Why is it that realities unwind
When I am with you and my mind is blank?
You own me, you control me, and you bind.
Still for my freedom, it is you I thank.
I am confused and restless and alive.
You make me question all that is my world.
Yet, in your presence, my peace I derive.
You are the answer that I do unfurl.
These contradictions that have held me back
Only lead me to loving you the more.
Yes, everything I’ve gained, I still do lack.
However, I do trust that I am yours.
Love is the truest untruth of my life:
Everything and nothing ends all my strife.

I traded to you

A part of my mind
For a part of your heart.

We met in
Some hidden bazaar
With innumerable lights
And unfathomable colors
And unrecognizable sounds.

I hoped for nothing more
Or nothing less
Or nothing less than more
Or nothing more than less.

And so I handed it over
After wrapping it smartly
With a dumb ribbon
Woven delicately from
Confused secrets
And silent memories.

You smiled,
I smiled back.

Rinse and repeat.

I wander through the frame.
Between two fingers, I hold close
A world petrified in two dimensions,
Whose glossy scent stirs the cerebellum.
Two left feet guide my body down
Old Canaan Blvd – Memory Lane’s repudiated sister.

Continue Reading »

Spit out by a bird, a seed
lands in a junkyard in Japan

years before anyone
notices, before one of the workers
sees a tuft of green beneath
a nickel box Honda.

Even then, nobody expected anything but weeds.

The young tree, knowing nothing
of the thirty-some shades of rust or
gravity’s quiet, oppressive hand, felt

the sun through busted floorboards
and ruptured right on through. Oh,
how it wore that car like a necklace!

The dented fender pointed up
and east, as if ascending an imaginary
mountain.  The drooping tires hanging
from the branches, graceful as moss.

The workers, who
were used to seeing things die

built a fence around the car
that was now a tree

and declared it a sacred monument,
a reminder that even broken clocks
are right twice a day, and the holy

flowers in mud, flower
in mud.

Oh! your clavicle is a most holy phenomenon!
I’m only certain it’s not unapproachable as it seemed –
You knelt beside me, unblinking, for the Eucharist.

This isn’t the right way to tell you, my young love,
but I want to feel it’s warmth with all of my toes
and slyly rub my beardless chin into it.

In light of long contemplation – useless attempts to flee
my desires. Late night. You surely sleeping. A candle
burning on the table – I see, I must ask.

This is a most hasty avenue to reveal these savage thing
to you, a pure woman, but I want my apprehensions
regarding your beautiful clavicle to rest.

And lest you be uneasy, this you only need consider –
my love is the sweating passion of a negro singer.
There is no reason to fear my swooning.

We will depart to the civilized Russia of Peredelkino,
a village free of turmoil, and mustachioed women
who may kidnap you for their brothels.

I’ll ride to meet you as midnight snows on my coat.
And I’ll knock six times with the skin of my forehead.
All to embrace the miracle of your clavicle.

some longer lovers hungry lovers
dance in strawberry bowls
the man slicing blood berries
his muse mixing beneath his thumbs
wild waltzing with the dismembered fruit
right onto blender blades
And he puts it on his pound cake.
how wet
even the seeds crushed
the juicy extract tart and
penetrating the porous sponge surface
while she sighs and slides around the plate
Just enough
to be lost in all the pulp.

We picked my mother’s bed
because it was big enough
to be its own island, a quiet
place, and in that room
there were no windows to see
our nakedness, nothing but
the door, still hanging limp
on its hinges, a loud creak
just so we’d listen.

My teeth were still misaligned
my mouth thick with surgical padding,
from the first of three molars
that lost their way to the jaw
somewhere in the bowling-ball slick
of palate and sinew and bone.
We did not kiss, I was too sick
with anesthesia and stitches.

But I am not ashamed of sitting
with her naked in my mother’s bed.
The sun made its own picket fence,
shining through the sheets, and
I believed in it too much to worry.

I hate the mess of it, not on my arms,
no, it’s my ankles and hips and stomach
and inside of thighs and calves. My arms
are clean and flecked with other things. Arms
are what people notice. When I was sent up
to the guidance counselor, two times, my arms
were the first thing I showed them. My arms
let me skip back down the halls and yell
into the bathroom sink and then yell
again into my hands and go back, arms
bared, to biology. I am nothing but someone
holding the marks of five years. Just someone.

It’s not even a question, why I didn’t tell someone
else. Everyone else is busy scrutinizing my arms.
It’s easy to understand, isn’t it, oh, you are someone
who writes love– but that’s bullshit. I am someone
who has been stupid, and stupid and young, someone
who slept well and often. No, better, I am someone
who stills walks with stupid on my ankles, head up.
I don’t talk about this because even talking brings up
so many nights that weren’t mine to begin with, someone
else’s fucking story, and besides, all I know how to do is yell,
not live, not like, not cry, not in public. Yelling,

that’s easy. Biologically acceptable. Animals yell,
the young are animal. Even the peacocks yell,
and they’re ridiculous. I used to bare my arms,
triumphant. Here is the piece that doesn’t fit. Yell
all you want. I am not here. I am yelling
in the bathroom sink, and I walk high,
still full of stones. My mother couldn’t stomach
it. She forced her fingers under my chin and yelled,
hurt and animal, from the diaphragm, up
and under. How can anyone grow up?

I make mess for myself. It grew up
on its own, but I planned it, precisely. Yelling
is all I know how to do. I hold my head up,
thinking this. Who gives themselves up
first? I have been young, and I am someone
who scheduled my own madness, looked it up
first. I am someone who stands up
on stupid ankles. They’re the worst now, armed
and too tough to cut through. It’s not my arms.
I am someone who hides it better than the stories.
Someone should stop telling the story, should stomach
the end of the lady who swallowed a fly. My arms
don’t flap like wings. My arms are just arms.

[Ed. Note: We at The Yeti love politics. We also love poetry. Most of all, though, we love combining things we love.]

A HAIKU ON CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES:

Time-tested truths, like
“The gov that govs least govs best.”
(Somalia rules!)

A GHAZALVILLANELLE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

[Ed. Note: Originally I wanted the national security poem to be a ghazal, an ancient Arabian poetic form, for irony. But ghazals are super difficult and complicated, so I wrote a villanelle that steals pretty heavily from Dylan Thomas' classic "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" instead.]

Do not be so gentle as to give terrorists rights,
We must oblige our enemies if they want to call it war;
After all, America is always looking for a fight.

The Muslim snuck in ‘cause our security wasn’t tight,
They should have made him strip, drop his pants to the floor;
Do not be so gentle as to give terrorists rights.

And that other country, Yemen, should be in our bombing sights—
If we aren’t killing foreigners, then what’s our freedom for?
After all, America is always looking for a fight.

We aren’t even torturing, that keeps me up at night,
The rule of law prevailing will just make them hate us more.
Do not be so gentle as to give terrorists rights.

But Mr. President, for Iran please do what’s right.
(Psst, I heard the Ayatollah called Michelle a whore.)
After all, America is always looking for a fight.

We must shock and awe the world, must attack with all our might,
Must kill and maim our enemies, must wage an Endless War.
Do not be so gentle as to give terrorists rights.
After all, America is always looking for a fight.

A CINQUAIN ON ECONOMIC POLICY:

Ronald
Common sense con
Did it stimulate you?
We got the cornhusker kickback
Reagan

William Blake? Who dat?

(Images via Yahoo! News)