Goose Filth & Bottlecaps

I'm not going to crawl in there.
Wet goose poop will soak through my jeans
and slime onto my knees
Cold, wet--rejected by goose cells
I'm not going to crawl in there.
Dry goose poop will stick onto the palm of my hands
Urea dust, seemingly more potent--toxic
Riddled with unknown bird bugs
I waddle in, only the rubber of my tattered Converses
are allowed to touch the filth
I feel myself tip and steady myself
Hand pushed against
Corrugated insulated walls
Bottle caps used in lieu of washers
Spread nail pressure
and keep cardboard in place
I grab goose eggs and cautiously back out

Bathroom Sink

Water swirls down the chrome plated drain
Canned laughter erupts, reminiscent of,
Laughter strategically inserted after
Limp noodle Brady Bunch punch lines
But Alice does not clean my dual sinks
Elsewhere she sits, sipping coffee
with her Sam
I squeeze SoftScrub with bleach
onto enamel and chrome coated metal
Never able to exorcise
Canned laughter swirls
Escaping down the drain

How are you doing Jack Mueller?

Some days I wonder how Jack Mueller’s doing
If he still slings that string of snake vertebrae around his neck
I wonder what he would say if he knew that I had lost my voice
Washed away by the rain, blown off into straw fields and buried
Turned under with spent gray topsoil by thick silver blades
Jack probably couldn’t see the smokey lisps
Whispered rumors of some poet, sometime back
Lost endurance, asthmatic lungs and mind
Only able to write single stanzas
That trail off…

My imagination is always better than reality
by t. zoey benally

My imagination is always better than reality
(Alone) with the door mostly shut
Listening to deepened AC hum kicked started out of fan
Five flights down, hydraulic release
Hiss and blows clean asphalt circles
Ant rocks and raised dust tumble towards diameter fringes
Mr. Coffee carefully repackaged, encased in cardboard
Makes its way--pardon me, excuse me, oOo--sorry about that!
Onto the bus and up into over head storage

This was NOT what I imagined

Walk across unlit tile floors, arm un-kinks, fingers unfurl & feel the switch to flip
Earth friendly tubes crackle, hum and stutter, finally release a white yell
That ricochets off the stainless steel faucet fixture
And aches my eyes
I lift the handle and allow pressure generated miles away
Devised by civil engineers, scratched to existence, H graphite on grid paper
Oblivious that I (alone) would be thirsty (alone) in this apartment (alone)
On this particular Friday (alone), many years from whence
They conjured waterline diagrams and schematics
Carefully considered and chose PVC pipe, more carefully picked than China patterns
To deliver these 16 ozs of chlorinated water
Which I will drink (alone)

This is NOT what I imagined

I kick off my shoes, unbutton my pants, crawl out of my shirt
Shimmy into flannel pajama bottoms and worn t-shirt
Too transparent to wear in public
Slide between cold cream sheets
Serenaded by bits of metal hooked together in rectangles and smaller squares
Interspersed with springs, discordant squeaks
Unintended instrument, which will never lullaby me to sleep
I play the game—BE STILL
Fortunately, simply breathing does not set off
the metallic dissonance, creaking cacophony

This is NOT what I imagined

Nineteen Thirty
by t. zoEy benally

Nineteen thirty, and the world was poised
on the paper cutting edge of chemical technology
Symbolic fingers and cuticles prepared to be shredded
Wyatt Earp might have saved us, but, alas,
he was sucked into a wild vortex of discovery dreams
And he didn’t wake up in the morning
A time of innovation, breakthrough and understanding
New galaxies—not just the Milky Way
gravity related to electromagnetism—Einstein’s idea
Zeppelins flying around the world and landing in New Jersey
And Lysol douching

Exploration of Antarctica had begun
But American women were still “Held in a web of indifference…”
Patents were being issued for coin-operated vending machines
And women were still trusting “now-and-then care”
Women were careless and risking “married happiness.”
Grace Kelly was born and what did she have to look forward to?
Prescriptions for “Lysol brand disinfectant for douching—always.”

