isha

she has -- a frozen glare, with pointed lips
and pouted eyebrows, arched: dangerous and sharp
(she is short)
but has the presence of a statuesque titan
her hair, near white, turbulently lies
straight and perfect
her cat's eyes, green, peer suspiciously from their deep set niche
in her thin, wide, oval face.

she is dignified, yet infamous for her many men.
she speaks spanish__________________in russian



oh that little green box

that creepy picture.

your feline features

intrigue me.

Jargon

Oh stop it! 
Sequins are tacky. 
Poems are jewelry
and exclusively able
to show off that
word.
The kings all fall
eventually:
they weigh too much.
The angels sparkle
but lightly,
with gemstone eyes
or even better with none: 
radiance is
glowing softly.


-Citron

main hand

he casually touches my hand, asks question. continues with work.

while, I....

                  .....awkwardly don't move my hand.

i....

      ....glance at it, every     so         often   . feeling strange...

and then i wonder,

 my mind wanders,

every hand has an invisible network of henna

a written record

have you ever wondered how many people your hand has touched?

a high 5

a handshake

a tap on the back

an accidental awkward brush

many many thousands i would think.

how many people have i touched       who are now dead?

                                                           who are criminals?

                                                            who are famous?

it gives me new reverence for my hand.

indeed 

i marvel at its intricacy

-Pamplemousse

Hallway towards a window

Shoulders make them seem older in rough fabric coats bobbing browns and hat.  Dripping squeaking shoes a film of slime on every industrial floor tile.  There are no branches in this hallway, but when people turn off it seems like that in the movement of the ocean, like levees could be island oases in the way the sea water moves.  Speckled and musty shoulders, pushing forward toward some beyond and in headed goal.  The hallways is prismic- a perfect square at each end.  I came in the hot blooded torrent from a metal barred door with chipping paint.  Before us is a window.  Here is my turning- says one young lady in embroidered jeans.  She'll never see out it.  I have places to go.  I'll never see out it.  I have places to go. 

-Citron

fog

with fog, the world grows opaque
a puzzle with pieces missing
that your yearning mind
                                        completes.

early, early in the morning.
when the sun's first yawns
have barely bounced from the sky
the fog creates a world,
                                     far away.

that misty field? it is an ocean.
i am on a road, adjacent to the water.
one can hear the crash of waves.

that shadowy house? it is a citadel.
i am on a road, in some medieval town
and see the flaming torches flicker from the towers.

those dark bushes? a low wall.
i am on a road, crossing over a border
marked by the wall
that will take me, anywhere i want to be.
anywhere but here.
over the wall, i see the grass much lusher, greener

the grass is greener on the other side.

the fog has cleared

the world goes on.

oh that i could find the passage to,

"the other side"

-Pamplemousse

Uncensored mind rambles, 3 minutes.

Frank Sinatra is wonderfully romantic.  He uses words like heaven heart happiness, cheek to cheek, wonderfully.  I can tell him exactly where in our history those words were created and why and by whom but I could never make someone swoon without chemicals.  But you know what else?  I'm stuck stuck stuck because (hahaha he says crik, like in browned old novels) (I make novels sound like ground beef)
because I can only write poemns about history class coherently.  No essays work- I can only express under this strange influence, the language of which I don't necessarily trust you to understand
as it is my own. 

I don't mind though.  Dean Martin is singing now.  It's like a nice little sidewalk.  I have a sidewalk to walk between two galaxies.  Actually I am in the center of two neuron black holes at once.  I only want one neurotransmitter stream but two kinds are needed to make me send the right information.  I wish I could write that into my philosophy essay...


-Citron

Uncensored mind rambles, 3 minutes

An aurora of glittering lights, violent violet shrieking as a brush of paint and I wonder where this picture was taken, it seems like a fantastical natural phenomena that exists only in dreams but there it is in "options" among condescending roses and jovial wildflowers of a merry color. Who takesthese pictures. A building splashed with union jack graffiti paint, who has times for cameras? Wouldn't it be hard to be an empassioned photographer? Seeing everything in angles, sudoku boxes. How can you relax? Just watch the world in peace through naked eyes sans camera screen.

-Pamplemousse

Chicken Dinner

Sleepy eyes and microwave beeping, stove fan hummmms.
I never made it to dinner, too busy staring at a blinking screen.
Irony chuckle about memorized life goals.  Beep beep beep.
I didn't bother to cover cold chicken... popping and sizzling on the white disk.
Steam and juices already overflowing from mass of meat
one bone held by thumb and index I rip the body apart, twisting
and breading flops to the side.  Outside fat and smooth,
splitting lines and lines on the inside, like celery but spicy
and more malicious on the base back of my tongue. 
A grease high. I stop scraping my palms off between bites
and a thick marination up to my wrists
turns me orange. 
Pulling at some other part,
I can see each individual, curving rib bone, black against a golden breading in light
cooked translucent, the spine curving into a wing opening for flight.
And then I realize- I forgot the chicken. 

The pile of dark bones and burnt ends stares.
Rivulets of blood always move ridiculously slowly
from the murdered. 
It is a very large pile. 
In all of this,
I forgot the chicken. 


-Citron

car window

breath on the window

swirling manmade fog on glass

messages written in transparent outline

disappear within a glance

courageously write your secrets

deepest most personal dreams--

and watch them fade

 and disappear.

30 years old.

After now, and travels and merching for an indie band and school and three well named research experiences and seven thousand three hundred and five cups of coffee and a bout of pneumonia and love, after that.

I.

