~Christi Michaels~12/2014~
   ☆⊙☆⊙☆⊙☆

you with an onion
in the palm of your hand
pulling back layers
seeing just who I am

removing the papery
outer shell
the flesh beneath
holding slight color tan

folding back the next
begining to understand
sweet juicy onion
cradled
in the palm of your hand

brave to peel 
the next layer
spicey as onions can be
a tear begins to form
a tear just for me

now you are intoxicated
as only an onion can do
you pull back again
translucent flesh
coming through

sweeter and sweeter
I become
as you genlty find my core
you've settled in
found your way
what a delectable
delicious score

  ☆⊙☆⊙☆⊙☆
Copyright © 2014 Christi Michaels.
All Rights Reserved.

I came home pointlessly
endlessly
that day
the windows didn’t confess
I didn’t recognize anything
no, no more
I nailed myself on walls
-nothing really helped-
I sat on my bedside
facing the voracious truth of flesh
while my dresses were exploding
in the wardrobe
my furious love
erasing sunrise
between me and my skin
an alarming desire
happened that day
to clear the view
the life I’d smuggled
and hid away
the sons and daughters of darkness
were calling each other
in my hips
I put some makeup on my shoes
ready to face the world like this
woman
beast
no need to panic
there’s only this desire
unredeemed
to give away
a heart full of dire

I became one
with the other
another me
while
you were
beautiful
like a free day

Late at night sadness covers up my skin, ivy
on the old bricks of an abandoned mental hospital,
broken windows, we stopped needing help years ago,
and this place is just as scary empty as it was full
expect when the doors were open the crazies
would come and go, I swear it made the stay
a little more tolerable

Hey kid, I woke up buzzing, here
In the future ruins of ancient America. 
Staring, after the imperial sunrise,
Listening to Los Angeles on repeat.
Insistent and purple, only 
Sediment left in the
Bottles of night. 

This third-world way
Causes Third World War
So I'm drinking at a 
Tavern on the End.
The bus goes by, and
"Baseball's the worst sport."

Alliteration, allusion,
Colors, characters,
And metaphors.
Sobriety sending me 
Searching for smoke. 
Rehash, re-up, and "read the ****** thing." My world-view,
Out-maneuvering your
Upbringing.

(The memories I have are white and yellow.
Fogged, not angry, if even confused.
You'd call me, after finishing your nightly readings, to cry about the characters you'd loved, and castigate my inability to care.
Remember when you used "undermined" to describe the adaptation?
You meant that it was "assuming too much.")

"Brenda and Eddie," over here,
"Couldn't go back to the greasers" so they
Wound up at your family's tavern. 
"You look like the fat kid,
On whom the popular girl was 
Forced to settle."

Dear Man,
Woman's found you out. Or 
Are we, justly, doomed to be 
More juvenile?

Worn sole, soul-open, "so long,
Kid, I don't know you, but,
I can't help myself from
Destroying you."
(My upbringing: out-maneuvering
Your world-view.)

"You've always been the caretaker, Flagstaff."
The bait's in your brain. 
You've simply been 
Overlooking the barkeep.

(Dear Diary, could I just die already?
The Price is Life, and purgatory's a game show.
Anger, the color of your mother.
Skin, the shade of yard-work.
Staring at road maps of Virginia, stoic.
Trying to divine the diners we'd die in.)

Feel the red curtain,
The night opens a discreet picture
That still chirps about the burned-down marching band
We can no longer forget.

Your eyes still speak of
    The boys in the black attire
    Girls in wedding dresses
    Abandoned mother in the perfume of war
    Wearing masks of serendipity
That were consumed by the flimsy fire

And talk of the devil,
Talk of the leader,

His dark eyes were set ablaze
And his heart on his sleeve
Half eaten out
The parade, though, kept marching along
With its beautiful brides and paper snow
In the dark and discreet night

I could not wake
The romance they inflincted
Between us who knew none of each other
But the ode I will be sending to your most loved parade no longer
Will never reach anyone neither carcasses nor night masses

So what will we get from our early midnight memory
We confronted before the sun went down?
   The songs chanted with death’s drum rolls
   The steps taken with dwarfed soles and melted eyes
   Or the love you could not relish for the boys in the black attire
                                                          ­           Girls in wedding dresses
                                       Abandoned mother in ******* serendipity
                                      Or for the marching band
                               That will never pass us again?

And here I lie,
But they bring memories like a festival
Under the moonlit night
Presenting the illness of romance between life and death

And here I love you,
My visions of the discreet night
The parade of the wrong and right
My carcass of the burning life
We try to live upon a single stroke
Of two-faced departure

And here you love me,
As only
A parade of paradox
Unforsaken

The moon spoke to me tonight
As did the equinox inside the raindrops
I see tales of wonder
Hidden in silver noonlight
Frozen between my retina and glass tears

I taste the poison inside the electricity of a heartbeat
I braided a prayer to my dreamcatcher
Breathing a night wish that tilts on the edge of stars

Blooming myths onto my black cherry lips

I shall paint my emotion onto a valentine
Fold it into a dove
Letting it sail like a flying ship
Like an angel with feathered wings

I will dip inside this paradigm shadow
Absorbing the colors from its paradox lullaby

Sky Roses are falling

Evanescent  scent melting ashe petals Creating a storm of iridescent ink dripping onto the heart of my canvas

Where dreams are frozen in the ice of my fears

With all mirth,
With all despair,
I shall leave you
My last verses.

It's in my sweetest intent
That I would share this when I die,
When I'm as open as I could over be,
When death itself is no longer death
But true love.

When I lay, when I'm alone,
When high-noon calls for me,
And in an instant, a bird
Sends the shade with its wings,

I do not know if you're the Sun.
I do not know if it's your summer kiss.
I do not know if you are someone
Who truly cares for me.

Now, I'm freeing my mind
From all the metaphors
That are known to me,
Simply because I do not know,
Hardly, because—
Because I wanted to say this
Plainly:

That I love you
And always will...
...forever...

          ...since forever.

© 2015 J.S.P.

The passionate propensity
   of waxing moons' passages,
I crave your poetry
    as the air I breathe,
vital spirit aches within intention
    hungering the  blissed taste
       of essential Neruda -
midst the significance of
  rose and topaz
    arrows of wildflowers,
whence your own  scripted
   inclinations unfurl
     searing 'neath my flesh,
   rendering me speechless
      'tween ***** sighs
   I surrender in the exhale
      of a thousand blazing suns

I have exhausted my ink, my pen, my hand.

My tongue has unlearned all languages,
all terms of endearment and soft sayings.

I am no longer flesh, no longer blood,
but have transformed myself into wind:

a wind that has traveled the oceans for you,
a wind that has discovered Africa's worth,

that has lifted me into an African skirt
where the origin of everything began.

The dreaming watch
is always set to one o’clock

                                                                                                 she talks to stones
collects animal bones & birds eggs

drinks green tea
counts the rain drops  
                                                                                          
                                                                       her aged husband always knocks
before he enters her

her younger lover
never does

                                                                                               the Samurai sword
hangs on the wall, expectantly

the dreaming watch
is always set to one o’clock