Steve Jobs Is Dead.

(A small little something I wrote for a visionary I honestly admired.)

He had lost too much weight, strangers could see that,
and weight is the first thing to go say the experts, first thing
that’s missed and it was gone, the fleshy weight of him,

his black turtleneck loose on his frame, jeans that used
to fit, cinched tight. We saw the cancer keep pace
with him, in the pixels of our screens, a pale horse that

trotted next to the man’s excitement. We watched the keynote,
and he talked about numbers, about the future, about
something he once dreamed about while he slept, a dream

he remembered when he woke up and covered in aluminum,
brushed metal, a dream his developers filled with Cocoa and
Webkit and no idea what else, we didn’t care, it was beautiful,

this machine, it was something we wanted, something we were
promised, like jetpacks, like hover cars. He talked about the future
and we applauded, we criticized, we made our requests

like prayers, just one more feature and we’ll be happy, we vowed,
we swore, we lied. It was over too soon. We saw the horse
nibble his ankle to prod him along. Slow exit stage right.

Steve Jobs is dead.

The Dinner of Her Skin

The bitch

wreaked of lavender

and some mint,

and then faint trails
of marigold
and hibiscus.

I hunted her,
for months observing
the small zigzag
pattern of her gait,

the exquisite tiny hops
of her feet that played
like a melody
when she stepped.

And I knew

where she had been,

where she was going.

I knew the hearty smell

of dinner soup

she spooned

in to her mouth.

I memorized the small

crevices in her lips, again.

I gave them all names.

I watched as her tongue

cleaned the scoop

of her silver and I salivated.
My mouth open as she ate,
I strained to keep my pursuit
patient while my stomach barked

to taste her furless coat,

to feel the weight

of her flesh inside me.

I saved her
supple breasts for last,

savored only after I took

in the rest of her torso

with bloody bites.

How she stared

empty at the stars
in the bed of her entrails,

how she laid stiffer
and colder as the moon
moved in the sky.

My wet nose,
intoxicated by the dining

room bouquet, head all drunk

on the smell of lavender

and hints of mint,

on wisps of dragon’s breath.

I hung her red hood

and cape above my mantle
like the Woodsman hung

the head of his deer.

Maybe my children,
someday stretched
by the fire, will see
my trophy and ask
for a story about
the beautiful red hood.

How once upon a time,
I carefully ascended
the stairs of her house,
upright like a man,

how I knocked with the back

of my paw on her door.

How I whispered

over and over, the words I had

so carefully practiced

to sound human.

How it felt when the knob
turned and the door
swung open. How her
eyes grew when
I lunged.

Shema

The following poem is based on an earlier poem called “I Have Given Evil A Name.” That poem will remain in the archives, but consider it scratched. The middle section of that poem was by far the strongest, so I took it out and made it stand on its own.

Our God who razed the Mosques, burning God
of witches, Lord inquisitive God of Spain,

our God the Crusader, God the Jew hater,
God, the owner of slaves.

God the Warmonger, God the Oppressor,
righteous God who abhors the gays.

God the Conservative, God the Liberal,
God we worship and praise.

God our provider, our corporate sponsor,
God our father, God we love and obey.

God of our basketball or football or baseball team,
be on our side as we play, as we fight

for your hallowed name! May your kingdom come,
your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,

Hear O America, the Lord our God, the Lord
is One. The Lord does not change.

The Augurs Are Taking The Auspices.

after Matthew Zapruder

When the NPR anchorwoman tells me
The sewers run red with blood, I am sure,
for an infinitesimal shred of a moment,
that she is quoting some Bible verse
I once knew, a verse I had memorized
and then tried to forget, maybe the one
where sweet Abimelech killed his 70
half-brothers on a single stone
in Ophrah; or the one about Samson,
after the Philistines cut his eyes out
with a sword, when he pushed the pillars
of their temple apart and the roof fell,
killed everyone. I turn down the radio
in my car and whisper the words to myself.
The phrase has a different timbre
than I would expect. I realize that it’s
not a Bible verse, just sounds like one.

