing straight across lashes
and stills their throttled lungs
a jumprope smacks an obelisk
bearing the name of Emiline’s grandfather
and his mason crest
her knee twitches against dust in heavy sleep
What games do the ghosts of children play?
What lullabies for babies dead unnamed?
What elegiac etching on kitten graves?
marbles clack against mauselea marble
like tiny fallen teeth

_____________________

may 16, 2007

my body
is a song
a celebration
curving through the grainy light
of sunset

eyes are opals
hands hallelujah
carving out the crimson glow
the sun slipping
dipping into
lake
turning water blood

i blow a promise
a kiss
to ripple across the surface
of thick red glass
a promise
to chisel
at the marble
of my soul

______________________________________

october

it was mid september when i declared that i would create october beautiful because i never had. because i had always let it whip me. because i have never been more buoyant than the changing colors. because chill claws at me and then i claw at me. and mid september i said ‘no mas’. i have the power to create whatever i want. i will have a phenomenal october. i will conquer this thing. each week october tries to get ugly and i pat it on its wild head and say ‘nice try’. i will not succumb. there is too much beauty. i made a declaration, so the weather is holding.

today i realize that i am not weak. i face forward with golden cheeks and slay demons. but then i feel my bones thrusting toward concrete. then i feel my blood thrashing against nails. and i look at her and say ‘what are you doing? it is october 30th. just one more day. you are here.’ and she snarls at me and skulks away. i carry the flambeau high above my head and shove flames at anything that threatens darkness. last week i was so proud of the october i am writing that i pondered a november. call me crazy, i said, but i think i’m going to go for november too. ok, he said, i’ll bite. you’re crazy. ‘i’m loony, i’m daffy, batty as the mad hatter…’ i sung to myself. stop it, i heard him say a week before. every moment exists all at the same time. i wonder if that is a waste of energy. what if just one moment existed at a time? like one light on in the house. who needs six lamps in the living room?

if i can remember to eat breakfast, i will start the day with b vitamins. october will end as beautifully as it began and november will be beads of sweat skating down a brown back. i want so bad to be heard, i want so bad to be sung.

what did you want, he asked firmly

i wanted to love you, i said unwavering, embarrassed of my past tense, emboldened by his

last night i thought, it is never too late. and i have nothing to lose. october is almost over anyway.

“I guess now is the time when I’m supposed to say something crazy like ‘It didn’t have to be like this’ or ‘How could you do it?’ Right? Finish painting my martyr mask and take the stage on my own personal tragedy. You’d love that, wouldn’t you.”

He responded with a few panicky grunts muffled by the hood.

The hood might be a bit much, she thought, and her throat closed. She realized with a choke that she had really come this far and couldn’t turn back now. The insanity was tenuous and wavering, and as reason peeked through the muddle of her mind – a swirl of emotions in finger paints, rage and hurt and fear and betrayal – the tight chest feeling wound itself around her lungs again. Her eyes burned.

A few deliberate grunts hummed through the hood.

“What was that?”

Grunts again, this time with the rhythm and inflection of speech more distinct.

“Speak up, I can’t hear you,” she grinned through the new tears, ” ‘Where-are-you-tak-ing-me?’ Is that what you said? ‘Where are you taking me?’ Where am I taking you. Well.”

She turned down the music. Her foot pressed the gas. She let herself get lost in the coral sunset smeared above the cornfields, but felt too hollow to cry anymore. She was just about to remember to answer his question when a familiar three syllable grunt lilted through the hood.

A spray of gravel from the road’s narrow shoulder cascaded around the car as she skidded to a halt – in a flash, she was in the backseat at his throat yanking the hood back to reveal his eyes, gripping his face like a vise, watching her nails sink into his jaw. She tried not to recoil from the softness of his cheeks or kiss him or trace his eyebrow with her lips. “Say ‘I love you’ one more time,” she growled through clenched teeth, “and some poor trucker will have to squeegie your tongue off his windshield.”

She threw his head back against the window, then leaned in to cover him again, with a slow tenderness. And got back in the driver’s seat. Put on her seatbelt. And with a breath, began to drive.

She wasn’t looking for moons. Or thinking about me gazing up to feel her. There’s so much I didn’t see. She probably ain’t never even catch the sky like that. Such a fool. I was such a fool, to think she gave a damn about December sunsets.

I mean, you ever seen the sun set into the froze-up lake?

But what’s fucked up is it never goes away. I carry her in those moons. She bleeds into my fucking sunsets. Like, I can’t have my own moons anymore. All I feel is her. I mean, all I feel is hurt.

No, I feel nothing.

Man. I don’t feel anything at all.”

