A Posteriori

A Thank You

2012-01-04T13:55:00.004-07:00

Thank you to those who followed and have been reading my poetry. It's been years, hasn't it? I realize writing is not my forte, I've neither the education or natural ability to formulate or play with the English language as some of my friends who write, and others I admire who are very gifted, even genius. My own strength is in my artwork.

I've enjoyed writing and sharing my work with some of you nonetheless.

Thank for you so many great and encouraging years. And thank some of you for sharing thoughts and your own writing with me. You've inspired me, you've brought me joy too.

All the best ~

xox

2012-01-04T13:51:00.001-07:00

Untitled #3 (For...)
0104.2012

She taught me to be alone,
To move stealthily among man
And cross my arms over my heart –
“For they will steal it.” She said.

Here on:

I have concluded, my hands have a meaner purpose,
A privileged call;
And I will love all the days like a ghost
Someone who won’t love me back -
I will never write another verse
As blunt and self-effacing,
Or love as complete and pure as I do (him).

The emotions of our youth,
Kindled in our closing stages…
Nothing bites colder
Than a winter’s unrequited words
Or springtime’s wish for his touch.

I bid my heart a lonely send-off:
Farewell, farewell.

M.

2012-01-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

My Generation
0103.2012

I was not made for this generation
The Pepsi generation
The Me generation
The “I love god because I
Look better” generation,
I am rich and gleaming,
Telling you how kind I am,
Smiling like a sheep,
Wearing wolf's teeth
Generation,
Generation X
Generation Sex
Generation operation
Ethical wipe out
Moral degrade
Generation
Degeneration –

Preceded only by
The politics are broke
Hey no joke generation,
Glad to be dead soon,
But feels “sad” for my generation generation
Of ignoble motivation
And I cannot seem to fit,
To make heads or tails of it –
This Generation Falsification
Of self entitlement
And ignorant enlightenment.

Marni

2012-01-03T14:50:00.002-07:00

Untitled
0103.2012

“An artist loves like God.”

I say it missing smile
And humor while you look slighted and
The long day extends its bitter guns.

I am no good at being superior
To people with less moral
And ethical soup
In their guts.

It’s a defeatist challenge.

This year they will bury me
With salt in my eyes and
Water in my throat,
They will cross my hands
Over my breast and lay me
In the earth I love.

At least I’ll seem like peace.

The Lord signals us under skin -
We believe he only wants life
But his soul in my body
Will see you in the fall
As he beckons me home.

- Marni

2011-11-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

As For Me (For Kristamas)
1213.2011

As for me:
Leave me to my own plans and the chaos they bear,
Like the chaos of reeds bending,
As if giving up their lives to the storm.

This autumn the flowers died near the beginning,
As if the sun persuaded them with promises of brighter days
And the heat they took was their end.
The irrigation and chill came late, when the land was already desiccated
And the long dark hours made clicks inside my dreams -
(Where bones fold from knowledge
And take on the appearance of the dead.)

In this dream I’ve become fond of cellars,
Derelict doors, the table and untidy chair,
The white tree, flat and thin with its lover quill –
And breathing in the dust and skin that visited previously;
Exoskeletons tied and hung to silk like translucent curios,
As if they designed their deaths
Knowing how they wished to be found.

Beneath the unfurled moths and perfume,
You buried yourself from asphalt labyrinths
Hitched to harsh cycles and machines.
No trace of you as day becomes night
And the moon showers its jeweled plumage
Onto my locks and look, kissing my complexion
As I sigh satisfied and not, and then curve,
Lilting like a sad note that recollects about
The closing stages,

About the hours where we were held green...

I've become an empty abbey
Whose saints before gave heat to its garrets and oratories.
I've traversed solitude as a woman of letters
Dressed in a hand tilled to prevent,
Yet by some means, fetching of the day of reckoning –

And you, wherever you circle as if flung in the wind,
And the quiet of that thing, lost in its quiet current,
Bathed and drowning in quinine stars,
where the click of an hour turns inside my dream.

- Marni

2011-10-30T22:13:00.001-07:00

Untitled
1030.2011

They must have poured you into your skin,
If only there were a hole where you’d escape,
Because I saw this bad boy rather noble,
Leaning like James Dean,
The constellations in his eyes –

Marni

2011-10-30T22:12:00.002-07:00

Words And An ATM (For Mike)
1022.2011

And I was supposed to write about an ATM,
But all I could see was Audrey eating Benjamins and Franklins,
My bread being thieved, and it was suddenly better to
Cover the subject in anything but what’s what:

I’ve become Seymour Krelborn…

Well, about the bread and circuses, I mean ATM -
I’ve decided to use florid language to do the deed,
Because corpulent suits and my country ‘tis of thee
Is a poor and republic notion that’s no longer greasing
The wheels of democracy or providing enough
Tax revenue to tell the pricks on 1744 Main Street
To fix the damn ATM so I can have my slice of the pie,

Who cares if it’s “envelope free”?

Marni

2011-10-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

Poppy (For Belinda)
1021.2011

Poppy - A bloodroot alkaloid;
Angel’s making milk sheep -

In a dream, the lea bleeds from a phantom’s hand,
And the sable and starless sky writes imaginings.
Honestly I know of this nature’s epilogue -

A warm kind of,

“Good journey… good journey…”

Marni

2011-07-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

“But life is long. And it is the long run that balances the short flare of interest and passion.” - Sylvia Plath

Untitled
0725.2011

I must hurry through the trees
That line the valley several kilometers ahead
And go even further into the dark, under
A moon that is hung in the shadow of myself,
And I must remember the light
That was elliptical in me as a younger woman,
That when another button comes undone
Or loose end unties while undressing itself,
I will have forgot everything again
And will have been naked sometime
As the rest of the world hides its
Ideas and imagination (thinking them
Important and of some use)
Half expecting them to be soiled in the light’s exposure,
(As if they are worthy of ruin)

Marni C.M. Fraser

2011-04-13T12:02:00.003-07:00

Pretense
0513.2011

A gypsy carried you until the earth
Made its revolution around the sun,
And your bones cleaned themselves
Of your truth-seeking intellect
And double-dealing crust,

Until finally
All that existed
Were the ashes
Of your illness.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-12-20T11:53:00.005-07:00

Rain
1220.2010

The water and the worms,
The grass gathering diamonds.

Marni C.M. Fraser

2010-11-26T19:50:00.002-07:00

Untitled
1126.2010

Or of you, whoever you are.

When you talk, everything sludge and blossom,
the world with all its open mouths and eyes;
the divulging of their secrets;

The dead of winter’s sleep into life,

you beautiful and towering past a star's frontier, never further out of reach
than where love’s hung like a bloom on heaven’s branch.

Marni C.M. Fraser

2010-11-21T21:08:00.001-07:00

A House
1120.2010

Earth’s desert carries a home cradled by hazels,
by right of entry it should accept life among dust,
not pretend it stands on the east coast.

Even so, its inhabitants appear known,
and I believe I understand their building of it:

They crave green breathe being old in a desert that’s raising
a city they cannot blast, even if its atmosphere and natives kill them.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-11-21T21:07:00.006-07:00

Driving
1102.2010

Tonight driving through the city
I couldn’t help but notice its population
Carrying a shadow on their back,
The buildings leaned against air,
Supporting its concrete silhouettes
With deteriorating, tired shoulders.

I saw how the roads look eternal
And their builders love birds and snakes,
And slipping beneath the moon shedding
Its clothes upon glass so fine it could
Cut them in the landing,
I thought I’d like to write and drink
While sitting on night’s ridge,
Not home where I’m not at home,
But where weeds bend into darkness,
And wind abandons the ground for chaos,
Leaving me to my own.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-11-21T21:07:00.003-07:00

What Remembered
1117.2010

Of all love, at least one time, a spring comes
Though in no way to land, the likely unrequited bloom
Of ghosts enfolded, the little hand click inside my dream,
The downpour of what I remember -
Rain to either chase it or bring it.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-11-21T21:05:00.004-07:00

Dionysus
1031.2010

Seated across from you:

I’d lower the spines of my eyes to see your legs unlock
And dance with mine like a pair of snakes entangled –

I’d also like to be a set of arms
To brush the side of each breast connecting to your torso,
Which sits unbending like a statue.

