Monday, October 20, 2008

the dance

At a thousand paces I smell a metallic stench
of drool at the wait to macerate my privacy
innocent request by screaming silent demand
until integrity lies beside me like shredded raiment.
Let you near to lick my sacred juices with your
hot rotting deceits?
I know you, velvet hammer,
You were born of Adam.

I am millennia older than Your cronies.
In the dawn before time you worshiped
my million mothers, who died
in your untold ontogenetic accidental arrivals,
until only the Virgin escaped your rapacious claim.
Now, you and I remain. I transform you
and wrap you around me like mail:
Bite me and spit out your own teeth.
I am of the Goddess.

At My House

I grew up between a carrot
and a stick.
Running this way and this way
I learned to dance with both feet
off the ground,
Play statue reading book while
Breathing Mozart and the
Lord’s Prayer from A minor.
Down the hall Papa kept his blue
socks separate from the black
and the liquor key busy
on some kind of schedule.

While I practiced my lines
and he was voicing his,
Mama did her part flying quiet,
supper on the table hot by six.
The food was usual,
conversation a surprise.
Some nights we ate carrots;
Some nights when the table jumped up
and smashed his fist, the silver shouted
and we all took showers from the milk glass.