Ode to rotting
ode to naked, labile moon
my dumpster diving sunflower remedy
I take my clothes off and hope for an antidote
Ode to nothing, because everything is good again
Ode to laugh tracks which become sinister
ode to
repressed memories and
nostalgia
and
criminal night life
and
I had a lobotomy
it was very
overrated
the smell of springtime
specifically May
purifies me
where do we stop, your greedy eye sockets
are filled with quicksand and
oh.
Big Victorian houses
seduce me
wherever I go.
The only fossil left on earth left in the palm of my hand.
If you see something, say something, or so I’ve been told.
The only city I know has been bleached in bad taste.
When we wake, the world has gotten rid of its traffic signals.
When we wake, no one remembers who was broken.
In every dream, I see you covered in blankets.
I can barely make out your face.
The elevators have frozen; we must take the stairs.
How elegant the galaxy looks in the heat of July.
In the heat of the moment, we make love in our bomb shelter.
Tell the earth to keep shaking.
Watch the brownstones unlock their prejudiced doors.
When I close my eyes, the world is covered in dust and the world is mine.
When the sheets conform to our skeletons.
Vertigo ripped my house in half.
You’re the comic relief looking through my gilt-framed mirror.
You try to exhume my nostalgia.
I make us into paper dolls that slide beneath locked doors and no one is ever home.
Walk me through the Stations of the Cross.
We forget each other’s names.
Every item on every grocery list crossed out and fed to hungry families.
Lets retreat to fake sleep.
I have you cover my eyes in case a beam of light enters the periphery.
My dream and your dream sip chamomile tea behind blackout curtains.
Love grows from an abscess.
Tensile love supporting each earth.
The only saint I worship is Ursula.
You carve me a slice of crescent moon with your dirty fingernails.
When the end comes, we must be ready.
We armor ourselves in necklaces of bone and five red bats.
Not one dream catcher.
We’re groping the side of a cliff while trying to fall.
Here’s a candlelight vigil for your favorite mirage.
The only sentiment left in this world is can you hear me.
You can have the inside of the bed.
I will grow a garden of knives beneath the mattress.
We ebb and flow tyranny like the Romans.
I forget when I last saw the sun.
I forget the difference between day and night.
When my doppelganger looks up from the street and I am stationary in my secret annex.
She has been watching for at least a week.
I hope the asteroid strikes soon.
We wait for disemboweled misery’s defense.
I see antlers on the roof of every car fleeing this refugee camp.
I scratch reason into sacred runestones and they disintegrate.
The only dreams I have now are debased by foggy morals.
I have already written the ending to our tragedy.
You say, isn’t that something.
Four glasses into the night, the road runs right in two
Franzia nights; I had lost my spine
When my eyes bled me into you.
Confined between times, silence overdue
Coupled on a love sea, bled into blue.
All is well
before the streets explode with anxiety.
Call me a cab.
Distance yourself, these tenement
eyeballs never cease to stare.
Forgive me, I
grope the right way.
Have you heard?
I am fluent in
jibberish, a language you don’t
know.
Lightning strikes in between my toes.
Move over.
Nobody wants to live in perpetual
October
Pending the very end, but jumping is
quite a nice way to fly.
Roads crumble when footsteps leave them.
Scraps of
time are left for the
underfed
vultures
waiting for children with
Xeroxed faces
you just
zone out.
I have been holding
My cards in a way that I can’t see.
When I put on
Your sepia sunglasses, the world is
More forgiving, can’t you tell?
I have been held
Back and forth and in captivity and now by you.
The verdict is in.
I live amongst
Swamp-like creatures. I wonder who still goes to church.
Read my fortune.
Then make it your own.
As I grow fur to cover the bruises.
As crayfish consume your maddening tent.
Ready? You begin to fall.
Rug burn hurts the most.
But it doesn’t hurt until you stop.
And a binary code has been cracked. Look at our children.
Clawing through an eviscerated adolescence. Guns leading the way.
I forgive God for making us like this.
I forgive a torn hymen.
I forgive vanity. I come up for air, shudder and cough.
I will leave this place, and never look back.
I will pick hydrangeas.
No, I never liked that.
Who is king in this winded up world?
A symphony of tin cans that rattle in place of a neighbor
Hug me as if to say never mind.
I tied them together to make a kite, it doesn’t help.
They sent me a muttering
Telegram
(Not delivered.)
I won’t belong to any of these universes.
Winged nymphs will devour your craw
Magicicadas erect new walls
Confusing themselves, but it is barely spring.
(I am not there; if you look, look now)
Somewhere in between
Craters of organelles,
Red-eyed battles, beasts that engorge like blood oranges-
Our tongues elope.
Something other than God
Stares at you through
Damask wallpaper in citadel
Nighttime.
Each grace is
Impeccably versed.
We can’t hear anything besides
Winged nymphs making love again and again
(So look-look now!)
But there’s never going to be a girl like me.
Nothing sounds the same in their version of English
And they wonder why
No one has anyone to talk to
But I do.
Here we have impoverished settlers
Holding paper fans that threaten self-immolation
Where the rumors live, Tiger Ridge
(Just as soon kill you
than look at you)
There’s good in everyone
I suppose
Ignore the horrors seen behind
Cataracts
Couplets and clippings and nativity scenes
Butterfly blood pure as
You’ll never find what you seek.