She hatched with a rainwet smile
She had lips a crimson bruise
She smoldered, she dared.
She rolled open her palm like scrolls

She reached for inkwoven brows
She sucked them playfully to say:
She was golden locket, she was the solid ring
She never wavered in her gaze

She started at the first blow
She nursed her exploded jaw
She did not shield against the rest
She deserved them all

She let them ugly up her face
She uglied it herself
She healed and pouted lips again
She pouted and she bled

She drained the blush from slope of cheek
She emptied poems from her wrists
She metronomed her vicious hips
She lowered eyes to crescent coal

She softened with the spring though
She damned herself to that, she did
She always opened pink and raw
She erased even and insouciant

She, who haunted Eden’s obelisks and mausolea
She echoed dirges, she filled urns
She loved and loved again
She loved and loved and loved

She coiled around
She oiled scalps
She roiled rhymes hummed into ribs
She boiled water for his tea

She smeared the honey
She held the pot
She let him dip his finger in
She saw him hammerfist it

She pounded at her throat
She shrieked to please explain
She bloodied stars, she tore the harps
She wound its strings around her face

She began the weaving then
She studied many masks
She looked like ghosts of girls she’d been
She said let them kill a girl so dead

She fit it to her pretty face
She chafed beneath its weight
She bit the blisters, sipped the salt
She forgot the rainwet lips, they forgot how to taste

She is stone
She is chalk
She grays
She, smoke tumbling from his lips

She was seen again at the graves last night
She couldn’t cry at all
She scattered shriveled roses
She crunched over their thorns

She hummed some silly song
She gloomed about the stones
She peeks alive from time to time
She wants someone to see, she does

She sang something that goes like this,
she moaned over the gusts:
“She trusts, she does. She must. Or the golden locket rusts.
She sheds the armor, wipes her lips of dust.

She sips the sweet of dusk. She loves.”

Sunday is Gloomy
My hours are slumberless
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you
The angels have no thoughts of ever returning you
Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?
Gloomy sunday….

Gloomy sunday, with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there’ll be candles and prayers that are said, I know
Let them not weep, let them know that I’m glad to go
Death is no dream, for in death I’m caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I’ll be blessing you
Gloomy sunday….

Dreaming….
I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart, dear
Darling, I hope that my dream never haunted you
My heart is telling you how much I wanted you
Gloomy sunday….

written by: Rezs– Seress
favorite recordings:
Billie Holiday
Bjork
Sarah McLachlan

my crown is heavy
but my neck is strong

my lips are red
my wine is deep
and my honey
as dark and thick
midnight marmalade
the pots ride
on brown coils
piled on my head

porcelain breaks
i never brake
i suck the sour of the mandrake

the gauze of my dreams
mists around their silhouettes
shadows swallowing their howls in silence

i wake up with purple crescents in my palms
i palm my brow
forefinger curving around my throat
the soundest sweetest sleep

Temple desperate
for genuflection
till columns crumble
colonnade returns
to marble dust
He will never touch me

Cords slicing
violent whip
toward surface of skin.

and it hurts.

Then
the jewel of night
shifts, spills
light refracted black.
Rising, he reaches

Unfracture
back.
Detangle
mangled muscles
Ribcage re members
Bones moan hallelujah
Ankle arpeggio
Finger bed trace tercets
on fibula
Tendrils electric
web through me

Aorta exulted
pulse clavicle cavalcade
captivated capillary
Soundless rejoice
rages
Lightning veins ignited
Furnace-fired follicle

Face blazes through haze
Oil slick iris
Teeth terse promise
Onyx honest

I have seen his face before

Body breathes familiar
Verterbrae marimba
hums older winters
Soldered souls, Cairo gold
Sand cuts crystal
Hands touch ritual

Space deflates
Everything touched, changed.

a work in progress, critiques welcome

Tundra of his smile
icy carpet at my feet
daring me to walk

slip across on knees
fevered fingers seeking face
fortress forgotten

His loathing is sun
Apathy, bloodless lily
in echo of day

naissance
3:52am

purple moons trace hands
when fists finally unclench
Night is in my palms
Voices flood cisterns
caged in ribs, hum through sternum-
Sails sweep through my blood
Morning, bones refleshed
Traffic moans through screens again
I am re membered

I speak myself
into being

and become
all that I am.

He said to me a few weeks ago, “Have you ever really forgiven anyone for anything?”

And we were arguing, so I didn’t let him know how deeply that affected me. But I’ve been asking myself ever since, have I? I forgive my father everything, but he’s never done anything that really hurt. Not really. Everyone else…I don’t know. What is this thing, forgiveness? A maraschino cherry? Ripped fishnet stockings? Ravens…

I’ve come to the conclusion that it has something to do with love and healing. And that before I can learn to forgive, everything can’t hurt so much. You can’t be a minefield of open wound and ripped flesh 6 months, 2 years, 8 years old.

