MiPo Poetry Board Best of 2002

If I could, I'd slap her Mama "trailer park rant"

I should steal me a couple of babies from that little bitch
who keeps her kids in rags, treats them like shit
screams at them, works them like mules
while she sits on her ass and watches Springer

and smiles real cute

because she knows how to keep her ole man in line
and kids do right if broken in young to the sincere fact
that there ain't no such thing as Mama being wrong.
She keeps em up all damn night until the work is done.

I outta go over there right now and sling her ass outside

Drag her junked up shiftless self round the block by the hair
and into my house! I'd work her to rag and bone, feed her
nothin' but beans and rice, dress her in a plastic garbage sack
make her sleep with her flea infested cats...

God I hate her. Done called the authorities on her twice.

They more or less said "get in line" been promising a home visit
since summer last year, while her kid's get the big skinny and
she buys more crap to hang out her belly and unicorn tattoos
on her double-wide. Not to mention her daily sixer of beer.

If she weren't married to my brother, I'd probably have her killed

slow

like she's killing those kids.

Telling Beautiful Lies and other Gentle Sins

He said "you are beautiful" and she turned away
from him to the mirror. Her vanity had died.
She remembered when she was round of belly, ripe
tropical as a setting moon. Her bones shriek now.
Her beat slowed, her season does not change.

He finds the back of her neck, the soft skin, white
as the dresses that innocent children wear, sweet
as the memory of his first lingering. He lays his cheek
where the skin is frail and wants her

to understand. It was never her youth that made him stay.
It was her truth and defenseless smile. The slack softness
of her breast had fed the hungry mouths. Her gentle womb
housed the men and women that do him proud. He wants
her to discover that the skin of her wrist thin and blue
has a delicate beauty that does not do justice to the blood.

The blood of her faith and fear, the chambered music
is all she hears. She pulls the wrap tight, stares past
and in. Her eyes tell her "this can't be so" I have lived
through falling skies, the never ending rain, loss and grief.
This terrible pain that has coursed me like a river bed
and bruised my legs...

and yet he stays. She prays in secret to her to her saints.
"He said I was beautiful" and for a moment, she believes.

I Don't Think 
I'll Kill Myself Today

It's enough to drive you crazy, so you think about in
a purely nonchalant manner, carefully casual, a way
that won't hurt, that isn't messy, to Yogi Bear it stage
left Buh bye, Boo Boo.

It's very interesting to examine it from the corner of
your eye, but knowing not to look at it's visage, lest it
is beautiful, beguiling, full of promising possibilities.
You know it true that another you, the one that cannot
sleep, that burns and howls indignant at that which is
righteously fucked, is inclined to fall for a pretty face.

Oh, but not you Seven of Nine, silver eyed, disposed to
dispassionately defer it to the Collective.
We, yes, We, have made a list, checked it numerous times
scoured the sink of cloudy scum leaving a stainless
reflection. We have found to our probable temporary
relief a number of good enough reason's to put if off.

reason one

It is yet to be proven to your satisfaction that there is
not a burning hell, and that ole devil perhaps looks like
that person you asked firmly to drop dead but they didn't
have the courtesy too. Maybe those pesky minions are
really mosquitoes and chiggers and lice and they all have
voices that bitch and whine. You remember you didn't
repent a few choice moments of your life having enjoyed a
little sloth and gluttony, a little lascivious spite.


reason two

The closet is a nightmare tangle of the real you, a Dante's
Inferno of twisted clothes strangling each other. A battle
field, the odorous dirty versus the unfolded clean, they
creep out of rubber baskets. Somewhere above you a box of porn, Sleeping Beauty, spanking that bad bad boy. Evidence that can be used against you in the court of law.
The Judge someone that had once thought you verily cool.
The humiliation of laying eternally dead, but aware that
someone, somewhere is laughing at you.


reason three

Optimism, a plague on both your mouses! How many times
having settled comfy cozy into, and yes, bent to your
various needs, a place you had thought "maybe, this will
do or at least not undo" Oh dirty "O" word, then found it
just wouldn't do, not a bit, no matter the pillows or
fountains, or Feng's that Shui. Yet it is there like a
barefoot girl with a mouthful of lies, she does rattle on.


reason four

Reversals of fortune, the odds baby! The math, oh yeah!
Having fought the zeroes and ones, they always win and you
at least smart enough to know when you're bested, sulkily
turned to books on the paranormal and the tomes of famous
poets who might teach you to suffer, better. Chastised,
but reassured that shit only stinks until it dries up and
blows away.

War Is Good 
For The Economy

Because it meant surrender
Mama chewed rice during Lent
ground it to a paste, held it
in her mouth like a self inflicted death.

When she heard the Chaplain knock
Mama coldly locked the door
pretending not to hear her dread.
She turned up the radio
walked into the bathroom
and dyed her blonde hair red.

What to do for the children
when the echoes of his voice
leave their heads? Don't speak
of resurrection when their father's
blood has dried to powder
where the tall grass hides it's dead.

She left us with promises
candy and kisses, ran naked
down Haight, stoned religious.

Your Mother was there when you left
YOU'RE RIGHT
Your Father was there when you left
YOU'RE RIGHT

Men who leap like angels, float
into a black and scarlet sky
fall gently through the bullets' hail
to count new ways that they might die.

Mama danced and danced, spinning
in infinity, counted the melting freckles
on a lost dalmatian, the one in the park.
She slept curled next to it in the shadow
of a cathedral, taught it to bark for peace.

When Johnny comes marching home again
HURRAH HURRAH
When Johnny comes marching home again
HURRAH HURRAH
When Johnny comes marching home again
He'll beg on the corners and eat out of bins
and we'll all turn away then
when Johnny comes marching home.

Daddy sent two letters after he died.
A ghost in love with home, wanting
only a lawn to mow, a bike flat to fix.
The pictures were of boys on a motorcycle
grinning through dirt. There is a small bent
woman frowning under a hat, she's holding
a naked baby and has wood on her back.

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