breath
silent
sweet whisper
cooed inside dreams
honey veins the sting
it comes on spurts of hot
metal polish in the blood
wolfram exploding in the night
thinly necked liquid sand holy grail
near blue Nirvana send me off to sleep
Grieving
stella mori
universe so dark
just like in my room tonight
stars so far away
a conversation
i remember that garage
atop of the Echo Park hill
pretty in spring
bikes built to thrill
now my hands empty
mind full of memories
that fueled my entire life
the end nears by
we come close now to the station
we could never use words
only cryptic sensations
what sets me apart from the Godly
she asks
i can’t forgive what’s been done
i explain
all that is left
are two daughters
and a conjoint broken heart
desperado
when the armor sheds
and the spirit is bare
he likes to sit on a swing
legs spread across the grass
thighs dangling between heaven and earth
he doesn’t have to plot
on how to bear the brunt of sin
when the struggle rises yet again
instead yonder down by the willow trees
the children playing hide and seek
remind him of when he was a kid
teetering between his mother’s hallowed hand
and the inevitable curse of becoming a man
shoreline
the nutty wafts of kelp breeze
wrap around my body
looking at the waves they crash
the little crabs shake
their tiny pinchers at them
they all just laugh
their foamy locks behind them
my fingers remind me
that i’m digging in the sand
i smile on my left side
two young lilac gulls screech
over some meaty mussels
my attention zooms in at the ferris wheel
closing my eyes
subtle waves of nauseous panic come
but you’re gone
your arms not there to hold me
your lips can not whisper
your hungry desires in my ear
your wandering finger tips caressing
the nipples on my breasts
as i whispered i want you
we both laughed
the piercings in your lips
they caught my hair
we clasped tattooed hands
the deepness in your voice
only for me
subtle wind moans
only to be cut by youthful laughter
holding my knees
those demons prick at me
your notes didn’t answer my questions
pour toi, Charlie
the cattails sway slow
resin sun settles down deep
she has blazed all day
moon in silver comes
knocking at my back window
dig his Elvis suit
then E Piaf croons
tears brim in my tired eyes
never did i miss
you so much as i
do now even with all of
our misunderstood
way of saying words
to drive each other away
fearing that our hearts
would be ripped apart
by anemic attempts to
share a normal life
you the older one
did not necessarily
know best i was young
i did not know that
fucking my way through real love
in time would never
heal our broken parts
still not all was a failure
truth and wine reveal
little generational differences
laughing a little in the dream i had a roasted turnip with paprika for breakfast maybe that’s it it’s noon on Alpha Omega how does that work for you there is loneliness in her jeer but she keeps at me i’m not beautiful like a spring breeze i’m not delicate like a feather i cannot be a ballerina with two stone feet i am nothing and i cannot write pretty words like the zenith is your eyes i write rusted words like hurt me with your tongue knife and my ideas weigh like mercury on mars but she the Venus does not mind when i do her bidding our way of seeing life is very different i smitten with the downtown proletariat she with uptown well to do’s i can’t believe you are my daughter i know i say that i agree with you it’s too late momma i’m half way gone it’s best this way no hard feelins’ right i know punctuation and the grammar rules real fine but my lips shoot out the poisons thought of in my heart perhaps if reincarnation does abide the cosmic rules she’s supposed to follow i will come back as a super model just for you but now you’re gone and i see you in the clouds above in periwinkle linen and jewels the color of God’s eyes i heard you mother all of our unhappy life together and while on earth your words did bite me i also learned to use their teeth to cut my noose i ran away and did it my way it nearly killed me too but rest assured that in your way as a mother that you were your raising helped me through
Figaro’s
