[2011] Don’t, Won’t

We’ll starve until our blood bursts out our veins,
or maybe just pretend, whining so you’ll
look at us, just once.

We’ll pull out all the stops - Bitch! Slut! Whore! Prude! -
and we turn on each other, shriek so you’ll
listen to us, just once.

We don’t have a say in the answers you gave,
the questions in blood we never let you have,
nor the choices you forced us into.

Take away the money for our passions,
Control our bodies and how we view it,
Kill our friendships, self-esteem, careers.

We are tired. Watch us wither
into mothers grieving for our girls,
raise them by driving the stake in deeper.

You won’t do anything. You won’t.
We don’t believe in you anymore;
we don’t believe in anything anymore.

[2011] He Didn’t Need Anymore Coffee

Percussion concussion,
only to those who aren’t
deaf—he hears, clearer
than the fact that
he cannot see.

“Alms to the poor
pouring pity
into your double-
shot espresso caramel
Machiavellian disaster!

“Bless your soul,
souls inundated
with endless, filled with
virtue, searing bright
caffeine! Bless you!”

They pull at their
ties and bindings,
cry and hug
his weathered body:
so inspired! they say.
At dusk he leaves,
fist bumps the baristas.
“How stupid, how blind,”
the blind man says
and shakes his cup.

 

[2011] Scream Quietly

Take out the parchment rolls,
splattered with iridescent lace
patterns telling history invisible
to those blind with blots
invoked by Privilege.

It radiates with age and yet
we can feel the pulsing of
the threads underneath:
WEWANTTRUTHAND
BLISSANDWEWANTREVO–

Hush! Not so loud!
They’ll hear, hear and
not listen. Remain
silent, under the eye
of the storm.

No, for now, write your name
here by mine, glittering
with night-shed tears
and all our thirsty dreams.
We strike at dawn.

[2011] Asian Pear

My hips have a little more
to lie about than what goes on
upstairs. “Waffle fries?
More like ‘awful lies’!”

But really, if you think
about all these types…
banana, apple, pear,
blonde, busty hourglass—

Who in plastic centerpiece hell told
all these fruits that ideal
means becoming inanimate,
passive paperweights?

Who demanded aesthetic
pleasure and singular
function (for another)
in place of maturity and vibrancy
(within yourself)?

In fact, what sort of sick,
sadistic moron decided to
reduce our souls to something
less than human?

We are not fruit,
bells, spoons, letters,
or your beloved hourglass
left to rot on your table.

We are beating
hearts and mouths
screaming for your silence
when it comes to the temples
that house our souls.

Oh, and for the record:
I fucking love waffle fries,
you are full of shit and awful lies,
and if you refuse to step aside…
a new world order will arise.

[2010] Shopping in the City

The urban fragrance: gasoline decay, fried spirits on Friday.
Sins smeared over the brick, cresting tobacco smoke
along the free-trade coffee and ironic t-shirt assembly line.
The rubber soles skid on scabbed concrete,
no thundering, only hail-steps. Quickly now.
Compressed gas ignites neon; revel in plastic hookers,
tattooed with age and nipples and twenty-two ninety-nine.
Mannequin men with their arms raised,
guns pointed at their hole-scarfed hearts,
black and black and brown like home.
“It’s a freak show out here.”
Pull up your hood. Hail-steps, hail-steps.

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