Death owns the mossed headstones
orphaned by time and muted stories
no longer spoken in mortal’s rockery.

Fallen epitaphs .... names surrender
to nature’s bloom and winter frost,
broken granite bouquets tied with wild roses.

Where pain no longer visits, peace speaks
poetry through meadowlark and aspen sigh,
souls long gone now rest as poems cradled
in the arms of Mother Earth.

They sit beneath the moon
in their newborn love
and spoon-fed dreams.

There’s magic in innocence
that is both a promise, and
a suitcase of unopened wounds.

His toothpaste left uncapped,
and her hairbrush abandoned
on his pillow are smiles
that have not yet become
the war of the roses.

There is no map for the future,
only forever spoken from lips
not yet bruised by reality.

I feel ancient with my weight of years,
sacrifices, grief, humor, loss, and love
broken in like uncomfortable shoes.

I hear them call through a screen window
to come sit with them…
With a sigh I step out the door,
and walk out into moonlight
that one night will shine through a curtain
on two innocents who discover the
lock on the suitcase is broken.

Grandma’s kitchen didn’t
have room for me.
There were no warm fuzzies,
honeyed memories, or even
a space at the table.

With her smothering, mothering
of my cousins I was an end of the line,
barely know your name, grandchild.

My arms never reached nor did my lips ask
for affection…Grandma didn’t have any urges
to spoil an apple outside the walls of her orchard.

Times were tough…I didn’t get a choice
to be angry or sad…I slipped into the slot
life made for me, and was taught my first
dandelion lesson of how to bloom in drought.

The moon flirts
with me in muted
winks through
a window shade.

Most hunger for
the sun’s heat,
but it’s the frosted
light of midnight
that warms me.

My silhouette dances
on the kitchen wall
to the music of
a distant wind chime.

In the silver blush
of secrets I don’t
face eyes that judge
or words that scar.

Draped in sapphire shadows
I hear words yet written,
feel dream chills on my skin,
and imagine tomorrow
threatening stars with sunrise.

Saturday opens
its book of pain.

I’m tired of reading
the same story.

I search for an ink pen
to write a new chapter.

All I find is needles
searching for a vein.

There is not a firm step in Autumn.
The snowfall of bright falling leaves
invites me to dream as I rake
them into blankets for winter’s nursery.

The anger I so often carry in my steps
surrenders to the sleepy hours of shorter days,
the gentle voice of house slippers whispering
across my bedroom floor.

This year of sterile rooms and moans
quietly disappears into the mist
of kinder memories, hot chocolate mornings
that speak you don’t have to hurry now.

So many believe it is a new year that commands
resolutions, new beginnings, but it is when
trees explode into their confetti last hurrah
I begin to feel the first flutter of new wings.

This poem is everything
I didn’t erase

The sea I swam until
the shore was closer
than drowning.

My mind took so many detours.
I ran toward the sun,
become tangled in why
I didn’t do the dishes,
wondered if my bookshelf
had one more space for Apocalyptic.

Sitting in the litter of what
I couldn’t complete I question
if this is poetry or confession.

Tuesday has way more ink
than I have words for paper.

Autumn and I dance
October’s two step
across earth feeling
the stardust in our limbs
drawing us closer
to the moon.

Impatient bleak holds
its brush to paint
our waning on the
stark canvas
of winter’s landscape.

Even with a calendar
determined to strip
us down to fading,
we are bursts
of burnished gold
encouraging the sky
to dress in its deepest blue.

Dead Grass

It is agony to feel irrelevant.
I wonder if the earth swallowed me
anyone would worry I was gone
or be more concerned about
why the grass won’t grow any more.

I used to twirl
in everyone else’s dance
until I bled every drop
of my do into their won’t.

Pale as a sacrifice I rose
where I fell and drank
from the well of self.

Belittle, berate, I no
longer hesitate to
prioritize I before you.

In my desk drawer
are broken things,
bits of what were,
hopes of what could be.

It’s a journal without words
where a red paper clip
holds nothing together,
and a tape measure
never reached the length
of a bookshelf.

Tucked in a corner
is a faded love letter from my husband,
a few words about roses, and
how beautiful I was at seventeen.  

Sticky notes lay scattered
in confetti colors of green,
pink, yellow, and blue
waiting for ink instead
of just taking up space.

I should clean it out…
send most of it to a waste basket,
but not every treasure box holds gold.

Mine is a cluttered drawer
filled with broken things, the
archaeological site of a dreamer
with a catalogue of stories to tell.

