Ugly Thursday

An ugly Thursday again

rewound to that moment

caught so many times

like the fine nestled ball in the catalyst's hand

where would the play be without Mr. First Base?

and how different, really, are the moments we save and secret so tenderly from one another?

We've all squeezed that ball before, no? Perhaps we all haven't made the play.

Sixteen Purple Platters...

and an unwanted baby in an underbelly.







-------------...---------------------

Pause, you homo-hag
take a drag off that fag
slip on that laugh
twirl that split-ended tress
sunglass the dots that read:
"papi, I ain't ready for real hands."

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Fifteen green apples...





and a pill in the upper belly.

Curious George

Did you with a bang--
final "acting out"
final shameful escape
last kiss to seal the end...
wrong man however

Closed my eyes
played my hair like a fine fiddle
moaned like a bitch...
to the beat of the wrong skin however

Another Maria you claim,
slipping in and out of sheets dirtier than Bush
"I want to live in America."

mami

Loudly I remember "la condenada muchacha" spilling screams in stores for new crayons you never denied.

I learned how to jump rope, tie my shoes, read, color in the lines, and reject naps at four.

Today I am four again, wearing the curls you tempered and the laugh you never gated.

Nothing

I make friends with space in hope that time will be gentle, grabbing my hand instead of face. So often and so abrubtly, time makes a spectacle of me--abrasive reminders that hiding does not stop its ticking. I've left the watches to boxes and travel to the sight of things only to fail in the grandest attempt ever: running from those walking gracefully to a time that makes sense to more than one.

Follow the Blue Arrows

A little color
A Z at the end of a name
Stops in Mexico and Florida
And a passport full of wrong places traveled
Can make grown men put on gloves
and search through dirty panties.

off the beaten boundaries

the red couch sat outside
curbed: for lucky takers
the street, a tv; an outdoor living room
as if to turn intimacy inside out
i expose you
to
taunts from passersby
Benjamin's porosity meets Baudelaire's flaneur
without the introspection
the goingons without the going

and you sit, nearly short
of words, already short
of meaning, running short
on time
i expose you