Being High Over the Promised Land

The promised land is
what?
land, & to whom

does it belong?
The conflagrations
are hissing There is ash

between my toes, ash
between every
hair on my exposed arms

& legs I think of our
vaporized heroes It’s not
that they’re begging it’s

that they are panting,
(shut)(look)
[up], leaning on the edge

of the turbination
of the cold-rain bursting
sand; the granular

feel of the sky
- someone’s twisted
idea of ‘being high" -

but don’t
worry(about me)there ]
is always the come -

down, sky diving(stop)
having not put(stop doing
that)the vest on, the one who

pushed you knowing
you had no
parachute but nor knowing

me at all of course there is money
in this, to the pusher. Welcome
to America & God bless.

8.6.2005
- michelle greenblatt

2.13.2005 - Ballot Counting

They’re counting ballots
It was just the election
a couple days (years? minutes?)
ago & they’re counting ballots
Not here, read date above

(& don’t look back) the Iraqis are
back catching
bloody tears in chipped bowls
mixing them with contaminated
(how ever untouchable you think)

water for soup. When a man was
(you are you are wrong) asked
what he would do with a million
$ he said he would buy each
member of his family

a balloon. Fall, fall deep
into (doge the bullet) the abyssal
spaces between the words of his
Lord who answers when
he was

asked what he would do with
the rest of the money
for he did not know there
would be any left
over and stared. At the camera.

In stunned silence. Jounce along
the blood-specked (American-)
sand (Iraqi) ask yourself how
many poets have been bombed
out of existence

2.13.2005-9.29.2005
- michelle greenblatt

Night in the Sepulchre

I am gathering crow feathers
in the hopes that I can
cross over to the other
side
with some goddamn help
for once.

Or I can light these alkali papers on fire;
I like fires; I light them all the time

to remind you of how you
made me burn:

that incendiary
night you left then called me

crazy
&

a liar
about what happened in the alley,

to your friends,
A LIAR.

That night, a black smudged
X

carved onto each side of my
face, each bitten breast,

scratched arm, bloody cunt
smeared in the soot of lies

(The other
side:

The man
in the alley

holding a gun
under my chin

pressed against
my neck,

& his
hands.)

You shoved me into the
sepulchre

with the rest of the rotting bodies.
I thought I fit there,

though the next day you came back
to me,

by then I thought I was dead
again.

For the man who brought me back

11.23.2003-7.28.2005
- michelle greenblatt

First Shot (Balm in Gilead)

as the ambulance siren hurriedly draws
near for one of my boyfriend’s dope
addict friends I think always

before I could outrun the tortoise always before
I had worshipped the snake and loved big men
with big guns then one taught me

so many words I didn’t know all
the books on my nightstand all the poetry
this would later cause how I would use this

cacophony of power and whispergrunt no
clattering spoon no eyes rolling
back in a head no sugar disintegrating on

a tongue just two flapping eyes cupping
power like
breasts then ripping distorted shapes

filtering thru I thought maybe just this
once balm in Gilead so the irises that taught me
the one lesson every mother tries to teach

her child never walk down
a dark alley alone you stupid bitch
taught me much more I only told

my boyfriend who cast me out
of his house with a high and wicked smile and that
shot did come the one to the head to the vein

although I don’t know which was the first
shot I know I loved both of them the milk
the honey the sonorous boom

4.1.200
- michelle greenblatt

Conduit for Death

there’s a hole in your brain, Nellie, let’s fix
it, we can do it with my extra brain matter
I’m sure I have some lying around somewhere -
we can pick my brain, Nellie, get it? I will
jump if you toss me a coin, I will stand on my

head; I will perform tricks, as I feel the jerk of
all the little strings I watch what warps in & out
of those shadows. plenty but not you. plenty
but not you. I paraphrase my self & try again.
Nellie, somebody is looking for you, but no,

you do not even come to the scent of gold
dust. perhaps you are tired. I’m exhausted from
the vertigo, the fire blazing thru my veins; conduit
for eyeless eyes, corridors for moving masses
of money, passing between hands for death.

6.16-8.8.2005
- michelle greenblatt

A White Death Before a Blue Future

“I know we always lose, and that death and destruction of another is infinitely more real and unbearable than one’s own. I think know how many times one has to start again, and how often one feels that one cannot start again.”

for K. A.

