Thursday, June 30, 2016

Motion Pictures, Park Avenue Armory

Based on Martin Creed's 'The Back Door' exhibit

1.
A suited man walks along the invisible river bank
Of a voluminous S,
His feet thrumming under wraps
            Of light brown shoes, pointed tips
Behind a cast of wrinkled leather,
Toes curled, pearly with sweat,
            His face, a tone of mystery.

The path he takes to come to me is undulant, as I stand
            In a room of black emptiness, light from his motions
                        Muddling my face. He grips, in succession,
Bouquets of fresh blossoms – bracts  
Of trompetillas, Brazilian plumes, floss flowers, lady slipper orchids
And smashes them on the ground such that the impact
            Of flower on rock
            Plucks limbs of rosemary greens, piecing off, like blocks,
            Legs of chartreuse,
            Lips of dark, clotted scarlet,
            Inflorescent wings, like butterflies carved out of warm ivory.

 What was once a clean white floor, is now a gallery of broken skulls,
            And unused knuckles, and bellies filled with panting seeds.
What was once a clean white floor, is now a bed of scandal –
            Objects of tenderness shredded, flanked,
For me to bear witness to nude testimony.
What was once a clean white floor, is now a site of massacre –
            Even the air, ashamed, cries into moon-silk kimonos.
What was once a clean white floor, is now held across your eyes shaped
            Like magnified trombones, for the sake, he said, of art appreciation.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Post-Pride

We hoisted rainbows 
Caught in flags, chanted
Slogans praising Love, and gays and the puffy throats of guns,

And marched in the company of decorative floats,
Smooth, silky, automatic –
Themselves rolling, like pieces of clouds.

People kissed other people, nondescript 
            The roles of gender, and held hands
                        Firm, definite, moist –
As diffident eyes burst in cheers.

Streamers coiled toward the sky,
            Their bodies twined in helices.
Voices bent in shallow arches –
            The air tilted with applause
                        Raspy, explosive, successive.

So much applause, our voices
            Drowned in the tributary of a celebration,
Forgetting never, that you and me,
            Were illegal once, in the eyes
Of our Nation’s history.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Birthday Wish

II.

‘No more wishing over candles’
Was the promise I had made,
Post happenstance of prior years, where
I had made my thoughtful wish, and moments later
Watched it stick, like captured kites,
With armless might –
To burning lips of candlewick.

Birthday

I.

What has age-d isn’t me, per se,
But my birthmark, stretched
Across my arm
Like a squatted jellyfish –
Having grown, on this day,
A darker shade of brown.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Word Fall

Grab a book now by its hip
And give it a shake, and watch

The rows of sleepless words
Peel off its face, and fall
            Like feathers made of lace

On to the hard-wood floor, and settle down
            Quietly
Like schoolchildren in a hall of prayer.

Walk down to them, pick up a few,
And lay them down on strips of cloth,
            Gently, carefully, like nacre pearls,

And feel their weights, in tens of grams
Like paper stems and wings of wasps.

Then bring them close, under your nose,
And force a whiff, until the smells
            Of honeysuckle, white lily, jasmine
Waft into your soul.

And when the course of examination
Is done, roll them up into a ball,
            Check for any leaks or dents
And gently watch them fall.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Beach Bodies

We were at the beach once, when
A runner-by, had yelled out
Get going, you fat brown pig.

I had laughed in response, noticing
His eyes caught behind a shade of
Dark glasses, his pale white skin baked
Into a wrap of leathery brown.

I had stared at the sky afterward,
And had noticed the ocean’s deep blue wrinkles,
Open and crack and disappear. And had felt so small then,
Staring at the blue bodies’ widths,
Felt so little, so insignificant, that I had cried quietly
Into the red bucket with which we had made
Sand castles, cupolas, and fragile minarets.

Later, I would dip my fingers into the colorless puddles
Of confusion, feeling its salinity sucked into my palm,
And inhale sounds of the saxophone they had left behind
An hour before the bonfire.

Little had I known then, how, years later,
Six pointed words would ring in my ears,
Like an automatic response, well-rehearsed,
Every time you’d ask, Want to go to the beach, Tom?
Want to go to the beach? Leading me, instead, into
A cool, dark corner, away from the mockery of sunlight.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Hold That Thought

1.

