Visions lost in cracking air
dirt and crumbling sidewalk

I drag my feet homeward
one more time

I dream the dream of dying
I wake gasping

I am locked in
this chambered hell of body

I see fire under rocks
I smell smoke in the bathroom

The night breeds evil smells
they float into my nostrils

Hope is lost, it flew away
I woke up laughing with the dead

Give me a safety pin
I have to pin myself together

My body has parted
was it a distorted mirror?

I touch my eyeball
and it sinks

I spit out teeth
with blood

My fingernails
have fallen off

Tired, I am so tired
i wander crooked streets

Shadows on the grey walls
my only companions

I am daughter of radon
I laugh as my hair falls out

I am so hungry
hungry for life

This steel landscape
of bed pans and commodes

The chill enters my toes
I wake up screaming...

I've wandered far all alone

just to find my way

back home.

Twenty-five years in a cell

of my own

is too long a time for

anyone to atone.

I grieve over the life that

passed me by...

It hurts like hell;

a sty in the eye.

I hunger after rainbows

on dingy walls

then pick up my pack

to go no where at all.

My eyes are tired

from lack of sleep;

no gentle hand to

comfort me.

Where can I go if

not back home?

The jokes on me

where ere I go

I'll be alone...

I am standing here myself by the kitchen table,

the facet drips in the sink...drip, drip, drip,

a familiar repellent sound.

I raise my head upwards with the final beauty

of the done deed...

here in this shabby hotel in the darkest of places

in the city, where the winos roam and  beggars die.

I walk to the room with the white shadow on a blood

splattered wall, a red hand print on the door.

i lift the hank of sticky hair from a worn chair and smell

the clotted blood.

I am filled with weariness; one man's answer to the belly pain.

My eye is a match-flame, the pain a solid lump.

Who will clean up this mess? Who?

I close my eyes in divinity and pain. No redemption...

The neighbors did not hear, they never do not with the radio

blasting out the rock and roll of a seventies tune...

Now there is no noise but a lack of sound.

i have gone deaf from the scream but the scream

was hours or days ago and the radio is unplugged and i stand in

black blood, it covers me and the bathroom is filthy and I

want to leave but stay and try to light a cigarette with shaking

hands. The room is empty except for material things...

strange to feel this cold...her gift of love too clumsy, too worn

not enough to hold me stable not in this dark place.

Why in this space of cockroaches, and stale muscatel?

The room does not answer only its broken ugliness hisses,

and where is the body, curled like a beaten infant in the corner?

Will rats devour her? There is a male insistency on meaning.

i can find no meaning in this stagnant air.

She laughed at me and my hands became weapons.

What was I doing in this shadow-land of the city?

Following what? Death! My death...

Now, i hear again the water dripping, it rips my nerves.

I am strung to a fine pitch...to know, to know not be erased

like so much dirt...dirt is here. i do not live here. Can I burn the

body in the bathtub and run the brown rust water and it will

go away? How many people on this planet starve to death

every second? What time is it? She stole my watch, the *****.

I give it all back. I give her retched life back. I am covered with

her blood and I long to be clean. Long to be rid of her rotting

stench. Who will call the police? I will. i know that as I know the

corpse because I must have wanted this. i have no understanding.

It was a surge of life i sought and only found death. My death,

her death and the world's death. Our planet will die ,just this way

with a dripping facet and a ****** shadow...

The world will die with me.

You swallowed everything rotten when you

swallowed me.

All the indigestion, disgust and anguished reverie.

I keep it tightly locked within...you dared the worst.

You swallowed time and tears and added years;

sorry for what you've done?

You assaulted my infinite oblivion....

my darling solitude and sick...

and yet you thought you'd won.

You lost, my dear, more than you can know.

You can't contain the old re-runs.

So, spit me out into the sea,

a better person you will be.

Let me dwell in my hollow hell with

my demons under lock and key.



Some things should be left alone forever.

It is the days
we do not spek of
that turn our lives.

It is the cold
which makes us yearn
for houses made of woolen.

We are caught...
In the endless Bric-a-Brac.
The absurdity of it all.

We are the children

of men in winter,
mad sailors,
and silent snow.

i hear the voice in whispers...

whispers...whispers...

under the willow tree

the voice says nasty things

***** words

to keep me listening

i hear it by the river

over rock and into splash

slash your wrists, sister

they'll never take you back

i run to my old playhouse

under the old oak floor

the whispers turn to hisses

i can bare it no more

i take the razor and cut so deep

the blood is black and sprays

now maybe at last

the whispers will go away

Dusk

Winter fog slips

Silently

Trees rise as dark

Sentinels

The road is

Shortened

The intersection seems

Too hazy

Notice the dead

Gray rabbit

***** paws up on the

Curb

Pass this silent

Symbol

Cross over to the

Houses

Amber lanterns glow

Hazily

That familiar dusk

Has fallen

The amber dusk of

Long ago

Warm memories of amber lights

In fogs damp chill

You have to shiver while

Strangers peek out  of their

Windows

Snug warm people

They didn't see the

Rabbit

You must go back

Yesterdays memories

Warm to the bone

The rabbit needs to be

Buried

Somewhere in the deep dark

Woods