Ashtray
"It's not easy" she would say,
putting her fingers into the ashtray,
"It's not easy to erase your blood."
- Metric, “Rock Me Now”
Your older brother put cigarettes out on my chest
while you were sleeping
he licked the wounds with his pointed tongue
He pulled my hair while you were in the shower
bit my neck and made it bleed
his eyes like dwarf stars
Floors that left sticky grit on the black bottoms
of our feet in the smoky kitchen
ashing our cigarettes in the sink
We watched frozen green squares rotate
your arms around my waist, sharing cancer
listening to the cockroaches dance behind the fridge
On the banks of the Old Yocona River
shards of glass masquerading beneath our feet
watching the algae swirl in the current
Wading to the waist
I held you in the hurried water
while you cried.
And smoked a cigarette.
Beneath The Ice
Not even Shakespeare could sing to us that night,
the wind frisking our shivering bodies
strip searching our souls, shattering us into billions of brilliant
shards of memories spread on the pavement like shreds of a negligee
on a satin coverlet
We were waiting for a savior
or, if not that, at least some inspiration in the heavy metal
chains that we clutch like blankets from the cradle,
rooted as surely as an onion in the moist ground.
Jesus!
we call into our plastic coffins
only surprised
when nothing happens
the first time
What passed
five years, a fuming joint, all the constellations in the sky
what passed that night, whirling sirens
we followed to a house in the country where an old woman
her mouth a pink black hole
lived beneath a roof with eyes
The fire burned as blue as a morning glory
as blue as the tattoo on your hipbone
where I stopped to smell the snow one cold Nebraska night.
as blue as your face the morning you died.
“God is dead” said Nietzsche
if none had argued
none would remember
that grizzled old German
that notzi, philosopher king,
except for you, my communist manifesto
my Marxist Terrorist
Swamp Foetus
hot smell of asphalt
glittering in the July sun
glass from a Heineken green as algae
lying on the gritty blacktop of a back county road
yellow line faded to grey cracks
Soybeans sprouting brown to the left
newcut corn, like rotten molasses
sweat crawling on her face like flies
remembering the Great Dismal Swamp
rattlesnakes coiled on tree stumps
big around as a tractor tire
bare toes sinking into the mud banks
of a Potomac estuary
rotten leaves sticking to bitten ankles
deerflies swarming around a blue Ford pickup truck
the river like veins around a womb
cradling the house with the oak tree
weeping Spanish moss, slowly strangling
in the front yard