Silence, Oh Silence
Why is it that solitude graces the night?
Each of us curled in our own little worlds,
Wrapped in contentment, memory, and sometimes pain.
Is Death so different; than the lack of the rising sun?
To be without light; without warmth,
Shadows become solid and objects lose sound
Darkness heightens mind, frees the heart
All five eyes going nearly blind force us to see
Perfection in ecstasy
But a harsh Satan shows us
A thicker realityof a life not brely begun
So here I wait for lovilier fantasies
No one knows when the light will dim; when it will go out
Yet I feel it coming closer everyday
I'll smile, at sunset, you'll see.
And show them all I'll be happy when night comes.
For me.

The door's wide open
               Why don't you come inside?
                              come inside?
Here lies happiness
And all you desire
I desire
Day's end
Now is its twin
It beckons
I beckon
                    Won't you come inside?
                              come inside?
Sitting pretty
Head on a silver platter
There is a tragedy
None to hold near
Unless you come in here
You cannot hide
I see you now
                    Will you come with me?
                              come inside?
All that stands in our way
The air in the open doorway
Fingers black, oh, so cold
Snow and ice dark as night
Look up, up at me
I wait quiet as can be
A frosted empty glass
Begging, fill me
                    Can't you come here, to me?
                               come inside?
                               come inside?
No longer, longer will I fight
                               come inside?
                               come inside?
The door is
                               --come inside?
                               come inside?
Wide open.

I haven't had the chance to say
Linoleum makes my feet slippery and sore
Somehow the sock in the hall is mine
I don't know how it got there
But I don't want it back now
There's a bug in my head that won't let me be
It sometimes hisses but I keep it anyway
Have you read 'A Clockwork Orange'?
I'm in love with Alex and always have been
If that makes me psychotic too, I suppose I am
That’s ******* anyway and I know it too
The sun is warm but I know snow will make me lonely
If I could be anywhere I'd be everywhere
I'm not really sorry but I've said it anyway
I'm afraid I wouldn't take you
One day my pants are too short --old
The next they drag and scuttle along --too new
If I could be a vampire I think I would
Why not? Maybe I already am . . .
It’s all ******* anyway
I shiver when it rains
And late at night when I can feel everyone
I always feel for everyone --even if its pain
My nail got ragged yesterday so I chopped it off
Now the other has a mysterious ****
I wonder how it happens that I'm always odds and ends
No I don't think I gave myself the chance to say
Have you read the Bible, you God-fearing ****?
I think there's a section or two of Proverbs you missed
Hello I'm somebody too!
Hello again and how I've missed you
Is there hate past Heaven’s gate?
Perhaps it is best that I remember to choose my words wisely
Even if it’s all ******* anyway
My wrists always ache after I make something new
Happy day and future arthritis on behalf of beautiful creations!
I think Alex was beautiful and I nearly cried when he grew up
If not for now I'd cry for me too if I had to do the same
Crazy *****, believe me you haven't got a clue
I know I'd rather be insane than ever stop running away
Have you seen the stars from another part of town?
Before I die I swear I'll see them hang upside-down
I don't know why I'm afraid to claim the lone black sock from the hall
I'm miles from home and I'm not all that tense
As if that’s not always a fat old lie
Maybe I'm just slightly bored
There it is, all I have to say for now
*It’s all ******* anyway

Bury me slow in a cowboy
cemetery where
the dirt
on the casket
matches the dirt on the headstone.
I want
to spend forever beside leather

bound men fighting vainly
against skies
far too pleasantly blue. When they come
looking I hope they'll find me weary
and mummified
with men of many pasts by
my side.


They'll see me
worn but fighting on. Gun at my hip
and boots given to wear
ever-etching words of freedom and lines
in the dust of battles past and after
life wars still to come. When my aching
body is quietly lined

with wood, lower me slow. Lower me
into earth of old and legends
lasting and in the land of dirt and
snow-driven beauty I'll lie
until they come
looking for the men beside and find
me instead.

Its more like crashing than any other feeling I've known; to be somewhere you've been before and knowing all too well the familiar sound of screeching tires headed for this cinder block these unstoppable things will come my way again. I know that helplessness tastes of bile and blood close but not yet on its way up. In my car I listen to jazz as much as the blues and most days I don't mind that I can't always tell the difference. Just so long as the music keeps my mind from replaying the sounds of glass and steel and cinders crashing down.

