if you understand addonizio...you understand me.
FIRST POEM FOR YOU
I like to touch your tattoos in complete darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you to me, taking you until we’re spent and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists or turns to pain between us, they will still be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.
You with the Crack Running Through You
I can seep in, I can dry clear. And yes it would still be there. And no I couldn’t hold you forever. But isn’t it drafty at night, alone in that canyon with the wind of the mind dragging its debris—I wanted to put my mouth on you and draw out whatever toxin …—but I understand. There are limits to love. Here is a flower that needs no water. It can grow anywhere, nourished on nothing. And yes.
The First Line is the Deepest
I have been one acquainted with the spatula, the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate, acquainted with the vibrator known as the Pocket Rocket and the dildo that goes by Tex, and I have gone out, a drunken bitch, in order to ruin what love I was given, and also I have measured out my life in little pills—Zoloft, Restoril, Celexa, Xanax. I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty to know wherein lies the beauty of this degraded body, or maybe it's the degradation in the beautiful body, the ugly me groping back to my desk to piss on perfection, to lay my kiss of mortal confusion upon the mouth of infinite wisdom. My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says America is charged with the madness of God. Sundays, too, the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue-black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea. Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry—Why does one month have to be the cruelest, can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through the sewage-filled streets. Whose world this is I think I know.
For You
For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves. I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand, I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair. I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine. I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air. I do it for love. For love, I disappear.
Good Girl
Look at you, sitting there being good. After two years you're still dying for a cigarette. And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up? Don't you want to run to the corner right now for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard that you're so sick of staring out into look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint, the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway, always groveling for love and begging to be petted? You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones, you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds. Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Look at you, sitting there being good. After two years you're still dying for a cigarette. And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up? Don't you want to run to the corner right now for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard that you're so sick of staring out into look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint, the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway, always groveling for love and begging to be petted? You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones, you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds. Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors' dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.
| What Do Women Want? | ||
| I want a red dress. | ||
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