It’s all more than I can think about right now, but I have the funny sense that my basic foundational happiness is central to figuring this out. What is forgiveness? A purple Fedora? Sacchrine Faberge?

I miss laughter. I miss scribbles. I miss apples and microphones. I miss climbed fences and Metra trains and long, long bike rides. Decks of cards, random pets, crates of records. I miss swing sets and sloppy blunts and tubs of tequila. I miss being wanted.

your face is a prayer
candles in your eyes
hymnals in your lashes
your smile, hallelujah

what is the shape of your song?
whose body will be its canvas?
how is the curve of your tune?

your face is a midnight in june
lemonade and lightning bugs
your fingers smear silence
with silhouettes of god

Her throat opens to echo back
your face
a prayer
jazz song
hymn
Him

–Krista Franklin

“You know what’s going to keep me warm at night? …..Those degreeeez.“

Blue
touch
breath
lick

sway
dip
stick
smear
fear

smile
hush

push
scream
squeeze

beat

retreat

We were in the clearing
a tangle of ex-slaves
having church or telling lies
barefoot in the dust.
I thought I saw your silver nose ring
catch the sun and beckon
through the crowd.

Menfolk sat on tree stumps
drinking lemonade and slapping knees,
Is he your solider? Is he your lover, your rapist?
Black feet stomped the grass flat
and I saw your swirl of colors
winding to the drums
Are these your fathers?
Your ankles were fleabitten and wrapped
in bells.

The colored children picked up your rainbow ribbons
and wound them round the maypole
So many black bodies with loudly beating hearts
and tambourines.
I saw you dancing
I wanted to ask you questions
but was ashamed to interrupt,
your head back, your eyes closed
your golden braids bouncing gainst your shoulder
blades and your poems tied in bright scarves
swaying round your waist.

Shug Avery stepped up on a tree stump
and started singing blues.
Half-braided women watched
and picked their scalps.

and you weren’t even startled
when I tugged at the ragged hem
of your patchwork skirts.
I asked you to show me the ghost
of the soldier and you said come on
as if I had just asked you to show me
the ladies room.

We squeezed through the bodies
packed liked a parade
breathless smiles and throaty songs
You smelled of talcum and patchouli
loose breasts pressed against my back
thrusting me through the throng, the carnavale
It was a revival, it was an orgy, juneteenth
and somewhere he was crouching
still waiting for an all clear
for the sound to come back to his ears
Is he your soldier?
Your lover? Your monster?

We waded through the sweating torsos
Over the tops of heads I saw Shug’s voice
fluttering to the feet
of her wide-eyed, wet-lipped admirers
like dollar bills.
And then you were gone.

I wanted to call after you
but your name is too sacred for a scream
and you wouldn’t hear me anyway
over the tapestry of sound
old men with smiling beards
pounding the taut hides of djembes
maracas and hymnals
and Shug Avery’s blues
and all the clapping hands
of every black child that ever was

A smear of gold glinted
between the necks of breathless black boys
your braids lashing all that stepped too close
and you weren’t even startled
when I lowered my eyes and tugged
the colored scarves swaying at your waist
I asked you to show me the ghost of the soldier
and you said come on

This time I did not let go
to the rainbow tied in scarves
swirling around your skirts.
You took me to him.
He was crying in the shade
away from all the singing.
Is he your monster? Your valentine?
You shook him awake from the sobs
and demanded he shake my hand.

Her crimson frills thrashed and slashed
through the dull milk predawn glow.
My bodice pinched and itched and I
yanked her fragile alabaster wrist.

Mother, she said, mother, will he
come? and I yanked her again for silence.
My bonnet knotted beneath my flagging chin
rubbed and blistered and I thumbed

it untied. A wound whipped open
in the sky. It bled that dreaded letter
and my mouth swallowed all the air
that stilled around us. It was not a scream

but I wish it had been. The blacksmith
across the square put out his fire
and all the town was black. Three
bloody cuts spilled red upon the stars

and then there were no stars.
Just the dusky violet black
and the bloody violent splash
carved into the flesh of night.

She pointed
but I smacked her tiny mouth
before she could say it
and rosebuds bloomed her lips.

And there he was
stumbling toward us in the dust.
Father, she said, father,
you’re bleeding father.

But he could not hear her yet.
His face was cold wax glossed with sweat
and his pearl buttons glinted
like smiles down his open blouse.

He tilted up his chin
lined it with where the moon had been.
Was it a grimace or a grin?
And then I saw it.

