The night was moist
the sea-winds blew salt
to the trembling lips
which formed half words
and quiet whispers.
The air tasted of memory
and long lost souls.
"What keeps you alive?"
the mad girl asked the sea.
"Or are you dead and still moving?
My father killed a snake.
and it's body moved like waves,
though he held its head in his hand.
It twitched. It twitched," she muttered.
Her laugh broke across the water,
the gulls shuddered, clouds gathering,
and the waves resounded to the hidden stars.
She screamed to the wind as it snagged her hair,
it screamed back
over the breakers.
She laughed
and laughed
and laughed
again.

Give me the pain, please.
Even if there is none.
Project what you think fit
onto my masochistic spirit,
who waits, open, longing
for the jab.

She chose all the battles
she knew she couldn’t win.

The cursed queen, to be sure.
Lonely you stand in your tower,
thickened waist and wrinkled cheeks.
There is no one but God here, now.
The men you loved are dead- one in body,
the other in spirit,
but still making love to another
on your broken marriage bed.
Your mother gone, and with her your children,
though their tiny things
still rest in the cupboard, their tiny hands still clutch your heart.
Your sister is mad, keening still
over the moulding coffin of her long-dead king.
Your one salvation, your living daughter,
small and kind with her parents red hair,
is shunned and rebuked as you are,
though you send her kisses on the wind.
Still you stand, refusing to fall to your knees
you have taken the armor of God
as you once took the armor of man.
Though under that armor
your heart is breaking.

My mind is an unquiet graveyard;
uninterred mistakes stare up from their open barrows
Milk eyes clearing to glass
As the anxious banshee crosses over them
keening notes drifting
linen strands of her raiment twining around their wrists
Dragging sloughed skin into the murky light
Of repeated examination.

I could be a queen of solitude
if not for this.
If Pandora's voice box were broken
hinges rent, screws loosed from their cavities, wood split
the demons might still, displaced.
Hope is not the last thing in my throat
she was the first to go
with a song unsung
an alto never strong enough to last
beyond the first few flakes of oxygen
I inhale in the morning.

They closed our eyes,
with the fluorescent lights looking on,
and helping to stuff things into the cracks of our minds.
Filling up the spaces,
where imagination used to dwell,
in quiet villages of thought, all colors and shapes,
we hadn't thought of yet.
There were no more rolling hills and streams of ideas,
only strait backed rows of facts,
that expanded day by day,
stabbing the mind with iron fence posts,
pounded in by the hammer,
of crowded words on glossy pages.
Imagination shattered, and faded,
with each stroke.
They told us they opened our eyes,
but they closed them,
as tightly as their own.

Longing is trammeled in my throat
Oh the honeyed years
Before I knew what to miss,
Untrusted, unspoken
I exhale its blue haze
Between the last note sung
And the first note heard.
You are the wonted dream—
The consoling ache
Wearing away at softened bones
With every wish
Unheard, unanswered
The stars are so beautiful and so cruel
Our untethered threads
Adrift in the firmament
Uncut
Yet untied.

Things fall apart.
my mother will be the first to go.
Stretched between school, a stubborn husband,
distance, and a daughter she believes is dying,
and the ever present thought
that she will never be good enough.
Taught as drum leather, she shudders,
Wracked and rent by memories of lost children
and protruding ribs.
I awoke to her crying in the next room this morning.
She greeted me with feigned happiness, but
red eyes stared truthfully back.
"I'm okay," she murmured.
"*******," I said softly.
She clung to me.
I felt the burden shift on her shoulders.
crushing her,
her over sized heart beat to pulp,
it's ****** remnants clinging to her dripping sleeve.
The people she tried to hold together,
slipping through her fingers
like sand-- as her brittle bones break.
Things fall apart.
And I wish I knew how
to put them together again.

This is a poem for the anger
I keep coiled around my ribs
Because I was taught that anger is an absinthian poison
That will rise like bile in the throat and must be swallowed.
And I realize you may read this
And you may be angry
But I realize with each crunch of bone
I must give myself the space
To uncoil in this way.

I am angry
That you made me a captive reservoir
for the bitter droughts you refused to drink yourself.
You were iron-stomached after years of punches,
that I understood.
Open handed, I wanted to be the exception
But holy palmer’s kiss
Was still not enough to let me cross the threshold.
You are the locked room in the house that the children are forbidden
Only small glimpses between hinges
Of your fear poisoned self
Huddled in a corner, vomiting apologies.

I am angry
for believing I could have lain beside you
every night for the rest of my life
And not starved to death from loneliness.