I wake up to bells
that toll church and death
and go to both calmly
sweeping the
old stone.

II.

I peer at the young man
through a beaker
where one
drop
finally
dis

engages.
into the pool. 
My apartment is filled with art
by friends.

III.

I don't wear makeup,
even though by the rulebooks that's needed
for pristinity.
I know which tractor exactly
did that to his leg, and can explain hay harvest
and find breathtaking beauty
in your soul
I am not you yet
I am starting to get your freckles though,
and sun through mountain trees.

IV.

Rehearsals and lessons
taking life and soul and being a humming
a humming humming instrument
in the little boy's hands,
careful fingers work over his
and over my long ebony and steel magic wires
block I sit in front of the brass section
and sometimes my ears hurt a bit
power through me
beautiful beautiful humming humming.

and V.  as well.




-Citron

ceramic plate

why do you stare at the ceramic plate?
don't you know it's much too late?
to gape make your eyes inflate?

that flat flat circular plane
makes the light go blane
as it dims my tired brain...

why do you stare at me so blankly?
it unsettles me and frankly...
you look shuteye depraved and lankly.

-Pamplemousse

scissors are my paintbrush

snipping and cutting the cardstock skin of trees

they begin to form the shapes of leaves

and though they are the excess, of the larger shape i cut
i begin to notice that each spindly tiny shard
is a glowing pulsing knut

i see beauty in each slight discard of paper i cut
these scraps have angles...so sharp and clean
i spy a perfect square, accidental, unplanned
facedown on the ground

i can not resist, it can not be wasted, tainted
unappreciated

i see a combination of haphazard shreds,
off to the side
it is so pretty
i stop to admire.


but stop.
and sweep them away with my hand. into the trash.

the world is too full of beauties, to stop and admire.
the world is too full of lovely things, to value one perfect pentagonal piece of paper.
one must not lament, and one must not attempt to preserve everything.

just sweep it away with your hand. it is gone forever.

and just keep on...

snipping and cutting the cardstock skin of trees.

-Pamplemousse

4:30am

if the moon smoked,
I might understand that cloud
blown away
by a lung
bigger than mine.


-Citron

Retrogression

We the children of the future
the humans of the 21st century
the offspring of all the world's hopes and dreams

we like totally like fail to like...impress

we who are the distant children of shakespeare, austen, dumas
the master manipulators of words
more than 100 years ago

we prfr 2 tlk lk this

the previous generation granted us a marvelous gift.
technology.
it is wonderful, but if overused, a pandemic of terrible proportions.

i worry for our generation and the ones to come
the internet, technology rule our lives
granted, they are useful
but they take away from a human's creative process,
their work ethic, their mental ability sans electricty

Black Holes

I am not the Sun,
nor do I presume to be,
but I sympathise and admire
the helium.  (not helios)

nononoyesyesyes
eyeseyeseyes

Did you know that we will
never ever ever
be a black hole?  Of all the deaths
the biggest one will never be ours
of all the lights,
we can only witness
the biggest
and the smallest. 

But the biggest and smallest lights
can not witness us.
The earth contains exclusive rights
to witess. 

And should we become a black hole
ticking clocks would slow to a trickle
and should we become a black hole
the light of the universe should flood in
as soon as we fall inside
its dark gravity.

nonono
yesyesyes
possibly,
that's us. 

-Citron

tick tock

no i do not smell the dead red roses
from the gardens far along the golden hedge
i do not scream or curse, over the ledge
willing to leap
unwilling to reap
the nonexistent pastures
of the dangerous wasteland i find myself in.
wake me from this turquoise darkening dream
and take me to where the bees and horses teem.

cliche

Everyone uses crocus
and lily
and rose. 

Now age can make a flower antique and crinkly
so where smoothness was crinkles satisfying
but crocuses and lilies and roses
have definitely wilted. 

Why doesn't anyone sing songs about broccoli flowers? 
They would crunch
green and fresh. 

-Citron

Tornado

have you ever wondered?
that you were born in the wrong time, the wrong place?
that you are not in the right place, and everything is jumbled
because your fate was mixed with someone else's?

have you ever thought
oh if only i had lived there, or been there, or if my parents worked there


i could have been her.


each little action, each detail
decides the outcome of your life

they are the breeze from butterfly wings
that create a tornado

the slight whispering thought
that became an obsession

so, i know all this.
but the question is.

how do you control this? this frightening thought?
each small decision could change your life.
each word, determine some aspect of you.
each glance could reveal something momumental

terrifying

just throw your hands up, and watch the world go by,
whether it encounters you or not.
that is determined by the temperate wind

-Pamplemousse

song for the corner girl

For you
there are too many colors
on the stores on either side
and your chest pains at every misstep
and all you want to do is stand still
but somehow forward is it.
You're supposed to be somewhere,
at none of these rusty
buzzing neon and flaking paint places
but somewhere.

You're a little girl on the corner of a street
and your parents let your hand go to smell the fruit
of the green-painted grocery bins
and the sweet smell makes you sick a little bit
and so does the gasoline
and so does the bookshop
and nobody is holding your hand. 

Well I find stoops to sit on
and play the harmonica. 
I think I scare you,
mostly because you're not sure what music
to tap your little white church shoes to
This particular
steel whistle tune
is for you,
cormer girl. 

-Citron

a matter of taste

you sell yourself cheap

you sit around, waiting to be scooped up...

you change your face for each customer

you act sweet

but you can be bitter

you attract those with exotic tastes

and those that just want the average run-of-the-mill....


....frozen yogurt