Lucky/not 13 is a black cat
         a broken mirror
    a shoe on a table
Lucky/not 13 is a new old school
         a shiny, new flute
    a blue bike
Lucky/not 13 is a lost dog and
         an invisible Italian
Lucky/not 13 is a babysitting job and
    a tiny pyromaniac
Lucky/not 13 is a shoe on a table
         a broken mirror
    a black cat

I used to have a thesaurus in place of my heart,
fifty-thousand words to say how I hoped
I would someday feel.
In place of love, I had a fountain pen with a bent nib.
Instead of kisses, I had wirebound sketchbooks.
While other girls, giggling, wrapped
   phone cords around their fingers,
I wrapped sestinas in proper syllabics around enjambements.
        tiny crushes were
        replaced by Haiku gently
        wafting on the page
Love sick sighs were ignored in an echoing of
   alliteration and onomatopoeia,
and now I look at you and I rack my heart,
but I can't come up with the right . . . .

I stare at discolored paint
waiting for a muse
to wander through the drywall
to risk the rusty nails
driven home by sweat-slicked carpenters
who care nothing for allusion

I wait for an idea
a Sylvanian glow of something
I haven't yet seen
I haven't yet discounted
ignorant of new wrinkles, freckles,
scars riddling the back of my hand

I dream of believing
in a dream I've stopped having
falling into down and steam
falling out of the high and mighty
knowing there are muses
amused by my plight
as I write of their abuses
escaping from the walls
into my room

I can say definitively
and without reservation
that I once had more to say
and once I said it well

The taste of the words
of the children in flux
the ex-children
the children in recovery
leaves an aftertaste of
sweetness I can mimic
but cannot make my own
though I know I have
the recipe

somewhere

Their words tumble
like dusty pebbles racing
downhill rebellious
ebullient and unruly
avalanches to ants
while mine drag
the feet of their tiny
y's and g's
p's and q's
like rainy-day-slogged
future people
wending their way through
weeds and reeds of
bullies and written responses

The taste of the words
of the newly-minted
suddenly people
with centuries-old ideas
cellophane gift-wrapped for their
     daily birthdays
beribboned and bowed for
kindergarten picture day
leaves a memory of
butterscotch and peppermint I can imagine still
but cannot make my own
though I know I have
the recipe

somewhere

Surely
your eyes smile like
sunflowers in August
dropping their seeds
from skyscraper heights
as you hang from your cross
nailed together by your own
rough-hewn hands
dropping their seeds
as the wind runs its fingers
through the weeds
windchiming like a
platinum-plated Joni Mitchell
and surely you touched mine
surely surely surely
and I wish like Christmas Eve
                      like a first junior high dance
                      like a death bed watch
that I could afford even
a bottle of you
but the demand for you is high
and the supply . . .
         well, you know, there's never enough
and you keep raising the price and
surely surely surely
                    you know, there's never enough
so I lie here
among the weeds
seeking out your seeds
some small, priceless part of you
as you rise out of my reach
                         like a house with a seaside view
                         like a villa in Tuscany
                         like gold
which you are
surely surely surely
you are
with your sunflower eyes
and your Christmas Eve wishes
you pay for my sins
dropping your seeds and
surely surely surely
                     you know, there's never enough

gasping for air
deep in the nitrite-laden murk
grasping at what lurks
in the reeds
needing the darkness lightened
the haze brightened and
offering clarity and
the rarity of an honest phrase
the razing of a debt that weighs
that brays its neighing and nagging reminder
a tick-tock doll wanting you to wind her
a quick chalk scrawl of admonition
desperate incitement and sedition
left breathless by your rescission
by your willing dispair
I'm left
gasping for air

I remember that first taste
of that first sweet college poetry class,
how much I wanted to learn,
how much I learned,
how much I didn't learn.
I remember that moment
when I realized that
    drone
is an onomatopoeia too,
not a comforting
blatting
wah-wah-waaah
of Sally Brown's first grade teacher,
or the baritone perfumed bath
of the religion teacher I hadn't yet had,
but the droning
in slow motion
or a drone
in slow motion,
buzzing, humming, droning by
in slow motion
too slow for the doppler effect
to dopple effectively.
I remember that first smell
of fear hanging in the air,
sharing in that cabaret of pain,
wearing hearts on ripped and bloodied sleeves,
baring our souls to demons who ate them for snacks,
understanding that the stacks of bodies
and broken minds
littering the halls
were the real lessons,
not the importance of breathing
or knowing Linklater from Viewpoints from
Organic Synergy from
how to get up when
a fat rock and a catwalk
in slow motion
pin you
in slow motion
to the north lawn
in slow motion
too slow for the doppler effect
to dopple effectively.