sordid scripture,
warring woman,
both menace and coquettish innocence
—barricaded.

statues,
fountains,
and restraining orders,
filling the garden:
decorations of
sunlight on a clock,
and a view into tomorrow,

revealing the "texture" of her skin
within the realm of her navel,
as soft as lace,
as smooth as
the surface of a pond.

before diving in
gives an otherworldly radiance,
her shape and smile
compared to everyday realities
are solemn in the extreme,  
the dawn threatens
to break in the east.

her voice,
(a lungfully deep, sensuous purr),
is so distinctive,
come what may,
this could be happiness:

sullen, waylaid and capricious,
her urban sexuality hidden
in the attic of revolution,
suffused with the dreamlike, hazy glow
of colored lights and tinsel.

desire is like Christmas
—it always promises
more than it delivers.

Foreign bodies with foreign bodies,
unknown hands with unknown hands,
we said we are in love together,
but we don't know where we stand;
such is the torture
of ghosts loving ghosts,
you never dared to tell me who you were,
nor I shared with you who I am.

Look at us now,
just two shadows in love,
no wonder when the two converged,
they slipped right through each other.

A quicksand cyclones downward at the center,
A spiraling hole spun around by the sands that enter,
They scratch at the innards of my heart,
Pulling everything down and ripping it apart,

I’ve tossed so many things at it,
But they just drop into this endless pit,
Nothing seems to fill it up,
Instead everything just gets ****** up,

It’s like having my flesh sliced by scattered grains,
Spun at high velocity as it sheers against my veins,
Carving out tiny wounds accumulate into scars,
Blood seeping, lost and disappearing with its cause,

Cries are ****** up and then dispersed,
Scattered into pieces until it’s no longer heard,
Screams are silenced by a ringing vacuum,
Run through bleeding veins buried in my womb,

It’s like something wants to come up,
Like a volcano that’s ready to erupt,
Everything that’s been sunk and saturated full,
It’s getting ready to finally burst my soul,

I didn’t want to shut it all up,
It wasn’t my choice to have it all ****** up,
I tried so hard to pull it out with my strength,
But I underestimated the length of my pain,

It’s been loaded and treated with all its vice,
So I don’t know how to clean it up nice,
I think my exterior is too thick for it to ever explode,
But I think that one day, I am going to implode.

Emotion bottled and shaken
to the point of explosion,
Risking a state of total destruction
With the simple rising of a raging white cap,
Twisted by the stormy hands of inner turmoil.

Slapping waves of reaction
Against mountains of addictive distraction,
Causing one an internal Mexican standoff,
Presenting a decision, diamond in the rough:

Raise the white flag of resistance.
Offer yourself some relief assistance,
Breathing in a meditative manner,
Setting a slow releasing standard,
Steadily releasing emotional pressure
In a controlled state of measure;
Or
Find yourself dead on the floor,
Having exploded in an internal combustive roar,
Because you fought to hold in the building Pressure.
Attempted cognitive deconstruction,
Neglected yourself thriving construction,
Fearing your own atomic reaction
to the explosive emotional canter.

Either choice resulting in emotional disruption...
Eruption,
But only one in total annihilation.

-Marie Moldovan ©️ 2020

A little less fuel
For warmth and
Hopeful things

I want to say please don’t leave,
I still have your coat in my wardrobe
and it looks like you can’t have gone far,
and please don’t leave, I don’t know
where else I’m supposed to stay
when it’s two in the morning
and everything feels like communion,
and please don’t leave, I am having to confront
how selfish I am.

So you’re leaving, and I’m trying to work out
if I should pack my memories into little boxes
and pretend that you’ve died, and you’re leaving
so I’m on the floor in my bedroom thinking
about going somewhere and trying to find Judas
or at least a tree with sturdy branches and the end
of a rainbow with thirty silver coins as compensation.

And now you’ve left, or at least made the decision
to leave, and here I am again trying to wave you off
with images in my mind of the Titanic leaving behind
everyone who couldn’t afford to die so grandly;
you’ve left, and I’m using metaphors to talk about this
because it’s easier than genuflecting and joining
a faceless pew - sorry, don’t think I’m calling myself Jesus
because I’m not. Really, I’m not. But you’ve left,
so don’t I have the right to call myself what I want?

It’s not like you’re here to stop me. There’s that word,
gone,
like it’s final, like you’ve joined the laundry list
of everyone who said they’d be there forever. You’re gone,
and I’m promising myself that I’ll stop being addicted
to people, only cigarettes and cheap wine and the feeling
of missing something when it isn’t quite packed up
into all of the final moving boxes just yet.