I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.

Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.

Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a ****** will grow.

The space between
me and the mirror
holds assumptions,
questions, a palette
of colors that promise
they can paint away
my imperfections.

In the vanity of brushes
time sings of a much
younger me, but the
mirror is patient
as it waits for my
eyes to look into
its silver frame of reality.

In the rawness of morning
when I look into the mirror
I see my dad, my mother’s
bluntness, my daughter
who now travels across the moon.

I am growing more gracious
with the woman in the mirror.
I will never grow younger,
but I can grow bolder.

There’s no expiration date
on a dream or a day there
isn’t something to learn.

Mirror, I don’t seek you as
often as I once did…I now
spend my time trying to
be a person who reflects
the spirit of the best in me.

I once hung clothes
from a line, canned
strawberries, and wished
for paved streets.

Now, I long for gravel
dusted sheets blowing in the wind
beside strawberry fields
concrete can’t reach.

Across the street
her grass grows much
greener than mine.

Here grass struggles
with pine needles
to feel the sun.

Could it be we
live in a thesaurus
where she chose effort
while I was assigned toil.

His words
s
  p
l
   a
s
     h
  e
d
against
my skin.

I thought falling
in love had taught
me how to swim.

I didn’t know how
quickly his words
could change into
a riptide.

So Many Crossroads

I took a long walk out of my mind.
Insanity had so many crossroads
I could never find my way back to me.

You weren’t there
when I stood tall
in a scribbled note.

I was sixteen,
blushed naïve
with first love,
yet wise enough
for dignity.

Your “*** I’m
too busy to call”
worked for two
weeks, but intuition
spoke louder,
“He’s lying.”

With every bit of courage
a black Bic held in ink
I wrote…
          Dear Randy,
               If you don’t respond
               to this note, you’ll never
               hear from me again.
                                   Susie
The phone didn’t ring.
A letter never found
my mailbox.

As a heart does at sixteen
mine broke into a thousand tears.

I swam the river of shattering
until my spirit fell on the shore.

After being resuscitated from why,
I rose stronger, proud I trusted
the lighthouse within me and
not the tormentor who didn’t
care if I drowned.

Half asleep,
barely able
to feel
the coffee cup
in my hands,
I wander morning
searching for
a destination
my calendar
has not yet mapped.

Walls of ocean blue welcome me
every time I open your bedroom door.
It was the color you chose amongst
all the swatches that slipped through your fingers.

There must have been fifty shades
of sea and sky you pondered before
you found the one that spoke of waves
and splashes of joy.

I roam amongst your things in a dream state
traveling from when you were a little girl
until spring brought flowers in vases
earmarked with condolences.

Broken doesn’t seem to be a bold enough word
to describe how I feel, yet I feel shards of longing
splinter my ribs where my heart lies scarred
by hours of yearning to hold you.

Oh sorrow, you are a conundrum.
It is both tears and joy… I cry from your absence
and sing because of your freedom.
I stumble and I dance getting through what I’ll never get over.

Dear Dawn, my precious daughter, I am trying to be
strong in my weakness, be a light when I’m besieged with gray.
In this room of blue I’ve splattered with growing green plants
I am your mother learning how to swim in the space where you dreamed.

I wonder if my legacy
will merely be a faint light
in the peripheral vision
of a passer’s eye or a shadow figure
of a memory, the name on the tip
of a tongue one can’t seem to form.

No matter how many letters I write
to my ten-year-old self she doesn’t
seem to trust she will ever be first in line
because she’s been taught, she’s
supposed to be last.

I am beginning to understand
why I’ve always been in love with dandelions.
They are petaled, defiant sunlight
thriving where nothing else can.

champagne broken dreams
clot yesterday’s bleak journal
i’m done with bleeding

Tonight, the moon is dressed
in lavender shadows, and
rhinestone starlight.

A showgirl dancing on
a windowsill, she tempts
a dreamer to shed inhibitions.

There’s no yesterday
or tomorrow at midnight.
Luna’s wink through the curtain
is a kiss without regrets.

my gut’s opinion
warred with my love sick pining
surviving myself

(Senryū)

Fame
shines with
bright artificial light
in the valley of
narcissism.

(Elfchen)

A thesaurus

is a devilish
device

to soften maleficence
by the innocuous choice of ill.

(Cherita)

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
E. M. Forster

There was no spoon feeding life to me,
gentle nibbles from a mind set on
sugar coating there would be more
days of blackberry thorned hours than sweet pudding.

