Tagged: the Plants

Grass

the moment wretching
becomes embarassment, or
forgetfulness begetting
regret

I must purge before I’m full
like eating grass
use it down to its wick
and need more

get more. expend more
smoke it. they call to me
they are soul choice
says the non-soul

so avoidable
so unnoticed, so
they don’t break the skin
as to them

every pour
is a great cathedral door
my eyes like stained glass
manipulating the light into

church light
dried blood and piss, the
yellow-green of flowers
shoved into books

everything is a mistake
your bouquet should have been
grass, the animals
should have been quiet

Health Class

in health class we were taught
the respectful way
to sit in a room full of
desks that face each other. still,
the boys would race
to the front row to see
which of the girls wasn’t
wearing any panties, which
hadn’t folded their legs,
which had hemmed
their jean shorts
shorter

boys,
are we chasing girls?
or chasing the first boy?

that year
a man in a flowered shirt came
he put a condom on a carrot
the carrot was sharp, but it
did not break the condom
i remember thinking
it could not have been
his first choice vegetable

Petrify

still caught up
in how we felt
about it earlier

the rarest stone
a person’s mind
being changed

I just planted seeds
in the garden. it is
snap pea, an easy seed

in a way I am checking
the earth’s pulse
I sit with it

having hope, but
waiting for it
I worry that thoughts

rarely occur
that aren’t hardening
the old ones

Joan Rivers Addiction Specialist

If I’m honest
there’s an envy
being scolded

the briefest gold
sepulcher
of wanting to die

I could sit
atop my headstone
tallying visitors

watch them
sift for time
in their pockets

finding none
pull out scarf
after scarf

I could call them
names like
‘Joan Rivers’

So much
time
in a day!

compared to life

So much down
to the way
we think

For instance, I
just learned
that sticker burrs
are really seeds
that they ride on us
even
when seeds
are eaten freely
by so many
animals

So it’s harder
and harder
to walk
by yourself

plants
grab hold

and people
present
their faces to you
like balloons

They have
miracle answers
to well-rehearsed
questions

and give you
some leaf print
of being

Remember being
young? was it that far
from being dead?
aren’t they both
just doing
the same thing
over and over again
without
getting tired of it?

Last Poem in this Apartment

I am trying hard
to think of things
that stay in one place
and get better. A tree?
I am not a tree
Trees have almost
written all the poems
I cut myself against them
Nailing plywood down
on lower lines
to lay there, looking at porn
I’d leave my house at night
sometimes to look at porn in trees
Even when very young
I’d walk past a
retention pond of taggers
blowing their colorful
horned instruments
Their illegible, foam names
like those of the animals
Some of us have things
we don’t remember
choosing to be
These are the things I mean

Memorial Fencing

On my way to the car, I look for blood
on the fence you punched. Mostly I see rust
the rivets and the wood staples. I pause
there for a while. It’s 6Am. Too early to
be light misshapen to anyone else’s eye
but mine. I am light that falls in the forest
Maybe your friends just aren’t that great
Maybe I don’t have any. Maybe I am the
lost brother, because this blood we have
has only congealed in me, to punch inward
I drag my finger along the fence. The
company is called Memorial Fencing
I wonder what I look like, reading
its list of names

No Such Thing as People

I have seen the chest of sky
at her deepest breath

A black sky draped like cloth
over a table I am under

The stars are glistening – they
are juices inside of melons

peaches, bad people. There is
no such thing as bad people

Just good people eating
the same things over and over

ignoring the plates of strange
misshapen people

that become our soil. See the
children in the soil

Watch them touch the sky
on a mountain of dirt