On a cold autumn day, on the edge
of a railroad bridge, fifteen feet high,
a young bulky black kid contemplates
the impact, the end awaiting him

on the surface of a historically
winding boulevard. Below, service
men and women stand wet from rain,
stand huddled, foggy with confusion.

A paramedic, understanding
the surgeon’s warning, stands poised, close by,
blowing curls of smoke from her thin lips.
Had I the nerve, or just the access,

I would climb the slick, grassy hillside
that leads to the old rusted train tracks
and ask the young boy for his thick hands,
ask him what he thinks the moment was

like before L’Wren Scott held the rope
in her hands, the last breath in her lungs?
I’d ask him what he thinks it was like
before Don Cornelius planted

cold metal against his head and pulled
the trigger? Ask him what he thinks was
in the oven before Plath entered the kitchen?

You know, just to be heard one last time.

"Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus, adhering to rules, to rules, to rules."

Baptized once again at 31
you were dressed in an apron of glory
purple-inked and gas-filled
a ******* carved inside your head

Withering in the basement at the age of 10
you took the blade as a best friend
a walking miracle, a providence
you were a tempest of silent wails

Ariel has made a banshee out of you
the world is going up in a shriek
but your head never went with it
an epoch later; you're in holy flames

A golden lotus crescendos in the ground
stripped of the chance to see your Ariel grow
the bell jar is inhabited by some
my patriotism has been ablaze

O' American Isis
I grant you now the discretion you desired
you don't have to adhere to rules anymore

*The universe is coming by your side

Sometimes you can't win, you can only hear 'em talk. They might take your haircut and clothes, your jacket, and blame it on you for that. Some they say their ships coming in at this hour or that, but who can tell when they're riding the shadow of a ship or if they're just laying in the river waiting as all their clouds move passed.

She only takes a step if she can collect many stranded eyes. She walks right out of cities and leaves all the husbands cryin'. Her dignity has gone, her past is waiting up ahead. She's a loose cannon posted on the sea, and aimed towards land-locked places paved in red. But who can tell if they're just laying in the river waiting as all their clouds move passed. Her pockets filled with rocks while she draws the water to her breath, it's one of some confusion that most men and women will never half.

Soon the eyes fill up with blood, the pupils turn to silt, the skin turns into leather, no one I know yet has gills. Roof to the river, sun to Adam, this gardens very rude. **** your brother, slay a goat, and make an apple and serpent stew.

If the sounds keep getting louder, and the eight ball won't turn back. Keep your hands out of your pockets, don't walk into a river, go home and have yourself a bubble bath.

Save the cursing for the evening. Make your name something quite unique, this is today's new tomorrow, a pain from each bother, a whole in the ears not supposed to be there, don't wake up, your life is better, as long as your dreams they keep growing, while you keep working to keep yourself fast asleep.

The quarter isn't what it was, the arrow yields no more. And even if you've got 10 fingers, the man wants you to use more. Keep your arms in the ovens. Keep your disease to yourself. When the violence gets here, you'll find it's only you and her, and you both only love yourselves. The poison is growing, the water can't be drank, if you flick your cigarette ****, you might have your own Nagasaki in the middle of your kitchen sink.

So let the rocks do the talking. Let your slave work wait until the fall. It's so unpredictable picking poisons, that's why The Wolves do it in the river or on the kitchen floor.

I should've loved a tree,
Strong, tall and fierce,
Roaring through me,
(But I had to love you.)

The tree and I could make a pact,
To lay together awake,
(But I had to lay with you.)

To love the sky would be a thrill,
Grey, blue, black, yellow, pink, red,
You were like a cloud,
(But I loved the clouds too.)

I tried to love a bottle,
To tip liquid on it till it swam,
Bitter sweet on my tongue,
(But you tasted better.)

Maybe I'll love the sea,
Cool and dark and swirling in mystery,
(And I'll love the waves forever.)

The stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.
        -“TALE OF A TUB”, SYLVIA PLATH

But I, incompetent fool of mortality,
have appeared in the mirror as nothing
but stretched skin and pained bones
with diluted features robbed
from ancestors before me. Ah,
the recognition of prior greats; it
strikes me in the soul, knowing
that I will never live to the expectations
held before me, dangled above me
like raw, dripping veal over the unfed
lioness of my heart, plucked away one by one
like grapes being fed to Caesar. Appropriate,
perhaps; the phrase of “Et tu, Brute?”
slips from my disarmed lips far too often.

A world of nothing sacred leaves me
lost in the swirling cyclone of cracked glass,
where fighting only brings deep, jagged
lacerations of mind and body
with struggling glances of withered reflection,
of girl battling demons upon demons
on the brink of crippling surrender.
Bonded to this body of paper and lead,
but filled with notions of ink and poison,
the sight has become an old friend, breaking
through the fogged haze of glorified reality.

Brace me against the past, dear
strength, I ask of you, and allow me
to plunge beyond this frosted pane,
to shatter the veil of uncertainty in a manner
to be immortalized for generations of dust
to see, to believe, to trust more than the
painted smile dancing upon my haunted lips
in the belligerent light of the medicine cabinet’s bulbs.

Colors of ocean, slate, lichen,
Swirl behind fairy tale dollhouses,
Their shutters closed tightly,
Occupants fretfully dreaming.
Winds like cold-
Hearted demons roar through the trees.

Strong through the torrents,
With nimble branches,
Scalloped-trunk,
An arc of leafed limbs
Shudders with pain that
Causes it to stand *****.

A shadowy moonrise
Sliver by crescent sliver
Casts the street luminescent
And out of the storming clouds
Of Devil's Point
Falls streaked lightning.