The dust caked
the drops that had fallen to his boots.
It dribbled over the brass buckle of his belt.
His ruffled shirt rusted and red.

I beg the balm of the moon to spill
on our ripped and ragged skins.
And if Christ went to His Father
with his body scarred and scarlet

then so shall we, us three.

She was piercingly sweet
I can barely remember
shoulder blades fading tips of wings
and swirls of gown at her delicate ankles
And a voice or a laugh or a song that trembled
with my chords and my lyre

only ever was for her
The memory is a grainy photograph
or a half-plucked melody
dissolving in my throat or at my fingertips
Notes that disappear before they ever
waver in the air
like her lips or her laugh or a song

Her corpse
smelled of sage
I threw myself upon her pyre
and refused to blink
My hair swam in sweat in curls across my brow

and then the cold
and the dark
the incorporeal air
the slow and dragging styx
oozing on and on past

I played morning on the lyre
to light the way

my voice was an urn
and I begged with it
My song pleaded through the blue and mist
the shifting sprites and angry waifs
halted
in their misery
to listen

My song dripped
sweeter
than
stalactites
fluting on the breath of ghosts

cerberus purred
and tears of stone chiseled down her majesty’s cheek

and then the journey home
The miserable and glorious trek
the lyre chafed my shoulder
and the blister began to run

my ankles ached for not knowing
her breath? her voice? her song?
and my chin shifts just to peek
but I don’t

I don’t
but the specters taunt me walking
and my knees are already giving
and they whisper that she has fallen
but hermes firmly at my back—

So I hum a song of morning
that I plucked out in the sunshine
when her eyes prismed promises
and her lips caressed my tune

And I see it
I see it
the fog begins to break
pillars of light burst through the brackish air
The sun! My love, hurry along! Apollo welcomes our return!

and then

I think I only saw her pink lips
shifting back to cold gray crescents
or perhaps a swirl of gown around her kicking feet

So this is my last song
and I admit it is not very good
My voice is a tomb
my mouth
an open
hollow scream

the water sways like a splotch of black ink
beneath a bed of warbling stars
the memory of bombs smokes just over shoulder

the tinier island is barely a shadow against
all this black – it skulks beyond the jut of shoreline
the white man that lives there
swims to shore
body shimmering through the hush and break of waves
and sneaks into dry shorts

children whoop and giggle
riding horses back and forth el malecón
they are brown and smiling and far too awake
they ignore tourists and flirt with each other

stingrays fly silently beneath the pier
sweet demons fluttering
with capes both comic and ominous
we lay on our stomachs and watch them
our tan arms glowing hematite
seaweed beneath sways calypso

it is past midnight
and the beach is bright
the sky is big and liquid and beautiful
spilling milky light across the pier’s soft sunwarmed wood
the sweet searchlight moon blaring on the sand

everything is a reverent sigh
rum tinkles over ice cubes at the beach-side bar
christmas lights salsa around the tipping spines of palms
cars bleat at the sleepy horses tropping in the street

what does paradise look like
after the sun has set? is the jeweled air as salty sweet
in the dark? the moon pulls back the blanket
of the sea and tucks the island in to sleep

holy water

Any place
called Mosquito Bay
should sufficiently repel American girls
with small clutch purses and plastic snorkels
It hums with hunger
as the sun dips into the glimmering Caribbean

The dirty white van
bumps and jumps along the unpaved road,
whips of branches slap the glass
The windows are rolled up tight
to protect the blood of American girls
from Mosquito Bay, humming up ahead

If one could see the sky
through the canopy of vines
it would be wicked streaks of purple
and not even the faintest moon
Viequenses say go to Mosquito Bay
when the clouds cloak the stars
so we do
and hold our breath against the insect-heavy night

The percussion
of swatted thighs
fills the third row of the clanking van
and our tans tingle with anticipation

The air is pregnant with vampires
as we fasten damp life jackets
across our breasts
and tiptoe barefoot into the deep mud
The mangroves stink of water and rotting leaves
and the heavy musk of seaweed
steams around our quivering calves

In the middle of the Bay
we are safe from the mosquitoes
though the island rings around us
like a dark open bloody fanged mouth

But suddenly
suddenly
the dipping of oars
swirls diamonds in the dark violet water
the kayaks up ahead are trailed by silver shadows
Galaxies swim beside me
the sky is still opaque
Mosquito Bay is mocking the heavens
The water is diamonds, diamonds, diamonds!
smelling mineral and fecund

Flying fish are celebrating the wet stars
coating their slick black scales

I want a baptism in the glittering Bay
to soothe the fresh new bites

the kayak floats away
and my body has a halo
I drip Orion on my forehead
And float on my glowing wings

i once believed in the magic of sunrise
minutes of a day when everything is new
a mundane and marvelous renaissance

a lie is a quiet thing
the smell of something not quite white
the careless folds of sheets
smoke that has faded away into the laundry

i smile so bright
every time
pretend i still believe in sunrise
the rip and bleed is noiseless
there is no muffled scream

a lie is an elegant dance
it arches and pirouettes around greetings
flutters and deflates with my smile

a lie is a thread
straining
to pull the anchor
of the sun
from the lake

But… the play came. And it came so beautiful. And tomorrow they read it on stage and then maybe, maybe, full production in winter. So writing I have been. But poems. Poems don’t come.

