the laddering of my ribs creak
like water-stained cherrywood stairs;
tread lightly, lest you
stir the dust and the ghosts
that dwell underfoot,
‘neath the cracked floorboards
of my skin.

i have but a simple request:
               rid yourself of your lungs
               and fill up the empty spaces
               with used coffee filters,
               crinkled wrapping paper, and
               forlorn hope. do
cast aside
               the shroud of indecision?, for
               that winding sheet will only
               hold you down between
               your shoulderblades, like
               framed butterflies pinned on paper
               with needles of stone and salt.

stay with me tonight.
we will be taxidermy birds
on marionette strings
with crumbled concrete
between our talons,
the afterimages
of neon diner signs
stamped into our inner eyelids
oscillating, phantasmic.

we'll sing elegies in spring
rock sugar on our tongues—
               there are staves of music
               written in the lining of your mouth
               and in the webbing of your hands
––as Sappho might say:
girls, sweetvoiced.

oh! but to think
that the starfire in your eyes
could be extinguished
by the tears you shed;
i’ll return my heart to the constellations
for you

i wrote you a relentless slew of love letters and gave you all my artwork.  you left them all scattered haphazardly throughout your room, never once bothering to keep them safe.  you never valued anything i gave to you, even in knowing they were all extensions of my tumultuous, uncontainable love for you.  i stopped giving you those things made of my love because you tread thoughtlessly upon them with your bare feet, underwriting my creations.
2. you said i was worth the work, but you never put it in.  i showed you the trainwreck of scars laddering my skin, the bones protruding from beneath, told you about how i swallowed all those pills wishing for a quick ending, then starved for years because i thought i deserved death slow & painful.  i told you i hated myself.  i told you i felt unlovable.  i cried in front of you, exposed in a splendor of shame & total vulnerability, & all you had in response was an awkward little laugh & “well, you don’t look too skinny” you left for work & i cried my heart out.  i don’t blame you for being foolish & insensitive, but regardless, *******.  
3. when you are high, which is always, you become replaceable with any other body.  you repeat the same stories, tell the same jokes, expect me to find you relentlessly charming. you zone in on youtube videos that are not ******* funny, stop laughing at them, it is all so pointless. you are redolent with intellect wasted away on the drugs, mere chemicals that entertain you far more than i ever did.
4. the moment you took me for granted, i knew i was going to walk away.
5. the night after my sister tried to **** herself, after i sought you out for comfort & all you gave me was apathy, i traced a razor across my skin, contemplating her decision.  i didn’t tell you, but i’m not sorry.
6. you always felt the need to remind me i was free, but i already knew.  i am my own person.  this is something i have always known.  you never had the power to influence the way i lived my life or the people i loved & still love & will always love.  don’t ever think you had that power over me.
7. don’t ever tell me i do not need to change.  there are things i have to fix about myself.  not all of my flaws are beautiful.  do not romanticize me.  do not turn me into some idea you have of me in your head.  i am not a beautiful and heavenly creature, I am a human girl & i have made mistakes.
8. i care about you, but i care about myself more, & this is why i am walking away.
9. the damage is irreparable.  i wasted my time believing you could love me the way i wanted you to, but you can’t & you won’t & that is okay.  i do not resent you for it, but you need to let me go.  i am not your dream girl & you are not for me. do not cling to the illusion of who you think i am.  let me go.
10. i am leaving because this time, i don’t just think i deserve better.  i know.

The rivers
          that oxbow
             slither
    down the Cumberland drain
        in May
                 SWOLE
M-E-A-N------F-a-t-----P--R--E--G--N--A--N--T,
         hungry pregnant,
walking the floor & opening the fridge pregnant,
drown your own mother for a nosh pregnant,
    cantankerously mad pregnant,
flowing from car to car, truck to truck and house to house,
   through crawl space, doors, and windows,
down halls, laddering stairs, licking banisters, cresting attics,
    feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding
on the stacked labor of years and years,
feeding, feeding, feeding
on unbelieving minds and dumb stares,
feeding, feeding, feeding,
     on "We've lost everything",
"Oh, my God."s
    and tears.

so it would seem that we have both been yearning, the eager entanglement of our loose limbs leaves me just a little drunk, forgive me for my clumsy fingers & breathless gasps.  i am dizzy with the weight of your lips, kissing me tongue-deep, awash in your scent & splendor.  i cannot get enough of you, now that you dared tell me you loved me beneath the starry-eyed blanket of nightfall, clasped in your radiant warmth & body heat, while the wild things sang.  here, intertwined within a mess of quilts, we are learning each other’s flawed perfection.  i do not apologize for my soft stomach or the sea of scars laddering my legs, & you breathe that i am beautiful.  there is no cocktail of chemicals beating through my blood tonight, only the weight of your body on my body & the poetry of us.