I am angry
for ignoring how I dimmed each time I waited for you
to want me, to miss me, to think of me,
to ask me to come into your arms,
to find me fascinating, enchanting
to tell me you needed me;
to betray anything that proved I was more than convenience,
A drink that served itself on a silver platter,
Asking to be drunk.
If you only knew how luminous I could be
when loved well.


I am angry
That I still hope you will be waiting by my door after work
because you realized how you starved me
And now you’ve set a banqueting table, a banner over me is love
But I know you will never do this.
I know you cannot do this.
I am angry
that I miss only the space you left,
That I have not yet been able to close the gap
And walk away from your memory.

She cut her finger while slicing bread,
no one gasped, or winced
with her exclamation of "****"
aimed towards the bent, saw-toothed steel.
She bloodied a kleenex,
then strangled her fingertip
with a band-aid.
She didn't mind the sight of blood.
She'd grown used to it in childhood.
From scratching the welts
left by mosquitoes till they were crimson.
She remembered accompanying her little sister
to a routine checkup
and the nurse looked down at her scarred legs
and asked if there was anything wrong
with the big one.
It was the first time
she learned to feel shame
for her scars.
In fourth grade she had a crush
on the class clown.
She liked his black hair
and blue eyes
and he made her laugh.
He ignored her.
Later, she found out
he called her pimple-face behind her back
by then, she no longer cared
what he though, feelings had faded,
but the pain of being told
you were second to last
in the classes "Beautiful" rating
(second only to the freckled girl with tiny eyes).
She learned her crooked teeth were things to be ashamed of.
Braces helped, but four years of wires
and widening her tiny jaw
with medieval, key driven devices
that prevented normal speech,
were hardly an improvement.
She learned pain was beauty,
but being able to take pain well
was not beautiful.
Being able to run swiftly,
having monkey-bar calloused hands
and strong arms,
only made her unfeminine.
She did not sit placidly on the swing-set
admiring her fingernails,
screaming,
when a fly buzzed past her ear.
She rescued frost-winged bees from being crushed,
laying them gently in the grass.
She held back tears when the asphalt stripped her palms.
She wanted to be brave.
Respected for the strength she thought she had.
That did not come till ten years later.
He called her a water nymph,
jumping from rock to rock like a small child,
though childhood had long since gone.
Laughed as she caught salamanders.
She cut her toe while they were walking together.
It began to bleed.
She said nothing, thinking it would stop,
letting the blood fill her shoe.
He panicked a little, wanted to carry her.
She refused.
But he bandaged her foot, gently,
like a morbid Cinderella,
as she washed the blood out of her sandal.
He complimented her graceful run.
Things she'd wanted noticed
for ten years.
She didn't know when she would find
another
who saw her, as he did.

My eyes feel heavy enough
to fall shut
and never open,
eyelids clanging like a tin box lid
with cheap hinges.

My hands feel heavy enough
to fall down
to permanent attention
and never rise,
frozen like the tin soldier
who was lost in the ashes.

My feet feel heavy enough
to fall once more
and never lift again,
bolted, like a tin sign
to a rotting telephone pole.

The definition of "Bleeding Heart"
is "dangerously softhearted."
I recoil, then nod.
It is dangerous to care so much.
My heart will crush itself
under the burdens it takes on--
Fold like tinfoil, till it has turned into nothing
but a hard silver ball,
I cast into the kitchen garbage.

'Today, I should be happy.'
I told Myself, as Myself and I
stared into Our mirror of thoughts
contemplating the day's ensemble.

'There are too many sad things here,'
said Myself. 'We've worn black every day this week.'
But I paused, and smoothed the wrinkled raven skirt
across Our knees.
'But it's grey today' protested I,
'and red makes Us look garish.'

'No one said We had to be all happy,' Myself mused,
'We'll wear the red scarf with the black coat,
a little happy, but not so much as to drown out the sad.'
I nodded. 'A little sad never hurt anyone.'

Here, I do not need to coax the sound—
No more tremulous plucks, bated breath,
Muting my voice as it slips from my throat
Here,
It falls as a gift, freely given
Resonant as thunder in the mountains
Bold and beautiful.
How brightly I burn
When I do not have to ask
To be heard.

I have learnt the pain
of too much tenderness,
of ingratitude, of impatience.
The pain that comes when you can't identify
the material of the casket,
you kept a gifted heart in.
I though it was love,
that preserved your misshapen, scarred *****.
But was it sympathy, inlaid with gratitude,
For three words uttered (though falsely)?
But I returned yours unharmed, when you requested it.
No gashes from harsh words
only salve, from caring hands- though the wound's wouldn't heal.