You’ve become a lyric singing me into you,
Your aphrodisiac perfume of ocean into my bed,
Into my thighs and lungs –

And my submission after the wine and conversation,
After you woo me with mirrors and man,
After the night opens its jewel-crusted feathers
And the sun is done sinking into a sea of stars -

We could be Diana and Kallisto,
Hunting our grief into endless trees
And dining until drunk on our skins;
Our hearts stuffed on the shadows seducing us,

Oh my unending nature, my darling -
You’d know how to be in love,
How to be a God,
How to be still -

How to survive off the love of humans.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-11-21T21:01:00.003-07:00

Untitled
1030.2010

Now words, the dictionary’s version at least,
Or possibly any cultural adaptation of feeling -
Cannot work out how to say what courage couldn’t,

No conceiving of it in this room
Where I love with my head in my hand,
My courage with wings flying and singing -
Singing about you and of how it can’t sing.

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-11-11T22:04:00.006-07:00

1111.2010

My life’s intent
is to love in
summer’s time of
dying daffodils.

- Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-10-21T23:51:00.005-07:00

The Allure And The Stem
1021.2010

The allure
And the stem
Blooming like blood
In the water

Marni©

2010-10-18T21:01:00.005-07:00

Untitled
1018.2010

Darling, I want to say something
While sitting waist high in stars
But a shadow hangs on me -

Now I knowing this am I against I;
A hijacked sun is ultimately dead,
The dark is consumed by something darker.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,
Or some such shit, but it’s all the same
No matter who, where, when -

Although you should know your 39th year:

That I’m in love, wondered about
When our paths might cross again
and you, making me experience you
At eighteen; deserted, bruised,
then easy to break as the bird I am in your palm –

That you were in mine,

Are finally even.

Marni©

2010-10-12T14:17:00.003-07:00

The Thrush
1012.2010

A thrush soars
Where the hunter comes
To raise his aim
For an arrow
In the underbelly,

Whose wing drags
And song lilts;
Where it’s soon asleep –

There a thrush soars.

Marni©

2010-10-12T14:16:00.011-07:00

Untitled #2
1012.2010

I think tales like this about a city street
Whose jet legs are crawling with cars and moist,
Dressed in fog, lonely and fucking city hard ons
Standing tall and soaring to fires pinned upon night’s ink,
And they almost breathe when I tell them.

Right now I think:
“And you making sense mild, have planted
A wild orchid, vibrant with flaming red,
Physical with flushed petals and blooming, even in the chill.
I keep them in my room, against a blue wall where I sit,
And writing this, they stack something alive against it.”

And the thought breathes,
Is familiar with the truth:
I choose you with your gift of orchids that open in winter.

Marni©

2010-10-06T15:06:00.006-07:00

I Have Decided
1006.2010

I have decided to die,
That the days as I am
Have run their course,

That no man won my heart,
And the chance came and went
As I was asleep.

I have also decided to avert my eyes,
Especially in shops full of fruit and flowers
Or streets overflowing with people and cars -
To hoard them from bodies I will never meet.

I also imagine that I decided
I dislike the California hills,
That as a dead woman I will head up north
Where my voice will bloom on branches of trees,
And sing with some smoke in its lungs.

I have decided to wave a white flag,
To abandon the crusade in my heart,
To avoid the ghosts who succeed
In these worldly conditions.

I have just now decided to tuck my sorrow
Into my boot, the bottom of it no less,
So with each step it cannot make a sound.

And you know how this is,
I have decided to say thank you:
That to do all these things and
To do them with some odium fixed
To my soul - that would be ignoble.

And I have decided to love nature
To bury myself in it wearing nothing but my death mask.

Marni©

2010-09-29T22:40:00.004-07:00

The Long Night
0929.2010

Night pulls the Day down to sleep,
And the tide of time chases its tail in a circle,
Scatters infinite fires in the universe when it becomes full.

In those hours:

If I could make every affection sing to you,
I’d gather each, let them fall into your hands,

Singing, singing.

Then you’d know.

Because the sum of love that you give
Is like star sailing in a sea’s dream,

And the breath of you I’m carrying,
Like a lantern through the long night.

Marni©

2010-09-04T19:50:00.006-07:00

Sleep
0904.2010

Sleep fascinated me as a child
Because of its life when awake;
It lay there bowed,
Cradled in dust,
Without a word
And looking like peace
With promises of Utopia.

Marni©

2010-08-13T20:02:00.002-07:00

Untitled 2.
0813.2010

Never’s road
Asphalt jungle
Babylon’s whore

The vague fuck

Electric moon
Bright eon
A moment
Time

Solitude
Sorrow
Friends
Company

Life dismisses rank

Has been
Competitor
Happy looser
Forfeit

Woman
Child
Girl
Ingénue

Category breaks them

Man’s blind eye
Woman’s truth

Marni©

2010-06-22T16:41:00.006-07:00

Untitled

But still let me arrive in the autumn love,
And when you see me with the sky in your eyes,
You will bury your smile and sun inside my body
And expel a small fear eating at my heart -
For it should be shaken loose, like dirt off my hands,
To be discarded beside a pile of encouraging seeds,
The possible blooms of the floret that is us,

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2010-06-14T17:43:00.010-07:00

Us
0604.2010

I think these words read like psalms, too holy and
Too dramatic; you're not a God, nor I a prophet.

But the sum of it is to lay my name by your feet,
Though here's no truth of my love for you.

Let’s try another thing then,
Let me place a book on your nightstand,
Rest a spray of orchids upon your bed

Or

Of us a tree;
Its root red vein and fire
Seeded and scattered,
wide and open:

Dispersed blossoms blooming for each other.

Us like this,

- Marni©

2010-04-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Nomad
0416.2010

Stranger that you become,
I’ve no regrets under this shelter
Where the dirt’s endless
And you call me nomad –

Marni©

2010-03-06T13:08:00.007-07:00

Sunday Morning
0306.2010

You have this ritual, Sunday morning.

You wake quiet to water dead skin and rinse away scales.
You’re tall and lithe, one of a pair slipping down the hallway,
Wearing long legs, ivory skin, and coughing lungs -
The cough into the bathroom with your face attached.

But when out of reverence for me you’re a soft parade,
Leaving my body to restore itself, its sex moist, knees crumpled,
Hair slick and a little wet as you go from used me,
I always know with eyes closed.

Hours later, I’ll rise and dress, the floor board singing to my feet,
Then an old woman down the stairs with creaking spine,
Palm rasping the banister, trying to wake my breath –

And here is where I find my statue,
One leg crossed over the other, like two snakes perverse,
Sipping tea while looking the quintessential English schoolteacher.

We spend morning reading, drinking tea, and eating pastry.
We make love sometimes.
You leave full, satisfied on silence and me left shaking.

Marni©

2010-02-23T21:10:00.005-07:00

A Tag On The Toe Of Jane Doe
0223.2010

I think she’s lost the ability to write:
Atrophy lays the song to rest,
Though belief’s hand travels down
Into the corpses throat and neck
Performing a type of autopsy,
It’s rooting around the heart,
Liver, spleen, and the lungs;
The lungs, they just might breathe yet, maybe,

Say something God damn it.

Now the Pathologist examines the eyes,
They observed once, you know.
The brain’s electricity is spent,
The ears useless in this case as well,
If she heard, her mouth is a mum.
Anyway, it’s pointless.

Her wrist is married to palms, married to
Dead snakes, they used to slither on keys,
Seeking their stow away words.

All we can ask now is,
What did you expect?
So be it.

A tag on the toe of Jane Doe,
The circlet of her heel wears a speck of dirt,
That’s where they’ve been, mated to filth.
A sock would have made it a threesome,
But she was a natural woman, had her ways.

Speck won’t speak of it.

Indeed, probably in all probability
She’s lost her ability to write.

- Marni©

2010-02-05T14:58:00.006-07:00

Bird
0205.2010

The birds I gather into my apron,
Different than the stones wanted,
And much lighter

It’s as if the bone not glass
The wing not broken:

I could almost go up.

But there’s this one bird
Fragile and a little afraid and
Folding itself away from mirrors and man –
In the trees it won’t sing,
Not even the sunny days,

It lilts like its feather falling,
A wound broken from its beak,

Other birds keep distance abreast.

