Poems Aren't Worth a Goddamn Thing

broken cracker
water straight from the tap
two day old bread
and salty soup

they come 'round here
offering
we have something for you
quick before it's all gone

you know there are more hungry than you
look at all these books
piled to the ceiling
sell them all and buy yourself some shoes

I'd rather wander barefoot in the rain
than give up a single word
each letter has more worth
than a heap of right opinions

each author a better friend
than a wringing religious hand
held out if you only believe
what we believe

I eat stale biscuits
the milk long gone
but still I am not alone
each word, each syllable
a stronger gateway to heaven
than any clammy outstretched appendage
crossing itself
with a backhanded weak smile
it's purveyor

Fucker

though faceless and thick
it knows its way around the room
it knows the secret names
I keep for things
and where I hide my chocolate bars
its leafing through my magazines
digging around in my porn stash
rearranging the shelves
and driving me crazy
it broke several glasses
smashed them to little bits
on the kitchen floor
ate all the cereal
and put the milk carton
back in the fridge empty
it smoked my last cigeratte
and finished the bottle of Jim Beam
it scratched up my favorite records
dog eared my books
got into my drugs
and smoked them all up
it stole my poems
and read them aloud
cackling wildly
it spent the night passed out
on the bathroom floor
and used all the hot water
if I could just get my hands on it
I'd strangle it all the way
when I look straight forward
I see the two of us
but when I turn my head
no one's there
and my fingers pass through air

You Go In Pieces

"I brought you a peace offering."
you say with too-much teeth grin
I want no more pieces of you!
I've had quite enough I think
I'm full up to the brim
with your dirty fucking pieces
all the little dusty chunks of yourself
you left around my apartment
I keep tripping on them
choking on them in my sleep
stumbling over them in the dark
on the way to the bathroom
when I get up to go take a shit
stubbing my toes against them
and hopping the rest of the way
expletives waking up the neighbors
 rattling  their ears
I want to toss up all those pieces of you
I had to swallow back down
when you looked at me funny
when you made a crack
about my lack of housekeeping skills
now it's pieces of you strewn about the fucking place
so untidy 
come get them
I don't want them anymore
I'll give you some plastic bags to wrap them in
to keep them from escaping back into my bed
I'll get the dust pan and the broom
you can keep all the cracked little bits
I've had enough to last me a life time
I'm all full up
I don't need them anymore
you keep those little pieces you keep offering me
I ain't got no more room for anyone else's regrets
but my fucking own

Dead Channel

I can hear you
trying to haunt me
your voice
coming through
like broken static
phonetic
frantic
cracked and crackling
ghost transmissions
on the still air of bright nights

hey, those
radio frequencies
my silver fillings
are trying to pick up
static
where your words
used to be
hissing through
the frayed wiring
of my soul
come in over Toyko
somewhere over Hawaii
can you hear me?

rattling around in my head
reverberating off the walls
I turn over
I turn the dial
I change the channel
big old test pattern
in the sky
the colour of scratched records

you got some
tv antennas caught in your hair
and big parasitic
advertisers jacking your waves
reprogramming
your late night
monster movies
to sell us
sentimental bullshit
packaged in sexist
dessert recipes
and bikini photos

you haunt me
with noise
broadcast every stupid thought
straight through rewiring
down fiber-optic cables
and up old copper tubes
I take the old Nintendo
into the other room
I'm going to play Mario
until dawn crackles
out distant warnings
over electric mountians
to drown out
your moaning
straight through the charged air
all wireless
until the end of my ears

only binary coded
sunlight knows the truth
and you turned it all off
years ago
anyways
the great switch in the sky
hard wired to your passing whims
'hey there
dancing robot girl
get up and dance for me'
I'd give anything to be
a sexy cyborg demon
and eat your
cognitive
heart right out of your
shiny tin chest

fuck the stars
in the space we
burned out for them
and fuck your
electornic
advances
while we're at it
I'll see you in the Hell
where they send rotary phones
and rabbit eared TV sets
you'll find me on the throne
cybernetic vengaence
with your name
still warm on my lips
and your robotic blood
still sticky on my hips

Monstrous Heart

"she's not human"
must have been what my demons
were whispering in his ear
because his face contorted
before I even brought out
the sharpest knife

"you know what I believe in?"
I mused
I didn't wait for him to answer
"Sex.
And violence.
And revenge.
And all the good things in life."

