I wake up shivering under all the blankets I own.
My head, neck, throat, back, everything aches.
As tears drip onto my pillow, I look up.
Outside the window four moons rest in the sky,
and I recall being a feeble old woman,
slowly freezing to death on a field of decaying flowers.
I am repulsed by the scent but it is inescapable.
All that I see before my eyes is the ocean.
Calm and glass-like reflecting the sunset.
I woke up just as a strange man came
to take advantage of my frailty.

A little girl staying up past my bed time,
Watching TV from behind the couch,
torturing snails in my spare time,
playing barbies with the neighborhood boys.

I am an angst-y teenager,
driving to outrun a broken heart,
with a guy in a penguin suit up front,
and a hysterical audience.

Inside I am simple, sweet,
creamy vanilla from madagascar
slow churned into a delicate snowflake.

I am the moon, I light up the world,
for lovers and criminals like me.
I am scarred and imperfect,
and on cloudy days I stay in bed
and hide my face from the world.

I am all of these things
I am unique
but
nothing that i've experienced
hasn't happened to someone else
and nothing I do hasn't been done before.

Tell me how love killed grandpa
when nothing else could.
How he was blasted into the after-life
by a grenade while trying to save another.
How they were sure he'd died,
and even issued his death certificate.
How they sent a folded flag and stoic soldier
to tell my great-grandma her son had died nobly.

Tell me how the morgue attendant
saw him cough and twitch.
How the shrapnel ripped him to shreds,
severing the blood supply to his brain.
How doctors told him he'd never walk,
or talk, or even sit up again.
How they gave him a Purple Heart
to make up for his broken body.
How he was too willful to be beaten by WWII, Korea,
or a doctor's grim diagnosis.

Tell me how I'm the daughter
of a dead man's son.
How grandpa refused to be crippled
by the forgotten war.
How he taught himself to sit up and walk,
at first with crutches and then unassisted.
How he learned to tie his shoes using only one hand,
and talk through damaged vocal cords.
How he conceived you 6 years later,
and the newspapers called him a 'True American Hero.'

Tell me how he finally died
of a broken heart.
How young and full of life grandma was
when Alzheimer's disease took her.
How quickly she forgot everything,
even how to swallow and breathe.
How you were orphaned so early in life,
no older than I am now.
How grandpa's big courageous heart could lose anything
but her.

Monday:
Marie Antoinette and the Big Bad Wolf meet in the forest,
where she is idly engaged in some bourgeois pleasure.

Tuesday:
They spend all day distracted, making mistakes,
they can't stop thinking of one another.

Wednesday:
The Wolf decides he must find her again,
that tasty woman whom he can't forget.

Thursday:
Through luck or a twist of fate he finds her,
And the starry-eyed pair share a cigarette.

Friday :
The Wolf pulls stockings up Marie's dainty thighs,
while she lays tipsy and giggling at the cold.

Saturday :
They watch the sun rise out of the camp fire,
and set into the ocean, as they go with the flow.

Sunday:
Sculptures spring from the ground at their feet,
as the two stroll along hands and hearts entwined.

Part I:
When hibiscus bloom, graceful stamens tickling the sky,
hummingbirds swarm in hoards to sunnier climes.
Where they drink sugar water from feeders in ladies' backyards.
they will not drink artificial sweetener,
to them, saccharine has the bitter taste of poison.

Hummingbirds originated in South America,
where the Aztec's thought them to be gods on Earth.
For certain ceremonies Aztec slaves were forced to sew
thousands of tiny hummingbird feathers to priest's long capes.
Hummingbirds were an instant sensation in European society.
Fashionable ladies would to embellish their hats, homes, and meals,
with tiny jeweled bodies, wings outstretched as if to take flight.
Today in certain parts of Mexico women wear remarkable necklaces,
which showcase lifeless hummingbirds encased in resin.
These talismans symbolize the search for true love.

The Hummingbird-man doesn't believe in love.
He stares down his hyper-extended nose
at the grey mosaic of the sidewalk
and ponders the bleak prospect
of humanity.

