What is this?

Alms,
out of pity?!
Fake gold, a slap
in a heart's need?!

Take it away!!

I had it all,
once...
A threshold,
a sanctuary,
iridescent,
for a bird
to borrow...

Oh, grand, it was!

What, now, is this?
What?!
Scraps...?!

All right.
I'll take them.
Leave them, please.

But go.

Just go.

i tried, oh i tried
to reach out

did you not
notice?
the hummingbirds!

still

this metallic cold
of not belonging

never again
to be kissed

[to the thousands of men, women and children fleeing their war-torn countries.]*

Adrift,
this huddle of fear
in the starless night.

Adrift,
this frieze-like
of carved anguish
surging in heavy
striped hearts.

Flimsy shores
draw an old world,
of other lords,
greedy of their pastures.

Plundered, ravaged,
preyed upon,
adrift
- who will see
our human face?

Worldly life picks out
each one of us:
the main character
upon a stage for delusion.

Cheers and spotlights,
special effects solace;
frights, fights, sighs,
all but blind spots.

Main characters
of make-believe...!
Wordy life feed on us:
now you are, now you are not.

[for Joe Cole's challenge, Imagination/ever changing clouds]*

How can we endure reality,
that lukewarm dullness,
if we can fly our hearts
in nimbus of paroxysm?

How can reality endure us,
with our wispy layers
of heaped, uneasy, pain,
our eyes in sighs of blue?

How can reality cloud the real,
the true perfection of rain
and the hail to a rainbow,
that we - uncaped heroes - see?

once i married my father
he was such an handsome man

can't you feel
the scent of flowers

anointed in extremis
cryogenically preserved
drowned stillness

i grow flowers
can't you feel the rosemary

once i loved a boy
what was his name

oh the yarn
all knotted

in dancing shoes
and sparkling laces,
the puppet leans

in a shed string net
- comets' tails blown
like a last match
in the night of snow.

the puppeteer never was.
she tugged the chords
and watched him drift.

she leans, but to rise
a melancholic moon
in strings of orange gold.