The broken barbed wire
wrapped around my wrist
like a blanket, not a bracelet.
A beetle catches raindrops
and bathes while hiding from fat clouds.
They are my steady friends,
the thunder booms, sirens at sea,
the watchtower that is never manned,
Yet the light casts blame in the face of a crab, scuttling and cackling
because he pinches past death, and
the fishermen fell overboard,
The net cascaded in slow motion
Deeper past the place they found my matted hair. A seagull landed on my legs.
The papers did not have the story with the name. My face puffy, swollen belly, crackers present on the lips that could not stop smiling.
Oct 10, 2020
Oct 10, 2020 at 11:33 PM UTC
"write a poem,"
Sylvia Plath commanded summer before last.
Her voice in all places I looked.
Avoided and silenced letters
Crawled in front of my mind and knocked on my skull:
A polite entry into their society with a family,
Other words in Gregorian chant:
You cannot undo insanity in the third decade.
I tell the others, the eyes around me, that these words
Feel like birth announced just now,
With no time to prepare or plan, to nest and caress
The down feathery face, or kiss his tiny mouth.
A poem emerges with a scream,
Bony hands encircling my throat and pushing
Into formation. The existence of new words--
Always the ones in the language before,
Though in this birth the roots twist under the tree.
Sep 27, 2020
Sep 27, 2020 at 2:23 PM UTC
They stand with their hands in their pockets.
One man adjusts his mesh cap, an excuse.
Something tiny, precious, real bleeps furiously through cargo khakis.
He types expertly with one finger and smiles chapped lips to himself.
Leaning against the uneven coffee counter, he reaches for his latte
and walks out the door with his fashion twin and best work friend:
grown men who assimilate in substandard choices to fit-in
years past high school.
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 3:02 PM UTC
*Because you cannot use borrowed breath,
and move lips of another
that are pasted on your face.*
These words swam through
my mind
behind my eyes
and never visited your mind
or saw green swamp irises.
My words wear shackles;
the chain attaches stubbornly
against a cloud of nothingness,
the cloak you wear and the plume that spreads
behind you, where I am--
trailing the ground, dirtying, muddying.
Decomposing.
How nimble the fingers that point at the WomanChild,
the creature who does not learn to grow
because she wants to keep living and borrowing time,
not breaths, not skin cells and DNA and memories
that do not erase without ripping up the cassette and the VCR.
My words were meant to meet yours and touch pinkies.
Your thoughts made your words and body and smile lines
Run, run as fast as you could
from a Monster, a Curse, a King.
I am the sword of tongue and the fist that crumbles
when a beetle passes by.
You are scared of me.
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 10:35 PM UTC
I am the voice that crept up the water.
Sleeping, not sinking. My arm hair
stood straighter, not softening in the lake.
Wake up. Open eyes. Gasp for air.
Dark black cool everywhere I looked.
No one tells you that drowning
isn't dying.
their voices pelted spit wads.
their fear launched missiles.
their apathy sank a princess.
I watched with my screaming eyes.
When I sank I surrendered;
shiftless, restful, still.
But I did not die.
Death is the worn wet whisper.
Death comes to those who wait.
Death embraces cell fish.
And I would know.
They swim all around me.
On the land, never the water.
To them the depths of this lake
ensured my silence.
Then I woke and saw nothing,
felt nothing, knew nothing,
except for the last breath that moved seagulls
and drew mermaids near.
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 12:19 PM UTC
Sands slip through my fingers,
sun scorched with dried blood
staining the palm where I wiped the blade.
I did not bleed. I did not bat my eyes
when his severed limb flew past my face.
My eyes opened wider and tasted victory
more intently than my screams
vanquished his memory.
I thought it was but an apparition on the sands
miles past; a haunting, a demon, a scorned lover
back for revenge now that I made off with valuables:
the fastest steed, the cave within me
where he stored his treasure when he pleased.
Thus when he appeared, when he charged by foot
and outstretched his arms (much smaller from my new height)
feebly, weakly to end me first, so he could brag to the village,
"She is like the women who believe they can fly."
