"Look!" she said,
Proudly holding
A tiny painted doll;

"I can make it dance!",
She squealed,
Excitement in her voice;

I watched, bewitched,
As the doll danced
And twitched;

Grinning like an idiot,
I joined the dance,
Arms flailing madly;

"Now watch!" she gasped,
Taking a darning needle,
Stabbing repeatedly;

"Urghh!", I laughed,
Bending over,
Feigning pain;

The doll moved faster,
Limbs blurring,
As she made it dance;

"I can't keep up!"
I laughed so hard,
Feeling sharp pain in my side;

I tried to stop dancing,
But my aching limbs
Kept on flailing madly;

She held my gaze,
Her eyes laughing
With manic intensity;

With a final ******,
She pushed the needle
Straight through the heart,

The doll slipped from her grasp,
Tumbling to lay beside
My still twitching body;

The last thing I ever saw,
Her reaching into a silken bag
And picking up another doll.

The phone crazed against its plastic receiver.
Tossing her clippers on the counter
with an exasperated sigh, she picked up.

"Mary's."

She began to pace around her paisley-floored
salon when she read the Caller ID.
Crosby General Hospital

The cord stretched further across the room
with each diagnosis like a tightrope that was
threadbare from decades of grim news and heartbreak.

A single thread kept her composure.

When word came across that her daughter
had died, the wire snapped and her faced turned
scarlet like she was crying barbicide.

I felt broken today
I felt as if everyone who looked at me saw how torn I was
As if they were counting how many pieces of him were stuck in my skin like broken glass
Little bits and pieces stuck everywhere he ever touched me
How can they possibly count them all

A book,
just pages
on leaves, whitened-
river washed,
dried then wettened again;
tears of words
torn from a heart-
his then mine, and mine again.

A book
of poems, written verse,
la poema-
the saddest lines of all,
but not all, no,
not all; not always.

Pages of Odes;
oh, the odes
to fruit,
to wine
and song
of the sea and mermaids;
the pages sing his songs.

A book
of heights
and stone,
he took us there-
a shovel in the sand;
of monuments
and ships
of drunken men and love
once loved,
and loved again.

Words
on silken thighs,
*******
and a red dress-
on a dark night
the stars and moon did shine.

A garden-
he planted a *****
into our hearts;
his dog,
it died
simply
loved too much-
Ai.

A book,
just a book
of pages,
of poems
by my bed-
dog-eared,
much read and loved;
his words ending
the saddest lines of all.

r ~ 8/15/14

dear friend do not loose hope
someday the shards of broken pieces
will be lifted out and placed
to create something new
a beautiful tapestry of color
and life lived through pain
to create a beautiful
mosaic

autum comes
I am a lone leaf on a tree
holding for dear life
last one to
fall

winter comes
and I am huddled
on the ground with my
fallen brothers and sisters

I return to the earth
and absorbed back into the great source
the giver of life
the tree

spring comes
I am reborn again
budding, growing
and no longer alone on the tree
I had forgotten that I was never alone
I was holding on when I should of let go
to join the great connection
of life

18 is a hard age
to be black
and dead

tear-gas in our eyes
burns, baby, burns.

r ~ 8/14/14