a twisted twig i
am not worthy of your cross
Rabbi gather me
Love
truth or chance
take
my heart
tumble it
beating for you
gamble take the risk don’t make me wait long
Russian roulettes corner me black on red
kiss me where it
hurts me more
then go
truth
just
lip deep
i love you
not today dare
to be a fool you might win the game prize
i’m willing to pawn my life for a mere
cold twist of fate
we might find
that we
bleed
my Paul
just tonight can we stare at the lamp lights
gleaming on the surface of the puddles in the street
tonight ange triste will you stand still
so as to peer upon your waifly silhouette
without it floating from my bandaged hands
can i be your Paul and place my ear atop your heart
and etch in little kisses i love you on the
renegade palpitations there about
tonight no wine no smokes no laughing hard
no sucker punches no living the life no mosher pits
no altered minds
just a little silence with you ange betwixt my arms
instead of me amidst your legs
you don’t always have to run away scared little bird
pecker and picker of my nerves and priestess of my vacuumed
universe
one time before i leave and i lose you to the vampires
body parts
splinter
i hope you look at me
from across this blue bed
immersed in your man business
i immersed in a primal hot urge
turn around i command you
i laugh in my head
i crouch quietly like a tigress
licking my lips fantasizing
of your thirst quenching sweets
raw essence on my pulsating tongue
waiting for you to turn off
the computer lights
and turn on my gyrator circuitry board
i’m bathed
i’m slicked in the patchouli you love
my t-shirt the loose one with LA Kings GO!
flash you a warning i do hope you know
that when you lay here
i’ll nuzzle your neck
tug at your ear
lick down the center
of your bristly chest
and right when i reach there
the music comes on
you get sentimental
and you pull me on up
to kiss and to hold me
and call me your love
that’s when it’s ruined
and i start to crumble inside
i know that you told her
the same thing last night
for a wild Irish boy
tempest in your name
wild love ripples through my soul
tease me rowdy wind
stolen nectar
you blue humming bird
i orange blossom opened
satisfied you go
evermore
on the last day of Hanukkah 2001 i was hung over from too many filterless Camels and clove cigarettes the night before i couldn’t sleep and i chain smoked i made my way to the cold bland bathroom to wash up the radio was on and i danced as i walked i moved like any skinny slinky Brit androgynous heart throb it boy from the 70’s i thought and felt kinda embarrassed after my ritual i went downstairs to chew the fat with Jonathon O’Mara from the coffee shop in the Tenderloin he wasn’t home so i went for a walk the sun was hot for a San Fran morning back then i was able to ride the bus for a quarter the drivers would mistake me for a high schooler it was easy i always wore boys clothes and black chucks my gay boyfriends always gushed over me as they tried to capture my femininity i loved having gay boyfriends we’d all have fun dance etc and i didn’t have to put out and if they needed an emergency fiancé to introduce to their waspy east coast family members they’d send out the beard signal and i was there we were all excellent fucking actors but behind the good times and the jokes we all lived our lives as prisoners in very painful cells some of the folks in our circle were even handed death sentences through illness or addiction as far as i went i had to fess up to my boys that men’s clothing might keep the rapists away and that when someone had the balls to tell me i was beautiful it would hurt very badly along with a litany of other issues most of my boys would gasp and then weep because they too had been deeply hurt continually for long periods of their life but we were a rowdy bunch we had survived our way and through those unfortunate passages we realized we were all connected and that race gender orientation and any other label didn’t really define us we were very strong and wise human beings with the capacity to love hard and relentlessly as for Jonathon and i woe upon anyone who’d mess with his sweet pea for a portion of my life i was blessed enough to know such a human capacity existed and i can move forward with this evermore
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
Aaron
when our palms met
that balmy Chinatown night
a little lost canary
from the corner pet shop
sang a melancholic cord
switching his little face
from right to left
he looked at me
and flew away
i had fallen in love
the kind of love
that makes you scrutinize
your breath your weight and even your thoughts
the kind where
you leave your beloved
friends pets and dishes
behind just to think about him
the kind of love
that makes you check your phone
fifty times at two in the morning
you know the kind you lose
your soul to in the encasing darkness
and nothing feels the same
distilled death and i churn my spirit
but you danced with me
for a few years
you are no longer Aaron
i am no longer me
i don’t recognize my smile
its erased forever in your cusp
my heart has melted away in your hypocrisy
my common sense buried under your peach tree
and Aaron he no longer lives here
and i don’t recognize
the song of the canary anymore
words less spoken 