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click here for the mmharris blog
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Some of my poetry can be found in the Maple Leaf Rag III
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click here to either buy or read more about it
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I released my first poetry book in May 2006 called Jackhammer Blow
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To buy Jackhammer Blow for only $5,
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the paypal button below or contact me here
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Poetry
all poetry is copyright Megan Harris 2001 - 2006
Life Now
Lust of a Young Boy becoming a Man
Making Love Together
Outside of Mike
Surgically Perfect
Surplus Men
TO SAY IT
And of Beginnings and Endings
I Like not Knowing
New Orleans Utility Bills
Sitting in the Texas Department of Transportation Drivers Liscense Office
For my Grandparents
Grandma
From a New Orleans Bar Stool
Meeting a Friend at Fred's - May 23
Woman, You Stole my Soul when you Stole my Bag
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LIFE NOW
Feeding on empty milk cartons
Like a forgotten fetus
In a fat woman’s belly
Exploding one day
Into unannounced existence
The marrow slips away
Between imparted lips
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LUST OF A YOUNG BOY BECOMING A MAN
Eyes
like a tom cat
biting the neck
of his lover
and women succumb
to the fury inside
his clothes that just
wont come clean
the hands that just
wont stay dry
fumbling with buttons and clasps
with a teenage insistence
until the right
one
CLICKS
And it's over
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MAKING LOVE TOGETHER
Male sexuality
is like
describing the fist
before the blow
Women, though,
are like the fist
after
Together
they are the fight.
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OUTSIDE OF MIKE'S COLLISION REPAIR SHOP
I keep thinking about
car accidents
Signal 13 films
windshield wipers left screaming
slashing through the silence
of a prosaic pristine
red paint on cardboard street
what time did you call?
was it when it happened?
the broken blood river
careless
hapless
blue faced and fading
clenched lips
kissing
bare
eyeless
asphalt.
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SURGICALLY PERFECT
comparing he and she
I complete myself with plastic
surgically perfect lips
to thoroughly enjoy
rain on small parts
the parenthesis
the solitude without
perfection
neopolitan chords in
the bedroom
sing like
razor blades
slicing inadequacy straight
between my thighs
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SURPLUS MEN
Why is it that
all old men
who run Army Navy Surplus stores
won't trade out?
No matter what you have
to offer?
As if their used, military
trash
was the coveted gold teeth
they use to chew their
damn food.
Sitting on top of all that
Fight
And Hate
And Uneasy,
like a desiccated corpse waiting
for the blow flies.
no need for nuthin’
no want for food
Jus' sittin'
rottin'
waitin'
lips curled tighter and tighter
against a snarl held infinite
like a lightning bolt
lost without its' sky
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TO SAY IT
IN SPANISH
Estoy pensando en ti
ahora mismo
y
todo el tiempo…
como un grito de una puta caliente…
pienso en el cielo
que esta’ sobre de ti
que esta’ ensima de su cuerpo
y esten en tus manos
sin tu amor…
soy una milagro de existencia
quiero hacerte daño
como la nececidad de alimiento
como la riega de amor
de un amante despues
el Cadillac de la noche
con las sombras de la luna
sin las solidad de las casas
ni zapatos pequenos
solomente hay tu
y yo
y todo lo que me diste
TO SAY IT
IN ENGLISH
I am thinking of you
right now
and
all the time
like a scream from a firey whore
I think of the sky
that is over you
that is in your body
and is in your hands.
without your love…
I am a miracle of existence
I would like to hurt you
like the need for food
like a shower of love
from a lover After,
the Cadillac in the night
with the moon-shadows
without the solidarity of houses
nor of little shoes
there is only you
and I
and all that you gave me
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AND OF BEGININGS AND ENDINGS
smell you on
clothes, hands, hair
fluttering the eyelash
so near
like tip toed fingertips tracing
like swept fire across
the hairless stain
lingering like something
left unsaid
in the animal eye watching
and even one small taste
of fruit not yet ripe
becomes the fatal bite
hold the breath in and out
with back arched in the
prowess of Sistine ceilings
before the first stroke
the possible beauty poised in the
anticipation of tomorrow
but
then
ink
drop.
and the race for time begins….
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I LIKE NOT KNOWING
I like not knowing
Your birthday
Your hometown
Your favorite color.
I like just knowing
What I know of you.
The mundane simplicity
Of the little somethings
That make you…
The things no one else will notice
Are better…
As a daydream
Are better
Better as a maybe
What if..
Because right now
You could not be
Anything but
All
The quiet alone
The singularity
Between our unfamiliarity
Is beautiful
Is beautiful
And nothing could be more
Alluring.
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NEW ORLEANS UTILITY BILLS
i swallowed my soul for survival.
i, machine.
with no oil
to engulf mexico.
sacred jesus tears of blood bled dry.
bury your dead.
bury your dead.
and scratch the rooftops
with the last attic scramble
as firefighters tie people to streetlamps
to keep them from the wild
like feral cats and summer lizards.
