BAD TEACHER

Go ahead and write your poems about flowers
Your insipid acceptable locutions that pander to the bible belt
Go ahead and slaughter expression and catharsis
hold me down and strap duct tape over my mouth
Because I am a walking impropriety
because I refuse to fit in to your library fundraisers
write your homages to daffodils
and pronounce Nature God
then tell me I have an obligation
to quote Chaucer at your meet and greets
so long as I refrain from tongueing some chick's asshole in public
go ahead and re-read Jane Austin yet again as you hold on to your tenure
while you step on the eggshells of my broken heart
drive home listening to your Eminem CDs that you bought at Walmart
because they took out all the swear words
that are a pox on your blushing complection
yet you bob your head like you're hard core
Art died a little today
it took a sucker punch delivered by your provinciality
when the bible belt wins
we all lose
But wait a little while and I promise you
your well respected minister
who just pulled the plug on our funding
because his sensabilities deemed us profane
will be caught
with a nine year old boy
in a room at the Vogue Inn on route 20
The kind of motel that sports paper bath matts
and the boy will be hospitalized with rectal bleeding
Georgia O'keefe never painted flowers
"She knew her audience"
she knew how stupid most people are
so go ahead and write your poems about flowers
I'll be over here jacking off to Hamlet
holding his mirror up
to your fucking face

SPOOKY CHICK

This is yet another surname
with an expiration date
Another useless batch
of address labels
another trip to probate court
returning again to autonomy
I wish I could joke around
like normal people
I wish those closest to me
wouldn't cringe
They make demands of me
and I bust my ass
spending a fortune
on drugs and therapy
to work toward self improvement
I wonder how many of them
work this hard
to gain another's love
The path to the Goddess
is supposed to be found
in how we relate to one another
Why is it then
that I always end up on the couch?


fifteen minutes later
after his cialis has kicked in
he calls for me

"You might as well come on in here

everybody knows
the spooky chicks

give the best head."

Ascoltare La Luna

She returns
a sliver at a time
back within me
and I am empowered.
At midnight
when the water is coldest
when she is round
I can run faster
turning in the darkness
like a snake or salmon
moving swiftly upstream
I arch to find and form
concentric circles,
a funnel I can move through;
A wormhole to pass through.
On the other side is ...
Avalon, Atlantis,
the birth of the Milky Way.
The other side is the center
turned on itself,
turned on it's head.
No wind nor rain
no clouds, nor sunshine
the no thing
Ain Soph Ain ...
never ending
and somehow perfect.
Is this me?
This storm's eye
so farsighted
fall's asleep
when she reads too much.
Am I here?
Where I feel in limbo
not happy, nor depressed
not driven, nor apathetic.
Where is this storm's eye
that knows no name
no station
no coordinates.
Floating
floating
simple silence
no rhythm
no symphonies
NO LIFE!
No music can only mean
there is no life.
Listen
find a rhythm
ahhhh ...
there it is
space
is ephemeral
not in four four time.
not now.
La Bella Luna
teach me your mysteries
here
on the other side
so convoluted
disconnected
from that other place
thought to be real.
Teach me
find me Mother ...
I am floating here
in this disconnected rhythm.
Muddy
cannot see clearly
convoluted
floating
waiting like salmon ...
for my concentric circle.

I AM A WOMAN 9-30-10

I am a woman 9/30/10

I am a woman
And my feet reek of The Great Mother
Specks of her black gritty flesh stain my feet
As I walk on her fascia
Blades of grass
Between my toes
Skimming stones in the puddles
Of her blood
I am a woman
And I am round
In all the right places
I see faces
Of a past
Of a bloodline
I know I can be proud of
Of blue and green
A cloud covered marble
She looks like so from outer space
And her face
Is reflected in our lady Diana
Our goddess
Our night’s light
Our moon
I am a woman
And my body has created no life
Other than my own
And a few English sentences
No stretch marks
No episiotomies
No reasons to cry
In the dark from sleep deprivation or fear
Over where she might be
Or what she is doing and who she is doing it with and will she call me.
I am a woman
And I was raised on the triple Goddess
As my mother parlayed the three ladies to me
All down to the letter J:
Judy Collins
Joni Mitchell
Joan Baez
My Maiden my Mother my Crone all the way to 1981
When it all stopped the moment I heard Led Zeppelin and called out for my father.
I am a woman
And my father killed my brother and got away with it.
I am a woman
And I have drunk from the poisoned well of my father’s misogyny while Demeter cried alone every night and I learned the fine art of the blowjob for the 800 dollars I sat and stared at on the edge of my bed in Watertown.
I am a woman
And I have felt the white cold polymer table against my back as the doctor told me to lie back and administered the anesthetic and after the D & C was over he asked me if I wanted to see it and I said no and twenty years later I live with the resignation and the regret yet I am not sorry.
I am a woman
And I dance naked at midnight around the game pole in my back yard every full moon except when it’s cold outside.
I am a woman
And I have slept on the floor of the mudroom with the dogs just to avoid a coked out boyfriend.
I am a woman
And I have been hit by a man.
I am a woman
And I have packed a laundry basket full of clothes as quietly as possible in order to leave in a car with no brakes and drove all the way home to my mother in Boston asking for help because I was a coke addict.
I am a woman
And I know the suffocation and loneliness and mortal fear of psychiatric emergency.
I am a woman
And I have attended the closed casket funeral of my high school boyfriend.
I am a woman
And I have let a strange man buy me breast implants.
I am a woman
And my sister and I almost drown together.
I am a woman
And my sister and I were molested as children and mom didn’t believe either one of us.
I am a woman
And I have dated a cross dresser.
I have hidden cocaine in my boot and come home from a 600 night with only thirty bucks left because the rest of the money went up my nose and I had to stop and practice diaphragmatic breathing because my throat closed up and I laughed out loud because I didn’t die.
I am a woman
And I have been to prison.
I’ve read Diane DiPrima and Virginia Wolfe and Nancy Qualls-Corbett and Pat Califia and Clarrissa Pinkola Estes and I called my mother drunk and told her I was smarter than she is.
I am a woman
And the black guys at the bar used to call me thick and juicy and I laughed and thought of Delmonico steaks and wondered how much they’d pay me if I let them take a bite out of me.
I am a woman
And I hate it when people use witch instead of bitch because they think it’s more polite. I am a Witch and it offends me.
I have let Hades spoon feed me pomegranate seed in the bowels of darkness and I have learned as much in the underworld as I have ever learned when May gives birth to cherry blossoms that glisten in the sun.
I drew down Mahakali and let her fight for me and she won the battle to overcome my fear.
I drew down Diana and she led my quest for answers and hunted down with her dogs my animus.
I drew down Venus and relearned how to love my own Apollo.
I drew down Gaia and healed myself and reclaimed the renewable resource of my mind.
I am a woman
And I believe in the Goddess.
I am made in the image of the divine.
Great Mother I stand here humbly before you a product of my faith.
I am blessed
I am whole
I am unafraid
I am healed.