I smiled gently as I bent over him,
and with lips pressed against his ear
whispered,
"you should probably close your eyes for this part.
You don't want to see this."

Ink (Nephthys)

I can't see the stars here
it drives me fucking mad
that flat black sky
only the moon hanging
her beautiful face obscured
suspended in an empty sickly orange glow
the sun coming too fucking early
like a useless lover
with a useless cock

I need the cover of darkness
to get up to my nefarious deeds
I need to slip between shadows
to feel normal
I miss that blanket of stars
whispering my name
and drawing me out into the empty streets

I hate the morning
it's flushed and pinked skin
winking through the blackout curtians
sneaking in around the edges
trying to rouse me
trying to stir me
trying to ruin me
in the light of day

my neighbors little morning noises
creeping through the walls
the garbage truck waking me with a shock
as it slams the dumpster up into the air
the construction workers across the street
and their fucking saws and hammers
which I threaten to shove up their asses
to no one in particular

how I miss the silence of the night
the clockwork of the world turned still
a million little busy hands
finally stopped
this city groggily asleep
and me slinking about
feeling almost right in all her dark quiet
all her darkness
slipping down my skin
curling about my hair
lighting upon my lips

I am beautiful in the night
straight claimed by her icy fingers
I run wild while you sleep
I've seen the parks too dark
the trees huge and looming masses
the world all the same blackened colour
building become shapes and lose their grandeur
the world no longer finite in the glaring dawn
but black and endless stretching to the heavens
to the dead star light
a million miles away

I slink through the night and watch
the coyotes hunting for rats
big fat black slick furred things
with long yellow teeth
fattened by over flowing dumpsters from upscale restaurants
the coyotes sleek and quick
a jump
a squeal
a gnashing of teeth
and its all over
 
the alleyways lit by glowing street lights
with fat moths flinging themselves upwards
in crazy loops
to that sulfured glow
the bats swooping in
near silent but the rush of air
past quickened flight
to crunch on those chubby bodies
and disappear back into the dark
the velvety rhythm of their wings
singing me home

from the edge of the bed
all lost in the solid dark
I stare at you through the inky film
as you gently breath in and out
at my side
lost in the folds of my sheets
your features barely audible in the dim light
uncomfortable when you realize I've stopped breathing
you flutter and roll
and pull me closer

yeah,
I watch you when you sleep
and sigh back into the knowledge
that your daylight is going to kill me
that my black little heart can't survive
in the heat of the bright rays
we are shrinking at the thought already
and clinging to the darkness
hiding under the covers
wishing the sunlight would fucking go away
just go away

I'm curled up all small now
deep under the quilts
this false darkness not quite right
listening to your morning skin
clicking the door shut
in search of the garish sun
outside of my beautiful black world
you say
'I've got to claim the day'
more like you've got to get out of here
because in daylight my skin is too white
my truth too glaringly bare
my willingness too easy to see

it's only in the night
that I am beautiful
and without the stars
I am hopelessly lost
howling down the streets
trying to find them
and you
again

Beauty (My Father's Hands)

you say
'i am too bruised for you
i can't survive myself
look at these angry scratches
this swelling place
where would you see beauty
in these fists?'

you know
my father came home every day
with darkly stained hands
from chain oil
and axle grease
smudges on his face
dirt in his eyelashes

he was a mountain of man
to me
his hands never clean
shaggy beard
wild hair
booming laugh
as he roared into the yard
in his one tonne chariot
with two flat tires

everyday he came home
with sawdust in his hair
and huge hands
lugging a chainsaw
at his side
tossing his dirty bucking pants
over the living room chair
much to my mother's displeasure

everyday
he came home
covered in the filth of working men
rode the big machines
once came home with a branch
from a surprised falling tree
embedded in his leg
bleeding all over the seat vinyl
as my mother sped
the hour to the nearest hospital

every day there was sawdust
and blackened hands that never came clean
and splinters
and little scrapes where the sparks jumped back
and burnt his skin
and bruises from flying sticks
when great trees met the ground
at his shivering command

and everyday my father was beautiful to me

if you can not see the beauty of yourself
reflected in mine eyes
then you don't know who I am
and will never see where I came from