I pulled my fingers out of the gutter
The Priestess turned her head to me
With her velvet pearls and trumpet stutter
"Do you belong to eternity?"
She twisted tight on my headlight
I widened her eye socket out of fright
I told her "honey, I like the look of your nose"
Which twisted up to the cosmos

Then she looked beyond
Like some small vagabond
Looking through a door
That wasn't there anymore
The black sea stretched across
She wielded my hand
Against the sleepless night

The town was crooked
People were empty
Tied to balloons and corpses of brides
The beds were shallow
The shore bred mountains
Yet there she was to taunt me
To envelop me
In her majesty's vice

I peel sweet potatoes.
My phone pings.
I check it.
Messages of pride flood my eyes.
I feel loved.
I put it down.


I peel the sweet potatoes.  
My dogs sniff my legs.


I am distracted, searching and anxious.
I feel loved.


I peel a previously peeled potato.


I stop.
I lecture myself.
"I focused and worked hard.
That’s all I did."


I focus on my potatoes.
The work gets done.
I feel proud.
I feel loved.

Wings still down

I thought flight could come to those on the ground

Don’t wanna walk around

I rather fly high

But without the confidence to span

You’ll never see the sky.

Don’t wanna be the type of guy

to waste talent.

But the soul behinds these eyelids

Needs balance
to walk the fine line between genius and insanity.

How can it be
that my canopy is litter dollar signs

but I never dream of cents
just a few problems of mine.

Wake up with no repentance.

she asked "do you feel safe?" her voice gentle, curling around my ear before the words softly entered into my mind, leaving kisses along the path they travel to my brain
kisses that bloom into flowers, taking root deep into gray mater, the flowers grow behind my eyes, leaves and petals pushing at my eyelids, bursting to get out before falling as liquid drops of silver that bleed out around my eyes and into the real world, the real world where actions have consequences and people can feel safe. I meet her eyes with my own, liquid silver and flowers and thorns and tell her "no"

arcing toward
a dark heaven
a futile ******
earth still
binds
me
but
not
my
♡

death by flying too
close to Mars
warrior that
he is

he sent his arrows
which lanced my
♡ with such
longing it
could not
be controlled
anymore
than a
bird
is
bound
by
the
air

and, so, the tears in
night's fabric
are sewn
by
☆
☆
☆


Catherine Jarvis
(C) 12/24/2019

There’s this new scar down the back of your hand.
“New” implying that once in the recent past it was absent from your skin.
And you didn’t really mean for it to be there, this faint red line,
Sitting too close to the lone freckle that exists on the back of your palm like Polaris.
Because now it’s a constant reminder of how you got it.
And scars do not fade easily from your skin.