she dances through words

dirty little pretty bruise

The battle scars one can be proud of. All over my

Body, the blacks and blues and reds convene and make their

Habitat under my bare skin. An honor one could gain by

Self-destruction and accidental mishap. The plot for the colors

To appear when least expected works every time. Every day is

Another discovery. Another discovery is an unexpected surprise.

If not on the arms, then the legs, then the back or the torso. It must be

When I slam my body against the wall while I slumber, falling down from

Five feet high, earning a rugburn during the process. The aggressive

Touch feels like rough hands grabbing my skin with force. Bruises. They

Come to show off their unexpected beauty The mix of pure black with

Caliginous blues and radiant reds circling around my bloodstream

Where the skin aches in pain and turns from ivory to bruise. The scar that

Stays temporary when the initial pain fades away and my flesh gets

Distracted. My badge of honor that I survived this nasty spill/little accident

That caught me off guard during the day/night, displayed proudly on my

Arms and legs for the whole world to witness. The wonder of a scar

In full bloom makes me wish that the bruise can stay with me forever, so I can

Relish the stunning joy in the blacks, reds and blues. It will be my dirty

Secret that nobody else has to know. I can share the short version of

The story that goes with my secret, but I can choose not to divulge the

Specific details one would want to hear. I can actually embellish the

Truth and make-believe a story on how someone punched me by mistake,

Causing my body to welt up in pain. Or in the heat of passion, my partner

Put too much pressure against my body when he touched me and left his

Amorphous mark where he can find it and boast to himself and I.

More fascinating than a simple “I fell out of bed, again”, yes.

Just so I have another moment to lovingly admire the dirty little secret

I have marked on my flesh.

a public relations nightmare

nuclear fallout

paranoia spreads like a disease

that ransacks small towns like the plague

people! run for your lives!

getting worked up over little things

doesn’t do one good for your health

people tune in on the televisions

straight to the all-news-all-the-time networks

that whore stories to death

beating the same trite facts into the ground

exploiting pain for profit and ratings

not to mention the publicity stunts

you have to learn to let go

sometimes

stop being so damn scared of the news

stop the madness

stop watching the news you say

I say one thing: never trust the goddamn media

they fabricate the truth and turn it into lies

proving that a sucker was born every minute

or at least that’s what the public relations departments

that actually work to cover their asses

will lead you to believe

and that leads me to believe

the alternative theory of news

is not to report all the facts

unfortunately for the select few, they know how

to search for the truth because it is out there

the mainstream stations doesn’t want to lose their audiences

but the sad reality of the reality of television

is that the channels just report the news to create fear and paranoia

just like the media did back in the 1950’s

when the atom bomb dropped.

artificial nature

I sit under the sable mangrove of the night, surrounded by

spider lilies and sweet everlastings. The stars in the onyx sky

grow dim by the second as their bright potential fades before

they have the opportunity to observe another day. Pale

meadow beauties never live up to their name in the arctic

chill of the wind blowing in the night, withering one petal

at a time. The sign that the land of hope has turned into a

land of catastrophe, full of pavement-laced fantasies and

high-rise visions. The concrete dream is fully realized as the slabs

of gray stone rise up from the ground as tombstones,

smashing into the luminous beauty of wooded

forests, streaming rivers and lush botany with no means of

compromise. The artificial nature has taken over as the spider

lilies and sweet everlastings may never have another day

to bloom.

february 17, 2004

“Does it feel good being bad?”

He asked me this when I took a shot of whiskey and sucked the rough tastes through my mouth. Lips stained with red lipstick and saliva. Clothes scattered all over the floor of the seedy hotel room. He wore nothing but crisp, white boxers; I wore his button-down shirt, black fuck-me heels, and lustfulintoxication. I raised an eyebrow and said “Bad? You think this is being bad?” He faltered for a moment, pondered the statement, then headed to the bathroom. I settled back onto the unkempt queen-sized bed.. Looking at the portraits of landscapes on the walls and a small table with two chairs by the window. Ice buckets on the dresser next to the TV. Just your typical 40 dollars a night mainstay for drifters and tourists. Five minutes pass by, and the bathroom door opened. Refreshed, he walks out with a devilish smirk on his face and promptly laid down beside me in bed. Both of us knew there would not be any sleeping going on tonight. In an instant, I found myself straddling his lean body of slight pudginess, long limbs and strong forceful hands on each one of my hips. With his messy brown hair and dark brown eyes, he was just as drunk as I was. And neither of us cared. We both knew what the other wanted and we did not care about consequences. I wanted him to fail me. He accepted the challenge enthusiastically to fulfill the void in both of our lives. And with that said, the voids become filled in an instant. The bar across the street from the hotel was where we met earlier that night. He was alone and so was I. I was looking for someone to fulfill this desire I had. Obviously, he was looking for someone to do the same. After a few drinks of hard liquor, we went to a nearby drugstore to pick up a bottle of whiskey and condoms and checked into the hotel where the lost souls come together for truth and consequences. Where life doesn’t meet death and love and hope turn to decadence and lust. Loving embraces are verboten and passion is spared to fulfill sordid fantasies and fantasy fucks. He looks at me with those deep bright-eyed visions behind the darkness of his deep brown eyes and cheat love by giving himself – giving myself as well – that release of lust that should be experienced at least a few times in their lives. How he has been waiting for that moment where he wanted to have no broken boundaries or taboos. How he wanted to fail someone at the drop of the hat. He will not remember me once the haziness of the intoxicated influence dies down in the morning when he wakes up to see emptiness sleeping beside him. How he awakened to find that I’ve left him in that hotel room a few hours prior to sunrise, ready to move on and live my life to find another man to fuck and repeat the cycle.

Does it feel good being bad? I was in the mood and I wanted to be failed. Miserably. In that seedy hotel room by that brown-eyed, brown-haired gentleman caller who only wanted to buy a lady a drink.

countdowns can be so brutal and beautiful

forty-six more hours to go.

the length of time needed for:
- a package to travel from the humid climate of florida to the unpredictable weather of michigan
- twenty-three showings of (insert title of movie with a run time of two hours long here in this space!)
- the amount of time it has been since i e-mailed a response to a classified ad. RE: a position in fine jewelry. surrounded by sparkling sapphires, precious pearls, and sterling silver. i would do anything to work with such colorful stones
- the amount of time i need to get rid of this wicked head cold. sucking down vitamin c, honey, and jim beam to rid my throat of disgustingly white bacteria.
- ……i wanna be sedated…..wait, actually, twenty-four more hours.

*sigh* forty-FIVE more hours to go
it took me an hour to write since this is my
first poem in well over four years.
the vacation wasn’t easy
but i felt inspired by poets i’ve read
(mostly pablo neurda and walt whitman!)
as well as those who aren’t poets
(david foster wallace, i miss you dearly!)
but what inspired me to come back to poetry?


love .


in forty-five hours, love is coming to my door.
again. after one month, love has brought me back.
back to writing. back to creativity.

back to life.