Drinking Sweet Tea. There’s a picture of a plantation on the can. Well…the Big House of the plantation. I wish the camera would pan left and show the coons crouching in the cotton.

Everyday… I look at the clock at exactly 4:16…sometimes twice a day and I say “hey that’s my birthday.” I wonder why I don’t look at the clock at 4:15 or 4:17, but everyday at 4:16, sometimes twice a day, I look at the clock and say “hey! that’s my birthday.” but not outloud because that would be weird.

And then there are big orange moons and talk of egyptian blue ones. I search eyes and lines and faces, hoping the truth will come if I concentrate hard enough. That I will know something with some certainly. But the truth hangs back, like the poems, and laughs, and I don’t know what’s what and I thought condoms meant sex, but I guess not always, and I thought you only burned candles when I was there, but I guess not always, and I thought she was beautiful too, and smart, and funny, and maybe that’s why I am so scared. But then I relax into the arms of a deep blue moon roaring gently into my neck, and its ok, I don’t care.

It’s 4:20 now.

And I have not written a poem. Another coded rant about nothing anyone will know but me. So, I’ll go.
And maybe poem picture on my back, first tattoo, like kisses, with mouth slightly open. And a haughty chin. And breasts to pay attention to.

and i shouldnt. they arent worth the energy. but i see it. over and over and over until i have to close my eyes or open them really wide and hold them there till they water so i can stop seeing it and i realize then how much i care and am ashamed of myself thinking of all the neurological electricity i wasted letting my neurotransmitters get fired up over stupid shit and i try to imagine little seratonin particles, like tiny smiley faces, floating in the thick space of my brain. but then i see it again. and smell it. so i focus on a shaft of light or a wisp of hair snaking out of a dreadlock. that of course doesnt make it any better because then i see it again. and over and over and over. it’s sticky and drunken and incomplete. it’s irreverant and sloppy. so i focus on the new scar. measure carefully the millimeters between it and the soft blue river of vein peeking demurely beneath the skin of my rice paper wrist. and i think of all the battles and the axes i swing breathless. and crossbows and quivers. i focus on the new scar and imagine my hair knotted with feathers and twine and it’s not so pathetic when i’m a jungle warrior lithe and sweatslick swinging spiked clubs and not a shaking girl bleeding with a single scream on a cold bathroom floor.

i finished my play early this morning. i’m going to be great. a gull trembling with the pain of pushing wings higher. it hurts to dare, he says. i want to believe it so bad. expect to win, he says. we kiss in the dark and press ribcages until our heartbeats tangle. sometimes i coo smiles, the beauty is so hallelujah. sometimes i tongue a few silent tears and try to smooth the pain out of my face, knowing that’s all there is left and i’m one tragedy away from nothing. the shining martyr glowing with bloody wings and a dull halfhearted halo.

Kristiana does NOT pay people to let her perform…Kristiana gets PAID to perform

what are these people thinking? are artists really that desperate for a venue that they will actually pay someone else to go on stage? wtf?

apology to lit x

it was renaissance
the blue line roaring victoriously overhead
a haiku scrawled over gang scratches
pierced my nose
the sharp smell of permanent marker
i gushed gratitude
walking wicker park
thankful to be welcomed to share words

the millennium came
and chicago was ripe
we came together
ellingtons and hurstons
ellisons and hughes
everyone so hungry
to be heard

generation lit x built us a harlem
over piles of dripping pizza
and styrofoam cups of generic cola
we chewed eagerly
tinkering with our narratives
equals at the table with the citys literati

walking division in april fog
i turned to amanda
“i feel so privileged, you know?
to be surrounded by so many brilliant people
we are heirs to the new harlem renaissance.
its right now”

she nodded solemnly

i dreamed naively of pink gardenias
vibrating in our hair
voices coursing through the petals
basement meetings
bourbon stained typewriter paper
coffee spills and spirals of cigarette smoke
hanging languidly over pre-pulitzer poems and plays

what did they have, i demand
bitterly of a breaking black sky

Artists destroy each other
We love each other too savagely
Community is only the illusion
jazz hands for grants and benefactors
the saccharine veneer over a broken circle
of ex-lovers, fellow smokers,
ambiguous rapists and their harlot victims

an apology to lit x
and all the other builders
godparents of chicago word and sound
for razing your altars to the metropolis muses
for clawing apart your renaissance
with our post-adolescent libidos
and irreconcilable envy

i was a hopeful apprentice
to the kingdom of griots
scribbling memoirs on torn paper
with the princelings

