And so she rose
Like vapor,
And disappeared just as fast.
Were her phoenix shape to return
To Earth,
She could not have been less.
After a year
Or ten, surely,
There are just worms,

But the headstone is where They return to pray,
To bring the babes named for the remains,
And the grave- they call her final resting place.
So how to grieve when she is lost?
To a classroom or a hospital,
Where are her bones?
Has she yet turned to dust?
Will her bed be in a cabinet of glass?

Every day that brings peace,
Is the sand on an oil- soaked street,
The resolution to a skidding horror scene.
Collective breathing quickens with the high alert and we begin to speak-

Grant this reporter freedom of the press,
Send her daughter to therapy, the boom put her in distress,
She’ll cover talks that result in trepidation
And count her contacts in anticipation.

Tonight we begin the countdown,
We enter the zone
From the 27th to the 33rd
And we won't speak,
Not a word-
Just let the fire burn,
And when other people fan it,
We'll each have to find another extinguisher,
But it doesn't really matter
Because the last words if ever there were-
"I love you",
And because in a week,
You'll be lowering a veil across my face
And uncovering one in my heart,
And after being made to miss
That one person who is priceless,
When next we part we'll have lived a lifetime
And barely be closer to eternal togetherness.

Grief pools in me like hunger,
And I have an appetite but I can't eat.

Today's horoscope warned me too late,
Sundown on Saturday,

Of the rip tides inside of me,
Of the waves that have lured me out to sea-
Whispering little temptations,
A mother's warmth,
Another's safe embrace.

So I said yes.

Fool was I not to have known,
For my destiny is spelled as brightly
As the sun in the light of the stars
And my blindness is my own shortcoming-

I am a broken vessel to be cast aside,
Worth enough to recycle for the next
To profess grand things and make promises.

I am a thing,
A force like a tsunami,
In whose face men cannot
But break vows not yet made.

Loud in love
To compensate
For the silence
That has taken hold
In all my inner chambers.

And to write
Becomes a last resort,
That I quit once when a man quit me,
But that is naturally my only solace.

I was born to die,
My faith was built to lose its way,
And I fall in love time and again

For though I am "impure"

I am innocent

And the world has not wholly succeeded,
Though it tries with every car crash
And with every war
And with every child like myself
Used and tossed away,
With every ultimatum made
To make  a woman stay-

To make the innocent in me fade.

So it sends another demon
More believable than the last,
More deceptively good, truly,

And perhaps this one has.

I don't know you but I speak for you.
You are the hands
That hold steady my guns,
and my legs
To crouch, attack and run;
You are my wings
With which to fly at my enemy,
And my aimed artillery,
That I may strike him heavily;
You are my stomach
To crawl on the sand,
You are everything but our back-
That's what I am.

I have a wand,
I try to hold on
To the same one,
But I lose them all the time.

And when I wave it
Across the lined white canvas
Things start to come alive
All around.

My head is full of musical notes,
I tried to sing some
But they broke;
For others there's still hope.

The fairy dust my wand streams looks like gold,
It sparkles when I read it,
Warms me when I'm cold,
The letters are magnificent as they unfold.

I have a wand
That turns the music in my mind to words,
I read it back and hear a track,
The playlist of my soul.

Everything I write, the rhymes,
All the poems, all the lines
Are a universe of melodies that's all my own,
And it's never quiet in my mind when I'm alone.

I saw Gaza,
I was there in green,
Not exactly
How she remembers me.

I was different then,
A child, carefree,
Before I learned
I couldn't always be.

At first she was a fence
And then a city etched
Into blue sky
And dust that stayed the same.

She expelled me from her arms
And changed her name
And embraced others
Who spit in her face.

I lost her as a home
And then to her lost brothers.
Last time I saw Gaza,
I was in green.