(September 2010)
At nights like this I dream in blue because you
Were everything I once thought to be true
At night when the roar of the street turns cars into clouds of smoke
Beneath barefoot feet,
Rosary beads and a broken tambourine,
Tapping tango of a vintage cigarette and only the dogs and the cats knew
What was coming next, oh Earl
When a volcano threatened to conquer our trembling city
You took a taste of this, and pondered
The life of a coal miner and
Being insane in sane places
Where everything results in a yes or no answer
Silent footsteps on the dance floor
Mother nature, you weep.
It’s like throwing a drop of water into the ocean
When everyone wonders what its like to be you
Wondering what its like to be.
Checked and balanced to hell, books stacked high, vistaril
Pray tell, as you wander the third and fourth floor
Is any of this real?
Looking for some angelic eye candy
Dreaming of going to sleep
In a tropical storm
Trying to say yes-yes no
But dear god, you never go.
In the alleyway, you heard a tale
Of explosions on a mountaintop
And men painted black with soot trying to escape.
There are disasters everywhere and you once thought
You would go back in time to the roaring twenties
Until you realized you might be poor.
Sometimes we must remind ourselves
we have changed, we have changed-
But Ethiopia is sovereign, still
Or so I have heard.
And the best of tanks and poison gas could not triumph
Over spears and rocks, or so I have learned.
And each night
We falter, stumble, wonder
Jealous when everyone else is on more intriguing drugs
Asking could violins scream a more desperate love?
And the moonbeams have not answered me.
At nights like these I dream of two
Cards facedown on calendar papers
The sentry engages our escape, nightly romps to homeless shelters
Left behind in summer swelter
Fanning my elegy
White lies are lies nonetheless
And I can sing in the dark or slip out of this dress
Will a glimpse stave off, satisfaction for today?
I could exceed wildest dreams
It’s disappointment either way.
I am
Every day of the week except Sunday.
I am the living, breathing, groping form of vegetation
Called afternoon fidelity.
I feel
Fingers drumming on the back of my neck.
I sit
Three inches from the window.
I smoke
Where we used to breathe, and sometimes
His apparition appears
Asking why I no longer grieve
Flaunting a grotesque reflection in revolving doors and sometimes
Lingers beside me.
I give
Food to the homeless-
I know
You know my reasons.
I use all
Three lifelines whenever
I cannot stand still
Any longer.
I fear
This open ended weakness.
I don’t want to stop
Living in a light bulb
I don’t want to surrender-
These novelties make
My world a little tighter.
Before
I lived all alone in a
Glass terrarium and displayed my
Talent—just shaky religion and
Entertained the intrusive the ordinary and the trivial the
Bored hung back where I hung each
Old pair of ballet slippers, each year a different hook, in the closet I called home, where
I once ran away from home, where
I dreamt
Of grown up things, I cried
During infomercials late at night with
This person I did not know, whose fault lines paved the way
Mornings could be glorious if you know what you know
If it starts to hurt, call Dr. Herbert Snow
Things he said in life and death
And on a chilly night when I saw my breath.
But now
I think
About his crucifixion, he said I hope
I look like Jesus when I die.
I might try
Not to sanctify, sometimes
I drive blind just to prove
I am driving away.
I wish
I could meet Glinda, she would
Teach me how to sing, I prefer
Waltzes two and three, she
Would not compromise this wish, she would
Come alive and dance in a soap dish,
Bubbles that look pink without reflection of light,
Light my way as I walk
This off-color terrain.
I fear
Omniscient predators
I am
Frantically setting spools of tripwire
To make
Each superstition
Seem less personal.
I watch the portal close when he says—
Je suis perdu—
But I will not return for you.
Just in case
I pull back the rope ladder
And wish the phantoms all the best
Six feet under ground, the grass determined to stay fresh
In Nassau, in between burial plots
His mantra resonates:
Tecum vivere amen, tecum obeam libens
I try to stay away.
I survive
Squinting at the sky
And the hope
For a three way call
Withers down to whatever.
Those moths
Wearing but black
Scream regret
As the white lights never fade
He’s reduced to brush strokes
Riptide lines.
He is
An anchor, masquerading love
I am
Painting his tidal wave landscape.
The tainted souls of this world are banished to an elsewhere
A perverted merry-go-round does not help
Logic leaking from star-gazed eyes.
Reason slides down my spine and puddles at my feet
Defacing what is known as
Real Life
I can’t be explicit, when who knows who is reading
annotations in my bible,
Imitation stained glass.
I just want to traipse through Mexican mud
Without leaving tracks.
Please don’t keep me here
Please don’t leave me there.
I remember shinier days
When dried blood could pass for rust
And the embossment of my nails on your cheek
While you were sleeping comatose
Let me know I left a mark
For a minute or two is all I need
Is chalked up to relief.
I’ve finally found a mate
Oh, you breathe oxygen too?
I remember the Alamo
I met a story once,
In the grotto of standing ovations
Where madness was rewarded—gingerly
With a glass of charcoal
(We failed miserably)
We are mosquitoes and our last words colloquial
Something about staying out of harm’s way
Just to make it safely to death
We grasp hands under the table.
DiVenuta Drags 