I am sorry, Mama
ashamed to be of the same litter
too many Cains dagger-splitting the belly of his brothers poem

Mecca Harlem Wicker Park
dreams sagging explosive on the vine
an apology
so much hate
poison driving electric
through your blue veins

my first rainstorm in brooklyn
and my mind is a spider
anansi weaving some dull heartbreak
and this page is a bad joke

my first rainstorm in brooklyn
is desire
a humid day cooled by thick clouds
kisses ink stamped across my imagination
are blotted by the swollen droplets sliding slick
across the window

my first rainstorm in brooklyn
is a mournful orgasm
torrid and torturous
on an electric summer night
languid and delicious
between blankets of thick heat

i wanted this to be a love poem
but it is some sticky sweet remorse
some mouth ringed with dried nectar
of stolen fruit

my first rainstorm in brooklyn
is over
before i can finish smearing it across reluctant pages

some where
some when
we kiss under a cloud
and im not sorry
your eyes submit
to my lips
without a tremor
the air is canopy
and forgiving

is that place brooklyn?
or some palm tree place?
some night dipped in a calypso rumble?
is that place some glass city arching over a lake?

some where
some when
a sky will forgive my wishes
hot on your ear

daydreams chastised by lightning
but the storm is over
before the poem
so perhaps
some when
perhaps brooklyn

**This piece was generated from an exercise called ‘exquisite corpse’ with a good friend and colleague. We played by the following rules: one person started by writing three lines, then folded over the page so the other person could only see the last. The other person wrote another three lines, obscuring two, and passing it back. Can you tell which lines are mine?

if i used to have your number, please give it to me again. i must once again reconstruct my phone book.

::: sigh :::

bad for business

like a wayward star
pulled bright-eyed into
the belly of the sun
i am drawn
i am icarus
melting and unashamed

tongues wet with poems
trading iambs in the dark

tell me what you want
i want you
tell me
i want you
a furious incantation
a potent spell
frantic breath
and searching mouths

bodies jeweled with kisses
tell me
the searchlight of the moon
say it
tangled in a timeless dance
sunrise halo and staccato strings
tell me
i burn sublime in this sweet thick moment
yes
bathe collarbones in reverent nibbles
yes
close my ribs around you
yes
a purple flame
will you?
will you?
yes

i swallow words
like glass
force oaths back down
into my belly
it is the possibility of symphony sweet cello solos
arching lustful over flute
we falter
each fall more delicious and painful than the one before
bruises lay gently as petals
is it the beauty of the song that we choke?
a refrain blooming insistent in mouths
the halt and flutter
the stifled song

but damn – there is a certain myspace friend who i really respect as an emcee, and everytime she posts an event or a bulletin i try to respond, show interest, etc, and she always writes back with these snarky, bitchy ass responses and i’m like “damn, i was trying to get details on your show so i could come out and support YOU and you wanna give me all the attitude under the sun, wtf”

i probably shouldnt be griping on here about it, cuz she ain’t someone who you’d want writing a diss track about you, but still

please please PLEASE if I ever respond to you and come off as a bitchy, ungrateful, stuck up megalomaniac, slap me upside the head and remind me that I’m just a girl from Chicago that writes poems sometimes

I don’t ever want to make my “fans” or supporters feel the way she made me feel

no more arabesque poses
spines slick with sweat

there is no more mournful sax
oozing through candlelight haze
bass lines plucked
stepping gingerly across floor boards

there are no more poems
etched on waiting pages
thought up on airplanes
scribbled frantically on yellow legal pads

this womb will nourish no more whimsical prose

there can be no more couplets yearning

no blushing recitations

i wanted nothing more than to write your smile
but every line is a brazen wish
hope for what will not be given

no more arias for my heart to send arpeggio
over the fortress walls

there are no more poems here
for each one is an untamed question
demanding heavy-handedly an answer
you will not give
no more ink spilled
when will I learn?
faith is a fistful of glitter
in a hand that clawed for diamonds
some people can write love poems
i must learn to love the silence