I'd like to cut my hair and feel
naked as I was
the day I left my shirt sheltering your back
I do my best to cut my curls to the
quick and cut your fingers
running down my spine
I'll cut the sweet brown sound
of me touching you with Mozart and mad
mad love in my eyes
I'm going to take my knife and free
my face from these ragged
wind-whipped blades I treasured
I can live raw
as I was the night I crushed stars under my
toes dancing on a concrete pilon
I was spinning not falling
into your soft embrace but even then
there was a beauty of a blade in my back pocket
I'd like to cradle you in the weary
cotton shirt I left behind and as I walk away
naked I'll cut you from my mind

Pain escapes his eyes and stains his cheeks
Does she know what she's causing by fighting the end?
Doctor smiles wide to shake my hand
I hate that I feel rude not smiling back
He asks again how long (not long now)
There is a dusty cobweb on the ceiling
I've never noticed it before, must've always been there
Nurse fidgets with some papers and bottles
Questions asked, doctor jokes and laughs too loud
Irrational voice in my head hates her
One room dying, another crying, in a heavy house
Thick and tired air between us and he is falling into it
Only seen him cry three times
Once for fate
Once for her
Now for himself

         I never realized how bad the front door sticks
                   Must've always used the back

My nails are ****** and my jaw is sore
She's smiling on the other side of that door
The road is getting longer, my feet smaller still
He has a fascination with not being loved
Her mother's pearls are tight around her neck
Friends fight and plead, all they need is you and dignity
I remember the day I sold all my dolls
All I wanted was something new I can't recall now
His wheels are spinning but he'll be around when she's gone
Even my tongue is hurting after all this time
She thinks she'll turn around one day
We don't think he'll last long enough to leave
And its their hearts I'm breaking this time around
I almost lost my grandmother's earring yesterday
His father rips him like the burning sea
Those dolls all left my hands without shoes
But I guess that's how it goes in plastic reality
Her path is a little hazy and she'll soon forget about me
I think I'd last longer if I hadn't painted my nails
Am I the only one watching us all lose grip?

Darkness growing
My darkness has wings
Does yours?

Melancholy moaning
My scars are cleverly hidden
Are yours?

Madness brewing
My crooked thoughts won't show
Will yours?

Love controlling
My heart isn't always open
Is yours?

All these things I do
To save me
From hurting you

If you kissed me now, I'd kiss you back.
Run my teeth across your lip.
Maybe let a little taste slip.
I'd pull my fingers through your hair.
In the silk of my back you'd find your grip.
Down we'd go into the peace.
When we're done, there will be nothing.
Nothing but the broken and bittersweet.
But now I won't think.
Now I need arms and lips and more.
I want everything I don't know.
I'll push my hands up your chest.
I've buried my soiled soul.
Here's the grave I'd lay in with you.
A feather-down headstone.
And linen caskets carry us on.
If I kissed you now, I would breakdown.
Run a blade across your hip.
Maybe let a little vengeance slip.
You'd pull your blade; we'd stop and stare.
In the leather of our skin blood would drip.
Down we'd go; into pieces.

An acid trip and the sink still drips
I found cover of night
after nightingales left my
shifting sight
but I've got little to say
that you haven't heard and I
miss the soil between
my toes when the heat
burns my sunlit cheeks
the sink still drips and my dreams
don't stand a chance
against the sound of wasted
water in the night
I'm longing to make a change
when I realize I already
have but all the
same I'd like to make it
again if it would
mend the memory of
nightingale wings pushing on
through the snow
soaked skies and still
the sink drips on and I'm
left reminding myself
the roots beneath
me have changed but one
day soon I'll have to
scream to call it all back to me
any other day
I'd disagree but just now
I think an acid trip
will be about as mundane
as the drip of the sink
if I can't manage to let it last
to let it change
the ways I choose to see
this old frame
desperately fighting against
every warped
memory I've made
and every sheltering night that
made me.

& somehow you weigh on me again
as i expect you always might.
once you were soft clay in my hands
then a hardened plaster when i could not
                                                             ­            breathe
but time has dried you out
and i remember a kiss
                                         but not your lips
i remember the lightness behind my smile
but not you
                      as you were, are
& somehow you weigh on my skin
dried like dust and blowing
                                                  away
wh­ile I stand, warm in this summer wind.