It sees its self the solitary fowl -
Isolated capon hunters feed their children,
I even tried to pocket it
To shield it from the whiteout
But something too fast for my hand calls it:

I think it hears the sleep of a cellar door
Where slumber waits gone from flocks.

I empty the birds from my apron,
Gather the stones instead.

The river is just thirty-eight feet ahead.

Marni©

2010-01-31T15:40:00.004-07:00

Making Love
0130.2010

Tonight I’m going to die.
The death will be delicate and reasoned,
It will take place in a matter of seconds.

You will thrust a sword, possessing the vain of your fate
And into my womb your temperate pollen dispersed white.
The twisted roots of our bodies will tumble upon the other,
The leaves of our ribs and lungs pressed wet in our garden of bones.

Yes, I will die and you will murder me,
I will let you, and for many times after.
This will be the only death where I say, “Yes.” and “Please.”
Where I gaze at you thankful, and then return the act.

Marni©

2010-01-28T16:27:00.002-07:00

The Truth (In Response to & For Frank Stanford)
0128.2010

I’m not going to sugar coat it:
Sometimes fucking a nineteen year old seems nice,
Other times I’d like to sell myself to a rich old man.

Even when I love a man,
I think how to break his spirit -

And sure, I’d screw a woman,
But think most are backsliding.

I think the anti Christ must be a politician,
Most fundamentalists probably demons in drag -

And who cares about old the people in America,
They have it better than most from what I can tell.

It strikes me young folks seem inherently stupid
Or stupidly self-interested,

Still, most anyone bores me.

I like my own company best on nights
When I sip scotch and smoke cigarettes,
Mike Seeger loud on the record player.

And I like to self-destruct -
I’m a sad woman, a clown,
You know?

I own a lot of hate,
But also love too hard.

Some days I don’t wash
Other days I’m vain.

The dumbest thing anyone ever said to me was,
“Tragic artist? Isn’t that a bit cliché?”

I should have told him fuck you,
But I felt sorry for him.

Marni©

2010-01-28T13:05:00.009-07:00

Regret
0128.2010

Maybe there are warnings for regret -
The words grating our throats while traveling
Out the white ladders of our entrance,

Something to tell desire takes away,
Well-being stacking itself against us.

Each morning I look down at my hands
Avoiding the mirror over the basin.

On streets I walk facing front,
Won’t turn my neck toward the streaked glass mated to city erections.

In May flies enter through the windows or open doors,
They spawn where I left a sink full of dishes and rot,
Then I wonder why the maggots came -

They are so hard to get rid of,

Marni ©

2010-01-17T15:17:00.006-07:00

“Truth is never trouble-free, though at all times solitary.” Me.

Lesson Learned
0117.2010

Dayspring doves fly out trees
And place her direction,

That’s too bad,
She can’t see through sticks.

When she does finally trudge
An ankle snaps on a hill.

Her lesson learned.

The lesson was:
Fold into a small hole,
Cock the gun
And swallow.

There won’t be a string quartet,
But the doves will fly.

- Marni©

2010-01-15T13:13:00.011-07:00

Crone
0115.1010

Wretch of twisted hand,
The clubbed foot,
Mar on the face:
Maiden’s foe.

Bundled brier in her mother’s side,
A rose fetus plucked from the womb:

They did not ask.

They see you as black stain on the cloth,
The cry on the cheekbone.

You become rattled breath upon footsteps,
The final ordinal number ending.

Reluctant to rise with the sun
You hang your broom in the bottomless night
Then tether your target to an attached star.

When you recede crossing the great divide
And meet with God’s denigration,
The devil’s laughter follows you,

For you come again erased:
A bud of leaf on the green apple tree.

- Marni©

2010-01-13T22:30:00.005-07:00

My Voice
0113.2010

There was my voice, a bird unfolded
Soaring from the Gorgons mouth at dawn
Freed by a creased rose on the face,
Flying from the velvet throat, silk gut,
A twisted ribbon to be chewed upon -

A crown's jewel under the hypothermic moon
Strung bright among cool blossoms -
And apples of the red sun’s yearly yonder.

- Marni©

2010-01-11T19:20:00.003-07:00

Stupid People
0111.2010

People are stupid:

I could say orange and no
And they would still think it’s
Apple and yes.

So I part myself
From the consortium,

Even if they burn me for it.

- Marni©

2010-01-11T15:55:00.019-07:00

At Seven I met Death (Ode To Schmecker)
0111.2010

We’d slip between the house and ivy,
Cynthia said it was fun,
My nature was to sneak.

There was a window choked by vines
Where I stood on a dirty crate and looked in,
Once the husband and wife made love,
And I watched.

Not long after,
The husband and wife fought.
She took the keys,
He begged her not to,
She took the boy instead.

For a few weeks A-bomb perfumed air,
Injun Joe sat on the living room floor,
He and his brother reaching for
A state of no mind;

I thought he was floating,
He knew he was.

Weeks I knocked on his window,
But the Toccata he heard
Kept me mute.

When I showed Cynthia the husk
Avoiding the night time,
She laughed and pounded on the pane,
Shouted for the sleepwalker’s attention.

So each day I came back alone,
Each day he looked smaller,
Finally he didn’t move.

Eventually the crust of the bad bundle
Was taken by men still alive.

I never forgot the channel swimmer
Of life’s furious water -

When I was seven
he showed me how love dies.

- Marni©

2010-01-11T13:50:00.013-07:00

Sanji (Or Michael because his mother insisted)
0111.2010

Picture this:
Three of them packed in the car,
Two girls, one guy, and he’s hot for her.
It’s blond brown eyed Natalie Wood,
Mowgli from The Jungle Book,
And Molly Ringwald.

On his hots:
When Natalie’s poured into Levi’s,
Her cleavage clued by wool,
Her thigh taut against yours,
Over heating’s easy.

When Natalie leaves the car,
Mow’s tight on the wheel,
And Molly’s so moved by it
She needs a tissue.

Mowgli and Molly,
Driving the blank lanes,
Until stopping.

The two sit,
No words between them
Pending, “Why doesn’t she like me?”
Molly’s head nods like a car ornament.

“I don’t know Sanji.”
(Behind his mothers back, he goes by Sanji.
It reminds Molly of a servant
And he smells like potpourri.)

But Mowgli’s more like Raja stalking.

“I have a secret, come here.”

She leans in and he kisses her ear,
She goes with it -
Wonders what fucking an Indian is like.
Is it like Karma Sutra?

In the Jungle,
One ivory tusk hugs the steering wheel
The other, the passenger seat.
He calls her rubber band,
Wonders how she bends.

Molly thinks,
Haven’t you read the Karma Sutra?
I don’t enjoy you.

After, Mow talks about Natalie.
People park nearby,
leave their car,
Write their name with piss in the frost.

The drive home feels like shit,
More words on Natalie again.
First Mowgli nailed Molly’s vagina,
Now he nails her esteem.
(Jai Ho Mowgli!)
Out the car door she turns away,
In secret whores dry their eyes.

Two days later Molly calls him,
“Is Sanji there?”
His mother yells, (In her accent.)
“His name is not Sanji!
It is Michael!
We Speak English!”

Molly laughs an hour,
Her ribs split like wood.

She didn’t care about Sanji.
Neither did I.

- Marni©

2010-01-10T12:12:00.006-07:00

I Can’t Write
0110.2010

I don’t write well
I admit it.

Can’t be worse than the edumacated idiots
In college stroking lines on their cocks
for twenty five thousand a year.

I can’t write, it’s true,
Because when I do
I’m describing shit and death
And not coming clean how it really is,

Because see, it's like this:

Philosophers would say I’m lying,
Florid poets would vomit,
Erudite hipsters would say I got no beat.

That’s a gas because I’m just saying, is all -

And I make crap like this,
Use words like this,

And I can’t punctuate worth a damn.

- Marni©

2010-01-10T11:27:00.006-07:00

The Man Outside (For Henry Rollins)
0110.2010

I read it:
Pregnant woman punched by commissioner,
Innocent and bruised fruit in the womb
Reduced to stoppage in muscle,
A man’s eviction.

Then I read this:
Blond forgot France is a country,
Her beauty turns blind eyes and we smile
Watching civilization decline.
It’s unfair.