it will have to change i say change not end because it doesnt end ever i am starting to see now and i guess that makes sense because nothing is created or destroyed right nothing is created or destroyed only changes form i think and it will have to change maybe maybe maybe with you taking finally taking from my hands this sunrise thing im giving but but but probably not
probably not because i don’t win here this isnt the place for me i’ve known that a long time and i loved him like a car wreck body flown and jerked i would have whiplashed eternal if he would take the sunrise thing from my outstretched hands pleading to give it and i am mourning
i am mourning i admit it i admit it here finally because i walk head high daily never thinking just erasing blowing away like powder sand ever licked eyebrow and tree from his bedroom window and the light of a cold sunday in bed i am mourning i said it i am mourning because what i lost was not some boy thing some black tear torn letter sobbing thing i lost something big something rock something foundation something that was not mine to lose some sacred i borrowed from the universe for you and now i must go back to her empty handed saying i gambled it away so sure you would take the sunrise in my hand and kiss my forehead and burn with me in the sacred but you wouldnt

and so i know it must change and i say change and not end because it doesnt really end because now that i lost that sacred thing the universe loaned me for that last car wreck love i know i won’t let the heavy perfume of another woman lay boulder on my sternum for very long because even when i don’t know you are with her i know even when i dont want to know the air tells me the silence tells me the hum of my computer all the objects in the world know you’re with her and they tell me and i stuff my ears with fingers but they only tell me louder and i shout back i don’t care but they call me liar the street lights and mail boxes and fire hydrants the faucet and my shampoo bottles they know and they won’t let me not know and i shout back i don’t care and the street lights call me liar

and since i did that car wreck love and lost the universe’s sacred that she gave me like a diamond necklace i know she won’t let me love like that again i mean for one her diamond necklace is gone shattered in a million stars on my sternum bloody collar where your finger prints once bruised so i know that it must change either you will take this sunrise from my cupped and outstretched palms either you will take it graciously and not make me ashamed for giving or i will leave i know i will and i don’t want to but i’ll fight you and fight you loving clawing and clawing with tears demanding silent that you take it hoping you will understand until we are so stranger that we float apart quizzical looking back amazed we ever were either you will take it graciously or i will fly away violent and thrashing a broken winged blackbird angry to be falling

like everything else
it is dying
everywhere
from the moment it begins

stale and brackish
there are no blue baptisms here
every water
from womb to primordial river
steams with death
bitter and black

we are dust
love, an ephemeral sandstorm on the wind
silence, a blade
slipping
across my dry and begging throat

DJ Special Blend plays two of my tracks and we discuss my CD, recent and upcoming shows, Def Poetry appearance, my influences, and how gorgeous I am. Only not really. I mean. Everything else but that.

PLUS

Hosted By: Kristiana Colón
When: Saturday Feb 25, 2006
at 6:00 PM
Where: The Silver Room – Wicker Park, Chicago
1442 N Milkwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60622
US
Description:
Kristiana Colón presents…

A Cold Day in the City
an evening of words from the windy’s finest

Saturday February 25th
at The Silver Room
1442 N. Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL
6pm-8pm
$3 donation

with
Def Poets Dan Sullivan and Tim Stafford
Amanda Torres – songstress, poet
Rev. Eric LabRat – poet, comedian
Butta – emcee, DJ
Matt Ewing – emcee
and
avery r young – singer/poet/urban griot

featuring Kristiana Colón

starts promptly at 6pm – space is limited – don’t miss it!
the city’s best poets together in one place delivering a toe-tingling
show at a bargain price

–
for more information, www.kristianacolon.com -
raecolon@kristianacolon.com

Click Here To View Event

it must exist
float somewhere in the ether
not unicorns and pegasus
nuzzling each other in riverside moss
not fable or fantasy
just water
clear as truth
and comfortable to wade in
i hope that i will find you there
in that nowhere place
waist deep and undesiring of fig leaves
i hope that i will find you there
you and your blue reflection
body bare and glistening with veracity
i hope that you will welcome me
into the stream
that we can meet each other
clean
and hold hands firmly
not like Parisian lovers under oil lamps
but intentionally
warriors
architects
inheritors of an unconquered earth

when is that place?
things stop dying
and where?
will you meet me there?
intrepid and hot-fleshed
will you collect me
drip by drip into your arms
and bathe with me
till we are redeemed
and clean enough to love

A Cold Day in the City
an evening of words from the windy’s finest

Saturday February 25th
at The Silver Room
1442 N. Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL
6pm-8pm
$3 donation

with
Def Poets Dan Sullivan and Tim Stafford
Amanda Torres – songstress, poet
Rev. Eric LabRat – poet, comedian
Butter – emcee, DJ
avery r young – singer/poet/griot
and
Matt Ewing – emcee

featuring Kristiana Colón

starts promptly at 6pm – space is limited – don’t miss it!
the city’s best poets together in one place delivering a toe-tingling
show at a bargain price

expect to nibble the gates of this syrupy paradise
without paying

my mom brought him home and asked me to entertain him, and so we talked about music and art and haters until the food was ready and I made him a huge plate of soul food.

