Opalina Salas

I invite all makers and lovers of beauty into my heart tonite.

Everything I write
is what it is
be what it be
is what it be
taken with the upshot imagery
of the Buddhas
and the screaming
dull seas,
because the sky is bullshit
and the spirit is
and has no fault.

i seek all that can hold in compassion
the words that i’m spilling out
to be my absolute truth
or not.
benevolence
and kindness thats ripe
so that i may learn
and teach to learn
these things i yearn
and drum up in me
the patchy winds
of sobriety
so that i don’t jacky don’t jacky up
’cause
50 means goodbye
alone
and bloated and loving my poor dead mother
too long.

sad eyed ladies
bemouthed of lazy
want free cigarettes
want to fuck
before they turn 34,
won’t wear yellow
to shame the sun and only come out
when there is a battle to
be won.

in blues mens clothes
to batter my weather in
button and tie
and fend off all the matters
and live like a monk
with the holy virgin mary
my only lover
fends me free of
my femininity
and the choices that
are so impossible.

I CALL ON ALL WHO CAN HEAL ME

can you heal me?

with drink tickets
plastic baggies
and promises of adventure
to crave your attention on long verby tick tack typing
fixated
mesmerized on the stature of you
in the faint light reflections of yester donts
hoping that the
shake bump bump shake bump bump shake bump bump shake…
will break your from your sleep
to come home to your 2 point one
thick with dissapointments…

You,
You don’t even know my friends.
How could you?
rowdy and horny,
the kind of people who will smuggle a
bottle of whiskey into a bar
only to later drop it on the floor
like a baby slick with bathwater
and love the night
all the more
we with talent that cannot be denied

give me the beat with stolen harmonica
give me the beat with stolen kisses
give me the beat with worn out alcohol eyes

pass the joint
give me a nother ciggaboo
and watch the birds flock away from the wild eyed
drunk as fuck poets
standing on the corner
outside my favorite
open mic..

where we go
to fuck you up.

we are here to fuck you up

we are you in your unadulterated form
we are the lifeless drones in the cubicles
we are the eat shit for dinner retail whores
we are the two fifty an hour waitresses
we are the stay at home moms
we are the warehouse workers
we are the do what you can’ers
we are the manic depressive solos
we are the older once were younger’s

and this is something that you just don’t understand
you can’t understand
in your tired
monotone
version of us.

i thought i was old
until i ran into a poet
who had no soul.
see,
you don’t even know.

how could you?

i get wild flashes of the night
you said these delicate things
palm pressed on cheek
flittering victorian eyelashes
and such
our asphalt playground steaming with
tears
ground up shoelaces
too long jeans
and bent over ankles

no one can hold a light to the misery
and still
i get wild flashes of the night
momentary lapses of a
cinematic quality
elongated shadows
closeups
and dramatic strings
bad storyline and all

it seems to always happen in
summer

i guess i don’t match
your seasonal wardrobe.

for months you pour over fashion magazines,
the upcoming seasons best in your view
and you tell me about your new shoes
open toe
fab
nail color coordinating

and the phone doesn’t ring as much
and plans fall thru

(why do the same boring thing
while wearing something new?)

i get wild flashes of the night
that night
when it cut so deep
the crimson red
outdid your lipstain
and when it really hurt
but for now
your shallow
predictable ways
come with the seasons

leaving the outcasts
fashionless
and alone.

so far my face in check
the brave but tired
puts makeup
after covering bags, scars and overnight wrinkes
set in worry.
double chin needs
double love
and a swig and a pull
on a bottle
would be better
would be better
if not alone in the barstools
id find myself these days.

this is what happens
when no one is around
wishful make-upping and all

shave thick calves and rusty knees,
pedicure sandpaper old feet
and slather miracle potions,
paint the snail tip toe nails
black or red or purple
pray and wish someone to notice

this is what happens
when the walls turn in
and its 3 am and my thoughts wander
to you

to any of you
long lost in the tides of indifference
or hopefully
death
to make my part seem less at fault
for the faultering ways
i keep stepping in the shit
your shit

your shit
eating grins

I can smell your shitty breath on me

i peer into my imagination to
see you laughing at me
it doens’t bother me
really,
it’s always been that way

so i wash
like a fat girl who sits
in the back of class
and prays to dissapear
or for duck and cover to mushroom the town
into black and white filmstrip
oblivion
or collapsing race champion horses
or dirty mexican animal flu’s

to take it all away.

i rinse it, redskinned down into the sink
and with the imaginary grime
goes all my chances
of sanity
saving grace
or normal niceties
we together
may have ever had.