I can't breathe and its your fault. You are all the elephant sitting on my lungs. With each breath your weight is all the more crushing. Every little struggle makes me so close to hating you. Hate is hollowing. I have felt it. You think you can't help it, you call me cruel. Words weigh more than you'd care to know so even in that I suppose you really don't care about me. Even in that love is a flighty phrase you haven't yet used with sincerity. But you don't know it or maybe you just won't admit it. I always hope you'll each find your way but please don't sit and wait, please don't sit any longer on my lungs, for me to find my way. I've found it now, so quietly and I'm afraid, I'm overjoyed, I chose the path leading far and away.

Peppermint breezes by
my cheeks. I'm looking for my stars
but mine is the only constellation
out of sight.
Winter time for a summer soul and I'm
wondering if I ever
really did feel the warmth
of the sun. Fallen
leaves are no more lifeless than I
am amidst a sky not mine. Let
fingertips freeze and shoulder
blades chatter
at least my ears have heard the glow of
black waters against foreign nights.
And for that I should be forever
grateful.

I have been beaten, bruised
by your winds and your current
the beauty of the moon has pulled at me
has made the earth and sea wound

I am erosion in its strongest breath
pieces of the sky fall from my waist
and I am losing tender bits of skin
but I keep my lips un-parted

I am hiding from you
as much as I am missing
the feeling of your eyes on me

I have often wondered if
you ever felt not the wind and
the current but the moon itself
carry you in pieces away when
my gaze quietly grabs hold
and tosses distance far and away.

Snowflake shingles
Brash happy jingles
They sing a song of winter
And here I stand in a large crowd’s empty hand
Silently screaming for another existence
And I throw my hands high and I wave at the sky
Inaudible invisible it’s a wonder I exist at all
They pull you in with sharp giddy hands
And all the while they cannot reach you
You and I we wonder if they really know
The sustenance they’re selling has hardly substance at all
Plastic memories and porcelain smiles
And they try to tell me its all worth the while
Paper and bows and more food than I could possibly eat
What’s treasured what’s valued
How could they even know?
Is it all worth it to slave away?
Just to slake greed for one single day

Daisies billowing in the wind

Callouses on her broken hands

Peaceful plots and naïve nurseries bloom

And every blossom withers

She once left her home for someone new

Freedom forced her heart to move

She ran past dry dirt byways

As she burned through city blocks

Somewhere searching they’d find

The remnants of flight she left behind

Bristling in the last fall breeze she fractures

Long white wisps fall down her back

Her feathers take to the last bit of wind

Her full heart is breaking

For the bittersweet kiss of mortality

And for all those who will forever

Hold tight to the fallen tendrils

She first let fly under the old willow

They’ll visit her there one day

With her lost feathers in their hair

Fizzle out
Feign it
You're in
Wish you
The very best
In the club of lonely children
Don't you wish
You could've seen
The billboards of the long highway
Flouting your fancies
Forgetting every noisy minute
That soon you'd resent
The loss of the signs
You didn't see along the way
You brought you
To this filthy new start
The very best
Wish you'd
Feign it
I am
In too
Fizzle out

The grace in the way things move feels
like the fibers of a mantilla veil until
the wind blows and turns
grace to something
worthy of fear.

I've got everything going
and they're all wondering if I'm coming
along but all I want is to keep
going my own way
even when I'm a little lost
in deciding what really is my own.

I've got the veil
I've always had
happy to know I had much more
beneath than beyond
but I think he proved me wrong.

The trouble with going
and still going strong
is that I do it best when he's gone.

I know what I want isn't
the best thing but
I want it just the same
nobody could blame me either way.

Now the wind's blowing
and blowing embers
burning my veil
clean away.

I'm finding all I hid
was worth something
to someone besides me and now
that I'm happy to be
alone they all want a piece.

Content beneath my mantilla watching
the best and the worst inch by
I had no Holy Week
and kept no days holy but my own.

Burnt to the scalp
I'm learning to dance without
the skirts and shawls that made holy
what I thought it had to be.

Fear driving my fingers to Flamenco
twists and my feet to wind-blown flames
I've got nothing to lose because the worst
is mine to claim and the best
isn't coming but going
my own way.