Then I see:
Woman’s past manipulates man
The truth is unwilling reliability.
If she’s black and blue meat
When he’s finished,
I’m okay,
I admit it.
But her man is on her finger
Like a stuck ring,
She’s dreamy.

I cut losses.

As I say,
Man scares me, hitches my demise.
Better to run down carnivorous streets,
Slipping into the black -

When there’s a man outside.

Terrorists make threats,
America checks for its gun.
The world overlooks bronze babies shot,
But not before missing rice and plants,
Or sad eyes getting a last lungful of sand:
Sigh goodbye cleaning a chamber
Then cross yourself without devotion -

I didn’t do anything though, either.

Words fail in these times.
Chronological order seems dumb,
Your comprehension futile,
No literal meaning mocks these matters.

Maybe words always failed.

Did they for Virginia or Stanford?
I heard Anne got tired,
That Sylvia preferred cooking.

I don’t know maestro,
Just don’t hold me to it
Slipping into the black.

There’s a man outside.

- Marni©

2010-01-05T16:40:00.008-07:00

You Departed
0105.2010

I can’t write to any further extent:
Love weighs down my neck
My arm, my hand
A lovers noose
A carnal cross

I choke on my words,
Eat yours too fast:
You don’t throw more
For the hungry harpy
Foaming at the mouth -
She’s got bats in her belfry,

Set them free
Be kind.

Twined, true
Though tall tale tight

You departed,
and she's got bats in her belfry.

Marni ©

2010-01-01T12:18:00.010-07:00

The Promise
0101.2010

Soon the black and green tide,
lilacs on white marble,
first breath’s color,
the colors breath last exhales.

Soon copses tired and naked,
the children of November asleep in wood cradles,
asleep under words in celebratory plaque;
their skin singing into dust,
(singing, singing)
once mated to the sheet,
once the lover in the morgue,
like a bell toll,

the hesitant promise.

Marni©

2009-12-29T20:09:00.018-07:00

The Man In Black
1229.2009

The man came to me on a black horse,
his flask was full of black water.

He rode along a deep black lake,
his ride cavorted with its reflection.

The man wore a black suit that made his fingers bone bright
and he pulled his black hat down that smelled like bad meat,
like a million roads someplace far.

The man said, “You must be earth’s daughter.”

I replied I was.

“How’s life walking along her spine?”

“It’s like striking a match on the gasoline,
like beautiful bravo and bitter blight,” I said.

The man in black nodded. “So I hear.”
He spat on the ground and grinned.

The man got off his horse to walk beside me,
I noticed there were songs in his eyes.

The grass was so high between us,
it met my waist and his hips.
The wind kind of sighed like a tired woman
and the sun was a speck of coal in my eye.

“I tell ya girl,” his voice was earnest,
“Living ain’t easy, you got peoples pain stacked against you.”

Then he looked serious, “You got to reckon next time, now.”

We stopped on a dirt road leading into a hole of wire trees,
I heard a dog bark somewhere far away.
“Maybe from the Janus plantation,” he said.

The man took out his flask of black water,
“Want some?” he asked.

I looked at the flask for a minute or two.
All these years I'd been thirsty as man with a bad accent.
I thought why not,
I was learning how to leave trails with no scent.

I drank the black water,
there was nothing else.

Marni©

2009-12-23T15:06:00.011-07:00

The Departed
1223.2009

What here?
The stubborn sun refusing to climb
While the bitch barks at nothing
And the heart cries undressed in the snow:

Ships have crashed in that dark
With calmer men than me.

We close our mouth to trap the inconsolable words
Hoping to fly out their white egresses -
Because the pain is satisfactory,
whether we invite it or not.

It's pointless when we disregard the bundled layers of human,
Leaving them to rest inside the earth,

And when we are all followed by a willing sun
which ascends with us toward the light.

Marni C.M. Fraser

2009-12-23T00:59:00.006-07:00

Who Are You
1221.2009

who are you

I ask because you caught the birds inside my heart
and though they continue to be trapped
for you they sing songs furious with fire
in notes plain and towering

because of you their wings grow stronger
and carry them to the constellations

because of you they do not mind being trapped
but fear the day you set them free

so tell me who you are
white woodsman of my heart

- Marni

2009-11-22T15:38:00.005-07:00

Canvas
1122.2009

canvas in this room without a voice but ours
you breathe into my unaccompanied life
the faces and scenarios of our fidelity

the milk snakes of my hands
coil around their sable branches
and flick their tongues against your agile body
stroking traces in sienna, cobalt and crimson

I barely contain my joy for such a patient lover
one who indulges passion and answers wishes
who builds our orgasm with a slow steady crescendo
giving what he takes without expectation

my lover
my canvas
my life

Marni C.M. Fraser©

2009-11-12T13:37:00.004-07:00

Tree Heart
1112.2009

my heart is a tree
each branch reaches for a thing
but this one branch reaches for you
it knows what it needs to cultivate its love

you are nourishment, wellness, vitality

see how it reaches toward its compassion
its fettle?

then watch as the others reach for
what they think they need –
they haven’t a clue
they have been so wanton
in their ignorance

now they are filled with regret

but this one bough knows

your eyes follow the direction
of her little rust colored stream
because their master knows -

see?

let your feet chase your glance
do not run away as she reaches
her hand for yours.

Marni©

"No pity in this world for a truth. You will be the end of me, perhaps the ghost of you waits laughing in the shadows. Oh you infuriating man, fall into my arms - for you have changed me to Sjofn!!" - Marni C.M. Fraser

2009-11-10T15:44:00.005-07:00

My Hands
1110.2009

What are the ten limb animations
Of air and considerations

They have become obsessed with building bridges

For dying languages

And now most days
They are my ill-mannered daughters
Curious about everything you

They simply won’t behave themselves

They are ten artists of
Song and story
Told through sweeping lines
Of lament and joy bursting in their dawn

They just want to know
They just want to sing

They are the stubborn geniuses
Of my arms and shoulders
So I’m never alone

Now I will only tell you once
Because I hope you forget
That you must be careful

But do not lay your milk skin before them
Because they will see you as you are
A pale lake to drown themselves in
The keys of a piano to lower themselves upon
A canvas to emboss themselves

An excuse to behave even more badly

You see how they can be impulsive
And Yes I am shameful to admit it

Their mind is very absent
Just leafs of skin and bone
Coupled to their joints

It’s a means to an end
For them to be so attached

Oh these slender branches of my bough
These harvesters of my garden

My hands my hands
Oh my maddening hands

Marni©

2009-11-10T12:06:00.002-07:00

Driving Haiku

fucked streets tenuous
convolutions in control
cars streaming birdlike

Marni©

2009-09-12T21:02:00.004-07:00

Bullied
09.12.1972

Beside crawling ivy beneath wet leaves
Feet under sunless autumn left school
Searched the ground its for scars to lead them home
Away from the shame of richer ways of living,
Of children with curled lips parodying poverty
Their mouths not aware of their future chains
Or the silence I unwillingly swallowed.

Marni©

2009-09-04T12:18:00.002-07:00

Childhood Tale
0904.2009

Home was the hill of a troll
With a dragon mouth
It took mustangs one by one
Chomped them two by two
Swallowed in threes during a blue moon
(Though only if they were broncos
The riders fat)

Crusaders woke to campaign
Donning garb before sun lit the day
Warming their rides in quiet mist
Feeding them at food stops -
After plodding along black roads

Peasants worked the tills hoes plows
Dodged bad spells of witches and warlocks
Dreamed of end to thriving and starving
They also made merry by night with spirit
(Their own magic)
To prop up
Lay down
Forget

Most children staved off the evil curse by
Eating scarabs
Telling stories
Their innocence

But I remember

When the angst of a King
Chose death by hemlock
Over his dissolving joy
(The queen had fled
Taking with her his ere)
A pair of childhood eyes noticed

Even then Knights and Maidens passed
Wearing their finest robes
Peasants celebrated bondage
Smoking stoked wild plants
Showing sexed complexions
Everyone Smiled

My childhood?
Must you ask?
T’was of fairies and tales
It was spared no moral.

