Loveless Love Spell

This heart is gold while the rest are cold

Mistakes left under the sidewalk

Three times behind this soft decay

Washing out the fears

Walking through the tears of those left by the wayside

Your pay grade is too high.

One more misstep

A discourse in integrity,

Your bedside my sight of mystery, of misery

When these portraits collide,
Frozen in time side by side,
This is your fear that I hide.

With your face plastered across the street signs of who we were,
Not who we are,
Your difference is beyond compare.
Traveling on jaded wings,
You can only fly so high before it weighs you down.
The tide comes in but the blood doesn’t wash out.

One last velvet smile.

Out with Lee

“Is that your sancho?” the fat Latino on the bar stool said.
In reference to me,
“Sancho? Oh… no.” This forgotten girl from China said
His question was with a preconceived knowledge
that probably yielded a surprise in knowing the truth,
Her placatory reply was uttered
in a matter of fact yet contemplative tone
that left me wistful and plaintive.

She knew and knows,
it is funny though how days later,
I could care less about how people are careless
With the people they just met,
We are all tangential,
gentle like a haymaker,
I bawled like a child at the end of a balled fist
Yet I am reserved and unspoken.

I carve, I crave, I carve my distaste in spades, amorously,
The charcoal sunsets are running down and out,
Sinking and being swallowed by the water,
Ruminations on fleeting impulses,
I am alone like I’ve always been.

In this lowly room, meant for a child,
There are no offerings to give, just pain to undergo,
Alcohol is a depressant because I drank it and this is how I feel,
Groggy and uninspired, unhinged and underappreciated,
There is something that you could do to make it alright.

You could kiss me, shit,
You could just lay your hand on me,
You’re making me awkward, I am though already,
This is how it always is, always is like the old days,
I will drift off soon and only know nothing.

You were so blunt, shit,
You told me but did I hear it at all?
You also said that I remind you of someone else,
This is how it always is, always is love like failure,
I will shuffle off soon and hopefully know something.

We Should Just Be Friends

Broken skin, bruised skin,
bad skin, smeared eye make up,
I love it for what it represents.

Staring past imperfection for once
and it burns my stomach like hunger.

scorches like:
An evening that never ends,
A morning that never begins.

The secrets are shared, my mouth,
an indispensable cask, swilling
and spilling that has been held dear
for so long in the shadows like sailors
in seaport opium dens of old. Clandestine
yet heartfelt, unrequited
and not totally understood.

Snuggled, cold sweats and anti-climax
with the watchful eye of El Oso ever present,
ever near, ever disruptive but not out of “malicious intent.” Threats of abandonment and other people’s mistakes, my own sense of responsibility and self-preservation at the forefront like a melancholy wall
of discretion.

We’re discrete and I’m relieved, heart-broken,
unsure, un-showered, alone, cold, opaque.

My heart’s a blank check, fill it in and cash it.

Pyrite pride under the circumstance,
I’d only pull your leg if you asked me too.

Foot Care, the Peace Process and Existentialism, Aisle 1

My spirits have fallen and they can’t get up. Daunting is the only word that comes to mind. Flights of golden angels cascading in their descent, Like winged droplets of fury,
A kamikaze dive-bomb of futility. So strong, so mighty yet even they can’t seem to lift it.
Ignatius’ boulder is my paradoxical heart. I step back, I take a breath, I try to lie as still as possible, While standing. The gracious God of my forefathers speaks in ways that I’m too deaf to hear, Years of amplified sound pushing the air and feeding back have given birth to ringing and comically misheard phrasings of others. Why should the utterances of a deity be any different? Yet in reticent differential reference to reverence I rise and raise my ears towards Israel, just to hear the shard-like cries of razor wire sadness from my people as well as those that would be thought of by most as enemies. In Canaanite candor, lost to the ages, I know what so many others do that you can’t choose one side over the other and still stay human(e). You can’t cry stop the occupation, because that is like saying, “please continue the suicide bombings.” You can’t simply stand behind this so-called bastion of democracy because that is negating the fact that they have innocent blood on their hands as well. If you need someone to blame then blame the British and for that matter then blame the Romans, the Germans, the Babylonians and the Spanish. The question is begged and pleaded with, is progress built on the backs of those who suffer? If I told you, well then I’d have to kill you. Those who can’t cope with the answer need somewhere to turn, enter a Shepard of sorts. Your God and my God are just filtration points to the same end. Different mailboxes that deliver to the same sorting center and are sent to the same place in the end. Same, same, same. The best metaphor for a heavenly creator is the ocean, who shows no deference to the millions of organisms living inside of its murky depths or even better, you are the most fit for parallelism. You don’t think of every cell in your body and yet you “contain multitudes.” We are but dead skin on an astral heel, waiting for the eternal bliss of a pumice stone called death to wipe us clean for the arrival of brand new flesh to cover and shield the internal, the vulnerable. Until of course they die off and eventually the heel has to die too, right? That’s the rub.

Waiting like Lacerating

Scratch
and shake
and break
these arms
that hold all
there ever was.

Watch
and take
and sate
the scantily-clad
urges of bygones,
not so forgotten.