Part II:
The Hummingbird-man's first word was 'death'.
He can still remember the fish that ruined his life.
She had big dark, infinite eyes, but he could never hear her voice.
She was all ribbony tail and bubbles, all cloying looks and temptation.
All he wanted was to hold her and kiss her pursed lips,
but she struggled, She fought his embrace. He loved her,
and she chose to die rather than succumb.
She fell from his arms onto the floor and her trashing finally ceased.

Then the toddler who would become the Hummingbird-man, fled.
He ran to his mother's lilac caress, bewildered and seeking comfort.
Her soft hands wiped away his tears. He smelled coffee and liquor on her lips
as she kissed his forehead and asked what was wrong, why he was crying.
He gripped her familiar hand in both of his tiny fists and led her
back to the still body, the first victim, his heart filled with regret.
The now-dead fish, his first and last pet, stared at him without once blinking,
eyes suffused with accusation, kissable mouth agape, useless gills flared,
organs and segments of veins visible through translucent skin.

Part III:
The hummingbird-man was not always the menace he is today.
He was once innocent and in love with a girl who had eyes like twilight.
They were both young, still children really, but they love they shared was feverish.
To him she was perfect, except for the gap in her teeth and her irrational fear of ants.
An artist in every way: every word she spoke was a song, her every movement
a dance, stargazing with her was like listening to the sky read poetry.
Her smile lit up the world. She played the xylophone because she said it mimicked
the sounds of children laughing –  the happiest sound on earth.

The only time he ever saw her cry was when she learned children laugh 300 times a day
but adults are lucky to laugh 300 times a year. She told him she never wanted to grow up
and he quietly fed her crisp frozen grapes. They never fought – she hated arguing
she said every fight was like a miniature war between two people.
That's probably why she never said goodbye … one day she was just gone.
Her friends said she left with a band that passed through town.
The lead singer saw her, and wanted her like he'd never wanted anyone before,
so he wooed her and convinced her to go away with him. She never looked back.
It was selfish of her but she was just a child, with a child's fickle whims.

Without her, he felt dead inside, numb as if she'd blown out the fire inside him.
What he does now isn't her fault, she was merely the final straw for him.
When he closes his eyes now he can see the dreams and hopes of others,
and he finds them wanting. Pathetic insipid creatures, he thinks, as he kills.
He is trying to cleanse the earth of selfish people,
in his twisted mind this goal is somehow noble.

They built you to be burned,
my gilded temple,
And everyone sobbed when you went up in flames.


For a week you were the jewel of Black Rock City,
A building but so much more, the world's largest harp,
more magnificent than the one I traded for my ticket.


You were our chosen sacrifice,
A holy place people visited to
cry, mourn the dead, and find peace.


With silver paint I wrote
about my heartache and loneliness
on your walls, as so many others before me had.


Standing around the funeral pyre,
We shared a moment of silence for those departed,
As you burned for our sins and were canonized.


The hush lasted until you were nothing more than:
the reflection of flames on a weeping face,
A charred spot in the desert, ash carried away by the wind.


Fire destroyed what was once beautiful,
but the embers of the temple danced in the pitch-black sky;
like an infinite number of flickering stars.

The hour that demands the following day be wasted.
The hour that proves you are irresponsible.
The hour for those under twenty-five.

The hour birds wake to begin their incessant morning clamor.
The hour the body begins to loathe the mind.
The hour focus drifts away on the smoke of tonight's last cigarette.
The hour of what-am-I-doing and how-can-I-live-like-this.

The incorrigible hour.
Chronic, hopeless.
The most degenerate of all hours.

There is little pleasure in familiarity with four in the morning.
If those birds are screaming love ballads to the early morning sun
three cheers for the birds. And let me now lie down to sleep
if I am to go on living.

In the smoke-filled trailer,
Curtains drawn against overcast skies,
His pierced lip trembles slightly,
as he serenades me with love songs
on a one-stringed ukulele.
I stare into his green eyes,
at the one orange fleck,
and pretend summer will never end.