POEMS BY: Jeffrey Bennington Grindley
PEBBLETHROWER
i was throwing pebbles at your window all night
wishing on your falling curtains
draping hope one dream at a time
in the frame of your silhouette
movement was detected at 3:45
it was only a vulture circling over our
intimacy
waiting us out.
the crack at the bottom of your sill
allows for some fresh air in there,
keeps me out in the cold
My whispers turned hoarse a little after 5
and i woke up your neighbors with my hacking
three packs of nicotine
it might be better to take the poison this time
and you'd open your mouth and say everything
everything I've been asking for
the last 2 months
all as i die........
Your arctic articulations
in this now antiquitous relation
make this an exercise in
ventriloquism
it's still me
maybe my voice will pull your strings
just right
and I'll catch the falling dress from your shoulders
guide you into my heart,
hip to hip
and my mind would orgasm long before
I came
I come to my senses
i was masturbating under your window all night
hoping for a quick glimpse of your cheek
i ran out of rocks and my mind is blank
so i'm shootin blanks into the bushes
fertilizer
for you
I'll just leave it here,
maybe you'll want me when you see it
and you can -like fish- have my spawn
by the thousands
I, hacking up three packs of nicotine
exhausted from my five finger workout
,collapse and wait for the morning
light to once again refuse my re-entry into your life.
THEY CHIPPED AWAY
They chipped away at your concrete cheekbones that stand strong as your nations once did.
Cheekbones that drew back a dark curtain revealing a smile I can only find in now ancient photographs.
The red sky held up by your brown skins gently lifting luster
Tough hide from day to days muster duty to one another and creator
In the process of living producing culture not the other way around…
The pure work of your hands even now endures, alas it seems only in tours and museums though the smoke still rises from your kivas
The river still runs in veins beneath skin in theses streets. You marched barefoot hundreds of miles some dying children in tow to be relocated to alien landscape so that “we” could have our skyscrapers and deal maker capitalized quote civilized millionair schemes?
Here in New Mexico I can here you under the concrete, requesting birthright restored from under our feet, so I take off my shoes and try to see if I can save some of your essence from being crushed by the marketed moccasins I tread with. The poisoned legacy of me. Reality of we.
WE chipped and blasted those cheekbones with our sperm and our smallpox blankets while up went mt rushmore proud and amused.
New Gods to worship
Who bear testament to the pride we have as a people for exploiting kindness and weakness….
Atonement for genocide a few thousand dollars just to say (as an afterthought) oh gee yeah I guess we were pretty wrong, um yeah but after all your blood line is too thin to correct now, lets shovel tradition out now to make way for economic boom, your better off this way …and BOOM blasts the dyno mite up goes the reactor, plutonium radiates just right….
Over to the right, just a little more the rubber glow in the dark tomohawk will look great next to the taiwanese headdress in the shop window add a pack of Marlboros to the display, ahh now that’s America!
Boom yeah that’s it right there by the photograph of the chisel-chinned murderers of Mt Rushmore.
THIS IS THE RAIN
This is the rain in my belly
the tingle when my physical
mental and spiritual seem to form a haze
that surrounds me
the rain
again
this is a skateboards wet wheels softly
rolling through dark streets of tar
the awakening of something ancient
in the parks surrounding trees
this is the rain in my belly
the wain
of sirens
calling from behind veils
of legitimacy
the broken shards and planks
drift
transient through
the false intimacy
of neon smiley faces
pink
blue
a mothers coo
This is the rain in my belly
grey mass inside thick skull of protective atmosphere
drops thoughts from cerebral cloud coverage
Electroshocks light me up
the thunder comes much later
you can count it
1 2 3
why must the truth be true simplicity is lovely but unbecoming to the human race
it tastes
it tastes
at times
like a low voltage battery
and
at others
it tastes like
her
Four feet
Four feet
and closing
closing the hole in the sky
my roots satisfied
......................that was the rain |
