MiPo Poetry Board Best of 2002

summer party: i danced, with you 
(Dance)

teens

i had been a puppy,
popping into oblivion.
and if my tongue
languished in slaver
or i ran in my sleep
without clothes
before the crowd -
what did it matter?

each step evolved
from something
less graceful,
felt ever better.
we ached for
vibration of bone
against each other
in the caramel
of after-hours.
we pressed the
dawn's refrain
into our banjos.
both of us
junked our luggage
along the way,
both puppies at play,
cautious till oblivion.

wood floors gave,
and sweat. it was
more a thing of drums
back then, not bass.
the beat jittered
into our bones
through guitars
and soul sisters,
steeple princess stoned
in moonlight, Mr Jones
coiled, then uncoiled.

here entered
the crescendo
no one heard.
here distance
was sorrow
touched upon
through want,
as we danced apart.
here the record
inched us
towards
each other
to the end of
the fast dance.

near the open window

words are what dogs do.
there is no way to tell the story truthfully
of how one slips into another's arms.
a choreography of leaves happens
on any windy day, but here is
a room full of people, a pulsing terminal.
units of sway made from twos
press us together. rhythm and blues
turns to train whistle,
we hear where we are,
and sway, touched
upon, pressed against
until i am wide open to
your perfume and sweat.
the dance swirls through violin bursts
of other scents. lizards, feathers, languid deer.
we squeeze together and rub legs dazed, smooth
as the bridge in the music, fluid and smooth.
our feet barely move. feel me
grow towards you, now that we touch.
i graze your neck, leave my breath.
hands dance below hips,
you can feel me better.

under black light

the room couples before the phonograph:
none allow the brevity of song to end their seconds.

this slow ballon is airborne once more in the romp of dogs.
we frug through the dark,
erratic and ungraceful in our separate airs,
spared by juvenile oblivions.
~~~

helpless before her 
(Surreal)

my best friend loves her vagina-like life.
crashing cars crystallize. i am
caught in a long stocking. try to tell her
i'm serious, it's then that she
draws my blood upon the moon.
look for me in the maguey tree
she boasts, i've slept years
on the terraces of dawn, that silence
you stole and wrapped in peacock plumes
is B O R I N G.

Wings! Lap up the silk ladder!
your nose bridge walks like a wolf,
it knows it's me and it doesn't care.
you care though. Amanita! Amanita!
shriek me through one moist damp dark day.
my bloated sparrow hawk, diet with me.
the city is steel, our mad inertia
will bend it into a wishing well.
reading the newspaper aloud
we board the rabbit, thousands
of us draped with obituaries, sexy
death notices, but it is a grand hare,
air-conditioned.

we all fit, get snug, fall asleep
and miss the train. smack
the sleeping conductor with
your crucible of rubies, and i will
breathe love into your vagina-like life,
wet friend whistle,
prairie park rendezvous,
denver am let amulet om let om.
the sun is it and it's hiding
in my blank banana.