desert bound

you thought you wanted to be a boxer
once,
a scrappy fighter from down to undercut,
in the jaw,
under the eye,
but what about the overbite,
the hammer down                                                                                                                                                  down
down 

onto that pretty face? 

so you dissolve into the asphalt;
you float like driftwood,
fighting gloveless,
fistless,
bitter beauty buried in cannabis dreams,
watered with carrot juice
and tequila. 
you won’t swallow the worm, though; 

that would infer a certain level of commitment 

that leaves you in a singular state of indigestion.  

instead, you squint into the glare of the sun’s eye, 

Eastwood-esque, 

unsure if you’re good, bad, 

or indifferent

until, slowly, you turn away from that 

sting of reality, 

apathetic to the burn, 

roll another joint, 

and fade into the soft green of your mind’s eye, 

a coastal grassland littered with 

alligators and lost tourists.

the humid air boils within you

and silently evaporates 

from the surface of your bare skin,

one more thing to leave you.

Fe-Male

You should be

beautiful,

popular,

sweet,

soft. 

How dare you be

mighty,

broken,

unbeautiful,

arousing,

an expansion

beyond the confines of your weaker sex,

bounded by preconception,

fear,

a lack of blood to your

cranial thoughts. 

Look happy,

keep smiling,

be a pretty face,

what more is there for a woman? 

Ambition?

Why waste the

footprints

and breaths

and wrinkles. 

Be still. 

Be satisfied with less. 

For you are less.

a neutral stagger

I should have known better…
stick with chocolate and cheese.

The Swiss were never known for their sandwiches.
The bread was neither hearty or soft, somewhere lost
between whole grain and white.
I would have expected a dark Pumpernickel,
grilled, filled with a tangy cheese
born into being between two solid plates of fortitude.

But there was no conviction at all,
merely a mess of ingredients that left me unfulfilled.

That was many years ago,
during the war
the “War to end all Wars”
that didn’t actually end up ending anything.

Recently I returned to the Alps,
searching for the memory of
something I once presumed lost.

It was after the fall of the Eastern Bloc.
There were too many –istans to remember,
long complex words full of letters and guttural beliefs
as full of presumed resentment as the German language,
waiting to hack up syllables in phlegmatic distate at
the “Englishness” of the new world order.

One quiet morning in the hotel lobby,
enjoying a chocolate and coffee (lesson learned),
I witnessed a treasure trove of personalities
stroll up to the front desk to check in.

The clerk must have made the mistake of misspoken identity,
For I was just close enough to hear the new guests utter in disdain
deeply and unforgiving, with perfect pitch and grammatical structure:

Russian? Russian?! You people all look alike to me as well.
I proudly hail from Kazakhstan, and no, we don’t want any vodka.
Champagne, for our celebration, see to it!

“Straight away”, the clerk muttered hurriedly,
rushing embarrassedly through their paperwork,
snapping for the bellboy to lead them up to their rooms.

I chuckled at the exchange, the irony, and asked for some Polish vodka,
a mild form of protest.

invader

a rash under my skin
a niacinic flush
an illegal drug
I long to scratch through,
find that trail
those shedded scales
betraying the cells that allowed you entrance
into my constant waking.

From one turn of a thought:
one step forward,
ten years back.

The child in me is frightened with wonder while
the woman in me is bracing for
six more weeks of winter.

The wind is howling,
and the thunderclouds are rolling forward
with a visceral hunger.
The sky is almost green,
and the first hint of rain has begun to spit on me.
I feel the acid collecting in the bottom of my belly,
and I shiver, an almost tremor.

rough love

Your chin rubbed against my inner thigh
like burnt toast on butter, 
the way a knife sounds spreading the yellow fat
against the dark and brittle skin. 
I resisted the temptation to wrench your peppered hair, 
instead grounding myself
in the fortitude of your forearms
majestic masts through the softened air.