he asked why do you keep her picture there in the drawer swallowing hard i realize that you were my mother more physically beautiful than any woman i’d ever seen no makeup no artificialness in any way i lied and i said oh i don’t know looking out the window at the bus stop i opened the drawer a few more times and there you remained stoic and frozen in your place as he gnawed at the steamy pepperoni pizza hot pocket and scratched his sack he yelled why don’t you put it in a frame and fear broke out in a sweat a slight vertigo took me and i rubbed my head looking for a hit he yelled again and saw what i was jonesing for he says nope not today lets go to the art store instead we dressed in American drag t-shirted leathered and jeaned he held my hand and missed my forehead kissing my aviators instead are you mad he asked i says no and think quickly about the flamingos at the zoo and the empty dark brown bottles of Kilkenny i left in the bus stop trash can two hours ago my feet feeling disconnected from my soul i says no i won’t go and he turns around to see me i can’t keep her in a frame it would be the ultimate betrayal she was Opa’s favorite until she met my Da and ran away with him imprisoned by her vanity and steadfast love for a man of misery determined to be his only queen on the backs of everybody she had to win but death did not agree what are you spewing about never mind i said i can’t keep her in a frame all her life she was held back by her thoughts expectations disappointments and aggressions even her people wandered the deserts and were rounded up in box cars as the evil ripped out their spirit and put them in cages i forgot he said but she’d like a frame she was always a refined lady as he smiled apologetically and the homeless guy with a grateful dead t-shirt on was handed a bologna sandwich by the salvation army guy as we detoured into Figaro’s Bistrot instead
paging Dr. Burroughs, Dr. Burroughs please…
WS i don’t feel that well tonight
the stars are covered in dust and grime
and the corner store doesn’t have the Windex i like
i’ve listen to Thelonius on Bluetooth
and Ravel’s Bolero till the landlady came
to shut me up it wasn’t even that loud
i struggle Billy Bull Baby i see you
in dreams of course with your suits and balding
beautiful head but your brain really turned me on
i’ve been going back and forth for three days whether i should
go to Daikokuya’s for a ramen bowl but i just don’t have the gumption
i think i’m depressed again the tears run like Jesse Owens and i have no interest in making
them stop
W im in head first in the Interzone of my own doing
for hours i sit on the kitchen counter
looking out for the little brown birds who eat the last
pomegranates of the winter and wonder where the
first half part of my life went but i worry more
that i have no specific certainty where my last half is
going
can you read me a bed time story my favorite is “Green Eggs
and Ham”
work by mbrazfield 2001
strikethrough
laced
sharp
clove smoke
in alley i
got what i came for
a ticket to peek inside God’s ear near
the heavens past the Milky Way from up there the world was beautiful
at the American Hotel full of sweaty nooks and crannies where the music was wild in its ferociousness and once infected
the brain floated amongst the red aura of the room while the riffs and the booms and the twangs and the truths were part of a generation dying to speak its aching lonely soul
from the cave with symbols and art from masters of no particular renown prophesies of the pioneers of future trillion sized debts and whose progeny would be prisoners within bars made of algorithms instead i was a rule breaker kid channeling Cassady before she knew how to write trickster of the night wild child who’d
never had to fight with an authoritative parent on account they were already at some of their own soirees as a little tax deduction i quickly learned that a woman’s place was not really where she had to stay and i followed suit because it was the only way my rebellious nature would be soothed and that’s how the old vagabonds took me to see the Clash when i was ten the coolest 6th grader ever summers in Bakersfield sandy hair wild like baby snakes shielded by the big
bad momma cobras picking grapes hearing the night thunder of God and machine never wondering what would happen to me at least not in the day time Al’s bar i miss your soul so many times i bled polka dotting your floors lost my mind but the angels of the green couches were there to call the taxi but no one knew the address rock and roll deep in thought colors floated steadily for me forming live connections to the guys that God called Us do pigeons count as doves i loved the one with stripped wings white neck and red beak hind and fore sight blended in my head pounding breaths waking up in the middle of the deck only to see the headlines im still here Hillel wild crazy as fuck child incomprehensible girl took the diagnostical sentence because you didn’t understand
