Like a bird I breathed in time
from the star of an evening
filled with two shades of laughter.  
I wandered with an empty heart,
seeing faces
that frightened all the love
from the last time
those three little words
floated silently
into spaces
where nothing......
is sheltered.

Different images hold my head up
as if saying
all I ever wanted to be
can be found,
if I move my feet
instead of trying to tame all I look upon
and have become acquainted with.  
Nothing smiles at the shadows
left by my broken heart
here on the sidewalk of
“Never Again, I Said.”

Should I pour colored hope
over what could have been a breath of time
and watch the light of the evening star
return warmth
to a water-painted canvas of laughter
we both can hear?  
Allow my heart to be filled
with two shades of beauty
so those three little words
can float into spaces.......
held dear.

blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

For the same reasons that I stay hungry
for dinner and tired for bed, I keep my
heart a little lonely for poetry; that way,
I can imagine your weathered hands against
my pale thighs as clinging starfish – my
fingernails, bleached cockleshells washed up
on the barely evening beach of your back.

I sold my skin one evening
As I had times before
He was a pale man this time
But eyes and hair as black as pitch
Teeth of smooth and beautiful ivory
Light circles under his eyes
Smooth, handsome face
Marred by an almost imperceptible scar

It was only when I saw his skin
Beneath the neck
His chest, his back
The corded and worn muscles
Fatless arms and legs and torso
It was when I saw his skin
That I both feared and ached
Wanted and wanted to run away

Where was it then?
That old romantic and cinematic sentiment
Where a working girl
Finds protection and comfort
A change and better offer at life?
Where was it then
When I wanted and wanted to run away

I sold my skin to him
My guts and breath and sweat
And though I smiled and cooed
Surrendered more than my form
I cast off my want of romance
Wept and hated myself
Beneath the actress’ mask
Running makeup on top of raw skin
Sweated out my tears
Washed away and worn away
False tone and pigment of youth

He left his seed, coin
And a tip for his tip
Light bruising and dull ache
I sold my skin one evening