Day after heartbreaking day…
Held in an unyielding web
Leo Reisman and his orchestra sang
“Happy Days are Here Again”
But not so for these women
Webs spun by spousal indifference
Resulting from—you know—poor feminine hygiene
These women were banished because of—you know—poor feminine hygiene
Women equaled Trotsky, husbands equaled Stalin
Lysol equaled disinfection and—you know—feminine hygiene
Women were put on a five year plan of
Industrialization, electrification, and mechanization
A five year plan of Lysol douching

December 1931, poet, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay
Downed a bottle of Lysol, and his last words were
"They tried to get me—I got them first!"
But Lysol douching continued
And the capitalist misconception that
The only good bacteria was a dead bacteria
—funny how that mantra has been reused
for a variety of subjects including me—
Continued to be churned out
There were myths that Lysol prevented pregnancy
Vaginas smelled like government institutions

Perhaps it was psychological warfare
To permeate our mothers with the stench of Lysol
To make them seem like they were one with the government
Blurring the line between women, mother, and home
And the federal government
The whirling eyes of Ka
Telling us to “Trust in Me.”
And beneficial bacteria across America
Were being killed
Paving the way for opportunistic pathogenic bacteria
By Lysol douching.

Muse-less
by t. zoEy benally

I cannot write because my muse no longer listens to me.
I feel her back--smooth, oily shale
Ignore me.

I am shunned, and words are repelled
by the force field that she has installed around my brain
by the iron walls she has welded around my heart.

I am unloved, and have been relegated to a hell
of perpetual false starts.

And each time I jump the gun
Bound out starting gates
I am tazered.

Portions of poems stick in my throat
Uncried tears, unacknowledged sobs
Partially masticated truth
Questioned
and never digested.

I am left malnourished with scurvy
Dehydrated and infested with worms
And my poems emerge in tatters
because she has left me only
boll-weevil infested elbow macaroni
and contaminated muddy water
to consume.

She is like a silent cat - my former muse.
Sleek refusal to reveal my transgressions.
She kneads my flesh with freshly peeled claws,
Purrs, and sheds silver fur on my black sweater and face.

I wish I had a picture of your eyes.

But no camera would capture what I see
when we talk about mundane things.

Like trying to take a picture of the moon
when it ambles over the eastern horizon
magnified not by earth's atmosphere
but by an illusion created in my mind.

Maybe I am the only one that can perceive
gold fire burning in the afternoon forest
that is your eyes.

Maybe I am the lone soul that senses infinity
and that listens for echos of pebbles dropped,
smash against the bottom
of seemingly endless granite enigmas
contained within these glimpses
into your soul.

I wish I had a recording of your voice.

So that I could listen to quiet wind
pushed through wheat straw, filtered through
evergreen sprigs, moistened by cool rain.

Maybe I am the only being that can detect
the crackling plasma bubbling under
quiet shushes at the edges of your words & phrases
Alone in my static reactivity to your soft accent,
the sole being with receptors,
cognizant & alert in this reality.

I wish I had answers
to unasked Questions
Questions that remain sequestered
only partially thought
at the tips of comet tails & eyelashes
Questions inhaled & held tight in lungs
in anticipation
of a quick kiss.

Origin
by t. zoEy benally

Mitochondria were there at the beginning
Nidus that brought all the layers
of complexity, precipitating out,
careening out of solution,
out of matter neither created nor destroyed.

PAD Chapbook Day 22
Response

At 7AM the hollow door wood reverberation sounded different
and holey-bat-tights it was! Knuckles at the end of a friendly fist
accosted my door, and the person at the end of the arm was for me.

At 530PM three additional knocks were again for me!
What shift in the earth's rotation has allowed gravity to shift
and caused these people to drift ever so slightly over to my door?

PAD Chapbook Day 16
If there is a knock at the door, It usually isn't for me

Two doors painted the same blue as the blue in Chevron gas station signs
Separated by three feet of wall and insulation
Two chiral apartments constructed resembling two hands unclasped
and unfolding with thumbs as front doors, and wrist as second means of egress
So when three knocks reverberate through hard wood and disrupt the air
in my apartment, I don't bother opening the front door because
it probably isn't for me.