I woke up 20 minutes before my alarm clock feeling refreshed, silly, and a little daft.

I mean, I like the music most of the time, but I can’t be dick-riding Kanye like that….dreaming about him? That’s kinda….eww.

But…. does anyone have his phone number?(I knew I shouldve got them digits that night….) For purely professional purposes, of course…

PS-
I don’t like you. YOU. I do not. I really really don’t like YOU.
(and if you can’t feel my loathing snaking down your spine right now, you probably aren’t the YOU to whom I am referring)

a sharp and deliberate empty
warm and welcoming
a wet mouth parted for a
wordless kiss

space
blank
womb
the pre-creation nothing
pregnant with possibility
canvas arching longingly toward brushes
like a lover’s back in rapture

then
the gentle fade to full
like the first command of genesis
lights
hot and honest

we
in stillness
breathing
bathed in simmering zoot suit colors
reds smelling of Sunday swagger
searing saxophone blues

scene

we dance
the language unspoken
hearts pounding ancestral in the silence

brow
lash
tongue
pulsing moment pivots

then
like lightning cracked clouds
voice
spills
recedes and swells
cascades from the edge
into the inkwell open beyond

It is the stage
a vibrant wash
It is sound
soliloquy
overture
every moment full and heavy
plump pomegranate tossed and
bursting on the tongue

we splash the black
with precision
dialogue and pause acrylic
a terse and passionate thrashing
carving legacy ephemeral in the air

eyes locked
sweat
breath

scene

fade
fade
fade
to black

curtain

Hey, anyone interested in being Kristiana’s personal driver, for the generous compensation of her company and favor?

::: sigh ::::

so when will the rest of mankind catch on?

damn. the one i just read kinda shook up my whole night, but this one below i found particularly interesting
I must know – WHO did I hug on this day? I wish I wasnt so cryptic

11/08/04

” ‘Stop that.’ Stop that. For whose sake, I wonder? There is a strange rhythm in the body, a pulse that thumps against the flesh, hard and demanding to be heard, when inhibitions are peeled to bone. And what does that mean? ‘Stop that.’ In the midst of an innocent…innocent?…embrace, those words net me with a choked guilt feeling
If I let my mind redirect my body’s pulse, have I not still violated some code, in that my blood beats in directions contrary to my mind and heart…heart?….sometimes? ”

any guesses?

afraid to chase a man so heartless with the blues of useless truth

Now I’ve dug tombs with I Love Yous that never even saw a dawn

drawn fairy tales, unaware he’d sail away into the sun

Rapunzel jumped the gun and now her precious prince is fleeing

and jaded, shaves her locks but she still winces from the feeling

of him leaving/ like ripping scabs from cuts still healing

The abruptness has me reeling, we were lovers, now we’re sealing

last goodbyes, I dam the cries/ My tears have no place

tattooing pillowcases or painting lanes across my face

I only tasted your good grace enough to blanket you in faith

a breath too soon, you red the moon and fray the raising of the day

And in the wake of faceless wraiths, I say your name in vain

I bled cocoons and fed you tunes cuz I refused to lay to grave

my unsatiated dreams and foolish youthful faith in us

Will you save me from the rain of ash that grays these ancient lungs?

and let me croon the incantation waiting patient on our tongues

And when you say we’re much too young, I say your fragrance I have sung

in the cradle of the sun, since we were bathing in its blood

and every day the sky has tasted since we were faces shaped in mud

But everyday you pull away, you paint me a new bruise

While I’m clawing for your love, I’m still faking the aloof

When I declare how much I care I’m aware you ache for proof

and when I bit your bottom lip last night I swear I drank the truth

it’s a blind man’s terror in a canyon
no touch to guide you
it’s a deep ocean drowning
no surface
only four sides of oblivion
and darkness seeping into lungs

it’s a wakeless nightmare
fruitless hope for dawn

i have reeled into love an instant too late
clawing the incorporeal ghost man he was
hands wet from the mist of his body
his memory under my fingernails

When did love become something to mourn?
the grave of the unborn?
It is stale autumn and dead fingers clenched
It is circle zero
an insipid ache

I am the bayou’s harlot scourge
drfiting empty above the silt
hunting a wet grave for this rotting heart
Better to be a ghost, I hear my mouth rasp

I am chalk-faced and hollow
skin drum-stretched across bones
Looking for hands bold enough to pound
me a rhythm

Irises like sand
Let the willows whip the wind for my sadness
I am a fruitless well
tears are the privilege of the living