I don't know what you kept my heart in.
A bag of lust, tied with pride?
Cheaply made, so when it tore,
you sent my heart back, raw, unprotected.
At least I left you with sympathy.

Let’s pour a little salt,
flavor the Earth,
so She’s the only one to remember
that we were ever here.

2. I painted Care and Sympathy’s portraits,
and (falsely) titled it Love.
And you hung it on your wall to remind yourself
you weren’t entirely alone.
But I’m sure you’ve taken it down by now
and it’s sitting in a corner, under the white sheet of time.

3. And if I faced death today,
I would like to think
I could face him without flinching.
As long as he would strike quickly, in the head or the heart.
I shouldn’t mind at all.

4. He called me tiny dancer
even though I couldn’t dance.
At least not very well.
He still insisted on waltzing
in my parent’s kitchen
despite my stepping on his toes.

Tuesday: a squalling jolt of surprise sorrow
And I am holding a flood behind my lips
Mouth pressed to the leak,
While the sadness glides through me like a body under ice
Faceless, unnamed specter
Caressed in the current’s deadly beauty
While I stand voiceless, holding this sudden sorrow
Like a half-rotted memory.
Who is it for?
What tattered thread snapped
left a frayed chalk line
At the back of my neck.
Morbidly, I wonder if one of the men I’ve loved is dead
If this stranger grief
Is the last sinew of intimacy
torn asunder.

I've learned to hate uncertainty.
Changes that come cursedly unannounced.
The future glass is half empty, and leaking.
God, Luck, and the Fates have lost my file.
Tossed by mistake to the recycling bin,
to fend for itself.
Time is the only one that plods along,
dragging moment after moment
to the slaughter, though they shriek
never taking a day off.
Death is the only certainty
and even he
works by spontaneity.

I botched my reconstruction.
The arches of my cathedrals lie unfinished, burned bone.
You can see strait through my ribs into the living room-- one breast gone.
War is never civil
and its aftermath, never logical.
Reluctant combat of minds and hearts,
my body aches for you,
my conquered heart
reaching blindly for your familiar arms,
to find nothing but air.

I am queen of afterthoughts,
rarely of fore.
Especially not in matters of hearts.
I am dry heaving sighs,
with leaden guilt
and what ifs.
**** them.
**** me.

Loneliness is a taste of death
Here I am, dying,
without arms to expire in.
The house is silent, as I drift to sleep,
not eternally,
yet.

Something is drilling between my ribs.
Freedom swings to guilt.
*justify, justify, justify

Something broke inside me.
glow-stick soul
snapped
one too many times.
There is nothing here
but broken glass
the darkness remains
undefined
un-defied.

I picked my poison blindfolded.
Fumbling like Jane Grey
at the execution block.
Grabbed the jar closest,
cool glass with death beneath.
It was the slowest.
Death by leeches,
who **** the spirit dry
and replace it
with lead.

She was tired
of pretending
she didn't go to bed
alone.

Maybe
Love is nothing
but a rib spreader.

We are beautiful contradictions.
Living, while dying,
and rarely satisfied with either.

I was going to write a poem about you,
but I can't.
There's too much to say,
and besides,
I can't think of anything that compares to you.

Love me, he said.
She tried
And failed

The red scarf looks best on me.
It's the first time I've gone somewhere alone
here, in months.
It's growing bitterly cold,
I understand why the wind
might hate the human race,
having blown us about for the past million odd years
and finding that we rarely end up in the right direction.
He tugs at my hair, and the clouds
as I troop down the sidewalk,
the cat who walked by herself
I think.
Something like an independent streak
that rarely rears its head.
Might as well make the most of it
while I have the courage.

I learned to find beauty in everything, even the sorrow— a curse?
It is the deadly beauty of darkness
before the lion closes his mouth
round your head,
and the vast blues of water
as you drown.
Romantic? Never.
Real? Always.
The truth was beautiful
and it hurt.

From such a gentle spirit
came such a harsh reubuke
and from such a verdant life
Oh, such an arid death!

What hope once bloomed
within thy breast
until replaced by a blossom
of such deep despair.  

The fates did deal thee a bitter hand
such cruelty thou suffered,
to be taken from day to night
and as quickly as thou were.

Thy life, thy soul, such lovely things
how kind thy smile could be
thou were indeed a rarity
in such a dreary world.

Take this violent heart of mine.
Someone pulled the pin with a kiss
spit shrapnel and blood,
cut your lips without meaning to.
Cough enough smoke, and your eyes water
phosphorus breath.
Born under the rising of a red sun.
Blood spilled this night and every night
between sheets of rain and steel
cold, heavy, stark as my eyes in the morning
when waking to the sirens.
Foxhole of fear and foot-shooter,
What am I good for?
Men may cry peace, peace,
but there is no peace.
Not in this violent heart.

