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 April 2011: Poetry Madness Month

poems by Angie T. Jeffreys

1. Therianthropic

Walk across

shop windows

searching signs

for Anubis,

Persephone,

anyone but

God. Buy the

statues, anything or

all things that aren’t

 me. I bought a gun

yesterday.

It’s a lighter that

fires dancing flames.

This artillery does not

cut through:

it melts

instead wax in prayer

candles that snuffs

 when wick disintegrates.

It’s a wet slow death

speeding with ocean tides

and moon cycles.

 Anubis: friend of the dead.

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I pray to God to pray to

the Jackal to peel

the dead from my hollowed

heart bones.

I tell

God to tell Anubis

it’s just like

an onion: the tears

cutting out his eyes

are nothing but

embalming fluids.

I pray to God to

conspire with

 Anubis: friend

of the dead - to seal

dead flaps somewhere

south from me in fire.

I ask Him to ask him 

if he only seduces the wholly

voided with his gentle fingers;

if he tickles us awake only to lay us down

again or if he makes

exceptions like pruning pieces

from us, with but our last shot

that’s to pray to death

just to live.  April 2, 2011

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2. Metamorphosis

I bend like a tree

cracks into

to pieces under

you.

Half of me remains

rooted below

ground,

soaking

 water through

deep roots, and

you’ll never

find them 

all: maybe

five or maybe

 millions offingered strings

that suck dry.

 And that other

piece: a

skeleton

petrified

suddenly wood,

atop dead

leaves and

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and amber

tears, dried

 with

a tower

tethered down

 with nothing

but gravity

that can outlive

hurricanes’ worth

of wind. 4/3-5/2011

3. Haiku Hand

 my palm-lines tremor:

fault-lines crack open and quake

 with a silent rage.

4. you are nothing more than a moment

You were nothing more than the passing

of a moment. I felt

you the way I feel

a gust already

passed by. It’s exactly how

jet streams hang crucified

in the sky, before I guess they’ve

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faded by. Your kiss is dry.

My skin does not recall how to be wet or also

on fire. The wind blew it by.

Friday, April 8, 2011

5.warning storming

I have stories

about my past,

but

I forget

them.

I remember

dreams: day-and

-night :holographic

spinning-clocks

blurringeverything

 with gray.

Storms are

 made

of water

and they

have

nothing

to do

 with Time.

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They arrest

you. Before

you react

to seek

shelter.

Lightning strikes.

So you assume

it couldn’t

strike here

again

tonight. But

 what no

one’s ever

told me,

is if

striking you

counts as

lightning

striking twice.

6. Winged Arteries

I.

you wrap around

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 me your arms

become legs:

trunks of roots that

pin and unintend

do suck me in

 water weighing

in me from dirty

oases found in

deserts of underground.

II.

Behind me

ringing through the back

of me - bones, your heart

beat felt like

an angel’s wingson its back

do feel

through my

chest and hair

III.

 winged roots,

beating in flight to find

another place without altering any space

to just land before

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8. holding up my eyes

Right above your eyes slammed, they are shut

up in black and white. Dawn will never break

through this morning’s dreams: stories about

the glow surrounding a sunrise’s eye.

They’re photographs by an artificer inspecting

lines in front of the backlight. Isis’s daughter I no

longer need to raise my gaze. She gave me a scarab

that rolls my eyes along the skies that do shine through

clouds and tree-branches. Look up to see that I am 

in front of your days, and yes that’s me beneath your

nights..

 April 18, 2011

9. the man inside of her

What does what feels so hot-soft, to his

touch of any piece of him feel

like on the other side of my skin?

My heart’s an eaten ship, sunken into

the intestines every time you lift your fingers.

Death shivers me in the offbeat

of every tap. He quakes at the sight of my

lips as he makes them slightly shake. I

found my sun in my suspension in my

skull knocking ground. You left. You said

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the hotter the moment then

you didn’t say the colder

the grave. Does the crunch mute my groans

as you grind your boot against ground bones?

10. king of cups

You collect cups like cups collect water

drops ‘til you’re fat . Then you tip;

pour out past the lids’ edges.

You’re made from cups that catch

sweat clouds that you did not make. Metal,

you are temperate against the weather:

letting her palms warm yours while

she precipitates you back to room temperature

again. If you start to feel hot it’s because she’s on fire.In the same vein: if you’re chilled, she must be

unbearable.

In your palms, crafted from cups, cup her

like warm water above a dam of soft skin.

She evaporates from your surface, leaving nothing

but space between the eyelets in her lace.. 4/22/2011

11. heart water

 my heart is too

lean of a bloody

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 muscle like a spigot

 when the water’s

been turned

off I forgot to

pay the bill

because I don’t anymore

drink and bathe

inside of the heart pipes

 my brain feels my

God feels or maybe just

sees but they process

volume of fluids

pumping through

 my veins inside

and down the

drain I don’t

keep track of the things

that are already going

to throw away because

people always told me

I had to throw

out the old water and buy

some new my brain

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pays my God pays me

in droughts of apathy

for my heart slick and dead

tissue blue which was

 who it was who leaked

his way through

nightmares past

4/29/2011

12. what I do not know 

I shall not kill what I do not know. My brother

is my own stranger. My strangers are my friends.

I tell them, thou shalt not kill what thou dost

not know. They said, but we do. You have

the wings and the head of an angel, but the body

of a beast. I said but Isis had her head replaced with that of a cow after her own son beheaded

her, and Osiris still loved her. The dead

and the alive still see life when they look

directly into her eyes. They said, you said, I

shall not kill what I do not know.

May 1, 2011

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