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A prayer for us

I went through xanga today and edited a few of my poems to fit here and now. This is always revisited. Usually near a birthday. As always it is dedicated to heather- warrior, sister, partner in crime.

A prayer for us

Let it be us, I say.-

Let it be you and I and she and he and them

The ones we know and

The ones we trade with

The ones who fill our coffers, fill our coffees fill our bowls fill our hearts fill our shit lists fill our short lists fill our long nights fill our good nights fill our moons and suns and books and nooks, Greek Gods, the critics, the poets, the hot heads the pot heads the bi-polars the fur toting patrons ,the broken kids the token troubled ones the actors the lovers the basketball stars that tower taller then trees, The Flyers, the whores with constant bruised knees the moms who don’t know why or how, the guys who trim our trees, the ones we’ve loved in our dreams, the ones who’ve been to Rome, The ones waiting for injections off of Martin Luther King, Fathers who don’t know better, sisters who love ferociously, lovers, cadavers, workers, bankers, lunatics and all of us in-between

Let’s have this night

This one night. Let it be us.

let's put on our finest array and have cataclysmic food fights on the white house lawn-

let's bring back Burroughs and talk about Fletch-

let's laugh out loud at funerals to celebrate life-

let's hover over the freeze dried nun, tight in starch tread black and white trench  . Let’s fly after the largest group of them we can find with 50 kids with 50 wiffle ball bats.-

let's make a church built of crayons that melts whenever anyone talks of fire-

let's fall in love until our heads burst-

let's kiss strangers in the only the darkest of music halls-

let’s kiss strangers only in the darkest of places

let’s kiss strangers only on the darkest of nights

let's run naked through the bible belt with Jesse Helm's fresh face tattooed on our buttocks- Screaming Judas was framed.

let's get a gravesite for Jeff Buckley in the middle of Moore square and put Grace on repeat-

let's buy a thousand hungry cats and set them free in a Peter Max show-

Let’s paint ourselves, smash against canvas kissing and sell us for thousands on e-bay-

Let’s wear dance belts only to the ballet on Thursday-

Let's Paint a bar code on the Saturn and take a drive through a Kmart check out-

Let's paint Ray Charles on every Bible-

let's wear boy's clothes to bed, only if we've stolen them-

let's wear girl's clothes to bed and take only the most tasteless of pictures-

let's run Ben Nye Blood all over white hands, stand in Abercrombie and scream out damned spot to every passerby -

let's say I love you to every telemarketer, ask them how they fall in love, ask them what a sigh feels like, and ask them to the show-

let's do Shakespeare, and do Shakespeare, and do Shakespeare, because he really knows where it's at-

Let's put a velcro wall in every gallery, throw an art merchant up and try and sell him-

Let's name a dog after every beat poet-

Let’s name a cat after every rock in Virginia’s pocket

Let's close our eyes at stop lights and let go-

Let's crank call the white house asking for the good bush-

Let's stop under every street light to get a better look at each other’s hands-

Let's see every play-

Let's eat every storm-

Let's count every raindrop, believing that each is a planet hitting the earth and every moment is the last we have to kiss-

Let's notice the wind, and the wild, and the words, and the wary-

Let's fall in love with people too young- people too old, people who live, people who fear, people who write, people who know us as shadows, people who die, people who are dead, people who are willow cabins at our gates writing loyal cantons of contemned love and singing them loud even in the dead of night- (and shakespeare wrote that, not me-)

Let's drink red on a Wednesday, White on a sunday-

Let's go to the show, sit in the house seats, discover Tilly, Fall into Connor, and leave the other band behind-

let's do our acrobatic act in the lobby of the Performing arts center, just after the Russians-

Let's idolize Icarus's Blind Flight, knowing he plummeted, but wishing he would have burned because burning is closer to the gods-

