tav: issue 2a

a crayons poem

Under the seas under the planets I dreamt clean of bad habits no spread

winged sparrows laid into patterns, drown fire for addicts in attics,

cracked vases ravage around cartoon static. Smeared crayolas all

over the walls, true longings curved into love songs written in blues

written in orange...

There's some darkness to where my soul rides steady, horses and

trains, guns and machete... bank robbery while the suns in the sky,

praying on knees and cheating wife.

If my hands caress the bottom of earth and mold the countries to

rejoice in birth to build braided bridges from Jersey to the hearse to

go by your house than to church. Whisper me your numbers like creepy

girls do, finding love in empty air, upon tops of stairs, or sitting on

furry chairs in rooms. Upon night that sets your eyes, candles poured

from the sky...watched lightning fall and I saw angles fly. I saw some

clothes thrown in a basket and you saw me cry.

I'm window shopping like starving children, you feed the hungry,

you go to heaven. You're still three p.m. on a cloudy day coming up

through the basement barely awake, feel the rain as purity stains, lungs

collapse and at least you'll stay. Out in back by the white gates and

red barn, with your smoking fingertips and scars on your arm. Dressed

flower-bed and brick walkway worn, in new jeans watching bird feeders and

animal porn. Interstate getaways far from the cops far from where we

were born, rain through the crack in your window, makeup stores melted

your canvas forlorn.

Folded arms looking in the rear view as we go, secured around your

new parlour palm plant you stole. Something to fulfill the motherly

intuitions you've been having while we're on the road or until you

don't.

Leaving the south while the birds head from the north like a

marching brigade parading in arrowed shapes moving forth. The later it

gets the more the gluttonous clouds have to project, dispelling oceans

of orange in the evenings display of some silent war the exact color

of crayon I used to write notes on the floor. In warm summer nights

with everything we packed every one possession we had turned to ash,

left for dead, like the two trucks we passed. The am radio cut out of

tune now on the last ever newscast, for hours the frequency scared us to

the bone it once scared up our path. In the wave lengths of something

that seemed to speak to our souls, the sound was horrifying and the

only thing we'd come to know. Tracing under the sky and the moon,

further relief from every ghost town, our bodies exhumed. A longing to

breath finally now, with the faster we move.

A McDonalds was closed and you reclined, smudged lines on the

dashboard with your black toes. There were no clouds and the stars

started to implode. You shaved your head before we left sent a letter

to your aunt, telling her she was dead. Our childhoods were always so

planned, picked out by immaculate hands. I told you about when I'd lay

in my bed with the lights on and the radio would play slow songs, and

than static would just fill everywhere, with demonic sounds and I

couldn't speak, my door would open at three a.m. quite physically. A

shadowed figure just looked at me in my room, I think it was Satan, I've

told everyone, but you seem to believe everything I ever said.... so

I said, "I've seen him three times since", and than I said "I'm also

seeing your sis".

Up north it's cooler, the tropical weather will be left here with the

factories and feathers. Now declared a Kabbalist at least for now...

maybe that's forever. Esoteric by happenstance, we'll just study the

art of dance. I'm seeing men in suits fly through the sky. They have a

sense of life, they twirl and spin and than they dive, that's what they

do when I dream of them, dream of hot food...the sky being blue. I'm

scared as hell, but so are you when space continues to grow toward red at

night, like it did a few months ago.

I don't feel love anymore but there is a longing and a need. To be

buried by architecture, crushed by someone else's dreams. So when the

car stalls out lets try to roll it up on a beach, a lake, or somewhere

there's a bay. Somewhere wailing gulls still sway with the breeze.

You've seen me cry over movies and you listened to static for hours

with me, seen me go crazy and make out with trees, we've seen each

others thoughts in moments of disparity and we've both looked for God so

hard that our eyes could bleed...Now finally we can just wait while he

looks for us by the shore of the sea..... we can breathe.

I'm no addict within an attic or a mind held by lover. I'm not

homeless at all with a grave full of brothers. A panoply of panic like

a war movie on mute, an atmosphere actually shattering in colors and

hues. No silver horse or train just a stolen razor blade and old names.

Helicopters descending from where we thought heaven was and the stars

didn't implode, look...they're falling just for us. . .

There is a sense of urgency about action with all things important to

the mind because the world is ending.

poor man's suicide

Dramatic schemes of black mouthed nothingness. Dead bird, ripped shirt. Thoughts attained in arid space. Warm bathtub and softened skin, softened of burden. Any sugar coated mess of naked words that slipped out of a dress tender and malnourished across a bedspread of floral print that's finally flourished.

Ceiling fan follows the path of my eyes contained on one while the rest spin by. Laid in piss for days on end when my hands slowly crust over how a willow tree bends. Found angels atop edges of windows on neighbors’ roofs. Played harps in long hallways while most of my blood still is blue. Paneled sidewalks walked with attempt to renew some sense of temptation or fruit to pursue. Rotting on limbs while the world grows and learns, to be grown soft and rotted and dropped to the earth. So ceiling fan tremble the sound of rough love. To love nothing but midnight and flourish on the wet rug.

Patriarchal Symbolism of the Phallic Satan Figure

Mime post-marrow sweetly spring forth from daydream...

Trudge on past the orchid born to wild garlic and thistle.

Touch onward and thus disregard inane rendezvous.

Skin cracked in nature’s alliance, that on a single day

eternity marks its adoration for what has passed.

Forests of seeded anticipation reach a glance, hindered

upward to a skin draped sky.

Lips locked fastened on an ambush of silent crème tears.

Fickle enough, of a mute marked tongue.

Within the confines of contempt, a wise scheme of complacency

nestled adjacent to one’s brow... does it not?