her poem

you left
your hairs
everywhere my body still
throbbing
from the rub
of you
your voice
bounces off these
these clean white walls
your delicious dirty words
echo
fill
the darkest
mind of me

today i know bliss
i know the bliss of greiving
since one cannot
miss
who one has not
loved
i love
i clutch
every stray strand
i find
of you
you left
my love you have
not left.

i got it bad, skirtbutch.

new lover

we walked into my bedroom
together in the darkness.
your eyes reached out
to my walls.

you paint? you asked. i paint, i said.
paint me, you replied.
i nodded.

you took off your clothes
in the darkness, new lover.
my eyes reached out to feel
you

my fingers, my spit
stroked the canvas. your body.
i paint, love. i painted you.

lady skirtbutch of the earth.

love brought me to my knees

woman, i remember
everything you say.
i said, i've fallen for you, hard.
you go, kiss it...

i have not quite disappeared.
my scraped knees have been here,
still recovering from her
gravel love.

i've made a healing balm
with the mud-stuff of life:
i'm still a lady. still
skirtbutch of the earth.

don't mind dirt. don't know
where dirt begins and i end, been
treated like dirt for so long--
these days, i just let her treat me.

come dirt, come be me. be my balm.
don't know how to write
no love songs.
i mud instead.

sola, i remember everything you say.
i said, i've fallen for you,
hard. you go,
kiss it to god.

but that was a clumsy childhood game.

prized possessions (jawbreakers)
scooped up from the ground held up to the air,
in tiny hands like a prayer.

i'll recite my prayers
from down here, sun.
i'll keep kissing it
to earth.

dirt come, be
my balm. sun done gone
give me grave, gravel love. kicked
up the dust of my heart.

i'm still re-covering myself
in the grime of me. grime gonna soothe me
in time from the crime of you.

can't keep (looking up at) you,
love, lest
i kneel to death.
i mud instead.

come, be my song.

storm

my heart rains.

earth worms squirm
out to greet each
skipped sog beat.

i am alive, somehow. in love,
somehow. drenched,
all ways.

you held a palm up against
my chest. but i am
here, love. in love, somehow.

hear me sing now, soaking
wet. weeping
life.

my heart reigns.

-lady skirtbutch of the earth.

stay away from this state

george's skin looks like
someone's pair of beat-up
white sneakers.
he has a red moustache
that is eyebrow-thin;
a goatee, dyed
blonde to match
the bleach of the filthy
knots he dares to call
dreadlocks.

he works at
the place where
i like to get my coffee;
where they make
him wear
a hat, thank god.

yesterday he
asked me why i
looked so angry
and after a pause, i said
because people
like you
think i owe you
answers
to questions
like that.

he frowned--my bad--
and handed me
my change. i guess
i won't be going back there
for a while. too bad, cuz
they have good coffee.

seriously, i don't know when
i got so mean. living here
has made me sick
with isolation. i wish someone
would start up a black-owned cafe
in this pristine, cold, godless place.
the only woman of color on the main
strip is a psychic gypsy who
also has bleached dreadlocks and also
asks annoying questions:

skirtbutch, are you having a spiritual crises?

one day i'm going to raise
enough dough
to live somewhere
hot and not
so bothersome. maybe atlanta.
new orleans was a distant
dream, deferred
and now it's hard to imagine
making home
among the homeless.

how i wish i had something
less self-obsessed to write
about new orleans today. i just
need to fall inlove
so badly. a sexy distraction.
a long kiss hello...

of course, i don't know
what kind of people
i expect to attract
with posts like these.
lesbians of color who
like honest but
tortured souls, do
apply here. i promise you
won't taste this bitterness
in my mouth.

why
do you write
so angrily, skirtbutch?
because i am
having
a spiritual crises.

oooh lord, lady skirt of the dirt.

not in the freaking mood

if you see me sitting
in the middle

of an otherwise
empty hallway
and my face is a canvas
for mascara-black
tears
and i'm gnawing
on my fist so as not
to punch a wall
and i stink
like a runaway,
like a runaway
dog
please don't
ask me how
my day went, if i'd like
a cool drink or a suck
of the good joint
you've got dangling
'tween your thighs. please
don't offer me your number,
your apartment keys, your needles,
your compliments, your two
cents, your candy or your
lust. just
let me be
pathetic
fed up
fucked up
tagless
rabid
foaming
at the mouth.
because your timing
fucking sucks
and i'm not sitting here
praying
because i'm trying to get
laid.
aching
like all things--
like you, too--
shall pass.
so pass, homie, pass.
pass, lady, pass.

to my rich benefactor

i wish i were content to be
no one. but i am all
caught up in wishing
for fame.

not the kind that gets you
killed by the papparazzi.
i'm not down with that
michael jackson type shit either.

i only want to be followed
to the point of gaining health insurance.
somebody please
offer me a radio interview
that helps me
pay my rent.

i don't covet after-school spots
on MTV. most days, i'm certain
i have reached my inner
rock star status. today, though,
i just want some big mouth
to reach my potential benefactor.

where are the righteous
rich people just waiting to fund
my poor but brilliant ass?
i know you're out there.

call me, lady skirtbutch of the earth.