Purgatory Lake (final edit)

We all live at Purgatory Lake
where the loudspeaker crackles
and scrapes at our dreams.
If by some chance
the muddied waters
should rise, would they wash
the corrosion from our eyes?
No one pities the receding shores
No one crosses the infected border.
In blue plastic beds we flounder
and thrash in netted sheets,
a ghost-swell of sleep-warmed breath
beside us.
Today I heard music I liked.
But I knew
I'd be back here
to wander the waste.
Keep your head down,
for goodness sake
Don't forget your home
is Purgatory Lake.

[for the residents of the Carpenter's House, summer 2001, Glassboro NJ]

---JLR (c) 2001

Heron (for Michael Weiss) [newly revised]

This lake has a name.

I found out today, on my way
to the concrete waterfall.
Names are
held responsible;
He was still in my Rolodex.

Leaves rustle-- and look--!
I'd disturbed that big glowing-white bird
with the long neck.

I saw him fly away, past the stream
Broad wings slicing sky
above a black corridor of water.

---JLR (c) 05

Beulah and Sawyer (new, sort of)

Beulah wasn't a child of
Manifest Destiny;
she became busy identifying
potential exterminators.

Beulah worried that she looked like a cowboy.
She told Sawyer,
"See, I think we're probably not strangers--although my
people like to think we are...and that's why we're so damn
funny."

Sawyer told her that he'd probably peed
on every tree in this town
at one time.

Today Beulah waited for the bus.
The checkered flags in the used car lot
beat at the slate sky.

She will never quite know where
she came from, other than
snow, ash and sand.

--JLR (c) 05

Desert Moon Trip-Out Poem (another oldie)

Furies swaddled in
thickened days
cry for rain.

She is bathed in
silver-cool glory,
annoints
tender carrion befuddled,

Smiles upon fallen things
just beyond their reach.

We beg
the tides but her
forgiveness slips
under the sand,
sometimes arisen in
Coyote-speak.

It's all too far,
too silent,
it must be.

Drowning in her
Sea of Tranquility.

---JLR (c) 1997

Can I Get It at a Convenience Store? (recently revised)

there, right beside the soda pop
she's browsing colorful sweets
humming a popular tune
feminine mystque and candy wrappers
watch it man--
else the flower snaps, sure as
ice-wall film on freezer door
if only to alight her smile-- just
return to the jelly donut
in your hand.

The Bird Bride (an oldie)

I.
Once this feather was attached to my body,
enabled me to cut through air and flutter my
squat, brittle body
up and 'round the apartment
like a tiny zeppelin.

II.
"It needs more beans."
She stared hard at the garlic bleeding onto her fingers. "My
Mom uses Pork 'n Beans in her chili, we got any?"
Just then the corner of the blanket became a stretching cat
out of the corner of my eye.
The room stewed in the lemon dish detergent light.
She felt painted, regal, naked except for the purple blanket
over the towel, tucked under her armpits.
Good enough to be in a catalog.

III.
The air was silted, clouds of Country Time Lemonade mix.
The tortured bird fidgeted in its cage.
Crumbs, rubber bands, a ravaged paperback.
The bird cocked his head toward the reflected sun patches
of the mini-blinds on the wall.
The bird yelped and instinctiviely, she blew air out of her mouth at him.
Don't make me hate you.
But the bird screeched louder and she threw a beige clother over his cage.
The children outside, always asking, "Mom?" and barking at one another
like rabid Schnauzers.
Sneakers, plates of leftover chili.
From across the room she spotted a small black bug climbing
in a series of stillframes down, down the wall.
Her back itched and the hairs crawled.
The air was now dustier, crumbs of light, sedimented with
false peripheral movements.
A patch of light in the hall, tattered cotton pulled across the
off-white walls.
From below the cover
she could see the point at the end
of the bird's tail.

IV.
From below the veil I saw her outline.
All I can do is answer the tribes around me,
beyond the walls,
shrill legions of finch and starling.
I answer them, I call her,
I make sure I'm alive and loud enough in here.

V.
He did like her pork chops.
She enjoyed this, although she didn't like making them.
The meat was always too rubbery, and it cooked too fast.
Not challenging.
He liked the rosemary and dill.

VI.
"I'm going to fucking microwave your ass," he said to the bird.
His alarm had gone off, or was it hers?
The comforter had slipped off her shoulders and she
gathered it back, not embarassed of being naked but
of having to write the word, "naked."
The chatter of budgerigars from the other room soothed her.
He'd probably hit the snooze, although he didn't quite know
how to work her alarm clock.
And he would see that she'd gotten no sleep again,
and the dusty ghosts would settle in his hollows,
shimmer around him,
peppering his golden skin
with slaughterhouses.

--JLR (c) 2001

song..?

[i'm not sure if this will ever be put to music, as i am sort of limited there, but it's the first one i've really written. it's about trying to make friends at a party or what have you. if i seem to be coming off as a feminazi lately, sorry! i am really quite copasetic to everyone!

anyway, i picture this one being played to some intense accoustic, i guess...with some moody strings or fiddle or something...or even a sensitive electric A.F.I. thingamajig...? who knows. thanks for reading. peace out.]

