Do you see what I see?
We have descended into the belly of the beast.

Houses crowd together, their dead eyes staring out.
They’ve sprung up overnight like

Ugly toadstools.
The machines on the hill are busy

Scraping away the old. By that I mean
What was there before,

A forest naturally,
And putting up these monstrosities instead.

It can’t be let well enough alone.
There are too many people and someone’s got to make a buck.

The world burns down to the filter.
We suffer the fevers of the dry needle people,

And are left with what has been
Torn out from under us.

Some privy chair propped us up with potions.
Dutiful pawns, riding the arcs they have fashioned,

They pay us a small ransom
To cull and sell their wares.

Simple sticks and carrots are not enough to wake us.
The damage thus wrought we pay no mind to –

Subdivisions, shopping malls, parking lots.
There are too many people and someone has to pay.

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.

Even the stars are doing yoga.
Nothing has always done it,
bending into space.
This evening found me stoking
the fire,
warming by breath alone.
People are such cold little stoves.

Above the sound,
**** and give of ocean,
I heard Ariel sing.

and it isn’t so odd that
we become each other’s
caretakers, as like
children, we reach for love,
as if we’ve never endured
a long winter’s night alone,
hope the last matchstick
lit in our hand.

I search for the true reflection.
Is it in the mirror or the camera?
Is it in a lover’s eyes or an enemy’s?

I don’t profess to stand on a pedestal,
but I stand on something,
and it seems it’s always something

that knocks me off.
And we may say, I know, I know,
for I have also been there.

I know who she is. I know, I know.
I know the problems she’s facing,
as if we are all wise men.

But it’s becoming clear
that you can only ever walk
in your own shoes.

Forests were torn down and
cities built because of surety.

How can your child's face
assure me of my future?

It isn’t as if
I must put on
the Queen’s English
to be around you.

It isn’t as though
I should feel
the need to rebel, or
that my solitude

is a luxury
instead of a right.
Rather, these are
the whale-bone songs

of a well-worn battalion,
poised as I am
at every solstice,
footsore at the door.

This is simply
the ebb and flow
of ambrosia
that sets the pendulum

to swing
in different arcs
of fool’s gold,
the soft footings

at the edge of my radar.
This is the culture shock
of living dead girls
undergoing a seismic shift

in the round
mother-of-pearl
mountain ash,
insinuating

themselves
in a sea of voices,
while shadows cast
a romantic screen.

For every one that succeeds,
millions of others fail.
So tell me
how it should be,

that I could live
on my knees
and weep honey tears
as my dreams escape me.

Because this is
a death of sorts.
The phoenix rises,
only to burn again.

Poverty
is a personal Shanghai,
and just as vast.
I want to believe

that wealth can be
weathered beauty,
Elizabethan colouring,
and a pirate smile.

You get my most
gorgeous parts,
although
my flaws,

innumerable,
hidden
in blind spots,
hidden in ivory,

are discovered
again and again,
as I live between what was
and what will be.

Break me into chasm
then let the love pour in—
flower into deep well—
stem the umbilicus
of what you could say
you knew of me—

the privilege of living
inside your own head—
and me,
something made of sand,
a wink—

something of one
of many lives ago,
though how well
you knew me—
as did he—
how well they saw me—
and maybe no one did.

We were lovers
in a past life.
And now
I am obscure as
lost Atlantis, origin
of the fairy tale—
fragile
as gossamer and
the Holy Grail.

you are so enamoured
with the honey on her lips

you don’t realize that mine
taste just as sweet

I live with
holy sunshine—

but I wake to weep.
In the sun,

shadows stretch
long behind me,

where some things ought to
remain buried.

I did not go digging you up.
Bees do not normally

nest in skulls—
but I know

they hum in your head,
dripping honey of me.

Gentle wolf,
you came in the guise

of a friend.
They tell me that they would have

rescued me
as you made your advances—

except
they were never there,

in your lair.
And by that time

I had already
been eaten.

All that exists
between us now

is a history;
the guilt that still

weighs on you,
and poetry.

And if your guilt ever becomes
too much for you to bear,

and if you ever feel like
confessing,

my poems can be
your Hail Mary’s.

