What are these bodies, these
limbs, giving up their sap
and heat? Who decides
who dies, who lives?

What is cut down is
cut down, and
bereft children
grow in their place.

No suits are filed
because the lines were blurred.
**** isn’t ****
when there isn’t a clear no.
**** isn’t ****
when you just lie there
and take it.

Night lowers its curtain of silence,
my only time to steal away, and
**** the flavour out of every
lovely rind.

It is its lime
bitterness,
mine to enjoy.
If only I could taste it.

Sometimes I am more

thorn than flower


*but a rose is a rose is a rose

You are beautiful and I am not.
We are the habits of our forefathers.

We can choose to forget them, let them
Drain away like sand through glass,

Distant dust of history. As much as we try
To remember, desire is stronger than memory.

Sometimes I turn to sculpt soft clay,
Loose and stark in my hands.

And then I abandon the mess. I should keep
My fingertips stained red for effort.

I remember dreaming a vision:
Heroine of my own story,

Walking the grey beach in winter,
Projected far into the future when I might realize it.

Clay does not sculpt itself.
Prayers go unanswered. Here

I dwell in my own lit house,
Multiple yellow lights

Floating in the dark, mirror for
The starry night that I might see.  

We’re the only species with
Wings on our feet. We’ve molded

Paper into something precious.
Currency of kings. Gold origami.

Honeyed words remain my nectar.
Rome is a daylong process that is for ever.

To shape is a practice
Known by time and being,

That I may become a living embodiment.
That I might find grace in a raised arm, a bent leg.

That I might see myself through a filter of love.
That I might remember there are no

Comparisons.
That we are beautiful for our very selves.

The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.

According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.

Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.

Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.

Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.

I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.

So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.

Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.

Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.

But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.

Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.

Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****––
retaliation – ******* in my dream.

Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.

The sting of raindrops,
a thirst for outdoors.
Dusk, and the
whisper of leaves,
a certain silence. The evening hangs
still. I want to observe the
moment of change,
the discovery of strength,
a joining.