Untitled Song

No dancer in sight
Electrical trauma
Nations divorced
by only a comma

She's written me out
of her conversation
Not even a query
It's high masturbation

This is more than a social abortion
This is not blown out of proportion
I'll spin around around around
until I pin the tail on something

your blind parade
your blind parade
No more Jane Doe tirade,
your blind parade

We're not paper dolls
we're not polaroids
You'll see it's your own face
that you have destroyed

No more blind parade
no blind parade
no more masked serenade
no blind parade

Bitch-Slapped by Sappho (note the double entendre)

(this one is really for me. it's what i've always wanted, in a way. i think it's important to take a journey outside our skin and be the lover, maybe.)


Little dead girl,
will you smell of sandalwood?

Taste peppery, metallic?
Are you wanting to be this lost?

Have you died because someone forgot you,
misused your charms?
Why are you dressed like some sort of cartoon?

Lovely one,
were I free I'd tell you please
close your eyes.
Put away your playthings;
keep your leather up on higher altars,

Sweet ghost-thing.
Ageless dark flower, close your eyes and
I will perfume your bathwater with marjoram
and lavender

[Such a fool to think I'd revive her so easily]

I'd bring you the best tea I could find in my cupboard
and silently delight as the roses infuse your
lonely, swollen pout
and brighten translucent cheeks

"I promise never to hurt you,"
I'd say as I would wrap my friend in soft terry
Would she turn in scorn?
She'd know that I'd never been so far underground
and that her only connection to my reality
was the searing
and the yearning
and the wicked
emblazoning tongues of fire.

They've forged her,
she came of age in their kiln
and this is why she's
such the porcelain beauty.

Indifferent, funereal
she'd cast off my towel, slink off
to curl up again, enjoying
simplicity of evaporate
from her fragrant flesh.

"I am clumsy," I'd say;
allowing myself a gentle kiss upon her brow.
"but I am not one of these men
[kissing one eyelid
and then the other]
who will never know that your flesh speaks
or dare to confront
that language."

"I know," I'd say,
and take her into my substantial little arms.

I know why you are hungry.
I will but glaze your cherry blossom skin
with my lips and linger if only you smile.


I would wait for you to finish every story;
never degrade.
Through this your moans and giggles
will never once befall
a self-congratulatory ear.

Just to curl my swelling lips and tongue
around her taut electrical straits,
mercifully wandering among sweet, secret shorelines;

sensuality thrust over spiked iron gate
now into that garden
of broken mirror-glass:
Her home.

And now I would understand why you'd cut me, little sister

or why you invite those boys
all over you
everywhere

Can't you see I'm your warrior?

I'd thrust you about like any man
squeeze you harder and lick you softer.
I am not a thief.

When you come back to the dead-girl-way
I will lap sweet perfume-tears

if you need to tell;
I will never turn away your years of invasion,
the poison laughter, the zombies fucking you
like faceless hyenas.

My arms gather you in clean sheets,
I'll braid your hair, cry along and render us
into a tender unison,

Where we will finally rest, twins in utero
And fade-out:

Caressing the dead girl
all night by the flames
at once slick with
cold sweat
and stoked by white-hot
righteous rage

O' wild
witch-child,
sleep
in my arms.

interference

i am pimp and ho simultaneous.

when i put my little communicator device next to a computer, or a clock radio, or another phone, the other device has interference and begins to make noises.

he wants to come as close to death as humanly possible.

i'm determined to live, but my only method of living includes acknowledging sadness.is that horrible? why do people run from darknesses? why can't every day be a new orleans funeral?

clay has always been a difficult medium for me. i usually have trouble even centering the shit. and once it is finally, finally centered on the wheel....the pulling of the lip, which should be such a smooth and graceful process...oh, fucking hell.

hilda, leave me alone.

deep freeze reckoned

[i'll never be a grecian urn i'll never make
enough heads turn i'll never have i'll always yearn i'll
never be a grecian urn i'll]

-------------------------------------------------------

impulse mechanics
plum-bob dramatics
it's making me frantic
to break laws.
----------------------------------------------------

i guess when they look at me
and see the empty auditorium
they'll turn for the nearest phone-booth;
because i wanted a latin name
a suffix for two
and an erasure to display
candy-fix in motel six, i was never that customary
all i wanted was for you to call my name,
Agora, Agora.
-----------------------------------------------

shes sick she's she can't take a breath she
makes me sick with her sticky sick stories that
infect her and cut her and threw out her guts
and made her invisible and forged their devotion
somebody don't see 'er and no one believes
errand, well hey she needs to tell somebody
[these bitches all need to tell somebody why don't they make tampons for their mouths]
___________________________

and if not the simulacrum
and if not the ones that make a scene
and if not the griots or shamans

then why are men either nukes or black holes?
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