Christmas Presents

Every Christmas, my mother said Santa is
poor this year; he won’t bring as many presents, but
it’s not because you were bad boys, you are not
bad boys, Santa is just trying to live off of
child support and his reindeer cost a lot to feed,
and it’s okay because less Legos means more love.
And we would hug her because she never told us
Santa was real, because we liked presents but we loved
her, and somehow every Christmas we ripped
the wrapping off of just as many boxes.


~02/09

Paths

And insofar as paths go,
I generally retrace ones that
as a young and inexperienced tracer,
wobbled.

Accustomed to balance through
years of practice and logic,
my steps are straighter but less
joyful.

Is it a slow loss or one traumatic
point at which our eyes begin to
calculate and plan and lose the
moment?

Would our decisions be worse if we
stepped back in time and forced
our limited omniscience of adulthood onto
them?

And if so, should we approach
complex and unsolvable paths with
the naiveté and simplicity of
childhood?

My path has strayed and
only a child’s mind could
make it logical.


-12/27/08

Animalia - The Pandas, The Toucan, Vitiligo (The Butterfly), The Lioness

*Important Note: these poems are diverse entities and should not be read as a coherent aggregate, unless you decide that the animalia theme merits an interpretation based upon a sexual maturation process simulated by the chronological progression of the poems. This note is bullshit*

The Pandas

Curled in blue pandas and bottomless beds,
glow-in-the-dark stars overhead;
there is no crib and no baby blue
worn carpet with a prune perfume.
Slim silent trophies gesturing, moving
closer, their shaken shadows looming
larger and larger on the moonlit walls,
the anorexically thin acoustic stalls
that assist the singers who steal my sleep
in discordant duets between wolf and sheep.
Howling in communion, my voice
is unheard beneath my timid toys,
so I hold blue pandas close to my chest,
with glow-in-the-dark stars overhead.


The Toucan

I broke the beak off the balsawood toucan
that talked to me incessantly from her perch
on my bedside shelf; I took that green bitch
and I snapped her pouting pursed mouth
off like the stem from a banana.

I was content for a week before I glued her
back together; after that she always talked
with a lisp.


Vitiligo (The Butterfly)

She was on top,
undulating like an inchworm on a leaf,
trying to metamorphose.
I held her nascent wings tentatively,
disinterested until
I spotted a pale membrane rotating
on her left ribcage,
and for the first time, I entertained her
fantasy.

She asked – I said,
you have a birthmark; she rolled
away in silence.
Perhaps she thought it could pull
her butterflight down,
but she was already grounded, and I
can no longer picture
her face, but I see the smudge on her side
perfectly.


The Lioness

When you nuzzle,
when you knead,
when you splash your scent
into my mangled mane,
when you play your tail
and raise your haunches,
remember:
I have a barbed penis.


-02/03/09