blackbird days

when january rots,

bitter chill shivers

spoil over every inch

of petty white dress.

blackbirds so black you

could call them exquisite

death. you could call them.

blackbird fly.

three days harsh white.

ruthless, wicked white.

glazed in carbon-- the

smokestack's black grit.

blackbirds so black you

could sell them in milan.

trash-vogue for trash-vogue;

merla gone.

chanting, eating through white

world in fever sun frozen

amber; "lord, i don't care about

you no more, winter is over!"

we want you.

grasp the goose by the neck

and feed her from the apple tree.

i've got a hundred books on naked

men, dead legs, the atom: pick

the tender tissue, fuse the scrawny

birds-- the cerulean tuft falling

down, down, down like science

from a bashed jar making you suck

the sick bark as if it were lemon

juice from the war-- we want you.

yes, we want you. we want to fuck

your tongue twice, eat you out like

bullet ants, swallow you

like earth would, like earth will.

grasp the goose by the neck

and feed her napalms, fragmentations,

disney rockets, GB 4s, kenney cocktails,

white phosphorous, white fiction--

shove it down her throat, that dead death;

line up the shovels & pocket eulogies.

someone will have to carve the stone;

someone will have to make the words.

10/8- 25, feb.

whiskey lips crossed hot neck,

dancing like confetti to a voice

incarcerated.

slipped through the door,

stole a cigarette, &

met your friends.

it's late februrary;

you were staggering on the top

step like a static nazi.

met you half

way & formed a

stratagem.

under the fog,

we would lace the

room with a drive--

ignoring the sly, gushing

on your stiff blue bed, toxic

party foam swimming

through the body. my stockings

found their way off as your guests

found their way out.

we each murmur

words incomprehensible,

unrememberable--

but don't you remember?

milk skin blending into

sheets, my infamous fame

a freckle to you.

heat tangled in spins,

dawn cracking with

necks.

jammed exposure

in one lung, in

two cores.

breaths lost in the night.

Madigans, September 24, 2010

The college girls are taking off

their new (expensive) dresses

for beer and boys in polo

shirts. For an invitation--

a "handy" ride home.

The bartender squeezes a lemon, smoke

tangled in the threads of his Hawaiian shirt.

"2 more Buds--

a Bourbon and Diet,

please. Leave it open."

Neon lights plaster blood brick.

Scattered ashtrays & dollar bills.

Baseball, America.

Daily specials, shots, pitchers.

1978

Stuck on the old $ register;

worn silver, buttons click.

Jack Daniels sits, Jack Daniels

sings, and they dance like

"Yankees." Homerun girl's got

her win-face ready. Pitchers,

shots, pitchers, pitchers--

AND WE'VE GONE IN TO OVERTIME.

There are people cheering,

"RIP IT OFF!"

Begging for strong drinks,

stronger bladders.

Flimsy slips spin left, spin round.

Bleeding the same, bleeding all the same.

I've been here before.

9/10- Ghost Drugs

In the German tongue, in the Polish town,

We smoked dollar bills and I would gag

On the green edges turning brown

And the taste of cheeseburgers in your sleeping bag.

But losing brain cells and Homage brought me to my knees

In front of the salon, so I dumped your sorry ass.

Oh, but you had plans, you'd break this sleaze,

Feed her ghost drugs in a lemonade glass.

Oh, you were the brute, and I was puking in the black,

In the bathtub, paralyzed, Tommy telling you it was a mistake,

Mitch assuring you I was "a setback."

But you ruined my bones anyway, you ate my birthday cake.

And all these people still ask me how I can talk about it.

So I sob and pretend that it's hard to admit.

5/10- Dear Abby, Here are you clothes.

I sometimes wish they would all die

in a freak steamroller accident--

Jax miniskirts

And pastel Pappagallos

What are you going to be for Halloween?

The girl who would be queen?

I hope your pockets are deep enough to hold all your teeth.

Tonight: Don't look for a glass-smashing

Hotel room-trashing

Scorpio.

Or animal

Magic.

My generation

Makes me sick.

But Abby,

You wear it so well.

I am often sad

That I don't have a gag reflex

When you say,

"Look what Fridita did with all those silly costumes and flowers in her hair."

!WARNING: Doing so may result in

Carbon monoxide poisoning.

I am very afraid

That this is

The climax of my life.

5/6/10- My Name is Not Julie

Last night I was nervous; I met you at our favorite bar-- the one with the foreign beers and secret booths for bullshitting.

Last night the local jazz bands were unfamiliar; The Palmetto Bug Stompers? Johnson & Honey Bannister?

Last night you were a suave fuck, with your motorcycle boots and cheap leather jacket.

Last night Big Blue took us back to your place-- your place.

Last night you fed me sweet mead-- my "potent honey tongue slipping too many words" while 150 grams spin, swallowing the background of "honeymoon."

Last night I was happy to see you did not own a television, or believe in Ann Taylor.

Last night you painted me ebony, blood stumbling through my veins like the grime in tap water.

Last night it was the way your hair shimmered under the Chinese lantern light, planted where fire should grow.

Last night the floors were cold, my feet clung frozen to your legs.

Last night you couldn't hear it, but Yoni disputed through my ears-- "You act like a slut but you're really a freezer."

Matt, did you want the breast beneath my Fletcher blouse? Did you want me bare? Didn't you want to eat me alive?

Last night I prayed for morning, I prayed for the half moon to run across the city.

But last night, every night-- a 5:45 alarm goes off and the Saint Lazarus flame dies young; you steam your pasta and teach geography.

to my sister on the edge of the campus pool

i assume the checkered taxi driver
was her daddy, maybe her brother,

grinning like a jack-o-lantern
with a missing tooth.

annie's insides step out first, then her sweet smelling clothes--
fierce stilettos kill silver stone.

it's a faithless stampede to his window
for a quarter on the mercury line;

"call when class is over,
call when you're alone."

he’s always chewing, spitting, chewing
tumors like doublemint, like ice picks--

like the stinging long legs some great god gave her,

& spaghetti-curled hair-- cocaine freeze bleach.

like the can of diet coke and the cigarette

neighboring the handle of a pink umbrella,

while mascara runs like rag water

to pressed lips, cursing the rain--

the last lost lake in america
must have stuffed those egg white clouds with a swollen cork today.

i know she's got a moon in her pocket,
los angeles and bullets on her tongue,

skeletons, secret names,
just like I do.

we’ll both remember the boys
with flasks in hip pockets,

and the firefly dinner dance
on dirty sherbet patios.

the payphone chews her nerves,
the receiving end gnaws the wire,

“all is foolish except love and honor.”

i grind my teeth hollow at the union
while they eat their breakfast, while we let go.

nurse white, anonymous, concealed.

kingfish

moss trees mock my hair
while a sleepy olive figure
rests his moon slashed eyes
on the kingfish.

in this mud-cake shotgun,
cobalt bleeds from a painting
now defaced and infamous,
sinking through the floorboards.

i can smell sugarcane burning
somewhere beyond the swamp
as sweet magnolia sweat
hammers my shrimp boots like rain.

and i leave my lungs, my faded jeans
full of cheap silver and film
to rust with the boat,
wishing for gills as i jump first.