Metempsychosis

Allergy is a modern
Plague. We've come to
Reject our environment, the
Same as it's rejecting
Us. Take your five
senses and invert them;
Begin with taste and
Smell until they saturate
Your new impoverished sexuality,
Sinking through embedded texts.
Sickness arrives in Ceylon
In a launder-faded dress,
Assuring you otherwise with
Her perfumed manifesto, a
Steamed narcotic envelope that
Hides a woman's reality,
When she mistakenly waves
At the deceptively familiar
Figure in the crowd,
Realizes the horror of
Being buried alive in
Her own backyard, feels
The stinging folly of
Wanting to spare the
Necessity of evolutionary pain,
Searches fruitlessly through silly
And serious headlines in
A soggy newspaper, the
Ink spidering away from
The heart, oscillating between
Synapses in the slowest
Game of call and
Response, pausing at the
Chance of a meal.
Enameled embarrassment wrapped and
Sewn in newspaper drippings,
A funeral's dead opposite
Gives a moving speech,
Hands tracing, memorizing the
Sadness of a face,
Foreheads touching, more intimate
Than the kiss goodbye
Bringing the beginning of
A colder new year.

Low Paper Lanterns

Opiate-numbed and whiskey-colored in late afternoon,
Light followed its nose to the floorboards,
Wishing it had lungs to puncture with the shattered glass
(that morning it had broken the window,
needing a breath of fresh air).
Later, in the evening, it stumbled among gay men and
Angels on a smoky porch, unsure of itself, slinking
From cigarette smoulders to low paper lanterns,
Teasing the resident snake charmer as he closed
His eyes, bending to blind the piano-player into finding
Clearer notes before it slipped, satisfied with the change,
Into sleep and out of view.

Eavan

We blot the pages of our own new dictionary
With guttural vows still in our throats,
Delighted when we discover accidental rhymes,
Protean through the lengthening hours,
Loosened by the nozzle.

In a story about drunken magicians,
No rabbits are left innocent in the hedgerow:
I am the real Cynara;
I jump while she dangles, and I am jealous
Of the price of the whore's breakfast.

Prostitutes and socialists clog the veins,
Bonded by a cold mimicry
And the familiar nausea that fades with sleep
At the third coming of the father-figure,
When the lies creep softer than lullabyes,
Spreading warmer than the pooling sheets.

No one sings about the suburbs anymore--
Blame settles on the delay in light
Displaced from astronomy to television sets
(it never arrived in time to fully sway);
The myths were born before we needed them.

Now the nicknames are relatively harmless,
Only dangerous in the mouths of
Ex-lovers and schoolgirls
Restless for a quick game of crucifixion--
A scar is a sign of healing, after all.