1001 decapitated birds

"squalor," crows crack
accusation as though it were bubble gum.

Dollybirds fly south
in the cold, hard shuck of November,
grim until they remember

their limbs are not programmed
for relocation.

It's all about
the quality of interrogation
and those subtle, fatal instruments.

Boston Proper

Anne, my Brahmin,
I hope you don't
run marathons.

The Secret Life of Lake Champlain

each childhood
ensnares former tenants
in a landscape so foreign
and dangerous

there is no plan
to forsake.

contrivance

wrenched
this way and that
technology is never
an acrobat

false longing
strung high
on improvised wires

allows luxurious failure
to follow

Fox Song In April

and so this fourth month
trots along, fine
auburn fox
silver lined

dragged by its neck
skinned merciless

lean and whipped April song.

City Lights

 

the lookout sparkles,

gemstones strung on a spider web

and tossed delicate

toward our harbour.

 

memory blinks

like electricity

in a Montreal stone house

 

whilst power lines

collapse under frost.

 

it happens

again and again. no number

of edits can reclaim

 

that first moment

of fascination when you hold

the final mirror the only other way.

Letter From Palinurus

like a Sōseki path
the letter from Palinurus arrives.

my toe-hold
upon ice-floe
celebrates en pointe

marrow throbs and thaws

transplanted blossoms
from Tokyo
giggle in a schoolgirl row

there is a way
to lead or to follow
there is a way
at last.

no concept of concept

it's just what
the other keeper said:

you have no concept
of concept, and that holds
you adrift.

an owner cannot give
what is repossessed.

I want only your golden vision;
you may discard the rest.

 

Snow Crash and Ruby Passion

this day
shadows away from itself

on a path beaten with bleeding
feet silent

screams and a Declaration of Interdependence

my addiction
lists and sways,

greens under palms
and soft, tender ashes.

Your Passion
has always been too much,

even in binary code
or under moons falsely held

arguably bought
by bidders in disarray.

sometimes a sacrificed swan

in cyrillic,
erstwhile and otherwise,
I compose a host
of praise and development:

most would be surprised
by the family of muscle.

in my entire
misbegotten saga,

there have only been four riders:

father, son, husband and daughter.

The rest
can be swept
as ashes and this calms me

on the edge
of the Great Betrayal.

All who can dance
have no need of Forgiveness.

nostalgia without memory

a Russian curse,
this languid backpaddle
to an era
when leaders of state
sat entranced
at the Bolshoi

and ballerinas
dared not sprout
acidic fat.

defeat

Defeat
wears you down
like the prom queen abandoned
on a sere soccer field

or suicide girl
in political disarray,
ideology akimbo.

Some dare suggest
nothing is linear;
all is in unrest.

I protest.
Your swan song stretched
its servile neck

into aristocratic oblivion.

drowned girl

hello once again,
my eternal darling

Greetings from the dry side,
the sere side

I am safe, but so are you

finally

in your mermaid,
seaweed tomb,
in perpetual death and hiding.

I Danced With A Corpse

and her breath
was beyond laboured

slippage had ruined
her perfect skin.

I thought

Opera Gloves!
Remove Them.

Her stench defied
shit, piss, puke and disinfectant

Ah!

I am reminded of those suitors' stale gifts:

long-stemmed virginal roses.

I invite you to visit my garden each spring:

peppered with the ashes of my beloved;
it is viable;

it dances.

the quality of mercy

the strangeness of my face
as I guide her toward Czech glass light

reminds me of mercy—startling in its green degree

like a blond child
in a stale velvet dress

your need is drastic,
a ribbon slashes your good neck

a Southern belle
overturned and rung
in a heart-pink corset

all undone

everything about you ruined,
family, fortune, fame

your breasts, most of all,

failed and falling

whose telephone number
will you recall

when you can reach
no one at all?

St. Francis, The Argentine & Papacy

my beauty,
your tango strut
upends my virtue:

papal or otherwise,
sequestered with scant Twitter reprieve

Evita would spin
in her unquiet grave

Give me
a populist pope
or a shackled reformer

someone who has known
dishonour and despair.

servat regina colorem

oh queen,
you have been betrayed
and yet

your voice remains
sweet and true.

