Remember (Bees and Trees)

I’m close to the ground, la fay and la femme,
But the wintery wind can still lift my hem,
And in that moment, I’m Marilyn.
I am guilty of all the things I condemn.
I tug at my skirt, but you just saw my butt,
You wonder if I am a prude, tease, or slut.
That smirk makes me want to punch you in the nuts.
It makes me regret that I once spilled my guts
Before those very tennis shoes standing before me
Became cruel, cool, and predatory.
It's a waste to find ways of punishing you,
But I'd like to make you feel the way that I do.
I want to but can’t grind you into the dust,

So you’re in the clear, and we’re in a rut.
It's just lately you seem to me less than legit.
You can be such a tool. You can be a tool kit,
One big dose of gross that makes me want to spit.
Sometimes you’re an asshole without knowing it.
I remember the bees, getting bruised, and glee
Beneath the serpentine arms of the tree
Where I was pressed by you and into the trunk.
You pinched and pulled hair like some little punk
While I bit and kicked. You applauded my spunk.
I wrote in my scrapbook that you were a hunk.
That time is gone, and all that comes next is
A hair-line cracked heart. How it smarts, how it vexes.
You call me a witch, and I call you a sexist.
You throw dirty looks, and I pelt you with hexes,
And tell myself I’m pretty tough for a runt.
That strength did not magically bloom from my cunt,
Nor the sea, nor the beams of the cycling moon.
It comes from the place where the dagger went through.
It comes from the place that hates your crooked grin.
You’ve seen more than I would have liked of my skin,
Know too much about me, --this, to my chagrin.
But after all this, you don’t know where I’ve been.
I was the skirt and the wind that was blowing it.
You hung on a loosely tied braid. I was growing it.
You used to love me more, but you were not showing it.
Sometimes you’re an asshole without knowing it.

Remember (Star Wars and Rock Stars)

For Devin

Chuggin bottles of Durgango,
Pelt popo with unripe mangoes.
Eat the pope! Eat the teachers!
Homeless folks under the bleechers,
In art class--the fuck you say?
Mangoes ain't the EASY WAY,
And The Station's a bitch, one big tough titty.
So you smoke ganj to mae you giddy.
Kindergarten's ovuh, bitchez.
We'll end up on crack, alone, in ditchez.
I wish I could have offered you a message of hope.

For Lena

We mix a sweet beat, we drop a hot rhyme,
Honey sucklin' and sweatin' because it's spring time.
Fucking mosquitos! Fucking pollen!
On the isuzu! We be sneezin', we be ballin'
We be callin' up Miss Cleo on the hot line
Tell her she is not Jamaican and invite her out to dine
At the piano club or Senses. We eat onion rings or blintzes.
Hoppin' motel swimming pools, just fools hoppin' fences.
Hoppin' them bars and loppin' off heads.
Coppin' streets like police and ploppin' into bed.
Poppin' collas, droppin knowledge--
Do I want to go to college?
Project graduation is a pop-and-lock-in.
Rather be bobby soxin', got a cradle to rock in.
But I don't want to be roadkill littering the streets.
I am Vagina Overkill. We spell it with a V.
(Duh, it's spelled with a V.)

For my poetry teacher, Jason

He says "Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! Please!"
He's metaphorically on his knees,
Bespectacled, bearded, and --dare I say?-- bald,
By sentiment and angst appalled,
Holds lines about girlhood with latex gloves.
These trivial couplets, he cannot love.
But I ask him one favor: Don't knock it.
Respect the pebbles in my pocket.
Wherever they scatter, I must follow
Without you, Like Gretel, with sweets to swallow.

Banjo II

Once there was a little bit with rose bud hips
Who held a lantern to the darkness, a popsicle to her lips,
And cried "It's you! It's you! It's you!"
When your fingertips met her fingertips.
But lanterns like to blow out cold
When wind becomes a leather whip.
You lost her hand.
She said "I am
Trembling and lonely
I am the only
One who's watching over me.
But the hunger and the fever don't got a thing to do with you.
They're just the woods I'm walking through."

Remember (smoking boys like blunts)

For Ali:

Caustic grandma don't know squat
About what is and what is not.
Thinks that I should be a nurse.
I want to rule the universe,
Carry tazors in my purse,
Rule the Rule the universe.
I just want to do some art.
Olives, cheeses, artichoke hearts
On my pizza, on my mind,
Bunches of munches all the time,
But douchebags! Douchebags all around!
Ignorant pricks and stupid clowns!
I like to cook--
Does that make me domestic?
I read a book--
Brain connections electric.
So I don't want to be a wife.
Leave me alone to sharpen my knife.
G-ma, just let me paint my painting.
Turpentine fumes won't have me fainting.
Serpentine raps can never be terse.
Let's Rule the Rule the Universe.

Remember (walking in the sand)

So my picture isn't anywhere in the yearbook. At all. That is partly my fault for not taking senior pictures. Nevertheless, I am determined that someone somewhere will remember me, so anyone who asks me to sign and gives me an appropriate window of time has received a personalized rap.

This one was for Austin:

Collared shirt tucked in to yo' pleated pants,
Looking so smooth and ambient.
You're rollin' like a pro in yo' Jesus Van.
I'm cajolin' like a ho so you will lift the ban
On numerous hugs! Like a morganism,
I'm making plans to build a bridge across the schism,
But who will design it in his architecture class?
The buffsexiest of homeboys, call him Austin Phineas.
Shiggity shiggity shiggity shwo.
T.S. Elliot ate my rhyming skills for breakfast (yo).
PEACE OUT

This is my short post
Because you folks are afraid
Of long posts. Me too.

Sure. I am misusing the haiku. But Dude. It gets a point across.