Tripoli sounds like a fun vacation spot.
I imagine white beaches and palm trees,
not so different from where I live now,
and stiff alcohol that comes crowned
with umbrellas, carried by beautiful women
who want to give me a massage. But this
just in from the inconsiderate anchorwhore
on the radio, apparently Tripoli is where
the sewers of blood flow and I’m grossly
mistaken about the whole vacation spot thing.
The rebels are strapped with machine guns
and America has sent the drones, war birds
with Hellfire missiles. They kill for freedom
I am told. I stare outside my car window
at the grackles on the telephone poles.
These birds are harbingers, I mutter.

I have no idea what that means. Maybe I speak
in the Spirit, if you have ever heard such a term.
I remember watching my pastor profoundly believe
in the sanctity of gibberish and when I was a child,
I wanted to believe in it too. So I prayed for it
and it was given and I felt no different.
I prayed in tongues for a great revelation
in the backseat of my parents’ car. For God
to use me for whatever will he may have.
My father flipped on the stereo. I stared out
at the night sky for an answer as I prayed.
All I saw were stars. All I heard was the car
as we moved, my parents talking, the radio.

I must have sounded like a muffled duck
with my head bowed and eyes closed. Not so different,
I imagine, from the prayers of augur priests
who took the auspices, men who believed God’s will
was in the birds. In their songs. In their tongues.
The four horsemen are coming, sang the birds.
The seven seals will be broken, replied the crows.
We will take the mark of the Antichrist or die
a horrible death, proclaimed the augurs.
The sewers run red with blood, says NPR and I
can see the bodies on the news. My God, the hawks
foretold this and no one listened. We both heard
their rasping screams. We saw them dive together
for their prey. We were shocked at the meaning of it.
Don’t you remember, Lord? You were right there
next to me. You gripped my hand and held your breath.

For the Unemployed and Underpaid.

Wash your face.
Be all the beautiful
you can. Wear lipstick
and fill the cracks left
by your former love.
Cover your eyes
in shadow, taint
your brows with color.
For market. For all of us.
We’re all so incandescent
with secrets.
We’re all agleam
with starting over.
Let’s vogue.
We are the surprised.
The divorced.
It was never supposed
to be like this.
Lord God.
We’re all brokenhearted.
We’re all ashamed
and hopeful
that no one notices.
Let’s dance
under the lights.
Let’s eat and drink,
be merry and flirtatious.
Let’s be friends.
Cheers. ¡Salud!
Maybe tomorrow,
we’ll die. Maybe alone.
Maybe I’ve said
these things before.
Maybe it was never
supposed to be like this.
Maybe it was never
our call.

Hope

I tell myself, Someday I’m going to be someone,
as I drive past the bread baker on South First,
who smiles like his life
turned out better than expected.

What This Is

There are nights, lying in bed beside my wife,
(who likes her mattress still), that I am cursed
with what could be, the beginning of a poem.

And the hope of it pecks at me like the idea
of resurrection, a Great God Bird
in Arkansas marsh who no one quite saw, but did.

And the reality is that there is work in the morning,
like always; that I should be asleep and not fidgeting.
But my breath is too short and my body too stiff, and she,

like always, can sense what spouses do. She is not magical
with appearances. Her silence begs me to sleep
and I know it. Some would say it’s shame that compels

me to obey her completely. To blindly accept that
it’ll be alright in the postpartum morning. The bird’s pecking
will be forgotten with smiles and kisses and routines

and it’ll be just a few hours from now. I can convince her
that all is well. I will push these thoughts out like afterbirth.

It is not shame.

My Wife, the Gorgon.

No one talks about it, but my wife is the last
of the chthonic female sisters, born to replace Medusa
after Perseus cut her snake infested head off.

And no one wants to mention it, but something went wrong
during the pregnancy. She was born with a horrible deformity
that I can tell you just appalled poor Phorcys and Ceto.

