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.

dense as marble, your body
is something to hold onto

after years of chasing shadows,
thin reedy men whose leavetakings

were their legacies, fashioning
(maybe by accident) crude sharp tools

with which to stab my heart.
look at it today,

made thick by crisscrossing
scar tissue. have you ever seen

anything so beautiful
that was broken but

unbroken? here, feel
the heft of it in your palm.

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.

Sometimes I am more

thorn than flower


*but a rose is a rose is a rose

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.

Stuffed on chicken wire,
no rooster in the yard.

I’m practicing magic
while the lawnmower rides.

Funny that,
said her valentine.

They hadn’t yet learned
there’s so much to know,

her body opening
like a rose.

a thousand restless fingers
pluck along my nerves
and crawl swarming bees
over my flesh
******* dry honey
and I as a comb am empty
waiting on the waxing moon
to bring in the tide
exposed and littered
on the cracked seabed
lighting beeswax candles
impromptu runway lights
for those aeroplanes
who always fail to land
and wasted afternoons
fade into wasted nights
tossing to and fro
I sleep
under the cupboards instead

I imagine her night –
her winter, her dark – better
defined your light,
the same way black velvet
offers a showy diamond.

A diamond,
your diamond,
full of beans,
along with mine,
full of shrieks,

seeds we’ve germinated.
Yours is tall and yellow;
mine blue and pensive.
Kindred, we
dream a garden for them.

Once
in the old neighbourhood

I had never felt more beautiful
and unafraid.

But I am afraid now
as you stalk near.

My words are naked babies
and I must run.

Swifter beasts than me
have not survived

the chase
across the savannah.

You too struck
quick as lightning.

Do they willingly give up
their bodies and blood?

Are they all too happy
to submit to death?

But I,
I just wanted to get out alive.

The clocks wind down,
and soon the Earth will spin
tightly again.

How many passes do we need
to take a conscious breath?
How many paths?

The curtain lowers
before the curtain rises again.
I find myself staring at the red velvet,

the in between.

the edges are stained blue

and no matter
that spring is holding out its hand
in a promise,

spring becomes summer,
summer fall,
and winter again,

and the hours and the hours and the hours

and cities rise
and forests fall

once, gods
are now falling into disrepair,
temples on the verge
of imploding.

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.

Her novelty has faded.
The stars hang back, distant ladies-in-waiting.
The night sky, their palace, is eclipsed by cities
Exploding with neon lights and grotesque trees.
She is too romantic.
Inch by inch, the black sheath is drawn back,
Revealing her smiling crescent.
She keeps a faithful orbit, and stirs
Blue oceans with long white fingers.

In her full sphere
She is a perfect spotlight,
Turning quiet snowy fields into
Illuminated empty stages.
She plays peek-a-boo, uncovering lovers
Gleaming whitely in the mouths
Of beds.
The beauty of entwined limbs
Exposed in her milky radiance.

She is the sun’s soft reflection.
He is never dim, and the black
Silk bag, a sort of corset,
Is ready to devour her again.
The wine is drained from the glass.
Her smile has become a slit.
The single pearl
Gulped,
Cloaked in shadow again.

I hardly journey there anymore.

Those ruins are far and distant,
Far and distant, and black and grey.
Relics are moon rocks in the frozen landscape.

The grand façade of the pantheon has
Crumbled into sand. I could crush it all into
Dust beneath my heel.

The mind itself is an eye, a camera obscura,
Lit not by the moon—
That old pinged marble—

Over whose surface I skim in my tiny submarine.
The lunar scene fills my vision,
Film noir.

I spy the cold garden. In the heart of it
Gleams the litter of my chicken bones.
My cowardice the wicked reminder,

Consequence of the role I performed
For the impassive audience. I underwent
A sea change in the theatre of their minds.

On some other plane
Holy voyeurs peer through spyglass,
Seeking to undress the celestial paramour.

Such delicious vacancy—
**** statue in an arena of eyes,
Gristle picked clean by vultures.

The air is ****** dry. Cold stars
Abound in the black sky.
Smeared ink the lingering impression,

Smudged thumbprint.

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.

Could it have happened any differently?
Perhaps. But which fork in the road was it?
Where does the path start to unravel?
A change in the way things are
Would have changed everything else as well.

For all the mistakes bemoaned, lessons
Learned – unless vanity stands in the way –
Or the same error repeated
With different actors playing the same role –
Hero and villain alike.

And the split between people of insignificance and
The people that matter – faces splashed on
Tabloids and magazine covers –
The invisible reduced to mere shadows
Floating on the fringes of light.

Shadows have a way of defining the light.
People have a way of shaping our lives,
Setting in motion our trajectories,
The way banks and boulders guide water in a river –
The wind, a fallen tree.

No absence made a hole in the day of someone
Who was never there.
What’s out of our control – people,
Sequences of events. What’s inevitable –
How we choose to react.

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.

Love has given up.
It was the wrong religion.

And London did not melt into the Thames.
You teetered on the edge of a golden world,

and then fell suddenly—
accused of sortilege, ******, and treason.

And at his pleasure—
or was it mercy?—

Was it for the sake of your seven years,
or perhaps for the little daughter?—

in which flowed the royal blood, spoiled by *** and lineage.
Whatever it was, no matter.

He would spare you the pain
of being burnt at the stake.

Instead, to be executed like royalty—
dispatched by a French swordsman.

The prophecy must have been of little comfort
as your ladies helped prepare you to meet

Death, newly betrothed.
A gown of dark grey damask

floated over a blood-red petticoat.
Your mantle was trimmed with ermine.

Queenly, you stood and addressed those who had come to
watch you. And then you knelt and began to pray, and

quickly and mercifully, the blade
carried out its trajectory.

birds of a feather
no one has put

two and two
together

daisies gone
Occam’s razor

and he
our common denominator

no monsters under his bed
but in it

scars ripped open
I thought had healed

hurt to heal
heal to hurt

words I had never spoken
out loud before

hot lava
righteous anger

memory loss &
found negatives

was that a kindness?
to ply me with alcohol so that I wouldn't remember?

two weeks
no sleep no eat

hurt to heal
heal to hurt

a new hurt
to contend with

suddenly ghosted
back in the dark

like all dark
eating away at light

till only the stars remain
maybe signalling

to one another
I see you, I see

you, I
see

and between you and me is the world

and between you and me is a language

and between you and me is culture

and between you and me is a war

and between you and me is religion

and between you and me is a wall

and between you and me is perception

and between you and me is ourselves

We have the look of another place.
The rain forest dries to deepest desert
where meat is on special.

Politeness grips my hand
in a firm shake.

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.

When I was in her shoes,
somewhat,
I could be injured by any word,
anything.
If only they could feel what I feel.

I forget what I felt.
I have only cultivated a hard shell,
as I dole out
negativity.

who told you
you were not beautiful?

does that mean
not worthy of their time?

but anyway
they stated as such

if anything
their actions proved otherwise

but no matter
I’m trying not to mind

that I was never real
figment of imagination

whatever you cast me
I betrayed love

and cast heroes into new moons
beached jellyfish

I’m learning to gather bones
painting a canvas

instead of
reading newsprint

sculpture of messy clay
ultimate opus

good gold
honest trinket

bees’ honey
I recognize my self

ageless blue
flame

in all that is
ugly

small practice
sunburst navel design

Your moth light is supposed to
sustain me.

I am told to discredit
my sun,

its fuel unnecessary,
yours enough.

What do shadows live on,
this light?

I am the keeper of your
caterpillar dreams.