Pasts were forgotten.
They were strangers no more
To each other,
But unknown now to themselves.

They stood in awe
Of what they knew had begun.
Now outside of time,
They learnt nothing but new.

Their sense became numb.
They realised fate meant
To open love's toll-gate,
So they became one.

Beyond time's bounds
Begins destiny's chance
And there they waited
For their reality.

did you die,
Ophelia?
did you drown yourself?
I heard you looked
pretty and glorious
in your best dress
and with flowers
all ready to meet your Maker;
they tell me it was so beautiful
one could only cry to see you in the water…
did you **** yourself
darling Ophelia
because I told you to go join a nunnery?
did you think
your love’s words
meant a nunnery is the same as death
and so honored mad Hamlet’s words that way?
you could have chosen a drier type of death,
you know – though death by drowning,
dearest Ophelia,
dying in a stream and being wet
you save the living the trouble of washing you…
did you die, did you drown
darling Ophelia
thinking
Poor, poor Hamlet is gone mad…?
…thinking….
There is nothing left when a noble soul
goes insane…
did you die,
Ophelia?
did you drown yourself?
or is that just some new fashion you’ve invented
darling Ophelia
of taking a beauty bath?

he sighs,
lights up another cigarette.
this time he knows something is different.
he waits patiently,
coffee in one hand and nicotine in the other,
staring aimlessly at his phone.
he had lived through another silent day.
there really was no surprise in that.
it had been days since she disappeared again.


the routine was so consistent that her
absent nature was almost as secondhand
as the smoke she used to inhale when she
cuddled against his shoulder.
he was weary now,
because he tired of not knowing
what she was consuming,
or who she may be *******.
he was wary,
not knowing if she was lying in a gutter
or just lying on her back,
legs spread in an invitation to a myriad of catastrophe.
at one time,
he was the one spreading those legs.
but he was also the one tucking her in at night.

but one day,
something clicked;
she woke up one morning cold and indifferent.
her summer smile had faded,
her eyes grew frigid.
he remained patiently by her side,
until she stopped coming home.
until she started drinking herself into oblivion
with people who did only god knows what to her fragile frame.
this time,
he was ready to give up hope.
this time,
they had fought so terribly
that he knew she wasn't coming back.
he knew it wasn't easy to hear
someone you trusted say things like,
"*******, you filthy ****"
and
"i hope to god you choke on the next pill you pop."
he wished he could take the words back,
but his heart was so broken.
she was so distant,
he wanted to make sure he reached her.
and apparently,
he did.
she had shaken her black hair,
blinked tears out of her gray eyes,
and turned on her heel.
that was the last he had heard from her,
and even now he yearned to hear
her voice on that phone;
the phone lying in front of him.
any words at all,
to know she was alive.
maybe, even, that she still loved him.

because, after all,
isn't that what he wanted?
isn't that why he picked her up,
****** on roadsides,
and dried her tears on his sleeve?
isn't that why he allowed her to
hide from the world in his bed;
kept safe somewhere between box springs,
his comforter,
his arms?
he would do anything to help her,
but she was a tragedy:
a life doomed to fronts of indifference
and too deep of cuts on wrists,
thighs,
hips.
and she wouldn't let anyone help her.
any gentle touch caused her to run,
and she never wanted to come back.
and this boy,
he just kept running after her.


he takes a sip and sighs.
he ashes his cigarette,
studies it,
puts it out.
he studies the bottom of his coffee cup
and carries it to the sink.
as he rinses it,
he hears small footsteps,
and an equally small pair of hands
snake their way around his waist.
"i'm home," she breathes into his ear.
this night wasn't so different than any other,
except that she came home
sober
yet warm.
he had been wrong.
so he turns and looks at her,
takes her hand,
and leads her to bed.

a trinity of fairy tales
man
woman
woman scorned
and heaven hath no fury
like
the happily never after
spinning silver lies of lust
remedied by magic dust
or hair
or a slipper
perhaps
from your lady fair
live in your dream of pretty lies
the truth
my love
is in your eyes

does anyone know why I don’t believe?

because in all the stories good

always has to work too hard

to stand a chance against bad, 

no matter what.



because the numbers are always 

stacked against light,
even if darkness dies in the end.

why is it so hard? why can’t love always

have the advantage, from the very beginning?

isn’t that how we all think 

the world is: basically good?



that’s why I don’t believe:

because there are some people who,

no matter what is done or said to them,

will never appreciate what they are born with.

whether they deserve it or not 

doesn’t matter.

it’s lots of luck, the way I see things.

love, happiness, life: hard work, 

but lots of luck. 

and the first piece of that luck

is being born into a place with free
air, sunshine, birdsong, friends and family.

most have that, some not, but all have

breath in their lungs.