Let's be Touchstone, and Jaques, and Oliver, and Orlando-

Let's be Coriolanus, Marc Antony, Hermione, and Perdita-

Let's be Leontes, Dion, Amiens,

Let's be those great men of the Globe,

great God, Let me Robert Armin or Will Kemp, just for a day, I would sell my soul for it-

Let us be all of these,

Comrades-

warriors of the night, the day, the hush and hum, the blood and bones, the in-between, the solid sun and the moon-

let us ride razor blades and drink whiskey to welcome the new day and the day next and the day next and the day next-

let us celebrate Arthur and Ray and William and Hunter-

Let us sing unto their bones-

of Glory, Glory-

Gloriana-

Seraphim, Gabriel, Mother, Father, skyward we all will rise as

We guide the spirit of dead men glorius

We are warriors for the waking day

We will with eyes open mouth open thighs open heart open

Eat this whole

Eat it entire, flesh and bone

You, you and I

All of us

We sing a song of glory

cantiamo una canzone

cantiamo

cantiamo

Let it be us I say-

Oh Comrades, Moloch Moloch...

Amen.

Goodnight

How many days is this, I ask?

88? 4? Five? Twenty shafts of lights push through

And exit here like a river of fortitude

And it leaves this girl shaking with

The spaces in-between the vertebrae

The holes in the bones

The weak spots in the cellular structure

And in the world I do not have I

Will try to be a whole girl

Free of that moment, those moments

The ones that send me packing for a few

The ones that remind me of cracked doors and

Balloons between my feet

Rough spots on hands, filled with mail

And tiny lizards in jars

And I dreamt of a parachute

Dropping me in foliage

Made entirely of water, bursting as I brushed by

And all the rings became attached to the sky

And buoy-like kept me aloft

As not to drown in the trees

It exposed my belly to the wetness

As I was dragged up, in wait.

And the seven lines I see

When looking at a box

Do not show me the way in, out.

For this reason I draw circles instead,

And the shape of my friends faces

But only in shades of bedroom blue

And wedding white

And I pound this day with what

I do not know.

Take it out on arms, legs, and cheeks.

And the straws we used to put on our bicycle tires

Make the most miraculous sound

It was the beat of a bird’s heart

In full blue flight.

One day until wheels leave ground and I am airborne

And two three dancing at the derby and

Three four spine like I will travel down old paths

And old familiar eyes

Angels and batboys both need running shoes

And twenty years later will I say your name?

Skywise it puffs up like proud bird and God will go bowling soon

I’ll point my toes toward the red

If only for a day more

A night more

One love at a time at a viper’s speed

Pouncing on heart and freeing the room that was left

Behind years ago

Where falling leaves live, and earthworms the size of

Stormtroopers, cats the size of

Two-stories, hands the size of

Me.

And I pause for dreaming

I remember running, running so fast, so far in rain

At six or seven, running in stealth, me and Roberto

Fast with tight white Florida shirts baring

Arms, hands brown

Shorts baring brown legs, dirty knees

(post lizard hunting)

And that lightning could have pounded me in the chest as he

Closed in fast

Closed in grabbing

Arms tight closed in hard and fast

On pink mouth with kiss

And the rain ran down curiosity

The rain ran down a different take on Father

The rain ran down balloons and birthday scotch

I felt tongue muscle slide across wet bottom lip

Fierce Florida destitute forlorn poor kids

Learning the way to longer days

Punching the sky with boredom and new-found

Belly clenching activities

I don’t want to give, I say. I don’t want to

Have to quiet down.

I want to yell it scream it kick it whisper it

Bigger than my life before

I want to swim before and after by MY hand.

I want to keep my words, and my womb and my wicked hands

And throw them slowly to the sea

I want to learn 5 ways to say I desire you.

I want to be silent and only watch.

I want a different take on this all.

I want to rub chocolate on the white house and

Eat from my yard

I want to eat you like a whole almond, he said.

Me and time we see,

And I never knew the shape of trees in a hurricane.

And I love has never left me so full as these years, two

And I wait for your foot on the stair.