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SITTING IN THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION DRIVERS LICENCE OFFICE
Sitting and waiting for number 84 to be called.
The sign blinks for number 55
and has for the last fifteen minutes
The boy beside me berates his mother when she asks him
how much his father is paying him to be his son.
Spoiled fucking brat.
The boys behind me ache to launch from their seats
and drive all the way to an early grave
filled with beer and teenage pussy.
They tap their legs anxiously
and discuss new pick up trucks.
Numbers 56 and 57 are called.
“I talk on the phone all day. We met some goals last quarter, so my boss is giving
us a big BBQ party on Saturday. I work at one of those call centers… where
stupid fucks call in all day and bitch about how fucking stupid they are…. It’s a
real great job. I could get you on…”
Numbers 60, 61, 62….
The girl beside me is obviously bulimic
fat knees and oddly puffy shoulder blades
brown fat storage areas
She looks furtively at me
as I assume she is wondering if I am judging her appearance.
I am.
Somehow Number 69, 70 and 71 are already here.
A Mexican girl, no more than 17 wears a brown and gold sequin Bedouin outfit
its enough to make a Turkish belly dancer jealous
but the problem is that most belly dancers
while plump and alluring
are usually at least five or six sizes smaller
than this plus-size princessa mexicana
81, 82, 83…
A bubba next tome has an angry gash across his outer left calf
probably from a motorcycle accident
and yet here he is
back for more
quietly waiting for his permission to tear pieces of his body off
while skidding at high speeds on the asphalt throrough fares.
84…
fill out form
take picture
sign here
its in the mail.
along with all the others.
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FOR MY GRANDPARENTS
July 2005
Kissed by the earth
with petals of fake blue corn flowers
and scree scree insects in the trees
You sit
in the ground
listening.
To the words I tell you
about myself
at your grave stone
catching up like old times
Listening to the feet still walking above
to the pitter pat of newly fallen gumballs
like the ones that fell from the tree outside your front door
(I heard the new folks chopped it down)
Listening
and waiting
for the children
who are now grandchildren
to come home
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GRANDMA
July 1996
Perched like a bird
on a red block of concrete porch,
she waits for her children,
who are now grandchildren,
to come home…
but they rarely do.
Somberly she sits as her tulips
strain their bulbous faces
to see her without eyes,
to see her the way I do.
She seemed happy
when she gazed into her bed
of puckering tulips
who would blow her kisses goodnight
on the late afternoon breeze.
The womanly veil of vanity,
cast off long ago,
now, had eroded with age.
Her soul-staining sadness
imperceptible
behind such wide black eyes.
Soon, however, her tulips would
tuck her into their bed
and kiss her goodnight
while she waits for her children
who are now grandchildren
to come home.
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FROM A NEW ORLEANS BAR STOOL
Invalid blue
Like a tonic
Like a throat-thrust
Forward
Blood flower
The veins inside
Twisting
Acrylic animosity
Made double-fisted pour
Absinthe
Black men smoking pipes with cowboy hats
And hipless women in bolero jackets
Their ponytales telling
Sighs like empty concrete blocks
And the place where you were
Became
The fever cats have
When they long
For baby birds in spring
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MEETING A FRIEND AT FRED’S – MAY 23
I got here early even though you said you would be late
I came to hear the burgers sizzle and the
ice fall from the machines
Old men coughing old cigarettes
from their lungs
though they haven’t smoked in years
Old smoke from those very cigarettes
in 1972 caked around circular air vents
collected with the
dust and the grease and the sweat
make the place feel like a full-lipped secret
The cigarettes taste better
when you can see where they are going
The waiter pulls out a 20 year old map of Texas
and starts flipping through the frayed pages
as Tammy Wynette whines in the background
If he is looking for a better place than this
he’s not going to find it
because the beer doesn’t get any colder
nor the old men any older.
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WOMAN, YOU STOLE MY SOUL WHEN YOU STOLE MY BAG
Woman, you stole my soul when you stole my bag
you didn’t know that it contained my
every
thought’s
dripping….
The greasy ooze of
heartbeats, tiptoes, fingernails
heaves and sighs, laughs and cries
if you knew what you had
tucked away under your thieving eves
if you KNEW
I’d rip out your soul too
and write you a story about a girl
I once knew
who thought it would be a good idea
to take
what was not hers.
Where is it hidden? Oh, in that green “camineta”
as the coyote howled, and howled
The green camineta, he tried to stop
but “pues, no puede.. no puede..”
is my beating heart’s bleeding
enough?
will it ever be?
Oh, but if I catch you
to catch you
to catch you…
in the act
like a heart attack.
I would hunt you down with
the fury
of our Lord and Saviour, all hail George Fuckin’ Bush
and I would scorch your earth
with the Sitting Bull scalp parade
that only Custer could know.
hell hath no fury, baby..
no fury like THIS woman scorned.
I scorched my own earth to covet your hands clasping-
the scratchings of pen and ink
between the thighs of book binding
Oh, to catch you
and resurrect my lost words.
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