I do fly
to my sword,
my hand unsheathes the blazing boiling metal.
With one sharp ting I watch his arm and the tiny dagger
sail across the desert and settle atop the sand,
gently gracefully, unlike his living, boasting words
would have wanted.
To the man who brought destruction in the depths,
where coolness and faithful waters dripped down the walls;
where no one dared near for fear of the One who is near me.
They will say warrior was born of ruins.
If they ask me, I will say, "Warrior is born of defeat no more."
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 2:06 AM UTC
These are the words you will never read.
You will not see them, feel them, or remember
the weight they add to the burdens on my back.
And the guilt. The shame slides down my shoulders
and falls like puddles around my feet,
scorching my ankles with the splash.
My emotions are bubbling lava, brilliant light,
alluring, engulfing,
destroyer of apathetic eyes (rolling ***** of white gush)
There are three words you will never hear.
"I love you" came first, when the bump grew bumpier:
little, softer tummy; deadly force.
"I give up" comes now in tiny exhalations from my
bigger, clumsier fingers than that which we lack.
I say these three words to myself until I stop believing,
and my tears stop falling and my lips stop smiling.
The most fixed point in the wall I find. And stare.
We have a contest, and, of course, the wall wins.
Blink. I blink. I do the worst, the expected.
I try again.
I try a thousand new ways, ways I planned
with alternate routes and "just in case" setbacks.
When we meet I extend my hands, and warm my smile
with round shiny eyes. The dimple peers through my cheek,
never shy, always ready for the man I choose again and again.
This time half of my body felt half of his as we stood
in the rain and in the muggy sticky late August air.
In vain, I grabbed his arm, whirled it in an air circle,
until his fingers released and he walked to his car.
I watched. He didn't look back. He walked and unlocked.
and steadily then swiftly drove away.
The clouds grew closer until night spread across the sky,
Music imprisoned my ears and my eyes refused to open.
The car remained on a path, even without my consent.
I walked into the arms of a black skinny creature that whined,
eagerly scratched my arms with her black nails.
She looked as worried as I actually lived, every day
in fear of failing my work, my hopes, myself.
Aug 25, 2016
Aug 25, 2016 at 9:42 PM UTC
Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried *****
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.
Wasted human.
Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?
If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."
Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.
But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.
The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.
I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.
I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car
away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 12:04 AM UTC
When the rain falls
the sidewalk makes room.
The plants sigh and stretch back,
extending their arms, hands, and feet.
Every pore of every possible thing breathes
and remembers a time without a drop to drink.
The people curse and grab newspapers and plastic bags.
Some weather men and women smugly reveal tiny umbrellas.
As if they were tucked in their shirt sleeve.
Like a magic trick for the stupid crowd before them.
but how did you do that? how did you know?
Rain nourishes and devastates in one downpour.
The crazies and the weirdos dance in circles and
someone yells out, "Thanks gypsy!"
to his girlfriend who has a knack for making things be.
All she did was close her eyes and thank the earth, sun, stars, and moon.
And smile so fiercely the Universe thought,
Well I guess we can give her this one gift. She is so awfully strange.
Thank you.
earth.
sun.
stars.
moon.
You know all and you give life to what once was.
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 3:58 PM UTC
Some of us build towers with blocks.
We carefully place dull red block after worn red block
atop the one before, reaching for unattainable heights.
We knew the outcome from before
when some force sent our efforts crashing down.
Force comes way of a terrible brother, jealous gravity, or
the God who sees and knows and cannot have towers made of blocks.
Then why do we keep picking up the blocks?
Why don't we grab a few handfuls of blue light?
Just rip open your chest, dig into your soul with your fingernails,
scratch away the sediment and rock formations.
When you find the light bursting through the gaping wound,
and when you struggle to breathe and to live,
remember you know how to suture the hole.
Only take but a little of the light.
Stick it in your pocket, behind your ears, in the spaces
between your teeth.
And let them try to send the light crashing down. The light builds from beams that are ever connected. It doesn't shatter.
Though if it did, you would just create another galaxy.
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 1:14 PM UTC