Words on the Page

Words on the Page
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy
exploding in your atmosphere
I am happy tiny lovebugs
crawling tickling along your seams
Exploding through your atmosphere
I am b-b-b-breathless sleeping next to
songs floating through the clear clear
ocean waves of deliciously rough cat tongue
I am b-b-b-breathless lapping
clapping hands with rock candy cliffs
I am ecstasy (not the drug) dreaming of
Intellect and feet thinking of dancing
Clapping hands with rock candy cliffs
I am like playing steel drums with dreads
swinging in the night, evading birthday wishes
obscuring sink drains with the sway of my hips
I am dreaded steel drum players
In a bathtub full of lipsticked kisses
I am bubble-bath icing with rubber-ducky candles
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy!
In a bathtub filled with lipsticked kisses
I am laughing laughing with each cup of Indonesian tea
I am sewing machines producing higher education
like baseball fields with computer key bases
I am laughing laughing armed with Indonesian teacups like
Happiness wrapped in crepes with cherry compote
I am shiny sunshine kisses under moon craters
with Chinese New Year rabbits in my wake.
Happiness wrapped in cherry compote crepes
I am as if your world had a soundtrack playing
Music with harps and saxophones
I am castles in clouds and fuck-me pot revolutions
I am a soundtrack for the world and
Scratch-and-sniff eyelashes giving you butterfly kisses
Or the first rhinoceros you ever pet as it glided down
The slide in front of you on the playground
I am scratchy butterfly kisses giving you
ice cream in the winter that tastes like angel food cake
and spaghetti that doesn’t leave a mess of sauce
on your cinnamon-bun-white dress
Like winter angel-food-cake ice cream tasting
that first Polly Pocket you swallowed when you were three
I am when the trees talk back after you swim in their branches
Around around the merry-go-round
I am starry-eyed little pieces of three-year old Polly Pockets
and cucumber sandwiches at noon on a Sunday morning
when the church is on vacation
in cleavage you can get lost in
Noon-day cucumber sandwiches in the morning
I am death wearing a tiara with one stone missing
in business suit made of jelly-bean flavors
and chocolate smothered blow-jobs
I am wearing a stoned tiara like death
With fried pickles dripping in your chin hairs
After pineapple watermelon ceilings
and a really good poop
I am fried chin-hairs dripping down
one thousand multiplied by infinity I love yous
after walking through leprechaun rainclouds
when you put both your feet behind your head
I am multiple I love you by the thousands
and am the nonsense of suction cups used for
running from the border patrol
across the vast Guadalupe river of your soul
Suctions cups nonsensical like
I am iPhone ringtones like fingerless gloves with feet in them
and being able to hand-write everything with letters
in upside down backwards baseball caps and take-out menus
I am feetless gloves with fingerlings attached
to budding spring-time cigarettes
I am never boring never bored Spanish English dictionary lovers
With toffee infused negligees
I am cigarettes in the spring like
I am sleepless nights and hula hoops stuck in trees
I am your arms holding me close
as pixies fly through monkey-grass clouds
I am hula-hooped trees stuck in a sleepless dream and
I am double double-sided printers next to taunting tamale stands
Using notebook paper made from melon-flavored chewing gum
In a jack and coke banana pancake
I am double-sided tamale stands like
electronica that sounds like spoken slam poetry
in a bright hot-air balloon when cassanova is along for the ride
I am pieces of starry-eyes joylets
Spoken slam poetry electronica that sounds like
The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics
On hot jalapeno mayonnaise spread with the tip of your tongue
like my nose belongs in a rocketship headed to inner space
I am the ethical professional society coda
Under a shit rainbow of gratitude like the Texas lege
I am rye-bread crumb wedding cake at a Pagan knitting circle
and I am so pleased with the outcome of my sweater-vest slippers
Under shitty Texas rainbow gratitude I am
old fur coats left to the coin jars meant for wishing wells
in a down-trodden economy after a surplus of penis drawings
on an ivy-league college entrance essay
I am meant for old coin-jar wishing wells left to
graveyard Moonpies in the in and out of anthills
I am the dinosaurs died because you touch yourself at night
with your fingers in my cinnamon cunt cranberry apple juices
In and out of anthills I am graveyards
like snow melting into pomegranate rivers of freshly dyed hair
I am inching up the tub drain of forever
because anything is possible if you don’t put too much platonic science in it
Like snow melting into pomegranates of dead hair
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy
And I am the eternal infernal self-made orgasm of words on the page…