I’ve been looking
for
a means
of escape
from this
handheld nightmare.

I’ve been looking
for the slightest
mention
of a life
less caustic.

Searching backpages
of periodicals worldwide.

Searching the soul
I might not have.

Searching
and destroying
my mind,
a scimitar
of perversion.
Incising
with scalpel-like
precision
into the very taproot
of a solemnity
I have yet
to find.

The bulky blade
trembles,
much too large
for such
a delicate
operation
and I start
to wonder
if that
has always
been the problem.

RE: Kyle Moreno

I’m a fierce rooster crowing and shit,
razor sharp rhymes out my beak I spit.
Stomping ‘round the barn yard, all hard,
probing the mind like Jean-Luc Godard.

Stepping to me
is like bringing a dove to a cock fight,
I’m crazy like Rainn Wilson playing Dwight
all up in yo ass like novocaine,

a champagne brunch
packing a punch
like the bullet
to the brain.

Ring, ring, ring,
banana phone,
you’ll scream
like you’re in Home Alone,

because I’m prone
to pick a bone or two,
I’ll beat you with a shoe
‘til your blind like Magoo.

You day old McMuffin,
you’re that turkey I’m stuffing
always into something,
a truffle of trouble,

fast like a dragon you double,
eyeing you like Hubble,
annoying like Barney Rubble,
I’m to dope as ascot is to ruffle.

An American Jew Thinks About Gaza

Disclaimer: This poem has nothing to do with the title... or does it?

Ill and weary,
worn and always seemingly distressed,
dressed down before a mirror of self.

I’m a blank page on a computer screen.
I’m self-righteously cocksure
and everything in-between.

I hunger like an aphid on a leaf,
but achievement comes from the belief
in the existence of relief.

Out there somewhere, looking and waiting
to be found and allowed to make its home
in our collective guts, kneading and needing.

Everyday is a newsprint elegy
reflecting the ache inside—
a gnawing, maternal guilt.

Death and dismay are cavalier
as they strut their stuff
but there’s nada-zip-zilch to fear?

Just another bitter taste,
a stinging sensation in our skin.
The auto-erotic flagellation of time.

Confliction is the affliction
as what was promised comes at a price,
as those who want the right to return

are just pawns in a larger game
as God takes a blind eye to what
either side does

in the different names for the same being.

Alan Passman

Alan Passman is in love with you, you are not aware though.
Alan Passman has plans for you, you are not aware though.
Alan Passman wants you to have his babies, you are not aware though.
Alan Passman daydreams conversations with you, you are not aware though.
Alan Passman makes playlists for mix CDs, discs he’ll never give you.
Alan Passman seeks out porn starlets that look like you, sort of like you.
Alan Passman has fantasized about you before, just for a split second.
Alan Passman believes that it jinxed the whole thing, of this he’s sure.
Alan Passman enjoys pinning much more than actually having, of this he is sure.
Alan Passman doesn’t know where you live, your mystery intrigues him.
Alan Passman misses you. You, yeah, you!
Alan Passman, Alan Passman.
Alan Passman? Alan Passman!

Her Scent Makes Me Nervous

How do you cope with what can be inhaled like coke?
Her essence, a perfume untouched by mediocrity,
assailing every part of me. It screams,

“Hands up, this is a robbery!”
Guns of an amorous intensity intently drawn,
point blank like lovers inches away from a kiss.

I’m not her only victim, her only thrall
in this bank vault, this morgue for money,
she makes me worry that love is as petty as cash.

I exhale and with the dearth of air,
she leaves me for a second
and I elude the spit of hot chrome.

But this scene is only in my mind,
brief and mutably wavering,
it’s always different.

Yet always dire, perhaps the next whiff
will encourage a stampede
of the most exquisite beasts.

I stop my intake of breath for a second,
as an attempt not to travel back
to such dangerous surroundings.

Shutting the door, I sigh deeply.
Leaving the barrier between us,
free of the floral spice that suffocates me some.

Closed Casket Ceremony in a Forest Fire

A conflagration started by those of the highest station,
as an ode to one who’s soul found liberation
but this would bring desolation
to the furred population.

The roses are left,
while embers of arbors burn.
All bare and bereft,
the aristocracy grieve in-turn.
Wearing the mourner’s mask,
callously concerned.

Foliage ablaze around,
Sounds of deforestation surround
Assaulting and assailing
with the cruelest kindness.

Sweet little spectators,
carved out in neat little rows.
like swine to a trough,
regaling recently dead woes.

The woodland creatures come,
charred and enraged.
creeping from
their fiery homes decayed.

A fleshy paw points to an ornate sarcophagus.
“It was you who brought this upon us,”
sputters a singed hare.
The socialites stop and stare as if now aware.

A haughty voice rings out,
“Who are you to accuse and accrue
so much venom
for the departed off to Heaven?”

A roar rose up from the periphery of animals,
the fury of a trillion candles.
and just like that they all caught fire
as if the forest was one big pyre.

Dukes and duchesses burnt to a crisp,
nothing to be heard,
no quips with even a fancy lisp.