My life is organized colorful squares
cut out and sewn together
through the years smiles and tears
sailing on in all sorts of weather

A storybook of girl and boy
sickness, birth and death
years I could not enjoy
but some took my breath

Pet hair and spilled lily perfume
baby spit, sand and ketchup
the highlights of this bedroom
a quilted blanket of the mess up

To pass on to my children
as passed onto me
this life we're building
and lives we cannot see

running rivers.
and flowing chocolate streams.
I cried Rocky Mountains
eating quarts of rocky road ice-cream.
Cried after my mother beat me,
leaving welts on my lily soft behind.
And when I bought the house
all the papers I signed.
I cried in my martini.
Cried in my tight leopard-skinned pants.
Walking the beach in my striped string bikini.
At my howdy doody wedding
during the father-daughter dance.
I cried pushing out my son.
And again, at age four when the paramedics
raced him out the door on a black leather stretcher.
And as I was ***** willow *****
by a  amniotic Freudian letcher.
I cried after his beating,
when I saw his black eye.
There hasn't been a day
that my eyes been dried.

I'm a stone.
Hurled in a hurricane.
A ripple in a pond.
Thrown in from the rain.

Making waves.
I triple.
And reach beyond
his tangled hairy day.

Radiating halo rings.
Burping strawberry bubbles.
To him
a skating fling,

standing scratchy stubble.
Fast water jets.
Sharp bayonets.
As rings in a tree

you can count every
go around.
They all fall back on me,
in a painted poppy scene.

As the blues slam-dunk
the greens
the toad drones.
I'm a stone.

waking me from the longest
night's slumber. Peeling my clothes
off like a cool cucumber. This buzzing
in my ear. His wavy jet-black hair. Swimming

in ocean eyes, the size of apple pies. The waft
of cinnamon is my insulin. But a man with
violet cotton shirt and cufflinks the color of
rose pink is an eidolon that swam off

like a swan in the raining pale
grey dawn. But in this head, he smokes
of feather silky strokes. The bumps on
a goose. This man I can't shake

loose. I've not of him to hold as the years
grow me old. The girl in me died dancing
a whirl on a rainbow slide, falling off
a cloud just as her eyebrows.

bye. Is there is good
in bye? The letters
are strung together, like bird
feathers, and fly between the tides

and sighs. They're pushed
in breath and pen, in cards that
men and women send. It's just
become a greeting at the close of

every meeting. And then? The hands
on the clock move on. And night
becomes the dawn. And memories
are a fawn running past us till we strike

them moving. And they are dead on
the side of the road. Some disproving. But it
doesn't lighten  the load.I left as autumn leaves
in a gusty breeze of colors, from red to yellow.

in as a hurricane,
thick saturating rain running
down the gully. Everything
that he touches ends up being

sully. Knocking
down houses and trees. Hurling
debris out in the streets. Smashing
windows, shards of glass flying. Every nook

that I look women are
dying. In the garden all the flowers
are squash, just as her dreams. Rosemary
fell with the thyme into hibiscus cream. Chairs

are swimming on my front lawn. This day
the sun lost every ounce of brawn. The water
colors are grey, same as the sky. This is the year
that June ate July.

as ***** clothes
on the line.
I was strung out
from the ***** and lime.
And so, as the tree
I grew green with pine.

He Strung me
as plastic beads
on a string.
But he didn't tie a knot
at the end.
So, I fell off
scattered all over the floor.
Rolled under the bureaus,
and straight out the door.

He Stung Me
as a winged hornet
after he sang to me
sweet sonnets.
And not just once
but over again.
And still I called him
a close friend.

He Wrung me
as a washcloth.
Squeezed ever last drop
till I lay dry and limp.
How I hate
that I'm just a simp!