Nellie, Nellie, did we not fall
asleep on the sofa curled
in each other’s arms did
you not catch me when I fell
like glass and shattered
did you not pull
me back up safely
where I slept until morning
the white morning
did the lark not sing
soft songs climbing in
through the window
is that why I didn’t see
the hole in your chest
the leaking hole the glass hole the white
hole Nellie why did we eat
breakfast white
breakfast tender, chafed
nostrils why did we spend
days long days white days
wasting
away pink flesh
glistening on our white bones
grey brains flattening
against the sides
of our skulls we later
gathered quarters
from our pockets
to go to lunch
in my car, my silver car
encapsulated
against the world
glass windows rolled up
glass teeth chewing glass
hands moving glass
lips telling each other glass
stories
cold lurking
in the corner when we drank
cheap wine
at night
red wine
white nights
pushing deep into the sky the stars
black sky white stars
Nellie why didn’t we fight
for a blue future
why did we put our backs against the wall
hands over our mouths
glass hands glass mouths
were we lost in the white
mazes weaving corners out
of blackness to forget
what we couldn’t
forget
evaporation sublimation liquefaction
scraping away
at a full white moon
Nellie don’t betray me
with your death
a white death a red death
ask your mother
what I’ve done to you
don’t betray me with your death
who will catch me when I fall
in the white bedroom
like glass
off the couch
onto the floor
who will catch me
when I fall
out of the white mazes
into the blue future?

October 2003

With Thanks to Doctor Childrey
& Alexandria Rand

once more
knifes his whole school
of students in the gut.

5.6-9.2005
previously published by X-stream
- michelle greenblatt

Seeing Nellie. South Miami Beach. Collins & 17th.
7.8.2004

I thought you were dead Nellie, I could have
sworn your mother called me screaming
that you were “D-E-A-D” for she could not

even say the word
but there you were down in South Beach
during the Memorial Day Weekend Festival

hunched on a dirty sidewalk
skin lucent with heroin fever; now I could
have sworn you were dead Nellie

even A. told me so and cried to me about it
by the pool at his house on the beach
instead of fucking me as usual

he said you were gone Nellie
and I think he may have even been sober
for just that one night

but I saw your black hair
and black clothing Nellie
wide brown eyes lined in black

skinny frail body
slumped against a moldy wall,
head lolling around with pleasure

do you remember when we used
to go to Checkers Nellie and get those
French fries you loved so much—

but even if I did see you, it was not you,
only someone that looked like you, Nellie,
and certainly they were not alive either.

7.8.2004
- michelle greenblatt

Nightmare Stammering

the story that goes untold is a long
one longer than CNN’s 24 hour a day news

reporters have been mumbling
about since January 7, 2000 which was when

I got so drunk I could
barely stand up my prediction was in eight

years the United States would be the kind
of superpower

everyone laughs at right before it’s sucked
into the supremacy vacuum the story that goes

untold amongst the slinging of political
mud: dead afternoon: pavement searing

hot:(this is the part where they tell you
BOOM an explosion)a car

bomb was detonated & the day is black
as pitch the little Iraqi girl next

to him her arm got blown off if
you look you can see

her sister is dead, too. her head
got caught in

the one sparse tree; it was hard for them
to get the ribbons out

of the branches; if you squint
you can see

the hole the nightmare stammering
where do I go? next

“there” will be that “somewhere”
& the nightmare stammers on

5.23.2005-7.1.2005
- michelle greenblatt

Cut Up the Women

"It's a story as common as a penny, son--
I don't think it's worth anything to anyone."
- Ani di franco

At 78 rapes per hour i'd say as a country we're coming
Along nicely If you'd like to cut
Up the women that's 1.3 a minute I'm a cut up woman
Undone and unstitched the man (men later on)
was so unsorry i was 31 per cent of the women who suffered
Rape related-post traumatic stress disorder the first man
I'd say after i was pretty stressed but after the second year it
was
rather
Routine the second man i was just delirious i think i was
seeing
things
Definitely i saw a
Gun
I was twice
One
Of 1/3 of women who will be assaulted in her life as a country
We're doing quite nicely we're well acquainted with our rapists
78 per
Cent of us know us our attackers that's nice for us at least
we
can say hi

- michelle greenblatt
3.24.2005
* Statistics taken from the help line, usa inc.
...previously published by down in the dirt / www.scars.tv...

A Page from the Instruction Manual

A calculation: Breathe
blankly. Blankly
breathe. A story “so terrible
it cannot be told for fear
the reader will disgorge”
So save yourself
some trouble:
take a shoelace & tie it
around your neck. Or
shut up & do something.
Stop it with the amnesia.
Stop black as pitch
from being pitch black.
Leave the fears of the school
yard to the child.
Leave the ossification
to the government.
Leave the desiccation
to the President.

