Land
by Darrah de jour

Mexicans scattered along the drives
of old homes
with shards of wood
shattered windows
sharp enough to splinter the corneas of
wandering eyes –

hands the color of cocoa butter
i spread along
my hips
after gaining then losing weight
in quick spurts

Saliva draining into the Vs of
their mouths
like a gutter draining
rain water
into a northern lake
or Ocean

We swear to protect
but don’t.

Fertile lands,
like the body of the mikado
is the body of the Woman
is the body of the Mexican land miner
who – if he got stuck down some hole
somewhere, and Bush were not there to
ignore him-

Would he really exist?

And Katrina comes and goes
and the wars come and go –
but every morning,
on my way to work,
which I despise, that inconvenient 45 minute
straight ride up Victory Blvd or a crowded
highway

Littered with designer and not-so-desirable
cars with bumper stickers
proclaiming the rage of the common
modern man,
if there were such a galvanized one.
They could be swept up in the Santa Ana’s
or forklifted by a sneaky current
easing beneath their feet,
a pancake stuck to the pan,
extracted by the spatula of a storm
or an open wallet,

they could be the sex worker
with her voracious eyes,
her open heart,
and that thick skin
like mucous
that hardens around the once venerable
trove.

The diamond encrusted railing
up toward a Heaven – they believe
so in,
Or else how, could they stand there
The bane of the road
like Indians
like Women
like Prostitutes selling the richest of goods
for slivers of silver.

wearing rosaries around their tanned necks,
and black tobaccer
stuck with pride, rigidity
Latin ego and anger and familial lines
straight as me
tight as a row of corn
into their tired cheek.

as disparate as

the heaven of a girl’s daydreams
that never die
but are disillusioned
by the failing of men
we raise to live
not love

for us.

like gods that discover fire
then set us on

Live it up,
past the Home Depot,
they’ll be there tomorrow
if you need a hand, if you need a hand.

you will never know the depth of my love
for you
because you can only swim in the shallow end;
and the only way i know to give you my heart
is to form a heart the shape of an obsession
around you.
which only feeds your ego more.
and on the merry-go-round i go; trying again
for something real, when all there is in life
to feel.
you will never know the light that shines within
me
because you can only see your next big fix.
so you move on. to the blonde beside me. because
she represents your nearest miss. your high school
kiss. the girl you could never have til now.
too old to swim out;
the waves are bucking you. on the raft in my
strawberries bikini
i summons you back.
to feel the warm glow
to hear your voice in my ear
to smell your neck against my neck
flesh against wet slimy sandy flesh -
alas, it is all a dream and in the morning you will
rise like carbonation
forgetting again
pink plastic castle
that i adore you so
so very much…

He reached over the table, took my hand, and said, “I was thinking that when you walked in.”

“Why didn’t you tell me it then?” I asked, somewhat incredulous.

He had coveted me like Bukowski might a bottle of bourbon at a college dorm, after a drunken sweaty night reading poems to feminists heckling him in the crowd, and the likes of Elizabeth Wurtzel, crushing on him from the crowd. Outwardly futile; lips pulled inward to avoid the smile that creeps up on a woman’s face when she learns you like going down town. And inside, she screams for your cock like a Prozac in the morning, when a hang over can’t even be called that. When it’s power is so treacherous otherwise proof of the devil is meaningless and unnecessary. If the glove don’t fit… And I took a bathroom break. Like Buk might, to down some Quaaludes or dip his dick under the faucet to piss in it. He had coveted me like any sex addict meets his prey. Laughing, head back, enjoying her life. Like any arrow, stick pulled back, tense against the foreground, taut and ready to pierce the flesh, the unknowing heart of the innocent deer, pounding, pounding they say. And pulsating against the prison bars of the ribcage; ready for a thick hard dick to just beg for admission two feet lower. Fuck you and your sex addiction. Fuck you and your meaningless bravado. You are nothing — and P.S. I never, ever came. I want to shout, from behind my innocuous salad, carrots almost mocking me.

“I was thinking it.” He says, and slurps his tea.