I will never believe in a god

because there are those

who can’t see their luck,

who can’t count to seventy-seven years

and realize how little time they have

to live the life that luck gave them.
if it was god, they would appreciate

what they have. they would be born with it.

like air, sunshine, birdsong, friends and family.

I will not attribute honor



to the bloodiest of games



to cold, condoned killings



faceless murders without blame.



War is to the green-clad



a state-sanctioned game



I will not call that thing honor



for which good men should feel shame.

When they fly          
(I wonder what they dream...)
Do we die
(After we clear the Stream?)

Love for them, when they love not the need...
Walls melting, oh why cant she be free?

DON’T LET THE ROBOTS WIN


The red sun gazes upon a blue moon’s reveries
While the baker glazes over our doughnuts memories
5-9 TV talks of talcum dreams,
Suicide sweet
****** machines.
Fascist fornication with communist candy
Tastes kinda like Yankee doodle dandy

I whisper over the roar of a glazed man grazing,
Dazed, and drowned,
to the Automated telenation:
“Don’t use self checkout lines,
Don’t let the robots win!”

DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How I was put on a platter and laid
between the mayonnaise and the bacon.
The rhythm of the refrigerator
had been disturbed.
The milk bottle hissed like a snake.
The tomatoes vomited up their stomachs.
The caviar turned to lave.
The pimentos kissed like cupids.
I moved like a lobster,
slower and slower.
The air was tiny.
The air would not do.
*
I was at the dogs' party.
I was their bone.
I had been laid out in their kennel
like a fresh turkey.

This was my sister's dream
but I remember that quartering;
I remember the sickbed smell
of the sawdust floor, the pink eyes,
the pink tongues and the teeth, those nails.
I had been carried out like Moses
and hidden by the paws
of ten Boston bull terriers,
ten angry bulls
jumping like enormous roaches.
At first I was lapped,
rough as sandpaper.
I became very clean.
Then my arm was missing.
I was coming apart.
They loved me until
I was gone.



2. THE DY-DEE DOLL

My Dy-dee doll
died twice.
Once when I snapped
her head off
and let if float in the toilet
and once under the sun lamp
trying to get warm
she melted.
She was a gloom,
her face embracing
her little bent arms.
She died in all her rubber wisdom.



3. SEVEN TIMES

I died seven times
in seven ways
letting death give me a sign,
letting death place his mark on my forehead,
crossed over, crossed over

And death took root in that sleep.
In that sleep I held an ice baby
and I rocked it
and was rocked by it.
Oh Madonna, hold me.
I am a small handful.



4.MADONNA

My mother died
unrocked, unrocked.
Weeks at her deathbed
seeing her ****** herself against the metal bars,
thrashing like a fish on the hook
and me low at her high stage,
letting the priestess dance alone,
wanting to place my head in her lap
or even take her in my arms somehow
and ****** her twisted gray hair.
But her rocking horse was pain
with ***** steaming from her mouth.
Her belly was big with another child,
cancer's baby, big as a football.
I could not soothe.
With every **** and crack
there was less Madonna
until that strange labor took her.
Then the room was bankrupt.
That was the end of her paying.



5. MAX

Max and I
two immoderate sisters,
two immoderate writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be polite.



6. BABY

Death,
you lie in my arms like a cherub,
as heavy as bread dough.
Your milky wings are as still as plastic.
Hair soft as music.
Hair the color of a harp.
And eyes made of glass,
as brittle as crystal.
Each time I rock you
I think you will break.
I rock. I rock.
Glass eye, ice eye,
primordial eye,
lava eye,
pin eye,
break eye,
how you stare back!

Like the gaze if small children
you know all about me.
You have worn my underwear.
You have read my newspaper.
You have seen my father whip me.
You have seen my stroke my father's whip.

I rock. I rock.
We plunge back and forth
comforting each other.
We are stone.
We are carved, a pieta
that swings.
Outside, the world is a chilly army.
Outside, the sea is brought to its knees.
Outside, Pakistan is swallowed in a mouthful.

I rock. I rock.
You are my stone child
with still eyes like marbles.
There is a death baby
for each of us.
We own him.
His smell is our smell.
Beware. Beware.
There is a tenderness.
There is a love
for this dumb traveler
waiting in his pink covers.
Someday,
heavy with cancer or disaster
I will look up at Max
and say: It is time.
Hand me the death baby
and there will be
that final rocking.