because you were a writer,
you posed with a railroad brakesman’s rule book
in pocket, couch pillows airing on the fire escape
overlooking clotheslines
three flights up
on a lower east side Manhattan pad,
holding a smoke between the fingers that
pecked away
to the mouth that verbed deep colors
of consonant cues..

because your hand
into fist fits so casually
in Levi’s pockets,
you look like a lover i never had,
a lover i long for in the sickly green fadeout
black and white blues,

you were ‘indulgent and huge’
tall thick and manly,
American
full-blooded red white and blue,
exhaulting the railroads, negros, migrant workers, junkies,
homosexuals,
handsome girls and pretty boys,
and The Fabulous Beats

i daydream we celebrate birthdays together
smoke mexican grass from your leather pouch
drink wine, eat hash,
wail to Charlie Parker on the on the phonograph
and ! dance barefoot together on dirty wooden floors

i dream i feel my first new york rain
as we walk to the diner together,
like dirty diamonds on our eyelids and lips,
and in the diner we hold hands and
flirt with the waitresses for more cups of
coffee

i hear your voice, Jack
reading my poems aloud
casual, punctuated and musical,
taking drags off cigarettes and telling me,
‘i’ts awlright, doll’
and taking my pen you mark out all the
corrections and read and reread again

because you were a writer,
i feel your days of solitude in my head
where you hung like that clothesline
up above Big Sur
and tried to fill the whole that was
inescapable..
but i know..
that the booze stays bitter
and the cigs never satisfy..
and the grass cannot sail us away..

i think..and i think i want to hang with you in
Big Sur..
i want to avoid the outcomes of us
i want to avoid your demise
and someday! mine..
and i hope that mine
will not be so alone
like yours, jack..

because you were a writer
i forgot your birthday again this year
as i fucked my husband on the living room floor
in the Sunday morning blues and greens
with bebop jazz crooning us back to sleep

but somehow..
i know you think
thats
‘awlright’

my lips

feel the draw -ring gravit-

ational pull of a clown girl

frown

upside down swinging doll

of a million pirrouettes

sunshine memories and regular showers of

talking

spirited laughter

and cigarette bitter stings.

twisted lemon sours

alcohol burns and acid words

and once they spill

they all at once pray forgivness

white chapel seance screaming

beg for loving

open petal oozes candy gloss

chocolate

and absinthe

call yr name

vagabond hipster bearded

cunt breath

messiah.

words are a lost batallion, twisting in a paper bag, forgotton ringlets, couplets and thesis papers.

mandolin harpsichord washboard blues, shiver temptress and promises.

a muse is nothing but a rotton. bone breaks and shredded romance.

somewhere they sit, remember last nights dreams, on the edge of winter all i remember are libraries , their grey thick windowpanes slick with moisture..promises of a free lunch and a nap later frought with memories.

he came rastifari dreams

she came segram seven apologies.

he came stolen crumbling headstones and vampire bites.

she came greenhouse slumber and breasts of clouds.

he came hearsay and long blond contemplation.

she came go go dancer leg sprain.

he came upstairs erogenous zones.

she came aquarium danger games.

he came quite sublimation.

she came rock and roll thighs .

he came a night of falling stars.

she came saxaphone sultry fandome.

he came chairtop recitation.

she came torn tights and leather handbag.

he came eyes closed and murmering.

she came car windows fogged and dreamy.

he came cursing and violent.

she came whimper and heartache.

he came

she came red wine and pink panties.

he came razorblades and merlot.

she came pot smoke and ozzy.

a muse is nothing. a cracked paint chip. a flake of skin.

i withold my happier then. i withhold my desire for rain.

with them.

with a blow to my heart.

i withdraw my troops.

we are sitting next to the jukebox
right over there..
and
he taunts us
and says
that the more he drinks the more he feels alive.
like a dare
across the table
to us.

i love to stare into his caveman beard
the neon lights flickering
off his whiskers
beer foam at the corners of his mouth

holy prophet madman!
i love to drink shoulder to shoulder with you
and these mad geniuses
vulgar
making love to the dollar wells..
funking the james brown beats
and playing imaginary bass lines
on the sticky table tops..

its in
these times
these men
forget that i have a vagina
and talk to me like a man
respect me
entice me with their gestures

i see my father in them..
the father i was never ment to know..
it’s good to rub my knees against them under the table
when the drink has made us
forget out boundries
where the whiskey
on our breath mingles
above our heads
in smoke rings
from our borrowed cigarettes

someday
they will talk about us
the prophets
and mad poets that used to come around
and make a whole lot of life
next to the jukebox
right over there.