Your spouse
did not protect you

(as husbands never do)

and in this ebola trance,
you stretch your lovely swan neck

instructing the executioner
to forgive you

your slenderness.

incandescence and the mermaid

false child,
your memory serves no one well

shed those fins
that slippery tail

Repent.

slip between
your beloved river rocks

and sing the tale of the
otter and hippopotamus

or even better!

the mergirl who grew legs
behind her ovaries

and birthed a creature
too closed for openings.

A seamstress and her Czech glass buttons
was seen in Bohemia's last Opera House.

When a glass shoe drops,
high arches escape blood-lettings.

craven shield

old crow, how I longed to protect you,
or at least defend,

the kernels strewn,
winds shift
in unpredictable directions

that only scared ravens know

you refused to die

stubborn lass,
with your copper tresses
and algae eyes

why did you refuse to die?

the life you claim
in shy disdain
is as ugly as vampire veins.

Dollar Store Delight

like the cheapest
dollar store whore

with puffer fish lips
and mudsliding hips

your fossil fuel
and hip-hop gruel

disarm me to the core.

you cannot kill the dead

try as you might,
such doings are impossible
even at godneglected hours
or prophet turnabouts.

the dead are gone;
you cannot cajole them
into false submission.

you cannot steal their clocks.

a little refusal

I refuse
repeatedly to be
what I was not intended
to be

Detractors
mingle languidly,
in tulle and silk,
topaz and citrine

Autumn was chosen
to be my renaissance season

but reason intervened
and suggested

a different kind of  treason.

end colour

not yet assassinated,
you show us your true
colour. all love has ended
during this prolapsed detour

on hand,
you had,
a mighty dictionary and a rose-gold bullet,
good for nothing,

yet decorative.

you may dance or drown,
it is really all the same
to your virtual audience,

asthmatic and furtive
the curtain has been called,
all memory stalled.

the old and the new of it

once
everything was new—
too raw for beauty, yet
shiny with promise


which page do you claim?
which cover,
the front or the back?

sheets are roughly torn out
or perhaps delicately extracted.

almost nothing happens

your life abruptly sealed
so quiet, for you have begun
the task of waiting

however it is done,
it loses memory
and becomes
the one koan always fated.

the only solution

to everything
in hate or even for those
with the luxury to wait

the finality of death
suggests the only solution

we, however, bend weak
at the concept of shoots
not quite strung
to full height

pretty children
in gardens
of roses and bullets,
her end, our collective execution.

led astray

flush
into a firing squad
cameras loaded
lowered to meet your

childhood

we know
that your mother loved you

it is evident in your rose-red coat,
your curls
meticulously harvested.

little rose in Warsaw ghetto

my darling—
daughter

your perfect coat
stitched with Margarita devotion

may fail to protect you.

tumbled and humbled

Killer—
your treachery was not quite willful
never the less
I am impressed
with your reckless, feckless
tastelessness.

In a tumbled, humbled war
accountability is obscure.

You chose the thick one, the girl stuffed
with wheat and corn,

blondfully born; you spurned
the fish girl
hiccuping fresh pearls
and veils and bolts of mermaid revolt.

no new blog for you—80 8010

cool as a dawn in October,
your head rolled in, Miss November:

pinched and chilled and grim.

Forensics considered.

I picked up my Jimmy Choos
and ran and ran

as fast as I could

dismembered, barefooted.

All I have to say is this:

should death appear,
subdued and unbidden

consider yourself a genetic winner.

spiders in winter

do you remember a pestilence

in winter? tulle spiders too greedy

to conceptualize surrender?

 

resin on old floor boards, your capezio

brush strokes were so much like a sugar-rush

 

that swells all senses

until metamorphosis. then—

 

nothing ever looks, smells or tastes

right again.

