Buzzing Poems

Woman Seated, With Hood

(in response to a writing challenge from Forgotten Machine)

The breath that fogs the glass
carries rumors that I maintain to be untrue.

They say the apple was poison,
that the heart of a pig pulsed in my hand,
and the girl of course, beautiful.

For all that I have done in service
they tell me I am to perish in fire.
Actually, this is the one truth:

Each time they look in on me
I see lust glistening in that one eye.

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The Weight Of The World Is Lighter Than

(for Dino)

The weight of the world is lighter than the hair on the backs of your hands.
You forget that thought, change the channel, fumble briefly with the remote
when really, what else could you watch without looking.
Your dinner, three turns on the microwave is strike three on a zero streak.
Some days a new shirt and a sharp wit just don’t cut it.
Bartenders give back your tips:  “Cab fare, buddy,”  they say and you
would like for them to mean it but your secret sober heart knows,
it knows that really, they’re just scared your luck
would slide off the greasy bill and take on life as an infection,
the bastards are quick to wipe down the counters in your wake.
Before the world wobbled on its axis, defeat was not apparent to you;
why, just yesterday she said you could walk on water.
Entrance fee: tequila in a shiny shot glass, salt on her pink girl’s tongue.
All the pretty ones, they like to tell you the unvarnished truth.
“He’s younger than you.”  Well who would have guessed?
She too seemed wise beyond her years, beyond the shimmy of her thighs,
beyond the scruff marks her boots left on your white-on-white wall.
If they ever told you anything at all, the books never did tell you this: 
the gradual scraping away of layers will reveal the wood that is underneath.
From the fresh-scrubbed deck it was a dark drop to the water and along the way
you shed clothing, the name they called you as a child, the town you grew up in.
On shore you hardly recognized yourself, if not for the scar in your smile
when you do that wicked sailor’s grin, “Watch it kid, I’m coming in.”
Maybe you were forgotten, maybe given up for dead; what's certain is that no one
was unduly surprised when you ambled back, cheery as usual, beers all around.
Only later, years later when you ran down that girl, or was it two girls—
you know how the papers exaggerate—did you let on that you learned:
the weight of the world is actually lighter than anything.
It needs to be, light enough yes, to sit so long in your bones.

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Confession: Front Pew, Aisle 2

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I know.

It is a rare god
who does not demand devout adoration.

On my knees, I traverse the distance
between disbelief and deliverance,
make that leap of faith all prophets
spin into a tale to mesmerize the horde
into divine submission.

I cannot help it; I am an easy convert.
Yes, I’m a sucker for the beautiful singing in pig Latin,
quick to join those queuing up for a miracle,
the brassy abracadabra of old ladies weeping
each into her candle, for my soul.

I am always ready to be enraptured
by stories of waking suddenly,
into full-blown religion
where, overnight, the brain
unfolds into a clean horizon.

Where everything is white-hot bright,
even that corner of the room where, each night,
the faithful grapple with interminable lust.
Ten, twenty, a thousand years go by
and still the sinners do not die.

My one epiphany: it does not matter
how often you inhale deep into forgiveness
fling yourself at the foot of steel crosses,
petition each of the sleeping gods,
ferry arguments altar to altar.

No, it does not at all matter
how devotedly you kiss the bitter,
fervently loving the fear,
secretly taking to tongue
the exotic flavour of  prayers.

All the same, you wake up each day
and the first prayer you utter is for memory

to stay.

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