ketonet passim

rummaging in your closet

Photo by K Adams on Unsplash

hopscotch make-up artists abide in the realm of superstition
their blank slate, thousand-mile cracks double-takes
a mere razor’s edge away, glassy and sharp and brittle,
the better to break your mother’s back, little red riding hood,
and oh, what have you got under your basket?
all of your favorite things, the talisman and silver bullets you hold dear…

I like to hike these sloping, toxic hills behind military barracks
squishing half-opened green-yellow guava, mud-pie waterfalls, the crack of stinky monkey pods beneath my dime store sneakers.

I pretend I’m Captain Cook before the islands burned for Jesus, foraging for berries, coppery spare change, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi sightings, waving my palm tree staff around piously, quoting Moses in that Cecile B. DeMille movie, where haole play gangster dress-up for the cause, hiding cracks in Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat.

ketonet passim
before the fall of man

naked, you will talk to me
of hidden meaning, conspiracy theories, long-lost loves,
perhaps the tender one you hold for me when the bullies have lumbered back to their caves and it’s just us under the sticky mango tree,
watching cheerleaders tumble and bullets fly

the church up there is really the nco club, where sergeants and corporals go to smoke and drink and plot another backroom affair, and where,
I once accepted a VFW award for patriotism,
with the cracks in my shining armor showing,
turning the men in blue into killing machines
reminding them of sleepless nights in swamp-filled divots,
waiting for the next siren call of little yellow armies
behind toothless smiles

the layers over alabaster skin
tell me nothing more than hello, good morning, so long,
(go back to vietnam, go kill yourself, what are you staring at, you fucking gook), nice weather we’re having, how is your day?, good night

bullshit conversation

naked, you will confess every sin, real or imagined,
the stalking envy, careless boasting, standing bra-less in a see-through Archie McPhee gag tee, your $70 blue jeans with your botox lips pontificating about amazon purchases, “me” time, and the $150 fern you blew on your make-believe birthday

like it matters

maybe those midwestern values can cover up the battered, broken, damaged Korean orphan inside
hiding, shivering, quaking in her stylish Prada puffer jacket, Lululemon fuck-me yoga pants

I see them all
flyaway orphans on a rudimentary tablet
like patches of a quilt
lab specimens in lined-up test tubes
fireflies on the 5th of june between third and fourth grade

the crack in the layers of their overcoat
where I live
where I knock
where I am