Tuesday, May 3, 2016

James Diaz- Three Poems & Photo


This Emptiness you've Gathered Up in your Arms

Bottle up
that long neck of the shore
line across 
geno-typical space
from now on I'll hide
the indentation 
the water you seek
move mud into boxes
underneath willow of breast
how rain slides from mouth
into streptophyta 
into nowhere at all-
which came first,
pain
or the memory of pain?
Are you still standing in line
for the bathroom
at the county fair
your green hair raising suspicion
your eyes breaking hearts at the tilt-a-whirl
when you puke you call it punk rock
but when I puke you call it feeling sorry for myself
agile finality to gripping curtain cusp 
you can laugh for now
breathe easy
but the moral is another place
another time
gas station sodium light
liquor in a brown bag
unshaven legs 
yelling at the cops
in a ripped X-Ray Spex t-shirt 
“I've seen your blood rotate
inside of the earth, your cartoon infinity
your land of plenty 
turned to shit cuz you've made the whole planet
immaterial!”
carried away in cuffs 
teenage sounding voice
echoing for miles
in the dark thicket of a hopeless town
& as bruising as it all was
we'd still do it all over again
you and I
full of piss, blood and shouting
right up to the final scene
the settled score.



Monty XIV

each shadow is the longest
where I live 
near the birch wood
off of the interstate 
& my hands are crooked
like memory
let out of the stables
tumbling
each tiny stone
across the deep blue
and tell me this
if love were a choice
do you think I would make it
in this way
cobbled knot of light
at the back of the stove
burying my poem of you in soot
the boot blots the moon
& soon you will be so tired
& the road will not rise
but settle / the bottom of pond
like a shimmering heart
you naked I imagine
lacing the silk curtains across
the backbone of weeping elm
& how could I ever hold you
without cracking completely
open
here, and here, and.....
I can't carry the next word
but I... so wish... I could...

to your lips & you'd drink
for hours & hours &...

my hands 
would glow 
with all of the light 
you left there...



Monty XV

The truth is how you travel
the is rest how you live
one hour, pure sky
no one hears your heart beat
still fingers tracing hesitation
across the mirror 
deep religious eye of nothing
on the door
the road won't always
let you merge
so you crash into a  field 
& what has become of your dreams
shatters infinitely there in the dark
you pick the parcel of air
you want most to breathe
& say her name three times
Monty, Monty, Mon...
though the third blanks you out
mind winded off shore & her memory high above you
think of this, you aren't the matador
the chase is inside of your body
glimmer bound sluice of steam
floating in the east
& when it suits you you'll return
as you were before
a bit more weighted shadow around your eyes
everyone knows love is blind
but what you've never understood
is how just when you think you couldn't
get anymore alone
you do
& how when you do
you think of her & your head feels soft inside
like the clouds just entered through your ear
and made a small straw bed in between your eyes
and wove pure light out of you until you slept
& how when you slept
so did your desire,
so did everything you couldn't have. 





Bio: James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the founding editor of the online literary arts journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in Indiana Voice Journal, HIV Here & Now, Chronogram, Cheap Pop Lit and Foliate Oak. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/
 
 

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