 

 



the girl with the mermaid tattoo

Darling
daughter

how far you have travelled
to meet me this one last time

upon our bed of rock and weed
these artefacts I bequeath to you:

a tattoo of myself when I was your age;
may you fare far wiser

a lock of sea-coral  hair;
may you learn the Argentine tango

and the argo it inspires.

a subtle notion

your devotion
never was
and never will be

I am subtle
when I turn my back

seducing you
to focus on my butterfly and my alibi
and my aborted pregnancy.

beautiful and dead

hello world,
how fresh you smell
despite your immersion in corrupt and ugly

you see
I was pure

but what good
did that do me
consigned to the outer limits of hell?

Defaced

you
who lie in wait,
never to understand the notion of Defaced

I congratulate

your tepid ambition
locks, ladders and snakes

your pale supposition,

He who endures,

overtakes.

sometimes a tiny sufi

darling,

I would spin for you and spin for you again,
ecstatic in the tide of suicide

your elsewhere Karachi bride.

I swallowed those gemstones you mailed
like candy— like mosque ornaments and then I said...
(whispers a lament into your polymer ear)

heart break and tulle

why can you not
stop? every thing, single
is broken, trampled like
crystal in a nazi night

your promise
over spoken until your tower
and ladder are reduced

to one.

simply grace

this last of days
is measured by stars and scales

within your archway
I remember; loss
cannot assassinate the marriage
of hope and bone.

like a mermaid
crying to walk in a pair of steel shoes

I try to clasp your attention.

nostalgie de la boue

to you!
to you, my sweet assassin
I bequeathe
my bouquet of umbrellas,
my truffle oil, argan shampoo, tulle skirts

and sighs and heaves.

Anne of Cleves
kept her unlovely head;
Anne Boleyn
was less fortunate.

a lily grows from mud
even though her neck is the dimension
of a hearty tree trunk

I expect nothing

and I forgive.

follow me down

and you can follow me down
past your shantyshack town

I will be wearing a dress
stitched in water.

my tresses will curve
like the Moskva
with verve

my killer
your stones were heavy and cold
but how pretty
when dripping
ruby droplets
from my stilled heart
to your banquet goblet

pink shoes murder mystery

elegant and elongated

in repose,
your faux-haute glamour

trips you over
a man-hole.

that plunge
stirs vertigo in heart and heel and soul

poor baby steps
for a stilted girl.

my sister—my killer

your silence
erases all features
even the ones
perfect and cold

this dead January,
you approach two-faced
and I cannot fathom
a chosen direction.

duality and the madman

gone
those days
when your dual nature

sliced my skin-pink
figure skates

then left me
looking into the bottomless eye
of a timeless ice-hole.

carry on, savage winter

my nostrils attach
under blind-white
chill factor.

carry on,
savage winter.
you are dressed in icicle
splendour and your victims

are lost amid snow-drifts,
like holes in white cheese,
they have nowhere to go
but under.

the post and mistress

self,
hostess at twilight
with imported orchid lights

you whisper
at midnight
to guests

who leave
like hopeful ghosts

colour bleaches
from your throat
which locks
in loving protest.

The Life You Save Is

 

never your own
and that is why
you crumble

like a stucco wall or lyrical dancer.

You were never afraid
of living alone, rather

terrified of majority's noise—

its unrelenting blather.

 

 

slave girl

I have visited your cruel terrain
you are swollen, insipid and vain

yet youu twirl instruments of torture
as though you possessed honour—tenure

your teeth rot,
your flab glubs like
olive oil
churned rotten

oh,

my killer—my rancid one:

yellow is your colour,
true and five-pointed.

How is it that you disdain
hygiene in favour
of something

I cannot  quite
wrap my death around?

fish glass

here kitty-fish-fish
the bubble-gum stench
of your deep-sea lips

pries open pink flesh
inside a stained-glass wish

I am dying for you Bosnia—dying

behold

the faker's pasty face, his hold
on ancient Venice.

His followers are fat and fucked.
They've seen this card trick

tweaked and tucked
under sleeve or hem.

The executioner
kneels to be redeemed.
His silver bullets
are more merciful
than the poet's pre-fabricated
holdings