My message seems too abrasive to send
Like handwritten ransom notes
With a geriatric hand,
Gnarled and pimpled with
Weariness
And experience.
Our war stories
Are cards thrown down at a poker table
So initially casual
Then troubling after the fact.
People spout perspectives;
Our inputs are faucets overflowing
With the chemicals that change the mix.
Each of us contribute to the compound of strife.
What I need – what I want
Is my own element,
Thoughts pure of your life,
For you do not fully comprehend my experience.
My wuss-puss whines that resonate
As sure as a saxophone’s wail.
My jazz demeanor, burlesque figure
Only mask the pedigree of emotions
Beneath my wiggling hips, fluttering eyelashes.
Remember: this is a woman.
From smudges to sunlight to wind to aligned stars –
The cracked liar’s smile never eludes me
Just as the bite still scars my neck.
Marked, experienced, wrung out, aloof –
Live for sin, looping exponentially.
The seagulls scavenging in
The grocery store parking lot,
We know them and hate them for it.
Fuck, drink, yell, tip your way, son.
I’ll tap my cigarette, clamber into bed
[my motives are my motivation]
Deepstep, baby, deepstep:
Come willing because I won’t.
I am the renegade impulsively flipping cards,
Smirking across the poker table
And yelling, “Checkmate”
For no good reason.
Scattered to the winds,
My nonsense is the very ground you have to tiptoe upon,
My sense is the word on the tip of your tongue that absconded.
I am not your maker for he’s my friend.
I am not your mother for she’s my servant.
I am not your lover for you’re my witness.
This [whatever it is] is a syllable caught skipping on the record,
And we’ll never know the rest of the word