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.

Lining the street are no
Houses, No
shops, No
gas stations alive with the hum
of bright signs, or the noise
of busy pumps. No shuffle
of tired feet
on the gum-stained sidewalk,
No unbridled laughter.

Standing in the street, is
you.
You with your black camera,
Your back to me,
Swaying like a lone balloon tethered to a mailbox
in an unnoticed breeze,
Or like an homage
to the trees that you couldn’t save here.

I feel you feel me padding my way up the pavement,
Toward you.
A slow turn and a tilt of the head to the left,
You unveil a display of teeth.
Unimpressive, I think,
Your poor rendition of a smile.

With seven steps, I eclipse your celestial body, and watch
To see if you’re awash with glow…wait
To see if I concede to your gravity.
As both science and history could tell us,
I do.

And seven steps below your lauded orbs of sight,
Jerks to life the corner of your mouth.
And then it comes,
Softly, like a sigh of wind after a sonic boom:
Your voice.

“Strange, isn’t it?
The death of a parade — Always…
…But no one ever watches that;
By then, their mouths are full of turkey.”

But those words are not for me.
No, you’re only speaking through me,
To something even the trenches of my mind
Dare not comprehend.

Your lips meet to compose a subtle curl — serene,
While I gulp down ancestral fears,
I try to focus on how you’re beautiful, not like
A beach sunset, but like the glisten
of dog piss on healthy grass in sunlight.

And still I see it, as my arm
Travels the lightyears between us,
Just to establish contact
With your craterless cheek.

Beneath my touch, you relent;
Warmth, honest as raw earth spreads across your face,
And the words that come, they come for me:

“And when we die,
There will be nobody watching,
Nobody will see…
But now, it’s time for our picture.”

To the camera in your hand,
You offer all the length of your arm
So the lens can find:

Your dirt-dark hair, longer than I can stand,
Hanging lazily about that peculiar face,
wherein lie
Your eyes, the color of Neptune,
Surfacing on the smooth sea of your bronzed skin.
And behind you, a glimpse of asphalt, bleached by the merciless sun,
The curtain of dusk being pulled over the shoulders of the horizon.

And me,
(Or some semblance of)
Blurred,
Formless,
As I walk out of the frame.

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.

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.

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.

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)