- m. greenblatt

Just Fall

standing in front of you
stripped of clothes almost

naked but not / quite it occurs
to me time reflects a mirror

which reflects a god who
reflects damnation which is

pinned on his forehead
like a note on a tack board by

a people too desperate to care
about salvation ::but:: I am

here to talk to you about this
crumpled page which I chose

to write on b/c it is ragged
like my country, of

course ‘tis of thee, sweet
land of misery, froth

ing at its gaping red
mouth caged w/a clipped

left wing; a terrible, scarred
Face, too naïve for Truth,

too greedy for accepting
just the barest necessities

so we leap toward the
impossibility of breathing

carbon dioxide perpetually
& abandon poetry, flock

around for the next re-run
on t.v.; holding hands

we jump out of the tower
& just fall, just fall.

- m. greenblatt

A Common Fire

Shoot you know
you have a great shot or too
thrashy that I am dust heaps
in me knuckles down as bullets rap
ping at helpless Hello minutes when

blue churns thru white to make curdy
milk of our mothers’ breasts yes
the country is all hole zippered
open fainting in front of its favorite
neighbor’s liquors cabinet

the arpeggio of America sounds
like a dying whisper, then the
darkening aria exploding
quietly behind the shred of the
color line, the Veil, the oil, the

stillest torment that will ever be
phenomenology of wounds
many days have (especially
during gasp war days defined
by tombstones) emaciated

skin among a battening epidermis,
voltaic deliquescing sweet scent
of sweat brightly camouflaged
in the shape of two black boots
& over 1200 pairs of eyes staring

down hardly hurriedly to see if we
have found a common fire of random
ness or alliance if we are still burning
holes thru money playing games w/razor
blades & pain scrapers scratching

graffiti off walls or are we (our space
being used for breathing?) using
poetry for a sudden different
elsewhere of war (perhaps here?)
I am wondering what it would be

like to die w/shrapnel in my face
ass arms legs noise of a newlywed
ventral declension (scrap metal & skin)
seething w/rot now ready set. now go
to coordinates (0,0) for their bones

are hard scorched desert snow &
we have Winter-Vacationed the death
(O wonderfully yes so we are a splendid
apology we have to offer you & you
the masses) in our abyssal little minds

the occupancies bitterly slammed & small
febrile minds behind a skull deracination
incapacitation the machinations going
forth going forth tick tick tick says
the metronome staring us down.

- m. greenblatt

Nausea

keep your eyes fixed
on one spot on the horizon when
you are nauseous which is what

I try to do
every time I watch the news war
is the word on the streets

war is the only word
in the mouths
of our politicians war is the only

word in the mouths
of our hungry but peace
I think peace as I fix my eyes

on the small flaw on the white
wall in front
of my television

- m. greenblatt

Suicide Sidewalks
(as seen in "Down in the Dirt"/www.scars.tv)

past the pond sealed
with algae down
on Oakland Park Boulevard and State
Road 7 where the children play
in tattered streets
in front of their bruised
homes with a deflated ball
on suicide
sidewalks gutted by pot
-holes
and long dead fathers—courage, her face
shows courage, and years, hollowed
out by a dead and dying family, a house
unbuilding itself, deconstructing under the pinch
of a needle, a last daughter collapsing
in the bathroom, eyes rolling back
in pleasure. mother’s slow stride, her eyes, caving
from the inside out, destitute
drags on her cigarettes, trapped in America
the tragic, dreaming of America
the magic,
imagining a world where her daughter will eat
instead of feed, praying for a place
where her dead daughter
is still alive,
sitting on the worn sofa, suturing
all her wounds.
to have enough life
to go living,
to have enough stars
so that she doesn’t need a sky—
she gets down on her knees
she prays, she weeps;
she breathes raggedly.
She is hungry but sold her food stamps
for money so she could pay
for her living daughter’s last
uninsured hour long stay
in the hospital.
(Charcoal)
She watches
as the children play
in tattered streets
in front of their bruised
homes with a deflated ball
on suicide
sidewalks gutted by pot
-holes
and long dead fathers

- m. greenblatt

The Crying Girl

A girl in one of my endless English
classes was crying in one of the endless
corridors normally I keep to myself this time

I asked her what’s wrong she told me
she saw the man who raped her
when she 13 she didn’t know anyone

who was raped she had no one
she could talk to who could relate
so I told her I was raped

many times as a child she stared
at me then said I didn’t look like
the kinda girl who could get raped

she kept staring
I’m pretty small I don’t weigh much
she said maybe it’s the way I hold myself

and my combat boots always looking
like they can kick some ass but I have never
kicked anyone’s ass except

my own I laughed bitterly and wondered
what the kind of girl who looked like
she could get raped looked like

- m. greenblatt