On a Picture of an Ex

Now, months after, I notice
every corner of your face is a museum
stuffed with sculptures,
mounds of memories
from buried cultures, reborn
with every coy smirk, carving deep
basins into the camera lens.
You flood the photograph
with ancient emotion and
a secret nudge of progress.

It is wrong to think
your plagues are alluring.
The dead litter
your pale lips, kissed and preserved
in the heat of your breath
and the dune-glazed sand
in your stare.

I pack the picture away,
humbled and full of spite,
into a dusty crate of distance,
sending your discoveries
to some fortune-hunting fool,
blessed and ignorant of
the curses in your artifact eyes.

Ignorance crawls in
the corners of Alabama
and scurries, ascending
to the surface on the drive
back to my transplanted home there.

She told me in Paris
'goodbye' is like coffee,
as a true adult
you are expected
to develop a taste for it.

Sick?

Why won't I call myself sick? I wake up in sweat drenched sheets, filled with a cavernous soreness, my stinging breath stale in the fresh air of morning. I collapse out of bed, subduing patches of floor to walk on while my closed head leads me toward the bathroom for the day's first piss, more uncomfortable than relieving. My throat tingles with a blunt stiffness, flaring indignant when I swallow. My heavy eyes cascade over my bedroom and I soup myself back into bed. I fold myself under a familiar linen shield to sleep with the lie that I am just tired, refusing this sickness.

Dark winds whistle
missiles at my trembling windows
while maelstrom clouds swell,
twining soft, white fluff
into looming sky-shadows.

I stare out from the rattling
view, the bleak storm maturing
outside. I am half asleep, spralwed
across an age-stained leather loveseat,
the lights off inside the dead house.

Inside, natural purples crawl up the walls,
the storm tints and sparks the room,
craming a devious, secret strength in the house.

If You Are Falling

If you are falling, howl,
splinter the sterile silence
jailing us, your sturdy bones
will not survive this impact.

Howl, and I will gather
oceans of my numb blood,
drowning your blunt decent
and washing the initial slip.

So howl, and I will fold
the drop deep in my marrow,
enduring resounding leaks
only when I need scaring.

Dear Friends--

Friends;

We are the new rock'n'roll. We are the sonic energy of a bored generation. We are kittens with claws. We are the morning star in an uncertain dawn. So, let us march toward something. Something grand, something true, something genuine. But, and this will be the most important quality, something from ourselves. Let us write love letters to the universe. Let us say something, anything, about our lingering here. Let us smile. Let us cry. Let us tell stories.

Happy writing,
-CPH

I am a carousel of stars
spiraling without a sky,
elastic graces of breathing
binding me in shocking gasps
together toward the clean
comfort of an evolving tomorrow.

I am a stream of ripples
pulsing without a shore,
alive with the gift of you
and pushing past feting nows
through to the innocent
ignorance of an evolving tomorrow.

Three Secrets

***

Did I ever tell you it's always the cheap suits that make me the most remitted? I will find myself spending a weekend in meetings full of attractive associates, all adorned in fine-fitting forms of business-appropriate perfection. Meanwhile, I sit fidgeting, wishing I'd spent more money on shoes and had better fitting pants, wishing they could see the cuffs of my shirt outside of the sleeves of my jacket. I tremble, my stomach spins into stabs of self-doubt and I want out and away. I slip privately into a crisp fall afternoon where the sharp chill mandates another body to cuddle and keep warm. I daydream about overcast skies and low temperatures while blabbering bits of well-dress information spill over me. I dream of leaving to bowl alone or watch a movie, pretending that I listen, sitting fully erect with a shotty pride in what I am wearing, in who I am. I have to. They have all the other advantages.

*

Did I ever tell you once, stepping onto the porch to grab the chunky Sunday edition of the morning paper, I found a murdered tabby cat hanging limp from my brass door handle? The cat's wispy white fur matted against its rust-stained skin in places, and the dangling paws wobbled hollow in the breeze. The horror and general shock of the moment stunted the easy morning, and the scene lingered, twisting in me. My eyes welled and reddened with the threat of tears for a tardy and desperate catharsis, but I remembered I didn't have a cat. The murdered tabby simply wasn't mine. I remembered I had never had a cat at that house. Nor a dog. And the morning started moving again.

*

Did I ever tell you I buried a sack of Brazilian voodoo bones in the backyard? The pearl inlay was fake, but the magic seeped into the soil somehow. On that day the grass blurred and hissed, and the rose bush your aunt loved so much withered and bloomed in loop for a full week after. I buried the bones because I was afraid, after stealing them, that the proper owners would want them back, find me with them, and shrink my skull, leaving it as a morbid souvenir for brave tourists. Somehow I thought the ground might hide the bones like it does corpses. But these were Brazilian voodoo bones, and those tricky spirits die hard in this soulless American soil.

***

The Brazilian Voodoo Bones

Did I every tell you I buried a sack of Brazilian voodoo bones in the backyard? The pearl inlay was fake, but the magic seeped into the soil somehow. The day I did it all the grass blurred and hissed and the rose bush your aunt loved so much withered and bloomed in loop for a full week after. I buried the bones because I was afraid, after stealing them, that the proper owners would want them back, find me with them, and shrink my skull, leaving it as a morbid souvenir for brave tourists. Somehow I thought the ground might hide the bones like it does corpses. But these were Brazilian voodoo bones, remember, and those tricky spirits die hard in this soulless American soil.