Does memory deserve such a platter?
Cellophane instead of silver, but still
An impressive tower.

Such weight it bears—
Exhibit of blue curiosities
Resting on shoulders,

Original honeycombs.
The honeyeater feasts
On what has made a meal of me.

Grand rooms echo with silence.
Love turned to hate
So often without comment.

A history of broken hearts lies beneath
Street level. Away from sun’s glare
I buried them.

It is a tomb I walk in, tour guide
To myself. It is an ossuary hidden deep
Underground. It is the Catacombs of Paris.

Here moldering in the dark repose
A stack of secret skulls and bones—
Those gleeful arsonists.

In the end, even they succumbed
To the fires they set,
Burning down chapels without regret.

The city rumbles overhead, oblivious.
Everyone is absorbed with their own busyness.
No one pauses to wonder outside the still museum.

The cool façade belies the treasures hidden within.
They forget the history we share.
No visitor ascends the stair.

Inside, all is quiet.
The sole curator walks among the artifacts—
The rare objects, a Gordian knot,

The personas we once wore:
The naked emperor, the femme fatale,
The honeycunt.

It is her spirit
you fell in love with.

Be careful
not to crush it –
shards
beneath your heel –

shattered glass remains
shattered glass.

I held up the mirror
just to see
if you were as unrecognizable
as me.

They are the sky.
I am the earth.

They are taxi rides.
I am a river rushing.

They are eyes glued to a screen
when their companions long for real conversations.
I am the wind in silence.

They are ****-coloured beer.
I am black coffee and stout.

They are cell phone towers.
I am the stars.

They are poodles on leashes.
I am the lone wolf.

They are elevator rides.
I am off the beaten path.

They have forgotten their roots.
I am plugging in.

Where does it hurt today?

My teeth/sinuses,
Sciatic nerve,
*****, perineum,
*******?

But not my heart
(no, no more my heart).

Learn their language. You will
need the words
to sing
your own songs.

Let them name you:
shameful
crazy
nothing.

We forget that
***
is still
a weapon.

Laugh at their visions,
their one-faceted
solve all
solutions.

Remember that
every day
you rise anew
like the sun.

her shadows
have more weight
than my ghost

in my hands
a basket
full of ripe
plums

they prefer
those bite-sized
cookies with the
******* fortunes

plain language
in which
nothing hums

Peel back the layers
of my rural purgatory.

Figure out
the critical junctures
of where I once stood,
with this one,
now on TV, and this one,
surfing in Hawaii.

I was a **** girl, spreading
my legs for sailors, and
getting crucified for it.

I am guilty
of still imagining
our beautiful possibilities.

Death may yet
claim him, and my ****
are still round
and firm.

The times have me gobsmacked,
petulant observer, no more endearing
than anonymous audience.

My own visions, shadows on cave
walls, storytelling secret
animal lanterns.

what is sand
but the finest of glass?

and what are bones
but the finest of ash?

and you may try to crush
me down into the finest of elements,

reduce me to nothingness,
******* to the wind.

but I have a talent
for rising again,

oh yes.
you cannot keep me down for long.

you love me -- though you don’t

know me fully --

just as you love

the stars at night --

the vastness

you can’t imagine --

lighting up

eternity.

I wear an old shade of red.
My belly is a wrinkled
skin of fruit.
I am no longer a ripe peach,
not even a blossom.
That my daughter is.

Poetry is heavy as lead
in my mouth.

Tree branches find more grace
in a wind that’s ragged.

I am a rose

blown wide open

petals dripping, seeds dripping

in a garden

full of buds

just waiting to exhale their scent

This cycle

flowers go through

dying

for the next beauty

Drowned world
in a miasma of plastic.
I turn to love
is not just a flash
in the pan. I am moody walls
and stone borders,
eyes on the horizon,
the quickening ****** sunset.
I try to believe in some heaven
that I am here.
I should pay more attention.
I should bloom like a flower
underneath your sun,
rewarding you
with an infinite unfurling of petals.
The night need not crush.
It may reveal its stars.
The child brides’ shrieks
do not always
denote pain.