“You are nothing,” I want to shout – scream, at the top of my lungs across the table, squirt honey into my tea, and say nothing is what I did. Excusing myself to the bathroom, I take a long look in the mirror. Fucking gorgeous.

“I’m not feeling well,” I lie, when I return to the table.

“You’re feeling fine. Finish eating,” he says, and forces a forkful of garlicky kelp noodles into his mouth.

It was New Year’s Eve and I was sitting at home with my doggie, hedged between attending a roof-top hotel party with the inimitable Toledo Diamond, fit with playfully tawdry dancers flailing about feather boas and star-shape tassels, or taking another sip and flipping on Amazon.com. My thoughts drifted to my most recently ended dating extravaganza. It was with a boy who worked as the V.P. for a company that vets everybody from multi-millionaires to the guy pulling teats in Iowa for his next meal to become the next Neil Strauss. He was covered in tattoos (so much so they appeared shield-like when we first met), wore black thick hipster glasses like a stout glass of Brandy and carried a perpetual stout glass of whiskey. Very perpetual.

He was shaved bald, suit jacket glistening with perspiration from running around The Standard organizing an event that was both hailed and stealth, and in between shuffling men’s appetites and debunking the myth of the cave woman, he flirted with me.

My hands were frozen so I lodged them up his shirt. His stomach never flinched. First test passed. Decent enough.

We (he and I along with six or seven of the attendees) took the train – my first time – to a Hollywood nightspot where he dexterously loaded us into an $800 table with bottle service and two kinds of hard liquor served by L.A.’s version of a brunette debutante. My heart raced. Not for the reasons you might think. Between the bustling young crowd, the cigars and the spilling over of alcohol; there was some kind of carnival-esque firework going off on the dance floor, and add to that, smoke machines. I leaned into his ear and screamed so he could hear me, “My social anxiety is peaking.” He answered smoothly, “OK,” and sat me down next to him on the inside, protected and guarded by his 6’2″ frame, arm over the back of the booth, fingers brushing my shoulder.

Suddenly, Rihanna came on, and I forgot how scared I felt moments before. “I love this song!” He laughed. “Where are you from?” he asked and then nodded for me to tell the working class Leighton Meester my D.O.C. Hemming and hawing, he asserted, “whiskey or vodka?” Um. Uh. “Vodka and orange?” Meester went to work.

Sipping away, blabbering away, within an hour he knew too much.

“I gotta go,” I stammered. “My car’s at the hotel and they close the lot at 2am.” He rose without hesitation, whispered something into one of the guys’ ears, they hugged in that dude way where their elbows obstruct a full embrace, abdomen’s always separate from the male gaze, and we departed. We held hands out of there, and on the street corner, we pecked. I’ve never been able to just peck. My tongue always creeps out, teasing its way into the other person’s imagination. A quick cameo. A Dietrich inferno shrouded by teeth and gums, clever and loyal to both you and I.

“That was supposed to be a peck,” he said, now blushing. “I know.”

I texted Toledo that I wouldn’t make it. I was tired. Amazon.com offered a new Prime thingy where I could watch some movies for free. Stupid, Crazy, Love was available, and tonight, so was I.

(To Be Continued…)

[LOVE?]

so that’s why babies cry
howling the songs
that died in us
bodies wrought and mamed
like iron
scale against the fish tongue
cleared of misinterpretation
misanthropy

so that is why they are covered in fuss
covered in muss
trail of tears we shed
and forgot to share
or were too scared
waving on our way out
burial
casket open;
we shout as our songs die
inside us

fear breaks us – it’s ugly head pushed to the back
fear hates us – rear and stack

this is where we will find them
those tunes of earthly ill delight
fate to the state
ruckus and rotted
holy and slotted
in the tongue
the placenta
the umbilical cord
the biblical way

those babies they come out
 in a rage -
cuz us.

faith slams the door and never catches your purple dress up the back.

my desire for you
is almost as strong as my desire to write.
i will never forget the look on
your face
when we first met.

your eyes
were so blue and round
and shocked
by the sight of me.

and as your memory sifts into loose powders
narcotics to the corners of my mind

i remember needing you like oxygen.

