Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

She looked at her mother.
Her mother’s dead body to be more specific.
She wanted to cry and scream.
But all she could do was stare at what is in the coffin.
A body. It belonged to someone she once knew.
Her mother.
People were rushing past her.
It is a funeral after all.
Too many things to be done.
And no one really could ask her to do anything.
She was stiff as a stone.
Pretty useless anyway.
Always have been.
Never knew what the right things to do socially were.
That used to be one of the problems her mother had with her.
Her poor mother.
She gave birth to an alien.
Someone who wasn’t normal.
She looked human outside but inside her daughter could not be more different to her.
Not only to her but pretty much an alien to the whole planet.
She didn’t know how to behave or dress up in social events.
How much her mother wanted a daughter who was pretty so she can flaunt her daughter everywhere?
How much she wanted a daughter who did not always argue with her? How much she wanted a daughter who loved house chores and enjoyed shopping?
How much she wanted a child who was just like everyone else?
There were countless days her mother scolded the God.
All her mother ever wanted was a normal child.
She didn’t have the strength to handle this abnormal child who is nothing but a burden.
Fortunately, her mother does not have to worry about that anymore.
She has left this ‘burden’ to fend for herself now.
If only ‘this burden’ knew how.
Not that her mother was much of help when she was alive.
Her mother was pretty useless too.
And maybe that’s why Natalie doesn’t really feel much difference emotionally now that her mother has gone.
The only thing that bothers her is that she needs to cook and clean herself from now on.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

There is a light that likes to turn on
when I lay my head down for the night,
toss and turn with my dreams now forgone
no matter the yawn, this bulb is bright

not with so much as ideas but, words
and small phrases that I rearrange
that will fly away and cause me nerve
so I spread their wings, pin and arrange

their beauty captured and put in frame
so finally I can hit that switch
and try to win at this sleeping game
I will wake up in a few, poem rich

and so repeats the boundless cycle
capturing metaphor butterflies
in this restlessness bed of idyll
sleep late, wake early, a compromise

Hydrocodone®
Lipitor®
Zithromax®
Zocor®

Zoloft®
Prozac®
Ambien®
­Fosamax®

Coumadin®
Klonopin®
Neurontin®
Naproxen®

Simvastatin
A­lbuterol
Glucophage
Metoprolol

I am hurting
on my knees
Can't afford
any of these!

tinged blue and green,
chaotic and mysterious,
to think they would glance at me,
i would be delirious.