Marni©

2009-09-03T11:06:00.002-07:00

Rock
0903.2009

So alike you and I

One
Hard
Grey

Of many strewn

Traced years putrefy me
Immeasurably minute me

Gravity draws down
Steep
Sloping
Burying

Winded

Missing in clouded wilderness
Gone in miles of barren wasteland

Won’t step ahead
Won’t step backward
Wedged

Insects crawl over me
Animals piss on my head

The human disturbance
The earthquake activity

Pitched
Thrown

At the whim of debris
Lost in creeping
Rhizome
Water

Life

Marni©

2009-08-31T20:50:00.005-07:00

The Nature Of Human

I put this flower here this weed there. They are bound by slender whitened paper to your eye by my hand. How sweet to invent forests to lose me in, to forget us through, to fashion a woman from natural beauty. Outside ether folds while inside animus shapes. It is so still my bones have become statuettes in the night. It is so still I could crack.

Marni©

2009-08-30T22:44:00.007-07:00

It Is
0831.2009

Under the dark trailing crickets sing
Without my understanding one word
Even with my ear to the ground
Bug melody gets lost among tire noise
In lanes where hours ago a living thing
Forwent innocence and survival
I like to say it not so
But it is
It is

I wrote you once to counsel on numbered days
“The dead like you to lay your head near theirs,
It is gloom settling the score with joy,” I said

The world is hard Magritte
You do not go far carrying a cherry under your skirt
Or braiding razors in your hair although
You may be delayed finding stains in your bed
Even worse tying your truth to something less in demand
Will put to death your purpose
I like to say it is not so
But it is
It is

How superb the wine is bitter
The roses push daisies
At 2:27am the crickets are still wordless vocalist in my head

Marni©

2009-08-25T13:46:00.007-07:00

Death
0824.2009

On a hilltop without dawn
Death encounters us
he beckons breath to him
upon high ridge horizons
makes it easy for us to go
like god though not god

Death severs the vein
from the heart of being
to make empty bastions
leaves empty porticos
where irises could display
themselves in spring

As summer sleeps
Death stuffs the ground
with a natural Holocaust
no matter Jew or Arab
Death feeds a fat round earth
on mortal virtue and sin

Neither right nor wrong
undo the Death decree
neither cabinet nor ministry
disobey the quiet exodus
Death quenches lips
gasping for the notes
of one last aria unsung

Extended and unproud
hand offered to the lonely
solemn delay of mankind
human relief for years of unrest
surprising exit of adulations
do you beseech the solace
for your ancient impetus

No

Death is an architect impending
is master of truth designing
his life campaign to distract
our own unwillingness
from his lasting artistry

Marni©

2009-08-12T01:36:00.005-07:00

Machiavellian Guest
0812.2009

Guest, you are no longer welcome
To enter my garden gates
Of bluebells and wild rose trees.
You can no longer enter my house
To partake of my supper,
Toast to endurance,
My divan.

When you leave my home the last time
The ending satiates your face,
Your mouth is fat on the devil’s you eat.
I love you to gently bid you adieu -
It is the only way I know how.

I must confess
To having prepared a time to turn you away
Because an old neighbor who hosted you
Warned regarding this one thing:

He christened you Machiavellian Princess
When you wrecked his house
Said you would help yourself to my hospitality
Then upon discontent burn my home to cinder.

I did not listen but now, and tonight
When you leave my home the last time,
I will watch you shrink into the dark
Like a tiny bird swallowed
By a smiling black gulf –
Oh to be thankful for it.

Marni©

2009-08-05T00:34:00.003-07:00

Almost A Poem (for everything almost)
11.21.2009

This was almost going to be a poem. I woke the morning to drop it brain to script. I prayed almost on knees to write this almost poem. It was to be of lopped head at the shoulder, fallen off full on the floor, it was an almost appeal to have it back.

This was almost going to be a poem. It fell reason to ground in one fail swoop landing under a car tire quiet. In the store it got lost among flowers and fruit, meat and cheese. It almost introduced itself dressed as a groom of a groomless bride, a child of a childless child. It was almost going to be a poem on this plane ticket booking a new town, but instead it was almost going to be a poem on here, where love lay sleeping.

This was almost going to be a poem. It really almost turned out to be something before back home to warm wine and cigarettes - the almost ode, breath by breath blow by blow, but the words fell in and out of being and only stayed, almost. It was almost a poem. It was going to tell you of something true and tried, almost.

Marni ©

2009-08-02T00:13:00.004-07:00

Moth
0801.2009

When the moon dips its kiss in the black abyss
and stars dangle on the sky from invisible thread
I say goodnight to the empty armor
Whose clever self slipped quiet into the night

I say,

“Good night sir”

(in my most polite voice.)

Sir stands on the brown window ledge
each night for weeks now, translucent
undisturbed and natural like the face
thrown back upon him

Moth, you left your coat at home
So you could rise on the air like dust
dancing with the light your eye desires

Where night is bitter and the rain calls
forth giant greenies with turned down mouths
and wagging tongues to gobble you up
as you are too cold and tired to argue

Even then I will be here to say,

“goodnight sir”

(in my most polite voice)

Marni©

2009-07-14T15:20:00.007-07:00

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day,
he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends
his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making
the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and
enterprising citizen.”

Henry David Thoreau quotes
(American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

Mother

0714.2009

If only at night the birds sing
Drowning frantic-panic streets
Of their metal rivers and insects
Casting us in their crawl.

For being wise and fair
The world grows small.
Patriarchal trees harrowed
To cork and stump,
Their roots deep, conceal
Prayers for our sentence.

If you hold your breath and listen,
A quite storm approaches:
Clouds hide the moon,
Stars fixed, are eaten by
the mouths of a silent gulf and
Dragon that came as dawn died.

Soon the ceremonial cleansing
and long sigh from the lungs
of my mother to wash away
the circle formed of our sin,

she arrives to scold us,
even though we scream.

Marni©

2009-07-10T17:03:00.006-07:00

Dark In The Heart
0707.2009

Tonight we sit on the porch drinking,
reckon about laughter and crossroads.

It’s peaceful when dark in the heart of man
Charges from a car on the street corner.
Night colors monster muscle damp grey,
Its animal decked in stars.

A step back,
Grass bows under my shoe
Littered by nights outline and freedom,

I wonder how M14’s feel closing eyes.

Hate eats one breast at a time
Saving lips for last.
It becomes smooth lupine rivers,
Is wine cities drink every night,
Is making us forgetful drunks.
Who are we?

I go to the M14 to ask.

Maybe the animal’s stacked like in Nam
Or the Middle East, even at home.
I pass a mirror to see my face fall
Woman to fear quietly.

When you stand I return.
I think death will undress itself
Here on the porch of bleeding hearts
Where children played with a dog earlier.

Corn Fed’s bad accent shouts, teeth broken.
He looks weak as I lift my gun.

I tell him God says it’s okay to take it easy.
I cock the gun, offer wine.
Barrel sings of murder to night.
I wonder those three like deaths flavor.

All summer his car sits on the corner,
His blood bakes in the sun on our sidewalk.
My heart rots.
Nobody cares.

Marni©

2009-06-14T00:37:00.004-07:00

Us.
0614.2009

My eye throws its brief shadow upon yours
Whose light burns like a candle at both ends -
Like spellbound brains in a round.

Marni©

2009-06-09T11:30:00.003-07:00

Sentire
0520.2009

The way knows sadness wears undesired -
To be rid of it the last time is of throbbing pricks and
drunk virgins fat on young lust and virtuous fear.

I travel to trees speaking of sorrow with a river who knows.
Though late, the wood earth cradle of tired remnants and
water roads whisper the ancient secret in my woken ear.

Small sprig of heart, fallen from bird nest and
egg shell bed cradling mothers life, tears made your face
reach its wealthy vine toward Elysium skies,
for what does it have for you?

We,your servant father.
We,your child mother.

Sister, we save you.
Brother we stand with you.

Child?

I the child, sustain me.

Marni©

2009-05-09T12:09:00.007-07:00

Cali
0509.2009

Hey Cali
look at you
dress torn
shoes thin

How does your sky
hem in its birds -
your drying pond
feed its fish?