and i’m sorry i could not let you go sooner.
because the sweet death
that turns wings into transparent bodies separate from
their levity-bearing machines
revving silently in the air
like babies shafted from the womb

you turned into a man
right before my eyes.
men used to be that 50% i cared about
like an annual visit to the dentist.
and then nine years after swearing you off,
you came back like a taste of dark chocolate.

the bitter curious idea of more
was enough to make me pray for solace

because the first man that i ever met
dropped me

seared me
a filet venerable to the butcher’s knife
splayed to the elements,
wrapped like a jewelry box
spoiled children
might hock for an iPhone

a pawn shop diamond
hidden beneath layers of soot and cigarette ash.

yeah, but i’m not a victim, i’m a heroine.
if only heroin were an option. fuck, if only.

i wish those snuffed women, would come forward and become
useful.
i wish the same for every good man
who hides behind his gender.
who silences himself when he could be a shield
or else? why? would you have been built to protect?
not to rape.

keep me near. oh boy, keep me nearer than safe feels
and i will do the same.
i will let you in like before.
when my walls were non-existent and the thought
of you trampling shards of glass
toes bleeding, hot of coal, hot of ass
huffing and puffing
and blowing the house in the air by sheer might of will
windward with human hands
mightier than any father or sword,
Rapunzel back together again, oh it makes me sigh.

it makes me weep.

darrah, c. 2012

Unicorn

by Darrah de jour

Your eyes flick
like a cherried-cigarette
As I watch the ashes
of All I desired before you
careen to a seemingly
Endless floor;

Destroyed before us
the headlights enhance
the fog
As I slam on the brakes
Cushioned by a down-cover
Illumination clock.

Cars are ugly, I pronounce
“What would you rather?”
I want a Pegasus, I say and squat
to mount
As you grow into a muscled
Seraphim;

horns pushing out from your
temples

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. ~Aristotle

{cling to me like an Aristotle butterfly, letting go never… count the inches up my legs, reach around my throat whilst inside me; suffocate me with your smell, musk and citrus and berries. and love me with the fondness of children sucking popsicles until nighttime slumber without supper. distract yourself with me, your never ending toy — until work is a meaningless endeavor and all that matters is the minuscule whimper of delightful sighs; icy in their clever maneuvers to rescue you from circumstance; in the mealtime midst of rushing romance, we resolve to win over the world, with the simplicity of our first and last dance. -de jour}

Thanks to a dear friend for recommending I watch Big Night this weekend…

And read, “Bridge of Sighs” asap!

The story of this infamous bridge inspired an impromptu poem…

I want you like a prisoner assaults a bead
of sweat
bouncing childlike in a rubber tank full of helium
and surprises;
the last time he may see the sun
shining or the breeze molest a young woman’s skirt.
This prisoner of mine
who regrets nothing until this moment in
time;
when his foul breath rots
stinking of compromise
deprived of the minty ocean
turning over like Twain
or Wilde
in a gravelly end
Woolf in her shackled blue deep
rocks in her pocket weighing
ambition to reprieve
One day, never, he will see her again.
On the bridge of sighs. He weeps.

I dreamed of you, my love.
I dreamed you died.
And, in my nighttime slumber of no reprieve,
In the symbolism of my dreams,
you were Kurt Cobain.

I went to seek solace
from the black widow wife.
Courtney Love
was surprisingly sweet
and understanding.

Where have you gone, my love?
The only man I see
while eyes whirl helpless
and my heart is buried further
into the stream?

I raced in circles
seeking him;
this blonde dead man
who I knew was mine -
even if the world could not.
And in the spirit of the holy
in the minds of the money
he was gone.

I asked what he thought of me
to all I seek

But nobody knows love like a woman
knows love
(that’s why we always know when you’ve strayed)
and nobody sees blue where there once was red,
and when the red can’t fade, you find your
way – don’t you?
like the blue-blooded dog and his royal master’s flash
you fine man you find the door.

I dreamed of you last night, my lover man.
With your eyes of blue nile
with her creeking arm
and her crack-spent blood
she offered solace,
but there is no ‘morrow worth god
delivering, if this woman can’t be
with you.

O’ lover man
o’ where can you be?