Poems By Lin Ross

Cigarette Poem? ( Maybe… Maybe Not)

I have breathed you in…

Inhaled you in

Drifts and drafts

And mad dizzying spins.

And I have

Sucked you

Deeply into my lungs

Like some nicotine dream

Or herbal retreat…

An opiate from

A madness

That dare not speak

Its name.

I have breathed you in

Inhaled you so deeply

You became

My wind… became

The song

That plays in my brain

And repeats

Its soft,

Sly refrain.

I have breathed you in

Like a fine Italian

Wine, and felt

My viscera sigh and

Palpitate…

From the giddiness of

The high. I have

Breathed you in

With both lewd

And angelic

Inhalations.

I have felt my

Corpuscles race and

Stiffen

And glided with

The flutter of

Sightless butterflies, as I

Imagined gardens of

Earthly delights.

Yes, I have breathed you in

Like carbon monoxide

And frankincense

Like roses and toxins

Never knowing if

Your fragrance

Will awaken or kill me

Slowly. I have breathed you

Into my system… and

Made you a part of my

Blood stream’s story

And then

Si-i-i-i-i-iighed

Until you became

My prick

Of heroin…

Sliding thru my arteries

And taking me on wings to

The Heights of Heaven. You are

My insanity and my

Adrenaline, personified.

And I have become

A junkie…

Nodding to The High…

Purring to The High

Smiling to The High

While dancing inside

Each time, I close my eyes

To slowly

Deeply

Breathe

You

In…

Poem For Donna, Donna Summer

Even though you’re gone,

I am still vibin’ on

The music, the music

This sometimes

Monotonous

Disco disco

Beat, beat, beat, beat

Giorgio Moroder created…

But then… OH! How you

Embellished, completed and!

Elevated it!

It was You who

Gave it soul, soul!

Bounce, bounce!

And yes… yes

Even meaning!

The gay club cats in Munich

Were first to latch on to

What was so digable

About you… as you sighed

Sighed… and cooed, cooed

All the way through, through

“Love to Love You Baby…”

And soon after

This tall brown girl

From Dorchester, Massachusetts,

Whose mama named her

“Ladonna Gaines”

So swiftly changed

The world… and became

Donna, Donna… hot like Summer,

Summer. It was always summer…

Summer in the clubs. Summer

On The Radio. Summer!

Summer, it was always Summer

And it was always those simmering

Summer vocals that sold us

Controlled us… with

That siren

That belt

That urgent alarm deep

Inside your throat…

Coaxing us to leave our seats, to

Get on the floor

And dance, dance, dammit!

Like it was our Last Dance…

Dance ourselves into a

Luminous sweat. Dance

Under a mirrored ball

So hard and fast we could

Almost forget our lives

Had any cares at all.

Let it be known that you could

BLOW! Yes, yes, yo! Far beyond disco,

Or club, anthems

And syncopated, syncopated

Beats, beats… and that 70s-80s

Musical repetitiveness.

Hell, you even gave Barbra Streisand

A run for her money. Yes! Donna

Summer had pipes for days, and

Could so easily delight with

Her stage presence.

And for a sublime time

From ‘75 through ‘79

Donna Summer ruled

The earth, yo! I do not

Exaggerate much. Such was

The rhythm, the rhythm…

The sense of celebration…and

The Sheer JOY she gave us all!

So I am remembering

Donna Summer

Summer, and thanking her

For making me and

Whole generation

Fall willing and sweaty

Victims under

Her Summer spell…

Thanking her for making us

Dance ourselves into a

Luminous sweat…

Under a mirrored ball

So hard and fast we could

Almost forget our lives

Almost forget we had

Any cares at all.

Endangered At 17: For Trayvon Martin

I remember being 17, living on Lays

Potato chips, chili dogs and Wonder bread…

Would never be caught dead

Without my Swedish knits and

Chuck Taylors… with Stevie

Wonder’s Superstition in my ear. I remember

Playing Spades, and scratching myself in

“Nasty” places, full of raging

Hormones, adrenalin and

Silent fear. I remember how it feels

To live inside black skin. Being told

By my mother, I was “beautiful.”

