You called it our baby
And I sung it into life
The first word in its ear
The song of all our strife.

I am the ****** queen
No man to make me rule
Your underestimated dream girl
Your perfect ingenue.

You called the sounds
The good sounds
And from the rock came death
And all the sad destruction
And all our baited breath
And all the holy discord
And every frightened dream
And bare breasted, I move on
Like water in the stream.


You called me your baby
And swan-songed ever sweet
I went along with every gamble
Til you tasted defeat.

I am the queen of snakes
The Pythia, obscured
The maiden, mother, mistress, crone
The one that’s never heard.

You called my body
A celestial body
And from the sky came rain
And in the eclipsing silence
You never heard my pain
And all the holy hatred
And all the washed up dreams
And now, I alone move on,
Like water in the stream.

Sweet Pythia, I’m burning
And I must find the way
The lonely heart has never learned
How to make him stay.

But he is not contention
He is only choice
The songs I sang for many men
Only make him love my voice.

And you call these sounds
The good sounds
When the good sounds please you best
The sounds when they adore you
Not the aggressive ‘I digress’
And all the holy Heras
And all the built in rust
And I, without armies win battles
And you without care, **** trust.

I am the mistress, maiden, crone
All dolly-eyed and blue
Your manic little angel
Your perfect ingenue.

I am the maiden, mother, crone
And now apart from you
Because no one is anything
And nothing you heard is true.

To be imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea,
by the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words,
provoked brooding that my comprehension of his susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen,
when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen.

By the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words!
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany,
but when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen,
I discerned this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance.

I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and when I discerned that this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance,
I vowed to rectify the imbroglio for my quintessential cynosure.

When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance.
I vowed to rectify my quintessential cynosure of the imbroglio,
and fabricated a denouement to return her to halcyon incipient.

I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance,
until hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply.
She fabricated a denouement to return us to the incipience of halcyon
with ineffable felicity, and I remembered with ebullience my inamorata's words.

Hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply
provoked brooding that my comprehension of her susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen.
With ineffable felicity I found ebullience in my inamorata's words
and was imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea.

Driven and persistent
When a girl, I was undaunted
On acting I was insistent
By the stage I was haunted

A mere ingénue
At the odds I did laugh
Until the day that I withdrew
Now that ingenue lay neath an epitaph

To myself I was untrue
Now turn back to dreams
I must pursue

Lo, I am rebuilding
Her broken spirit within
Already she is healing
Anon let the journey begin again

You always leave out the end.
The part where the dream turns into a nightmare,
When the bodies turn to dust in your hand
Where what you thought were clothes were just threads.
The one where everything shrunk in the wash and all your favorite shirts are too tight on your ribcage.
You'll leave out the end
Hoping it won't come.

I never told you I live a synesthetic life
That we see red differently.
What appears to you as the fires of passion,
I can only see as a burning flame.

You skipped class on all the days a girl came in crying.
You keep drowning in waters that were never meant to hold you
And reaching for the first thing that looks like a lifeboat.
You pretend not to see the cracks in my hull
As if your broken words could ever heal my broken frame.
I pretend not to see the way your eyes still light up at the sound of her name.

Didn't anyone ever tell you you can't make homes out of people?
Why did no one warn you about the danger of resting your head where it cannot permanently lay?
You were the ropes I tied myself to the train tracks with
But all you could see in me was the beginning that the ending of her erased.
 And how can you tell me you understand
When you've only ever looked at me like a paperweight?
I'd hold you down until you were ready to let yourself be used again,
And then you'd leave me to sit and collect dust with all the others who were never enough to put the pieces back together for you.

Someday the end will feel like an accustomed coffin
And though you'll never quite fit comfortably,
You'll let it bury you,
Sitting dully in the dark of the Earth,
And you'll learn to only see the stabbing edges
As another numbing pain.
The apples in your garden will have all turned to snakes.

Roll my body in the rug or bury me under the floorboards.
I'll listen to your footsteps
Like a Heartbeat you swore would mean more if it stopped.
I'll sleep below
While the radio static sings lullabies only you can hear.
Lay me to rest under the floorboards
A funeral for a love never destined to last.
Lay me to rest under the floorboards we danced on,
But don't you dare drown me.

This, no song of an ingenue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments,--
I loved them until they loved me.

Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."

Pictures pass me in long review,--
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us----hence
I loved them until they loved me.