SPAM--Sacramento Poetry, Art and Music scene

KALI for Gary Aposhian

You follow me around the city for hours

both of you

Listening to your tape before I left

You screaming, “I hate white women”

Him screaming, “Have you seen the black hole?”

Bradley wishing for an Eskimo and an igloo

Leaving one city--alone

Your voice murmuring in the crowd

“I think I’m in love,” as he wails

Hundreds of chiquitas and drunken boys

who whisper, “I hate you” in seductive tones

“I hate you”

“You hate me”

HATE LOVE

over and over

in every poem

I promise myself

I will be happy

His screaming words

“I’m so happy”

“He’s my pal,” you rail

“You’re the virgin sacrifice, baby”

Fucking her at 17

as a union of church and state

Jack Hirschman Jorge Argueta

speaks of speaks of

the black eating

madonna fruit

The drunken white boys

in docker shorts

and black glass eyes

and flaccid alcohol filled dicks

yell, “Fuck these stupid poets”

I watch Ruth Weiss’s face

and wonder what I will take to the grave

We are old and white

and wondering

about your words

I want you

He calls this morning

and whispers chimp jungle sounds

You guffaw

“Who wants Barbie?

I hate white women”

The city rushes by

Every conversation an open wound

Legions of lost women

“We hate you,” you scream

The brotherhood

The sacred dick vows

Cock to cock

You read poems I’ve heard before

He reads poems I’ve never heard

about young black holes

and it is all about sex, magic and violence

Job’s daughter--Rebekah--can only offer up black lines

like twisting water snakes

even my words are black

what you want

“I hate white women”

“I want someone who’s dumb”

My black friend says perhaps

I should change my sunglasses

I should change everything

A brown man, painting, says hello

Hello carrying me up and down

cement hills--lost again

at CityLights I ask for The Diamond Sutra

and the Rosicrucians

The Diamond Sutra is not what I expected,

not Jack in the snow-filled woods

he wanted an Eskimo in an igloo

and a sainted dog

They’ve had a run on Rosicrucians lately

and they’re all out

of love

It’s all stinking flesh

You beg him to read the rotting egg poem

All the masks, the beautiful masks we wear

to cover the stench

and maybe Bukowski can tell me

what it’s like to be

drunk and ugly while all

the girls are powdered and puffed and pert

All designed for the fuck

and I say, “Fuck the fuck”

and you scream, “Fuck the fuck”

Never again

I have nothing but words

and a black hole

and you both laugh as you fuck,

scream as you read poems

Two middle-aged hispanic women of lurid colors

with black beehive hair

packed into black pantsuits and putrid lipstick

followed by two young white men with black glasses

and all the colored girls smile

do da do da do do do

A dirty bruise on my left arm

where you pulled me in the rain

“What’s my name?”

you screamed

and you are stronger than strong

like hitting black water

from fifty feet up

A bruise on my leg

where he pushed me

in and out

of love

I carry monkeys on my back

up and down the long streets

I’m looking for Columbus

sitting on the cum-stained cement

as people--I have seen all your colors--

talk on by, just walk on by

while lone-cat harmonica wails

when the rainbow is enuff

there never was a pot of gold

My metaphors become dry and thin

as the skin on my face

and my eyes suddenly brim with tears

as he mentions your name

in an off-hand way

as we shove our faces

with hot curry and rice

and

I will be an old East Indian woman

walking silently in the dark--

my shoulders covered--carrying

a sacred white elephant for the good

And everyone is wearing black sunglasses,

the kind I need to change my life,

and I hope that when I am an old old woman

rocking in my fucking chair

you will call

and I will say something to make you laugh

because your non-love

your hatred

your want you’s

your love screams

are skulls about my neck

My red lips are your open wound

And the devil hated Jesus Christ

and screamed and leaped and cursed

I have seen all your colors

snow-blinded

like that bastard

in Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence wanted something more--

the perfect union--

the sacred path of love to life

and Kali laughs

as he

dies

wildly

in the snow