Being told by teachers, I was “Artistic”

And yes… “Gifted…” but

Never being told I was invincible. I remember this

As surely as I recall walking

Home from the movies at night and

Being stopped by local cops

Because I fit the descript

Of some hot-

Wired black boy who might just

Explode… who

Was up to some no good,

Criminally-minded shit,

When it was neither my behavior,

My nature,

Nor my actions but

The color of my skin color which

Dictated this.

I remember feeling diminished,

Embittered, enraged,

And endangered for the first time

At age 17. When I should have felt

Young and free

And full of possibilities… Like you,

Trayvon… Angelic-faced victim

Of a brown-skinned hue

Another senseless victim to

Another racist fool’s paranoia.

Did you fit that tragic

Descript too, Trayvon?

Almost brand new in the world

Confused inside that swirl

Events. Hoodie-clad armed with

Skittles and iced tea? How dangerous!

How deadly

You must be. How deadly!

How deadly?

How dead.

Curse of The Sighing People

Lately, there’s been so much going on, going wrong, demanding me to suck it up and just be strong inside my orbit that it would be so easy to fling these great chunks of rage and hurl these bruise-colored blues soundly into the faces of people who are clearly unworthy of receiving them.

Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeathe! Just Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeathe, Lin!

The truth is:

I don’t wanna become one of THEM… one of those people… one of those people who sigh. Those Sighing People I call them… those people who speak in only blue tones, who brood and cry in terminally sighing moans. Those people who sing only sad and melancholy songs… those people who exist in sobbing fits of solitude, whose only trick, kick or tic is a permanent facial grimace.

I don’t wanna become one of them. God, please don’t allow me to become one of those crying, hand-fixed-to-the-forehead, overly dramtic, habitually Sighing People!

I don’t wanna be one of those people who feel alone, even in crowded rooms; nor a friendless soul who’ll only move to those slow sad drums of their own. I know some people don’t trust in different drummers for fear those drummers will fuck with the funk of their beat.

But I don’t wanna become one of them.

I don’t wanna be one of people who drown in a pain… so deep… even strains of Coltrane (or Manilow) can’t release them from their Indigo Trains of Thought. I don’t need the tremulous coo of some woozy crooner to renew, redo, re-blue my Blues, when they’ve already been blown Blue enough.

I just don’t wanna become one of them.

I don’t wanna be breast-fed by Nina Simone, or mislead by Lady Day. I don’t wanna believe Joni Mitchell ever lied… even if that “Furry” cat really did ‘play The Blues…’ And though I love the Jazz and Blues idoms, I don’t want my Life to be a indigo-colored song that slides terminally from the reed of a dejected and sad-azz saxophone.

See, I don’t wanna be nor ever become one of Those People… those people who only speak and whine and brood and cry interminably. Don’t wanna be a member of that mind-numbing Cult of Terminally Sighing People…

So maybe today, maybe tonight, maybe if I try… I won’t be.

Instead, from the Beastly Jaws of Human Suffering, I’ma be the one who snatches the living HELL outta JOY!

One.

WHORE!

She used sex to tell the world how fuckin’ hungry and desperate she was. A ravenous girl, turned woman, turned junkie, turned mother, turned out…

She used her power, her wits, her breasts to nurture the city’s populace, feeding those selfish men who never once fed her back…

Sustenance to her was like some foreign food, left un-tasted.

If sustenance was affection, it was lacking in its proper nutrients,

lacking its lactating mama, and lacking its daddy’s love
’cause love left, packing its

vagabond shoes…

There were just too many mouths left unfed,

too many cries and bellies
left empty and so…

She fucked out of the primal hunger for affection. So she fucked from an absence of
sensitivity and tenderness…

So she fucked from a need to feed every crack, every crevice, every cranny,

every gaping hole left open inside her soul.

So she fucked. and they called her: “a whore,” “a ho,” a “punta” as if *they*
were somehow better… because the neon of their hunger didn’t show

so much.

One.

From “Like Litter In The Wind”

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