Of men with hands
and drooling dogs
rested at their sides
during summers of
cauldron seas and sand

the parts of you left
under canopies -
pie-bald cum in the park

and damp trails drift from
your scent on fingers
down disturbed streets

then homeward where wives decline
sluts spread skin on plasma
and his dreams of you gush
from its head of sponge

They wish:
intense
stroking

They rise:
intense
stroking

And his dreams of you gush
from its head of sponge

Cali:
the dark place
in my ribs

Marni©

2009-04-17T10:01:00.004-07:00

Bitter Wine
0417.2009

I would like wine
A red scarf
High heel shoes
Something to feel hot
When living cool

Something for saxophone alleys
Packin’ strange faces and pale sluts
Wearing nothing
But cum trickle
For greedy holes

Give me wine
Make it bitter
For red lipstick -
That fag mister
Something in control
While out of control:
Let’s live up
Going down

Give me a drink
For tonight’s black
In silent shouts
And human shit

Give it
When dark opens
A starved mouth
Sucking us back
To remind us lives
We wish to forget

Because we wish to forget
And because we wish
And since wine causes
The forgetfulness
Give me bitter wine.

Marni©

2009-04-08T13:52:00.010-07:00

The Bad News
0408.2009

Grief visits
the day, the night
the day, the night.

Darling, dear,
some good name I can call you:

Why tell me the news
when skies finally cleared?
Look, buds are bursting,
a bird got its worm.

Now what?
The night rolls in like
some black movie reel.

Grief is the success
of death paid
to row me out
this life -

But death has its mark on you.

(and grief does not discriminate)

Marni©

2009-03-28T21:51:00.003-07:00

Collectors
0328.2009

We are all collectors:

We become derelict
Museums standing here,
Our relics on display
For the world to judge
Or pass up,
Whichever.

Marni©

2009-03-11T20:53:00.001-07:00

Where I’m From
0304.2009

Where I’m from
is stone-broke
people fixed:

The skint home
of white scrap
where I was
left to rise
from arms of
poverty,
lawbreaking,
and despair
driven on
by the dark
construction
of nightfall -
I come from
a hustle
and hook life.

This town was
not a town,
was not home,
was not street,
but passing
of my time,
and these words,
yes these words,
these true words,
don’t say a
thing about
my fear, which
lost itself
in the sons
and daughters
of pushers
and women
in make-up
with silk lace
tied skintight
to sidewalk
traffickers.

Where I’m from
seeds don’t rise
from ripe mud
and dog shit,
or bend to
the suns strength -
though they reach,
and reach,
and reach.

The good life
is living
some place else,
its triumph
the sweet strife
of veined leaves
trembling
on the air
like scarves
down tweed streets,
but not mine,
never mine,
where I’m from.

Marni©

2009-03-11T20:52:00.005-07:00

The Scarlet Gloves
0301.2009

Scarlet gloves fit these hands once,
clownish remorse to wear them
steered me clear the longest time.

Black gloves almost suited,
though in end small threads broke
weakened by time and habit.

A dark eyed women sent red:
traveling years they came
as the autumn done come.

I smiled opening the box,
what peace to feel the warmth
of their red splash upon my hand!

Of virgin wrist and fingers,
the relief, the solution,
against the cold angst of a
bitter winter.

Marni ©

2009-03-11T20:51:00.009-07:00

Abuela
0227.2009

We woke to rise with the sun
and watch morning remove its stars,
we navigated like ships over
water beads that shimmered and
died by day’s unforgiving hand,
to our feet rows of cotton fields
fanned, unfolding to eclipse the
finish she and I moved toward
as peaced together beginning -
and under the soft golden break
of our infant day, upturned mouths
called out “buenos días” to the
ladies greeting their face.

Summers she performed rituals
in palms yoked fragile
to slender brown fingers:

tortillas from powdered grain
for hot sauce grilled in a
toaster oven, the tears and
coughing as her green peppers
died black in their metal beds,
husking maize with its well-matched
yellow-green silk crawlers,
sweet apricot taken from
wood limbs giving their precious
stones for pie made from scratch.

Now she's almost ninety,
when the moons pulls its blanket
over the eye of her long life:

she holds my hand likened to hers
in the bend of its leaf, her eyes
cradling me she says something,
“I wish you a very good life.”
She reaches, kissing the white swan
neck of my sorrow, her heart weeps
for the end of its time and ours -
I cry breaking her bones.

Marni ©

2009-02-26T16:18:00.001-07:00

"I don't know why I shaved my head. I suppose it has something to do with rebirth and shedding shallow ideologies. I think I wanted to erase my mistakes and wanted to know if I can be noble - I wanted to follow a compulsion, remake myself and errors." - Me

Sheared
0226.2008

Pretty is pretty,
not smart or living,
a dishonest thing too.

Bored of pretty,
I sever her:

I do it sans thinking,
choose steel-clad teeth held
in hands, then fitting them
into the saintly wall,

feeling like a man,
like soon off to war,

like angels and demons
ridding themselves of me,

I watch the brown hair
fall strand by strand to
ceramic bowl like
parts of me peeled or
tiny trees chainsawed
from their bleeding root.

No tears drop,
though I die:

Each thread fallen loose
falls away with the
interwoven tale
of my burnt-out life,

each slash invites
the untried me
to throw the used me into
a waiting rubbish basket.

I’m no longer pretty,
but noble and reborn.

Marni©

2009-02-26T16:17:00.002-07:00

"Woman So Confusing" (in response to Frank Stanford)
0221.2009

Woman so confusing, in the beginning God make man
for fun, man no fun by self, so God think better idea, he
make friend for man, God call friend woman, man think
woman soft, God make mistake, woman not soft, her
head hard, woman have own idea how to breathe, man
look at little dick, scratch his balls, finger stink bad, man
get scared, this make man angry, man strike woman,
woman have hate, she strike back, man get more angry,
man cry up to God, God destroy first woman, man sit with
self, suck his thumb, look at little dick, God bored again,
God have new idea, he make new woman from rib bone
of man, man happy at first, man not alone, God make
mistake again, new woman smarter than first woman, she
like to think about what snake in tree say, woman tell man
about snake, man look stupid and follow woman to tree,
snake give woman apple to eat, man eat too, now both
smart, man and woman cover self, woman wash man
clothes, cook man food, now man want son, woman want
to give man son, she feel shame, she cannot give man
son, woman think she ugly, she make face look better with
paint, make hair pretty, wash off bad smell, woman hate
other woman, she make other woman stay away, man like
other woman, stick little dick in other woman split, he bring
sick dick home, woman get bad split from bad dick, split
have burning itch, head have crazy fever, she make no
sound, man move woman to city, woman still take care of
man, she soon tire of man, she learn to read like man read,
she like it, woman learn to write like man write, she like it
too, soon she read a lot, write a lot, soon woman learn to
vote, woman work in factory like man, don’t get paid same
money as man, she build gun and bomb, wear uniform like
man, man don’t care, man like game with gun better,
woman not like game, she smile anyway, pretend she
okay in head, woman want to be like man, she work hard,
learn to not marry man, she keep her money after all,
woman start to change into man, this make woman proud,
woman struggle but okay without man, man burn draft card,
she burn bra, she take medicine to make her feel good,
acid, pot, heroine, cocaine, woman feel just fine, man like
woman better when she out of her brain, she dance
naked to rock n’ roll, man ask woman to marry her, woman
say yes, man give up values, woman joins man, she give
up values too, woman live in big house, give man many
sons, man always at office, stay late, man have nice
secretary, secretary wear no panties, man show little dick
to secretary, woman fall apart, woman lose mind without
man, woman lose mind without medicine, she go to doctor,
doctor give her more medicine, she feel better, woman buy
wild turkey, she have bad thirst, she drink a lot, woman
forget man stay late, she forget nice secretary, woman
buy computer, she meet new man, man nice, she play with
little dick, new man might go away, woman tell husband she
want divorce, husband say no, he take half, now woman
nuts, have new baby, put it under car, run over it, she find
gun in man closet, wait till man sleep, go to his bed,
put pillow on his face, put bullet in his head, man sleep
good now, woman smile, put gun to her head, pull trigger,
woman sleep good now too, now woman just like man,
no value, no feeling, good sleep,
woman so confusing,

Marni©

2009-02-19T11:36:00.005-07:00

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness." - Nathaniel Hawthorn

Statue
0216.2009

I’ve become a statue receding in the night:
from out dust dotted view, my face fixes
on gold axis beyond arms of threadbare
trees and fallen leaves of brown sleep.

Oh nearly crying mouth!
Instead its pith folds from bird shit on its chest
and black stained night breathing
from out the long womb of day.