Cheap Suits

It's always the cheap suits that make me the most remitted. I will find myself spending a weekend in meetings full of attractive associates, all adorned in fine-fitting forms of business-appropriate perfection. Meanwhile, I sit awkwardly wishing I'd spent more money on shoes and had better fitting pants, wishing they could see the cuffs of my shirt outside of the sleeves of my jacket. I get nervous, anxious, my stomach spinning into stabs of self doubt and I want out and away. I slip privately into a crisp fall afternoon where the sharp chill mandates another body to cuddle and keep warm. I daydream about overcast skies and low temperatures while blabbering bits of well-dress information are spilled over me. I dream of leaving to bowl alone or watch a movie, but look as if I am listening, sitting fully erect with a pretended pride in what I am wearing, in who I am. I have to. They have all the other advantages.

Tabby Cat

Did I ever tell you once, stepping onto the porch to grab the chunky Sunday edition of the morning paper, I found a murdered tabby cat hanging limp from my brass door handle? The cat's wispy white fur matted against its rust-stained skin in places, and the dangling paws wobbled hollow in the breeze. The horror and general shock of the moment stunted the easy morning, and the scene lingered, twisting in me. My eyes welled and reddened with the threat of tears for a tardy and desperate catharsis, but I remembered I didn't have a cat. The murdered tabby simply wasn't mine. I remembered I had never had a cat at that house. Nor a dog. And the morning started moving again.

Cary Grant

A manufactured charm,
genuine enough to cradle
hostage audiences over
two hour romances, soared
over the closeted real man.

But velvet rouge lips and
dandelion hair compelled you
like magnets on the screen,
laughing for Deborah Kerr
or fucking Grace Kelly.

The part in your polished hair
perfected aside the image;
a half-cocked grin relaxed
onto the boyish face of
a silly-handsome Scotsman
sitting spitefully crosslegged
in a tuxedo, your hard chin
daring the world not to be enamored.

So, as I kiss cellophane
goodbyes to Archibald Leach,
I wish that I could be you,
the ironic pounding of that
shared wish playing us to black.

A Blood Red Barn

Pa built a blood red
barn far out in the north woods
away from the house

and worked on it every night
for two and a half summers.

We watched him build up the frame,
and fill it in with cheap wood.

He did it alone,
never once asking for help
from any of us.

While he worked his eyes were mean;
we didn't ask what it was

but watched it take shape
and figured it was a barn.

When he painted it,
we knew not to go out there.

That's where he'd do the killings.

Explaining Myself

I called the dogwood,
shedding in the autumn wind,
a blizzard; she laughed.

Looking at the tree
and seeing snow again, I
tried to explain it:

"The flowers burst out
into the flustering breeze
like a tidal snow.

First, the white pedals
bound in the air, playing with
the soft, impish gusts.

Then they shower down
after the wind releases them,
painting the ground white.

The pedal dusting sticks,
fooling me into thinking
that it is winter."

After I explained,
she understood and agreed.
We laughed together.

Fingernails

My fingernails bruise and grow
In jagged summits and snarls.
But I will cut then even,
Smoothing away their threat.

In jagged summits and snarls
are wild, woolly madmen
that, too, smooth away their threats
with deceptive coats of style.

Are those wild, woolly madmen
any different than me, grooming,
with deceptive coats of style,
this archaic, ragged body?

Any difference in my grooming
now is simply a coincidence with
this archaic and ragged body;
Noticing has made me self-conscious.

Now, simply, a coincidence:
I cut them uneven.
Noticing makes me self-conscious,
but my fingernails still bruise and grow.

the arrowhead edges of a crushed aluminum
can jut-out from the sagging
sides of a white plastic trash bag,
bunched at the top with red plastic ties
tossed, tumbling wayward, into a cavernous green trashcan.

Friday Night

My stomach sings regret
as I wander around
the dorm excited
for a party
I did not want to attend.

My ride is late
and I wait
with all the
anxiousness of virginity in
an uncomfortably familiar lobby
going through the motions
of the weekend party ritual:

Friday night is a breakbeat
introduction to a club banger,
manufacturing anticipation
to heights that
will not be fulfilled in dusky
crowded rooms that swim in darkness
and sin until the kind pause
of sleep and drunk induced alzheimer's
washes them away.

As usual, the dancers will eventually
forget their steps
and we will find ourselves
in Saturday morning,
stung with the stale
sweat and wasted toil of our attempts.

But, finally, at the party,
this Friday night waits for me
in the lonely corners
of a loud room where
I smirk at blurs of girls
I'm not attracted to
but would sleep with.

This Friday night screams
for empty sex and
a dashing tongue
in the weary mouth
of the work-week.

I falter from the plan,
the party eventually
takes me and dances with me
and I unexpectedly fall
into a good time.

A woman keeps my
attention and rips away
my sanctimonious pretensions;
she is intelligent, well-spoken,
and hotter than Halle Berry.

We rock and tangle in rhythm
where I find her soft lips
on more than one occasion.

And to think I didn't
want to come.
This Friday night has tricked me,
and yet we both have won.

So, galloping, I find lifted
spirits and begin to fly
on the now sturdy wings
of the weekend, beckoning
Icarus and giggling with
my new 'friend'
about his failures.

Now, we work with rod-iron
and steel, so keep
that weak wax away
from our Friday night.

And after we recognize
that the dancers are
all tired having failed
in their doomed mission
to pen an epic encounter,

we stumble into a descending groove
in the breakdown of the song.
The pulsing beat of everything
we had wanted is gone while
the sounds slides away to Saturday,
showcasing what we have found.

but I'm no longer worried or morose.
I tell my ride to go on home
because I'm leaving with
this brand new friend
to a hyacinth house full
of pleased lions where
we can sleep until afternoon
after tumbling like burning banshees
in the pyre of unexpected weekend sex
and still say to each other "Good Morning."