To discover their daughter’s hair snakeless and mortal
while her legs slithered about like a couple of reticulated pythons
was almost too much to bear. They asked me when I married her

what I thought of her condition. Why I haven’t run. But I said that
I didn’t mind her little cold-blooded toes sidewinding in the sheets,
looking for crevices and pockets of heat. That I would love

her just the same though she stuff her glacier calves
in nooks and crannies they were never intended to go.
That it’s too cute when I try to refuse and my sweet Gorgon

girl threatens to turn me into stone. Her fist raised in fury,
screams and sirens that I should understand what marriage is,
that it’s more giving than not; that this is what love is,

no matter what I say.
That this is how the story goes,
mythology be damned,
history be written.

I Have Given Evil A Name

This poem will remain in the archives as an original draft, but has since been scratched for a new poem called “Shema.” The middle section of this poem was by far the strongest. So I took it out and made it stand on its own.

I.

Seek and you will find - evil, if you’re looking for it.
    Mephistopheles and all of his minions
hanging like Louis Vuitton from all of our shoulders,
    in the congregation of the Charismatic church
where I grew up, where the pastor laid his hands on us
    to cast the demons out. Spirits of
alcohol and depression and cigarettes, hallelujah
    amen. Come Lord and heal your servant,
the one with the drinking problem, same person
    every week, heal her O God we used to pray,
spiritual warriors at twelve years old, on our knees,
    our heads bowed, eyes closed.

Our parents warned us on the way home,
    how wrong decisions can lead to spiritual possession,
and we were sure, all of us, that our dark hearts
    were already drowning in evil. Our parents
could sense it, Spirit of Rebellion they said, or something
    like that, rock music that blared from our walkman,
Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan. And when we became older
    and convinced of our sins, who could blame us
for giving evil a name? We saw the Angel of Death
    crash into the towers of New York. Sodom.
Gomorrah. Osama Bin Laden.

II.

We’re not racists if you think about it.
    Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists
        are _____. The first to answer gets a cookie.
I had a friend from the Midwest who actually said that
    via Facebook. Me in California, thinking that Jesus
        probably looked Al-Qaeda, that we’d want
to hang him, all of us, because of his striking resemblance
    to a towel head, a sand nigger, a Samaritan we were
        sure that God didn’t love. Not as much as us,
praise Jesus, the god of the NRA, the heterosexuals.
    Is this Baghdad or am I in NYC, read that too
        in a status update. And then evil had a name,
Mephistopheles, Islam, cast it out in the name of our god,
    who is a white European. Who would blame us,
        we said, for overthrowing the government
like Jesus did? Just like Peter, when he cut the man’s ear off
    and Jesus said rock n’ roll, my servant! and the Roman
        empire fell, like Sodom, like Gomorrah;
and Christ, victorious, set up his kingdom in America.
    What, you don’t remember this story? It’s right
        there in the Bible, black and white.

III.

God who razed the Mosques, God who burned
    the witches, inquisitive God of Spain, God
the Crusader, God the Jew hater, God the owner
    of slaves, God the Warmonger, God
the Oppressor, God of our basketball or football
    or baseball or hockey team, hear O America,
the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

The Field Spaniel

There is the burn of twilight.

There is the smell of grass that my father cut.

There is the sweat of my shirt,
    the scratches on my arm,
        the lost straws of hay stuck in my shoe.

There is my breath, heavy from my run to the house.

There is the shaking of my hands,
    the adrenaline of my fear,
        the hope I could get here in time.

There is my father, crying.

There is the hollow in my throat,
    the knowing.

There is the dust of my mother’s car,
    the gravel her tires spit back at us,
        the buckle of my knees,
            the wrenching cry that won’t come out.

There is my brother, running after her.

There is the fading sound of her engine.
    The screams and the arms,
        the reaching for her.
            The belief she will stop.

There is what happens when he loses his faith.

There is that guttural sound he makes.

There is my body, hopeless in the grass clippings.
    My face, weeping in the crook of my wet arm.
        My dog, who wags his tail by my side.

There is the whimper of my Field Spaniel,
    the nuzzle of his cold nose,
        the searching of his tongue.

There is my father, now, holding
    my brother, cradling him.

There is this dog, barking and barking, worried to see my face.