The ink in my veins seems to have run dry.
Circulation problems, maybe.
My soul is desperate to write,
but the pen isn't working,
and I'm left to make blank indentations
on a scrap of tattered paper.

Here is another lost soul on campaign.
Hardened veteran of dark words,
fighting to retain the beachhead of sanity, so narrowly won.
Tell them to hang a black banner
for the mind missing in action.
Tell them not to hold their breath,
Waiting for a homecoming .
It will die on foreign, but familiar soil.
So it is with poets.
We few. We happy few.

My sisters and I jest
That men never get over us.
We have been named
Muses, angels, succubi, leanan sidhe
But we are les belles dames avec merci
And that is their undoing.
Our breath has left them gasping
With unfilled lungs
We never meant to be their oxygen
But they drink us in like drowning men.

We didn’t ask for this,
But disarming, we are soft enough
For them to float in
Belly up, eyes to distant stars
Singing the sirens song that stirs in our veins.

Behind our teeth rests the love
The world has failed to give them till now
There are holds in the knowledge
that our fingertips find the hollowed spaces,
mother wounds, clefts where trust was carved out,
And they clutch our palms to staunch the bleeding.

We never asked for this,
They cherish the brittle changelings of us
until they are crushed in the coals of our eyes
Eggshell ideals, fragile as egos.
Blown by the sea wind in the strands of our hair
they are scattered, undone.

The distance drifts between, inevitable
And full they turn away to starve
We cut the mooring line
After one too many storms,
And search
For safer
Harbor.

When a star burns black,
But no one is around to hear it,
it screams the last, lingering, piercing note,
of a symphony
written for a dying wish,
and a lost dream.

Finally imploding into silence
where even the brightest of lights,
is lost in hollow darkness.

The cliff’s monumental resolve
Plucks the sustained note of its rise
over the wayward valley,
Sound thick and heavy enough to chew,
A nameless taste of memory
calls to mind
Seven years ago
When a woman who shared my name
Threw herself from the cliff,
Into the snapped arms of trees below,
The act of falling, monumental resolve
The upward sweep of dark hair
Against the grey hand of the rock.

After,
my mother’s phone rang
with urgent voices
repeating my name as they’d heard it
On the evening news
Asking if it was me who had climbed
the bones of the mountain,
I who had stared down into the doldrum of trees,
watched them float in the captive air,
I who had murmured into the reticent sky
And still found no answer
That whispered “stay.”
I, who had scraped the soft skin of my foot across sandstone
With the last grounding pull
And still stepped into nothing.

And when she said I had not
That the name, though mine, was not mine,
I heard the relief in the notes of their voices
Collapsing into soft reprieve.

But I knew what it was
To wonder if the plummet was
like the upward flutter of coat in a draft or
The cold sweep of wind across a wet finger or
the warm, couching blast of a passing subway car.

And they don’t report on suicides for this reason
But everyone hoped it was an accident
Because accidents can be explained away
As the things that pluck us up and drop us into death,
But walking into death
With open eyes always led to too many questions.

Someday, she and I--
our name will be said for the last time
Edging on the ledge of wrinkled lips
Staring into the ground below—
And the syllables will hold themselves over the edge of the world
And jump.

A thousand words, never to be written,
too many moments to translate.
An unnecessary task, but a preferred one.
It should be easy, I am a wordsmith, as you said,
but my fire is merely embers,
my hammer, lost,
The billows need patching.
Discouraged, I sit by my dying fire,
a pile of horseshoe memories by my side.  
Broken plough hopes,
iron backed words.
All once glowing red,
now solidified in time,
by the cooling tears in a barrel.

Things always seem to wind up, then crash,
Like the tops we spun as children
Winding, winding, winding,
Till it circled it’s dizzying path across the dining room table
Reflected in the polished walnut.
Then plummeting over the edge
Into oblivion.

The happy, ignorant, whirling top,
Not knowing its misfortune
Until it meets the floor.
And rolls, rolls, rolls,
In gravity's death throes.

By mental age they say I am 43.
Old soul, yes.
I have crows feet from perpetual introspection,
reading books in dim light, inspecting the folds of time
for the tiniest wrinkle
that proves I was born in the wrong century, wrong time.
By some un-ironed twist of fate, I was placed in the wrong womb.
But I am resourceful, I can bloom where I was planted,
Though I will always have heart strings in the past.