My heritage is martyrdom and I was raised in the shadow of its strict religion
Empathy has moved mountains
so have I
for those who could not
--would not--
move their own
A child of silent strength
mine is a lineage of
survivors of the ones they love
We are a calm
fighting breed
whose cause is never their own
and of them
I am proud as I could ever be
I've yet to see
dynamite
that could as
gracefully
move mountains
as my maternal ancestors taught me
They have bred me to be
a Joan of the Dark
Valley-born babes
find their way
to me
because they know
long
I will stand by while they face the mountain
casting shadows across their face
My blood is the roots of palm trees
weathering the scars of winds and earth-born quakes
They have served many well
in times of harsh valley winters and flooded springs
But I've found
my roots have yet
to serve me
I'm a martyr by instinct
and there has yet to be a cause
that's lost on me
My blood burns at the thought
but its taken me
this long
to find
all martyrs burn for troubles that know them only by name
I have mountains of
my own
and I would not ask
anything
past my own palm leaves
to brave their shadows
I know the trouble with the troubled
is all too often that they cast their own shadows
and prefer to be that way
Heretic of a dying religion
I've cast enough stones on the behalf of babes
Now I think
I'll keep my bricks
and build my own set of stairs
up
out of these shadows
and into my own hard-earned
sunlight

There's a place for me in the burning sun
Where flowers don't bloom
And winds of faith don't come

You'll find me here when the rest have gone
My legs will be your roots
And my strong arms torn

Dusted boots and myrrh and saffron songs
If I've yet to give my soul
I'll save a piece for you

A piece for me and all the shards for the end
Have you got a nickel?
Or five shiny pennies?

I always did prefer their backwards ways
The moon's on a platter
Save a slice for your day

If I say my feet and fingertips don't burn
A bitter forever I'll be a liar
But you don't want the truth

So here's a little known half-truth for you
I'll save a sunny burning place
For a boiling, bleeding two

Cuticles burn and nails curve
Scratching silent yearnings into wood
I yearn, ceaselessly
Splinters bite and rage
But do not fill me with doubt
Stippled marks made by callous fingertips
I yearn for something less than subtle
Less than ideal and far more shapely
Hands cramp as branches crack
Unwavering, I'm asking
Will you yield and come to grips
With becoming my creation?

I have exhausted the cradle I never meant to rock
Wooden legs are tried and sore

Slipping and spinning my bruised ankles
I didn't want to but if your knees scraped you'd cry too

I don't remember now, just who taught me
To tie my shoes the child-like way I still do

In a certain slant of home-spun light I can taste black ice
Did you learn to drive with tears in your eyes?

Was there hope or fear in your heart
When your last day home arrived?

It couldn't have been easy, I barely passed by
Even the dusty stars on my ceiling couldn't make me stay

Intuition never made me falter
I hope it won't forget to help me fade away

This is no far-fetched fantasy
There is no loop this is incendiary
Every battle is just one more
Without ever going to war
Here’s the door if you want it
It’s the only way out of insanity
But there you go caring again
There you go, never letting it go
If you hadn’t seen it you never would
But there it was and there it goes
A disappearing hearse rings destiny
So here you’ll stay with fear
Here you will live with sickening
Hate, Pity, Jealousy, Pride,
And self-deprecating Insufficiency
*You can’t be everything to everyone
You can’t save them all this time around
You can’t prevent all their catastrophes
You can’t help if they don’t help themselves
You can’t hold them quietly for eternity
You can’t . . . You can’t . . . You can’t . . .
You can’t . . . You can’t . . .
You can’t . . .

You are not a desert rose but a three-headed spike --the reason
for the pinholes in my shoes You are not a soaring
beauty --so many of the souls who call
you home are gnarled and cruel
You are frigid and the vicious
guardians of your sky scream
****** when I walk by You did
not always welcome me despite
the lover's whispers you blew my way
You are merciless --insatiable in how you
thicken my skin with the grit I gnaw
in my teeth You are not a peaceful
sun but a chaotic creator --anarchist
god You are the companion I so dearly miss

A few stiches with lacking seams
      You came to me as rough-woven fabric
      Under my fingers you were sewn in the lining

      But then you said, and I saw: walls
      So I tore it all down and found the bricks
      And I built you up again

      Red cement warned me not to pry
      With hope and grace you needed light
      In faith I tore cement away, I gave you glass
    
      Again I find the changing face of insecurity
      And I quickly find porcelain humanity
      Once more I made you into a finer clay

      Strength of mind and a feuding heart
      You became a gilt of silent armor
      Giving me blisters in the sun
  
      But for all your flighty woes and wonders  
      I never glanced away from each detail
      To find the broken platter of bending cracks

      You are burlap skin and of red brick mind
      Glass eyes and hidden sculpted mouth
      You don't shine in bruised and welded silver

      Some days I've built your mystery up annew
      I know I've torn you every way but down, you make me
      Tired, and make me scared, I won't build you up again