I can see road gravel bend before feet of
sidewalks marching home to marry wind-chimes
whispering ‘welcome home, welcome home’
they lull mortal ears to November’s peace.

Watching phantoms I desire to go so,
though steady, the scrimmage behind my face
aches to dance like women common and naked,
their desire bright even while I ahem and
haw at the baulk of it.

There’s no spry gender here, no bottle
under bridges where kisses are won
by turning spins and no his and hers game
or ‘like and dislike of you is’, no love-note
nor true puerility of mischief and grins
that tumble careless down the narrow streets
of my vacated youth.

Ahhh to have a grin like that again, I guess
but worms chew on the hearts pleasure,
if the sculptress even put one
in what seems to be a hollow.

On that note, if the artist just keeps me in light
her figure could sport with the flying sun until
it raises such a fire from my bitter piss
even I cannot stand it and collapse laughing
in a million scattered pieces, ending
the shrine that is the shape of me.

Marni©

2009-02-14T16:16:00.002-07:00

Cursing Things
0214.2009

I’m a writer of bad endings
so I curse everyone,
from lorn housewives with tongues
lolling out their bitches mouths
begging the national enquirer
tidbits for their empty brain boxes,
to talentless TV teens
of make believe character
here today gone tomorrow
tragedies.

I curse sheep sidestepping their
own flash-in-the-pan troubles
to find fault with another’s -

and the poor people,
I curse their poorness:
the poor fish of poor pockets
and poor smarts having five poor kids
in an economic war
of money hungry sharks
playing wrangler’s and red-skins
or a lousy game of craps -
Five kids, five brain cells!

I curse Bimbo’s:
From sport illustrated empress to
praised pop princess peeler:
Skeletal erector sets.
And I curse you:
you with dick in hand
crooning to emaciated sex.

Yes, I am a writer of bad endings
so I curse everything:
Pimps, ho’s, C.E.O’s,
old fundies in white undies,
young ones too that label you,
red necks, niggers,
sell out gold diggers,
kids spoiled rotten,
bullshit better forgotten,
governments and news media
tall that's booze expedia.

I curse it.

Today under fruitless trees
breathing poison oxygen,
A Walmart:
four small items
for thirty bucks,
three plastic bags
for four small things -

There’s rubbish charges,
but no recycling.

Now the phone’s ringing for
the ghost not living here,
“I’ll take you off the list miss”
(for the twentieth damn time.)

Well, what more can I say?
I’m a writer of endings,
so I’m cursing the entire fucking thing,
from the swank EU to down home USA.

Marni©

2009-02-11T21:31:00.005-07:00

The Fundamentalist god
0211.2009

I wish to strike down the Fundamentalist god:

The devil’s wearing white these days,
since he desires a life of guise.

Wardens of his prevarication snoop downward
before hiding gnawed bones in grim houses
and thumping on top the black book.
With narrow and penitent eyes imprisoned,
they suffer the clock, living as death warmed up
until the ink of superhuman theology
stains the world's eyes blind.

This god’s a cultivator who’s seeds cease to flower:
instead in his field, a slow strangling tare that I must
be quick to step over, lest it catch my ankles and tie
my feet so their life’s aim is cut short -
and in a world whose light he dims day by day,
sheep by sheep, feeding on awareness’ end,

I stand dazzling:
My electric sword lifted, her teeth ready to strike
down the pure white colossus of modernity's dark age,
and free the feathers of a creature it attempts to cage,
so that its flight may continue on true loves pass
of knowledge and worldly understanding.

Marni©

2009-02-05T15:40:00.006-07:00

Head Case
0201.2009

My head’s a case:
No, literally, it is a case
Though not very
Suited.

My head:
Poor sad, beat up, brain
Arriving by way upon the roads of life
After being misplaced by its own hands
(Since its holder forgot to mark down the final
Purpose on its voucher)
And no one was, is, will be vouching.

From point A to point B
Seen or unseen -
At last, unlocking a full face
It all comes undone -
My head, the head case.

Marni©

2008-12-20T11:20:00.003-07:00

Remember
12.19.2008

My brain is a failure to notice,
it’s trying to remember how to remember:

We stand in the black mountain
mist covering our heads,
our lungs eating the spray.
You spot someone walk dirt lanes
lined with crosses and trees.

I think, “This country is dark.”
“This country scares me.”

The next day the sun drips white poppy
petals onto a Venetian bridge.
Town women smile stringing fabric
and wood pins hung by weathered hands
from window to window lines, and our
feet burn in ancient narrow walkways,
after hours of this I think, “Oh Italy!”

In London hurried faces march upon
clapping ant lines caught in
the unchanging work crawl.
We’re alone in Soho, the city sprawls;
Scandinavian pink shirts and slick hair,
two women embrace crossing the street,
too many youth all agile sex and bones.
Don’t forget the woman who straitens
her stocking in the mirror of a window,
how bold in the middle of a theater line.
Me, the accidental tourist of coffee and eyes,
you looking on in the world (or
you watch her.)

And in all of Europe,
it surprises me Czechoslovakian women
are analogous of fairy tale dames:
I think, “Nothing more beautiful…”
Impoverished history, they are unruffled,
unfamiliar strength in war torn eyes
paired with circled mouths of antiquity;
I’m a little girl seeing her first doll
when noticing them at last.

Between America and Czech Republic
I cannot remember what everything is like.
The sight’s gone, but might well peak back with
a glass of warm wine and something to trigger it -
is anything left to recall?

I think, “I want to remember here.”
“Never forget this moment there.”

The car wheels snake on dark roads
and memory stamps its canvas with this tone;
a bare tree, brown horse, big cow,
bird…small black sheep (that I’m like) -
mustn’t overlook the tabby across the road
or forget to breathe in the air or risk forgetting
the perfume of rich Swedish dirt.
End appeals thought to remember all of
all in-between and things burnt
unseen into the heart -
or wish to be.

My brain is a failure to notice,
it’s trying to remember how to remember: …

Marni©

2008-12-20T11:19:00.004-07:00

Fingers
12.15.2008

First a lick then taste and nearly I eat my fingers.
This flavor remembers karo on the circlets of slender joints
because sex is this amaryllis dripping in the sun,
my humming bird finger digging the sugar rich liquid,
although it’s just remembering you.

Marni©

2008-12-13T16:37:00.003-07:00

Eatin' By The World (Inspired by Shel Silverstein)
12.17.2008

Ohhhh God,
I’m being eatin’ by the world!
The great big world.
The big bad world.
The rotatin’ world.
I’m being eatin’ by the world with
zillions of hairs, eyes, teeth, hands,
fingers, arms, legs, and more so’s,
it’s sucking
me
fucking back.
Oh how the world eatin’ me!
The world?
The world.
The world!
It’s got my hands…
nobody understands.
It’s got my eyes…
somebody realize.
It’s got my mouth…
truth gone south.
It’s got my soul…
into its hole.
It’s got my love…
Ahhhhhh! It’s got my love!
Sucking love back,
sucking it back,
sucking it,
suckingggg
Ahhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmnnn!

Gulp.

Marni©

2008-12-13T16:35:00.001-07:00

Language
12.17.2008

One day they’re gonna forget this language.
People are gonna look at each other empty,
their thought trapped in the belly of a vat
and mouths useless as a note hung on the def.
One day they’re gonna forget this language.
Their hands pointless, and eyes too, the body
automatic artificial intellect, nothing there,
nothing at all. Oh, I can just see it already how.
One day they’re gonna forget this language.

Marni©

2008-12-09T18:04:00.001-07:00

Bird
1210.2008

Your voice is a
falcon song high
and low between
my breasts of twin
sparrow under
belly and breath.

You sing of dying
in me, then I'm
a kind of bird
splayed before you,
the hunter prey end
of pink-wet cutlet.

Marni©

2008-12-04T14:16:00.001-07:00

Words
12.03.2008

Words stop marking themselves
into my rib; it cracks trying to say.

The tongue’s door won’t stir
by use or want, its white ladder
locked within cradle’s quiet death,
throatless.

The idea dies before a spout tip
and the clean snow white
of dead trees.

