new poem 9/01--->     

Man of the House

My best girl friend, newly married,
calls me in a tizzy
for advice.

"I didn't know it would be like this,
living with a man!
He scratches his balls!
He belches and farts!
He can clear a room
just by taking off his shoes!"

(She grew up with no brothers,
one sister.
I grew up with no sisters,
four brothers.)

Still, I have no words
of advice.

To my lover,
I am the brute
who brings flowers.

I am unruly, unkind,
a sinner with a golden arrow,
a bad peach.

I forget to floss,
I terrorize with tears,
a jackhammer dervish
in his small apartment demanding
when will you love me?
when will you love me?
again and again and again,

doing my best Stanley Kowalski,
full of shirt-ripping sorrow.

Then, I am vicious,
my teeth bared to bite his bones.
His friends shrink away,
frightened by the rabid froth
dripping from my drunken chin.

I wanted to shine
like a penny,
but I am oxidized,
a jealous thug,
cursing out of car windows,
dizzy and green,

infecting him nightly
but still,
he seems so determined
not to be cured.

 
Scattering

The wave like a crowded ocean broke me
and I was scattered back home beneath trees of white.

Her body is simple, 
very little fat, except around her belly.
Very few scars, but for her belly again.
She says the greatest challenge is walking upright,
not looking at her feet,
learning to trust the ground.
My birthday gift is the afternoon
with her in the library,
watching her pace the rocks in the garden
as she reads aloud from poetry books.
My hands know nothing. She is pale and threaded;
the memory is simple,
her hair through my fingers,
promising her things I can't keep.
"I will put you in a movie...
I will be your firstborn son."

I am scattering back,
she doesn't give up. 
I don't know how she walks 
standing up straight 
beneath the waves
la mer
(la the feminine article)
she is a tragic
ocean
her hands are like webs,
simple and silver,
she is a wake of platinum in gold spilling sun.
I am trying to sketch her
or paint her
through a sad window with a moon face
and there is my first mistake.
She is no painting. No sculpture. No poem.
She's a static ecstatic on my airwaves
She's a missive a miracle missionary mystery;
I am vertical and wartorn,
preaching the death of the senses,
preaching words I no longer believe.
But she is the truth
in a simple body,
nothing but a vision,
an emissary. a stone.

I scatter relentless,
bloodying the ceiling with my 
double-edged words,
writhing for a vision
on a naked sheet.
I wear her hand-me-downs
I walk upright
watching her, shadowed and crowded out.
I will be rusted by morning for sure,
I will be nothing but ash and glue,
but I will pull myself through oceans for her
because I made a promise
to pull through.

te amo

You stand in the doorway
with your shirt blue as a banner
and your smile so kind and cutting
I feel like a diamond 
in a laserbeam,
splintered and sparkling
as you wave goodbye.

next day (fragments)


peering out from behind 
sunglasses

little planes roll across the
heat-waved tarmac

my mouth is still 
recovering
from yours

 
She's My Verlaine


Should I dance on your tables?
Should I piss in your plates?
I have turned these drunken streets

on their ends for you. I kept
your city while you slept. I
remember how your picture 

destroyed me. Evil chemistry!
The chatter of bedsides. How black
were the stars! We walked through

traffic unencumbered. You tied your
clock to the parking meter, trying to
extend your stay. Knowing there is no

twine so strong. And now I wake on cold 
ground, with frost on my shoulders. 
How you regarded me with such disdain!

Witnessing my demise with perverted 
satisfaction. I must stand carefully now,
shaking the leaves from my hair.

The sun rises over the tombstones;
the impossible has finally happened.
I stand at your grave and I feel nothing.
 

seamless


Like a broken compass,
I don't know whether you're pushing me away
or pulling me towards.
You seemed so alive then,
so soft and dark
and quiet inside your skeleton.
I never knew how to be
still like that.
I wrote your words on my arms,
but I was too clean to get dirty. 
I got skinny,
but I was too hungry to starve.
The words are pungent and broken on my belly,
but they are alive,
because sometimes you speak to me this way,
with touches and tattoos,
in whispers and shouts
while my hair grows out,
and I remember that you were
broken once, too.
I'm okay, though,
I'm fixed,
you've glued me back
and there are no cracks in sight,
just this
seamless whisper
of your hands 
on my shoulders
pushing me or pulling me
in every direction
of you.
 

all poems © 1999, 2000, 2001 Meagan Brothers