Spent all afternoon
Holding in my palm,
A thought –

As if it were
A fossilized clam,
Sleeping quietly, dreaming.

 

2.
 
While we were fucking
On Friday night,
I was thinking, uncontrollably,
Of Vincent Van Gogh
Shooting himself
In the middle of his chest,
And falling flat onto a field
Of sprouting wheat,
Where winds were softly coiling.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Children's park

I was walking by the children’s park
And noticed on the swing,
Rocking gently,
Squinting eyes –

Your mood.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Taste That Word

For Brandy Richmond

Pluck a word from a sentence
And hold it in your mouth,
a few meta-seconds.

Let it roll over your tongue
            Like a careful, autumn brushstroke.
Then feel its texture –

The crunchiness, mushiness, softness.
Or is it grainy? Slippery?

Feel its weight, and with it
Its temperature –
            Cold, tropical, boiling?
Then bite it. Hard.

How does it taste?
Sweet-and-sour? Salty?

Chew on it, emulsify –
Till the letters
Crackle into sounds, softened
With bubbles of spit.

And then swallow it, like you would
A pill –
With a drop of mineral water.

Our Night of Perpetual Sorrow

To the Orlando departed 

One moment you were drenched
In streams of songs, a geyser of lights,
A leaky sluice of bright green lasers slicing
Over your hands, legs, face, pulsating with dance –
But, within a matter of seconds, you became
A lifeless name,
Your heart paused within a cage of ribs,
Your lips, bloodless, a faded blue,
Your eyes, fixated on a spasmodic ceiling.
Sharp talons of leaden bullets lodged
Within your body’s dark interstices –
Smug in the waterfall of clotted blood,
Your rose colored lungs losing clutch,
Your ears nauseated with splenic squeals, resonant
Throughout the vault of your abdomen.

What did you think of in the lingering moments
While your body revolted to a voiceless pause?
Your Mama? Love? Your treacherous killer?
Your boyfriend across from you, folded in death?
Or maybe there wasn’t time, to think, or hate, or even pray –
Your consciousness rocking on a wooden treadle,
In and out, like flashing lights, until
Your vision blurred, echoes retracted,
And you fell into a pool of silence.

I never saw the shameless bullet, traveling
At the speed of light, paused violently by
Your bridge of bones, bowed fibula, speckled fontanelle –
Yet, felt its presence deep in me, the sounds
Of trigger jostling within my ears’ cavernous springs.  
We never met. Yet, the means of your absence
Makes my heart slippery,  
My mind, swollen with grief.
Perhaps, the pull of losing a brother,
Made fraternal by our sexual identities
Feels fundamental, engorged, all-consuming.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Bake Shop

The bake shop has on display, a clutch
Of birds and fondant flowers.
Pastries puffed with Japanese apricots,
Their skins having risen in flakes, browned
In the oven. And pies with chests
Of crisscross ribbons, finger-like
Strips of dough over compote puddles
Of jam, syrup and blueberry beads.

There are Danishes, too, and muffins, filled
With perfect cubes of Honeycrisp apples,
Lobes of walnuts, powdered logs of cinnamon,
Stacked hastily like a pile of books, or bricks
Haphazardly arranged.

I notice on the wall, a clock, hanging
Inside a cage of Norwegian oak –
Its arms tangled North to the tip of midnight,
Its bony knee paused, at the end of a swing.  
And underneath it, a lady, her hair in a bun,
Slapping dollops of butter-cream
Onto the belly of a cake, smoothening it,
Over and over, with a blunt knife’s teeth,
Falling in and out of smiles, gossiping –
Her hands, once careful, now unmeasured, automatic
Like old, familiar creatures of habit.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Mindgames

What appeared to be a swallowtail butterfly,
Sitting on your cheek,
Paper-thin wings,
Antennae, electric –
Was actually
You later said,
A brand-new ray of light.

And the lady on the high rise,
Bent over a railing,
Her well-behaved curls,
Wispy, chatty –
I had mistaken for, apparently,
A wedge of lemon.   

Morning Thought

Catchy at first, my brain
Imploding, magnetizing, sensationally
Desirous of your presence.
Thoughts of you, escalating
Constantly, shrouding Reason
Enough to inaction.

