You know it's funny--
our late nights when we're chasing
the dawn. I think we're waiting,
we're thinking
if we can just make it
for long enough, a big red sun
will clear squinting red eyes.
We're staying up for a revelation.
The new day will tell us
that we were wise
for chasing the light.
That it's all alright.
After all our dark nights.
Dancing our feet off for it.
Arguing with each other,
familiarity breeding contempt,
when it's 3 a.m. and we've been together
since Friday night dinner.
When a demon named Insomnia
whispers to keep our eyes open,
we do it because we don't want to lose.
In the morning, we pray,
we'll know what we should do.

Blood-soaked, too close, unspoke words.
Your mom's eyes, but never her ear.
Dad's words of wisdom, but you know
next to nothing about his life experiences.
Granddaddy calls your brother by gay slurs
Still, when you talk to him, you're expected
to say, “Yes, sir.” Share a room,
share your clothes with your sister.
She won't share why she stays
with a boyfriend who hits her.
There's been too much agression
already, so you don't want to pry,
you don't want to push.
Family functional means carrying on,
harmony at the expense of heart.

The violent violets of her eyes
The latitude of her mattress of green,
the greenest grass by the lily pond
where she dreams to say, "Share my ship of
the fallen leaves and algae, green, the greenest."
Natures plays her tricks again
clad in clothes which are
a gauzy garden of renewal.

Bruised bitter apple:
the horror! To roll across my tracks.
Of the crab variety,
we decipher what's in cider.
Fright, how might, precisely,
the worms persisted- when once
flesh was tender enough?
Now they are dead, the apple dented
where butted their unsuspecting heads.
When guts are made a graveyard,
no Wicked Queen’s power overrules
the external grotesque, or the royal
inner circle’s internal damage, ringed
  like trees,
   like circles of hell.
Sour taste, and, more importantly--
wriggling, struggling,
self-pesticidal hopes and dreams.
Unsightly to fit their environs.
Some as parasites, but some only friends.