Violent Perfumes

I never, ever do this. But I need to. Here is my poem, "Violent Perfumes." I don't know how else to cleanse my palate today. This is dedicated to Bruce Springsteen, and to Juan:

violent perfumes

conjure me your Datura
your plaid pants and your chalk stains
those hopscotch games and tightrope dames
i’ve always been a witness, never witless
to the way you burned my sidewalk

under lighthouses i search for you
up above too, inside their burnt-out bulbs
on the rocks i find the sirens’ corpses
throats slit
heads shaved
androgynous
a feast of silence for the Flying Dutchman

if only i could bring you to my shore
implore you to exist, to forgive me for making you loveless
i’ve never been one to ask for a new identity crisis
but i just might be willing, if you take me shopping
if you lure me into malls after hours

we’ll dance with department store mannequins
wash our hair in shadowy salons
burn VHS tapes with ’80s memories
unburn books both pagan and witch-like

splash violent perfumes
inside the shapes of our changing organs

we are shattered
we are perfume
we whisper sex but shout war
we’d rather chop the tree of knowledge
than Taste it, this apple, this fig

my gig as your role-playing lover
has left me both Everlost and infinite
some mermaids prefer kissing sharks
but this ocean is getting a touch too bloody for my tastes

taste me, my nectar
my emotional cigarette tendencies
i’m not as decided as Mother and Child
though i long to be inside their portrait
their stolen breast-feeding moments

lunchboxes
cartons of milk
chewed straws and recess wannabes
you slip vodka into my carton
until i’m left drunk on regret
where i can’t decide on brawns or brains

these bloodstains are shaped like your yardsticks
rulers never held this heart
only pierced it with letter openers
that can never find a home

one day we’ll meet again, in our lighthouse
our angels won’t be tied down by cords
but will fly with feather wings
not cardboard ones
not kindergarten attempts at Picasso

together we’ll replace the bulbs
as friends we’ll invite sailors and captains to our tables
we’ll chisel at the rocks
so their ships reach us safely

next time:
no sirens to kill
only their beached cousin banshees
and boys in sheets at Halloween
our ghostly playmates
i’ll cut them eyeholes with dull scissors
and hope i don’t nick any last parts
that remember innocence as more than fiction


Copyrighted by Nathan Buck 2006.