sharp knives
of alien family systems
cut my emotions
to pieces
and hang them
on hooks inside of me
to rot.

a calendar
lies in the corner of a table,
forgotten,
two weeks into the New Year,
its simple pencil sketch at the top
showing at an angle.
late at night
a noise can be heard from that corner,
the sound of protesting sobs,
and a little voice
can be picked out here and there,
"all the other calendars
had pretty scenes
of mountain lakes and forest glades.
now they are all gone.
someone has taken them
to hang on their wall.
and I am still lying here.
nobody wants me.
my big, clumsy letters
are clear and dark.
a child could read them.
and my large, awkward boxes
have plenty of writing space.
I am the best calendar around
and could help someone greatly
in their struggle
to remember their place in time,
if only someone would stay long enough
to see what I am
and not what I look."

a thick delicate hairdo
of tall grass
blows in the wind
over its sidewalk,
crowning it
with glory.

running
to keep up with the sun
as it moves around
from room to room,
trying
to dip my sunflowers
in a golden spell
of life
to let them weave songs
of yellow and light
in a visual symphony
into the air
of the whole apartment
until the last ray
fades into the wall,
leaving behind
a basket of flowers.

poplar leaves
spin wind
into the music
of the woods.

I bear a hard ball within me,
swollen with disease
and alive with pregnancy,
an alien thing
grafted onto me by another
and grown into me.
its numerous offspring surge outward
in crusty, scratchy waves,
flooding my system with infection
and attaching themselves to my being
to run my innermost workings
by remote control.

needles of terror
pierce my emotion sacs
which leak and spill over,
staining my intellect
and distorting my vision
to see only impossible choices
which drive me
into emotional psychosis
totally divorced
from reality.