I lie in bed, my body
Buttery soft, wrapped only
In a blanket of plastic alphabets,
And images of you curl off
My walls, lilac, sapphire-blue. Smoky, your
Name hangs from my ceiling’s
Incestuous lips of glass.
The idea of you becomes one
With my blood; not an immunity –
You are not a foreign body who alarms
My body’s protective military.

Closer and closer to me, I see
The shape of your fingers behind
A screen of eyelids. Feel, so bodily
The softness of your pale, unblemished skin,
So supple-looking under light cones
Of pink chandeliers. As if, I have known
You since birth, as natural as grass.
I shake vigorously at the thought
Of wanting you. An all-encompassing plea
Engendered from Desire’s white lotuses,
Tender stems, green serpents, paralleled
To our legs entwined under a jeweled sky,
Our hands caught in a cup, ears
Chatting over tea.
Lips, that don’t exactly fit; their keys
Unfound in a chest of drawers. Eyes,
Marbling, your throat shaking with words of love.

How brawny, the shape of Want, strong
And veiny yet unpredictably volatile.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Reflections

1.

How odd, the tree by the building
Entrance stands motionless in
The middle of a dry afternoon, yet
Its shadow on the sidewalk
Nods, and sways and bobs its head -
Leaves like parched lips of wild foxes,
Coated with a pinch of summer heat.

I imagine of myself, an ant
Crawling up a cup filled
with midnight.

Within a matter of minutes, clouds
Float into the sky, and stack in thickets, like
Sheets of starched dragonfly wings blocking
Sunlight, spreading rapidly
Like a vengeful, roaring wildfire.

2.

A soft, silky breeze arrives at the place
I wait for my shuttle to the Summit train station
On Monday, after the weekend of
Our celebration -
You and me, on a bed of floating paisleys filled
With crayon imprints,
A row of familiar bricks above our
Heads, separating cushion from sky.

Our voices melting into the evening hours.
The moon, a shy bother to our
Modesty, sparkling, satiny
Behind a gossamer of stars.

How satisfying it felt to lay there
Beside you, hearing, so attentively,
The tune of your breaths -
Feel on my skin, their subtle warmth,
The arch of your neck, the rise and fall
Of your chest, the drawl of your whisper,
The sheer wetness of
Tears clotting your eyes.

And for the first time, in a while,
I felt complete,
In a way that seemed much more meaningful
Than a mid-Summer's afterthought.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Who You Are

For Eric

You are to me,
A freshwater pearl,
A Guipure blouse,
A Summer's blissful fancy.
A juniper's eye,
A starling's bill,
A book of unwritten poetry.
A tangible Earth,
A purple dream,
A painted cotton paisley.
A monsoon song,
A Sunday breeze,
A stem of tender ivy.

Iced Coffee

The coffee gone quickly, pulled
Up a foggy straw of translucent plastic,
I tilt the cup forward, angled
Acutely under my lip’s horizontal axis,
And hear the crisp rattling of a dozen ice cubes,
Their organs partly missing, having dissolved
into a thick crowd of milk and molten sugar.
What is left of them
Is a skeletal form –
Ribs retracted wide, knots within knots
Of cracked phalanges, a hip bone thinned
From osteoporosis, eyes
Evading dark orbits, tongues
Peeled away from their glossy faces. 

What is ice but a suspension of water bulbs
In a state comatose, peculiar?
Their elbows tied within a frozen lattice
With swollen arms, edematous legs, faces
Held in fixed expressions. H2O -
A triad of hydrogen, oxygen, left breathless,
In a makeshift cage, which upon
The slightest lick of heat dissolves into life;
Into its familiar form, the sight of ocean’s belly.  

I take them in my mouth, one by one,
And bite into their skulls, crunching
On them, like I would bones
Of a chicken leg dressed
In a skirt of well-fed muscles,
Breaking them
Into smaller and smaller chunks,
Themselves sweaty, erratic. A population
Of them melt into water, diffuse
Through my tongues muscular roots. Others
Scratch my mouth’s fleshy dome with fingers
Amputated by heat until they, too, tire and collapse
Into an outgoing basket of warm exhalations.

The absence of caffeine, felt,
I pour myself another stream of cold brew coffee,
Three spoonfuls of milk,
And a new family of ice.

And before long, 
The cycle repeats itself.