letting blood happen

out on Bonaventure, biting the braids of my knuckles

and thinking of how this cold-buckled South

must talk to Ireland across time in ghost-talk;

thinking how in France "the essence of the stairs"

is like wanting to pop a balloon; and how i live in

a place that holds all its places in the same hands;

then, it gently hands me my white, western sense,

that precious gem of cream itself, it makes me hate

me after my reading of Baraka and Marmon-Silko,

even if i'm half Basque, maybe knowing where luck

comes from, a maybe-Euro-hunter/gatherer-group,

probably so quiet, probably just knowing what it is

to hide, even with Franco. But maybe, just maybe,

that old blood never drew any blood from any Native

American man, any African man, any Iraqi man, any

Japanese man, any Vietnamese man, any Russian man,

any woman, even. but my ostrich egg, that creamy gem

of the now is what pervades--so how do i stay here and

live with the immunotoxicity and all of the race-myth

toxicities? how do I live with dependency and chemicals

& chemicals and vitamin B12 deficiencies? how do I keep

kissing ass for $20 an hour with my fingers free from the

food, but hair in my eyes? how do i stop craving & craving

the American tongue's last wishes, and say "fuck you" to

every man who ever made any addictions? will anyone hear

me in this place, so loud with liquor, Christians, parrots--

wild, biting everything off? will someone hear these songs

out on Bonaventure? where my hair is the shape of a paper-mache

balloon and woven so thick it can't hold it's own weight.

glitter or not, here i come

the house is just an inch on a hill if you put a ruler

to your nose, and inside there's a fridge,

with two birthday cakes inside of it, both

spreading with my name in script. Home

is the place I can say "I'm haunted," and

believe in things like fruit trees, fructose,

and that at least ghosts know where I am

when i sleep, when I don't. This place I

want to find a way to tell you about, that

the cardinal isn't red, and perennials are

made up of the golden knots of time, and

the word diagram of the alphabet is just

a luscious red coat of fur in my memory,

here. But what matters of when I sit in the

the middle of my room, the old silk horse

above my bed looking so small and quiet,

like a tabby cat, i'd say, with a bed up on

the plum tree, watching the blue jays up

and sniggering on the jasmine? Of sweet

histamines, the defenses in string, in any

mother's daughter with a thick rind of

guilt, leaving the pulp in a quotidian

poem about birds and another sour rind?