How does one speak of horror
to a child who trusts fairytales
grow reality from glittered imaginations?

I learned so very young monsters
don’t leave when a storybook presses
them between its pages…They stalk you
at dinner tables, in empty rooms,
within the sound of voices oblivious
to screams trapped in the cage of your throat.

In the oddity of breathing terror circumstances turned
me comedian, precocious child full of questions,
a crybaby at scratches while silent in the clutches
of a demon.

In the etiquette of spoons never judge
the one who doesn’t hold it correctly.
She may be a survivor who’d rather
eat the soup than explain why she
doesn’t have an affinity for shallow silver.

They come with their offhand,
stale yesterday words
that once felt like a knife.

I grew past the bleeding.

Now they are barbs
cutting themselves for
attention.

dead tree limbs
peer into a lake mirror
hoping for one more spring

gray clouds smudge
the water with prayer

August burns Monday
into tomorrow’s ashes
of history.

The future will ponder
why a society gave an ear
to the rantings of a man
whose resume was failure.

There’s a smile that wants
to dance across my lips,
but I taste its sweet,
and I haven’t an urge for sugar.

I do find humor in the
civil war on my face,
and the audience
who’s not sure if I’m angry
or simply (if simple ever fits) insane.

My husband swears I’ve been
reading Bukowski again,
those whiskey cigarette lines
keeping his bluebird from
nesting in my chest.

It’s a day… Just a day.
I‘ll get through it, around it
or over it.

But that smile, hmmm,
I’ll keep it to a smirk.

The sidewalk is a valley of strangers
where eye contact feels like
an act of courage, and a smile
is too fragile to break anonymity’s spell.

He was stone,
hard edges,
and brittle words.

I walked among
the gravel until
I had enough
calluses to leave.

I don’t know the yesterday me.
She walked paths of bubble gum dreams
wearing skirts too short for crosses to bear.

I still have long hair, but gray has invaded
golden blond, and I look more hag than innocent.

Oh, my younger me tries to break the
shadow door, but the creaking bone chain
that holds the key doesn’t like to rattle history.

I live in the moment…Doesn’t that sound enlightened?
It’s not. I’m practical because my tomorrows are shrinking.

The yesterday me thought she knew everything.
Today I’m always on a hunt for my phone,
because it holds lists of what I’m sure to forget.

Blind Paper

I beg ink for something to say.
The blind eye of white paper
frightens me.

It’s just me, out of my mind
sipping on helium, pondering
why a tuna fish sandwich
is on a vegan menu, and how
to install a security system on
a dollhouse without a door
or glass on the windows.

I’m not pretty when I’m backed
in a corner, but hey, there are
those who don’t listen when
I say my vocabulary has teeth.

There aren’t any caution signs
on a poet … They can hop from
a flower poem to beneath an umbraculum
so dark with honesty a reader will
seek a priest even if they’re not catholic.

So if you don’t have a tornado shelter,
don’t create the storm … I’m not pretty
when backed in a corner, and not timid
about writing with my teeth.

Traffic is flowing at parking
lot speed, happy isn’t on
the windshield, and horns
sound like seagulls fighting
over a single *******.

In the rush to everywhere
we sit in the nowhere any
of us wants to be praying
we’ll get just one more
car length closer to an exit.

The standstill bullies humor
dependent on a clock that
keeps ticking away any promise
we’d be on time for an appointment.

Sitting in faux metal plastic
we act like we are the only
set of wheels the pavement needs to feed.

Walking Dead

The sun on my arms feels lonely.
As much as I hunger for light
my spirit has grown too comfortable with shadows.
I’m the walking dead, a candle without a match.

Today I hung laundry
on wire and dust.

Saw mudpies
drying on a shelf.

Cursed mulberry
stains on linoleum.

I didn’t know an ordinary day
with my three little girls

was passing beneath
the shadow of an eraser.

Today is starfish crackers,
jumping off verbal cliffs,
and watching snowflakes
get stuck in their own glue.



Is it Friday, or Tuesday?
It’s hard to tell in the Texas hell
of waltzing with the devil’s politics
while wondering if sending your
television to a watery grave
will stop you from reaching
for another shot of tequila.



Yen or urge.
It’s funny the word
could mean money
or a strong desire
to eat a cookie.



I’m pretty sure I’m
an attempted cubist painting.
I live in a 3d reality,
but the artist ran
out of paint to cover
my geometry.