The Timing of Intimacy

The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

Speaking of trees, sweet amber caroline
is in a bottle of whiskey
rolling inside a purple suitcase, with his sinister buddies
and burping over multi-coloured cobblestones, that no horses walk on.
For today is Sunday;
The sun makes a prism out of everything
and you smile and the winter landscape smiles back at you (pl.)
flecks of white light reflected on your face like snowflakes
Black fleece cover linked arms and wind, love, musses your (pl.) hair.

 The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

Otherwise, there are no fish in the river,
The fishermen are at home with their slimy wives
whose bellies they slit open and rub grains of salt into the fishy flesh.
Mother collapses,
like the chickens raised for food on factory farms
mammoth bodies fold in on slender limbs.
Smells of straw and decomposing muscle tissue
Lethal squawking racks the rafters.
Father Christmas and his nine ghoul dancers
squirt through the skies and sit in the shadowy parts of the room
while your family traditions unfurl like a flag
and sitting cross- legged in your pajamas on the floor
you can only see His eyes
and their tiny, shiny, bloodstained hooves.

The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

Poetry from Aurora

VII.

sometimes when i get phone calls from you

it reminds me of that time i heard a cello playing

in an archway, but i couldn’t see the player

i could just hear the notes evaporating

 

in my dream, we are having a wonderful

time together, watching the children

playing below and sipping coca cola

on a balcony in the city and it’s cold

 

 

 

 

3 Poems

College

They come from home: swamps, sewers, and airlifts
Dragging with them their stench, mothers, and premature behavior.
“Class of 2012!” all pumped up.
What a great “New Ivy League” school
You should be proud to be here
Clearly you tried your hardest
And deserve a real. college. experience.
Close your eyes and breathe it in now.
Fill your fucking faces.
Turn on the showers and wash the shit out of your hair
And watch it float across the floors and down the drain.
Welcome to your personal institution-
Oh pardon me, I mean-
We accept your differences,
(actual intelligence doesn’t really count)
Natural selection doesn’t exist here.

 And gyrate your way to the quad!
Mod! Blod! Sod!
You’re in the Real World, guys!
So hip and horny,
Silent sodomy ailed by urine-barley-brew
The old Grecians whose letters we use
would be ashamed to their gods if they knew

 And mamas look me in the eye
On orientation day so divine
Searching for that kid (the one I’m not), the perfect example
They’re paying 50K for their own to be.
 
Well you’re getting ripped off, mom,
And you don’t care
‘cause everyone deserves their own taste of Princeton.

Sluttery

a rose is a rose,
to a hand is a hand
to a face to a kiss
to asleep beneath trees
with the fluid sliding, manic meaning
sounds like hydraulics and wind up doll
hey. hey there.
because the embrace is such a surprise
every. goddamn. time.
and my smile isn’t fake it’s just
an imitation of yours
and it’s not that I don’t feel, my dear
or cannot see you warm my hands with yours
but once everything starts, like clockwork, to fly
and alarms become redundant to the ears
and it takes so much more to wake up in the morning than a
             fall out of bed
             a beating to the head
             poisoning with lead
as I walk with you,    and he
and she
and he
and all, in good timing, are
alone with me.

 

After the Frat Party

He plunders, face drenched in ale
And over his shoulder he swings the girl
And carries her whooping victory cries
Her blood streaming down his back
With the rain, all the way up the hill
to Susan B. Anthony 
And in his drunken delight
That impromptu wedding night
Strewn between textbooks and roommates’ fright
He hears cheering from outside the window (thanks bros!)
And she, too delirious and panting and silent
Does not remember how quickly he came. 

“Wistaria”

June 5th 1975

Hiking Journal 

Finally! I am at the Broken Glass Mountain Range! There aren’t any trails, completely undeveloped (exactly why I am drawn to this rustic location). I’m camping at the foot of the biggest of these evergreen monuments, Cassiopeia– unlike the others, the peaks of this one are ice encrusted. They glint ever so slightly in the silver of the fog that manifests at dusk. The moon, partially concealed by cloud and shadow, clips these ledges and they glimmer. I’ve always heard stories about their beauty– but I never expected it to be like this. 

At the foot, there are some lovely hills and gullies. There’s also a curious little cemetery where I ate my lunch this afternoon. Lots of Polsins’ and some Abels’, a mockingbird or two. The headstones look very old, unkempt, decrepit (probably from the late 1700’s– I couldn’t make out the dates). Couple miles East, there’s a small town called Wistaria. Pretty average, your basic small town at the base of yet another fantastic mountain range. 

Tonight rest before I venture forth at the first sign of dawn breaking night asunder. 

 

William Helmsley