Marni©

2008-11-20T11:51:00.001-07:00

Apple
1120.2008

There’s this desire
when eating an apple,
I spit its guts upon
the plate you eat off,
okay the spit and taste
sinking into your glass too
so when you devour fare
your mouth hems me in.

Marni ©

2008-11-20T11:49:00.001-07:00

Silver Tongue
11.13.2008

Your silver tongue lands by my feet
so I beg you pardon to walk over it.
I must hurry to step away from its idea
that is climbing to meet my mouth,
for it is like a vine wanting to choke love;
the sadness of it licking at my heels
to say it no longer cares.

- Marni ©

2008-11-13T06:29:00.003-07:00

Suicide's Idiom
11.10.1008

I have this Idiom for suicide:
Death Of A Thousand Cuts

Suicides never ask why or how;
they know death's run in with grief
and the tools to build their marriage.

My hand fashioned a road on its wrist
and drove tomorrow’s verve into the tub -
wasn’t that the pain.

Truly I think best peace is casualty,
I’d willingly be that in any case -

its father stands in the wing of my being
invisible and seeking the moment to
graciously bury my whole wound,

though forcing the black box effect
is no doubt best, mainly after drunk
with cigarette breath and pill popper gulp -
on a night when the phone stays off its hook.

Marni©

2008-11-13T06:26:00.003-07:00

A Woman Dies
11.10.2008

A woman sad
as clowns dies
in the asylum;
eight hours flanked
by life and death
she’s watching
white uniforms
thread vein and
flesh jointly -
noticing they
make suicide
small talk smiles
of needle and
surgeon string
shot and bandage,
bestowed
by kinder lives
more caring
than she know'd
before her death.

Marni©

2008-11-13T06:21:00.001-07:00

The Night And You
11.06.2008

I scare myself
and not only lightly -
below star pinned sky
with hand in pocket
and tongue behind teeth,
I see you.

Tonight there are things;
rabbit in the moon
big dipper dropping,
the graveyard wax glow
blazing paths leading
reverse to you.

These things are you
dancing upon my eyes
next to silent hedges
and tree limbs pleading,
they carry the ghost of you
by a house asleep like
soft breathing back roads lost
in the blare rush air-stream
of lonely trains moving amid
deserted factory drones
and eerie black windows mated
to lonely construction.

This cold November
is a Wednesday where
under my own steam
along black alleys
and damp streets,
you play out hours long;
falling into my hair as
unanswered love,
a star ray beam -

In the night alone
I see you splay before me
as a thousand things.

Marni©

2008-11-13T06:19:00.001-07:00

Dead Relationship
11.04.2008

I see myself as the mother
of a stillborn child –
the seed of you
a failure of the heart
stretching into the silence
of a black hole.

Yet I continue to carry
this dead relationship,
my arms cradling the
hope of it not coming clean;
the truth is,
our love will not breathe.

Marni©

2008-11-13T06:16:00.003-07:00

Drunk
11.01.2008

Drinking away time
is easy you know –
you chug it,
the misery nonsensical nag
thrashing your skull,
the love bitter choke
drowning your mouth
and heart gone
November 1st.

Tonight he loved me,
I loved him too -

now I take in
double vision,
sun rising
yellow leaves
russet trees
silver sky.

Smashed looking sun,
6am wreck –
the whole nothing drunk
defiant soul and
embittered fuck luck
from out my window.

Tooth pulver/
Cigarette smoke/
Tar finger blemish/
God damn torment/

Making sense
- as if I can,
is nothing but chance
at a point where
I give in
drunk.

Marni©

2008-11-05T16:42:00.001-07:00

2008-10-30T17:27:00.007-07:00

How To Disappear Gradually
10.29.2008

How to do it:
In a crowded train station of a Northern night
with 6:00 pm clap-rapid heel movement
listen to ridiculously sad tunes in your breast.
When one grey train finally arrives
sit looking at blur-tree-window and fast gravel,
swallow the irrefutable tang of give-in.
Stoic quiet and silent,
observe:
alone people curl into
sweater/jacket
music/book
pastry/coffee
their conversation spent in airwaves;
watch them not watch you
then gulp tedium in the throat.
Eat capon, sip dairy, read Voque,
then sit little, surrender, make way to the lou.
Help despondent and irate jump out the mouth
then flush expunge-levers top secret into sewer.
The train stops
Step on blacktop
Take the long way home.

After several months of this a black sweater
dangles like rings on the bones.
(Stand for the applause
almost zero remains!)

Thin slips you into a comfortable crack
and each time you hide in the crack
now you’re disappearing
and as nearly disappeared,
concerned uniforms darn tube and vein together;
the steady drip of morphine drop into blood.
Soon no train station crowd
or blur-tree-window
fast gravel
and alone people -
you know you're nearly disappeared then!

Finally when the heart is too anemic
to stand in the crack any longer,
you know out of site is achieved:

Listen! The flat-line ring
from crack to everlasting breadth -
Now you have disappeared!

Marni©

2008-10-29T09:13:00.001-07:00

Virgin Hood Suicide (For T.G. L.)
10.26.2008

To know a wolf
hurry’s home to me,
I should bolt my door
and kick him away -
I should be careful
of sharp teeth
eating on a heart.

But wolf swagger under
Canadian moon wearing
whitish-blue star shine,
with taste for dainty meat
drowning your mouth
as you roll your eyes
with ache to my hand -

I won’t turn away
from big eyes you have,
all the better to see me with -
nor refuse the mouth
of big teeth you have,
all the better to eat me with -
No, I’ll stand stupid,

And after you bite holes
through my faithful heart,
I rush into your arms
with feet blood bathed,
their steps trimming land
in the red silk tassels
of a virgin hood suicide.

- Marni©

2008-10-29T09:12:00.001-07:00

Poet
10.26.2008

Tonight I lose words
by my stillborn tongue -
“Those words” I think,
forgetting they came.
What were they falling before my feet
like a snake springing back on itself ?
Something buried in darkness
that I must dig for,
my fingers break themselves
while working to find words.
“Those words” I think,
forgetting they come.

- Marni©

2008-10-29T09:09:00.001-07:00

Cyber Fuck
10.25.2008

She’s tubes and jars and things
A+ positive sex-fuck that sings
Hyperkinetic love drip -
Cyber kinetic space trip –
The circuit knob stroke queen
Of man splatter wet dream.
She’s an automatic love vessel
A heart of stainless steel trestle,
Robotic hypnotic synthetic lube
Bondage wire in the land of n00b.
Stiletto spike buzz click
For homosapien love lick
And killer titty laser ray -
The hot shit of organ grind play.
New make of liquorice vinyl lip
With electric thighs for easy slip,
She’s the new Model No.1 -
The real bitch-bot made for fun,
Yeah, sit back, reach down, ease into it,
All circuits a go for easy transmit.

Marni©

2008-10-29T09:05:00.004-07:00

The Unquiet Grave
(2001)

Inside a garden of darkness
Beyond black gates clad in iron
Cheerless shades of dismal beauty
Move from beneath the blackened bows.
It is there
Floating adrift upon rivers of dreams
Patiently awaiting the darkest hour
That I sleep.
White translucent skin
Against black on black -
A colorless ghost flower
That bereaved in death still blooms,
Definitive and yet nothing
I come to seek resurrection
And so I live
In spite of my ending
And find in death
A conceivable future.

- Marni©

2008-10-29T09:04:00.002-07:00

2008-10-29T09:02:00.003-07:00

Sad
10.21.2008

Here it comes again -
Perpetual pale blue blot,
Sickened snake slitherin’,
Lion eating its own tail,
Throat choking on its bones.

As I sit here tonight
My life folds in on itself
Like a little box lessening -
Four walls into two,
Two into one,
One into zero.

My poor crippled affection
Trying to find its feet
Is like a life without breath,
For I’m unmoving like this -
Stagnate as stale meat
That a dog wouldn’t bite.

My sadness wants death
Who dresses in black,
To be a gentleman desiring me,
She would gladly accept
His hand in marriage.

-Marni ©

2008-10-29T08:59:00.001-07:00

Untitled (No.1)
10.17.2008

My thoughts of you
give life to passion,
and from out my mouth,
birds!
birds!
birds!
Mad stark birds,
flying from tree to tree
lost and starving
with wings of fire,
painting the landscape
volatile red -
furious blue -
branding everything
in rage and sorrow.

- Marni©