Eat the skin off your lips,
You bird starving in winter.
Pluck your hair, your skin, your nails,
Let nothing grow from the dirt of you,
Harvest time and time again,
Knees in the black earth,
Hands tearing up leaves,
Slash, slash, slash,
And forget to burn until the earth is infertile.

How long will you chase yourself around
With a raised broom in the tiny cavern of your skull?
When will your pitter-patter feet,
And swish-a-wash straws,
And bird heart,
And mouse voice
Fall to rest in a silent pile
In the middle of the floor?

Your bird heart and mouse voice
Are like Joan's lion ones,
Should you ever manage to fall in a pile,
They will still whine like coals in its center.
They will thump and sing and harmonize
The unkillable refrain of your panic:
SLASH, SLASH, SLASH,
And forget to burn.

sugar, sugar
crunching subjugated under these bootheels
the Diamond Dust on whom I Cut my Teeth
sugar, sugar
sand between the raw fingertips
i am a ***** now
salt swatched on the flesh
that tenderizes the meat
that dissolves the snail-heart
the dull slug-eyes
Pink Salt
Pink Sands
sugar, sugar
Oh you said it would be sweet, but son,
It was rough
Rough
Rough

In ashes, in ashes,
My family in ashes.
I took for myself and built my world,
I refused only to light the scene of others' stories,
And He, who behaved the same and worse!
He spited me for it!
Wrecked me for it!
Why must I suffer marriage to a wasted insect,
And give birth to the unspeakable blot of blood?
Where once I was great and winged,
Now I am a wet bird too bedraggled and matted to fly,
Dripping my tears over the grass
Where my lover's thin-legged voice echoes,
Singing "Locusts! Ashes!"
And where my baby's silent bones lie.

Gathering flowers
From their bed
Is commiseration
If eyes kiss their fortune
Changing like the life of a star

Feeding a fledgling
If crawled alone
On the wall
Is understanding
Of an orphan and his nightmare

Giving a few droplets
To a fawn
If its throat is totally arid
Is knowing
The importance of thirst
When water is wanting substantially

Doing a little deed
Is doing
Justice to the needy
And to ourselves
For life isn't  about living only
It's too about sharing love and grief

Thick-lidded, thick-lipped, rough-skinned,
Lush clusters of shining leaves like black wavy hair...
She was born before love was gentle,
And took heavy beetles and scurrying lizards to her bed.
They pulled her hair and chewed her skin;
Tough and thick, the waxy skin,
But paper-pulp-tearable, all the same!
Now when she lies back and gives herself
To the gentle ministrations of bees,
They whisper to each other about their work,
"Does this thick-ankled gray statue
Feel anything at all?"
She sighs, and they, thin-fingered handmaidens,
Scatter from the heaving trunk.

He was my closest friend

But now I know better
He was after a relationship and nothing more...
Just like everyone else

And now that he doesn’t see anything more than friendship
He’s done with me

And it hurts...

                                                          so much...