I am the ****** and damaged warrior
Mighty presence on an arid plain
Waste-land empty and scorch-scarred parched
Looking to the dazzling dawn
Of another baking, aching, dry day
Of another dying, desert year.

They watched bold marching
Fearful tramping
To each pitiful skirmish
And every blood-hungry moment
Of all the days and nights.

They watched corded muscles
Spasm and seize
With each call to stretch and pull
And drag the weary-worn
To fight again.

Let no man call with shrill-shriek of the owl
Across the night-filled silence
Let no-one ever whisper in the dark, dearth
Across the shadowed chasm

I am alone within a purple shade
Night-cloaked in cunning strange
I am the time-deadened, weary watchman
Locked in a forever-circle of despair

Manacled with lead, banded with steel
Tight twisted and knotted by a skein of silk
Woven tightly by the softest hand
Strengthened by certainty and pure calm
There is no escape to unearth

But death
Is skirting the edge of existence
Picking at the loose threads
Teasing and niggling the fraying filaments
Laddering and snagging
And pulling, pulling out beyond time
The winding-sheet, the sack-cloth shroud
The only closing choice.


© M.L.Emmett

we waited for nightfall before making love to the moon,
smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the breathless aftermath, a
poetry of flesh on flesh & your bright eyes on mine.  i didn’t apologize for the asymmetry of my ******* or the silver scars laddering my wrists,
the cartography of a suicide left incomplete.  you look at me  like i am something worth loving
& all i need are your grasping palms, your shameless love, your
beautiful heart beating against my chattering bones.  we erupt into a star-stained sky,
explosions of everything trapped within us spinning into the stoic dark.  you infinities of beautiful & i give you my all.

~ per la bombardiera italiana di Vienna~

you want a poem of (a)side dishes, instead of a main,
you prefer a side vent, instead of a main event,
but always commence at the commencement ending,
another day begs for the first poem of the day (FPoTD)

the sky produces another hue, a whitish blue,
with violet shadings, majestic clouds slow moving,
heading north, Northwest by North(NWbN)
to New England, onto Toronto, then west to B.C.
but me won’t be there for that new course correction

sent some messengers your way, umpteen Canadian
snowbird geese, returning home, Florida too **** hot,
hurricanes not to their liking, quite the sight, brave old
man in dracula cape-flapping bathrobe, clapping and heehawing them intruders into the bay waters, off his land, their partying
in my no-noise motel against a law, not to mention their
empties and plentiful droppings, but I side vent digress

from where this Mariner’s tale began, but the mental alarm
signals seven bells, return to port, now a mess mate, inside,
delivering coffee in white china teacups to the Captainess,
who in time of war makes tremendous sacrifices, par example,
who due to the pandemic, graciously deigns, accepts paper(!)
napkins, a sign of the gravity of the times, no ironing!

god, I do not understand how you do it, vast eternal patience,
every way, every day, a new shade, you musta been an art major,
or very bored, either way, this goose chasing, cook, exterminator,
driver, poetry-writing no-maven son of a Canadian woman, is
your devotee, morning glory audience, who accepts your sky tapestry, your cloud interweaving laddering, with humble gratitude, a still life never stilled, my eyes, my tongue sings your praises like King David, and that other court-appointed Canadian psalmist^ who  understood, conversing with you is where all hallelujah poem songs main event must begin, fiddle middle, and perforce must conclude, that! the! main event

everything else just a side event, a side venting, a prayer-in waiting,
a get-in-line for another paradise, where poets play cards, smoke see-gars, checking their stockings for runs and new poem ideas, word worshipping the gifts of existence, a child’s ice cream dotted nose, a body’s curves, but I digress...he LoL’s to himself, wondering why his eyes are tearing...as usual, he is clueless, the last to know, but the first to weep because the winter is coming, yet again, a sky will be less frequent friendly, but the know-nothing-man will digress yet again, once more unto the breach...


2020
8:18am
Sat Sabbath Aug 29

What happens when you shower in the dark?
you can't tell the environment around you, only
the soap laddering on your skin, and the streetlight
peering into the scene.

you don't get to see your arrogance accumulating from loneliness
like soap rinse-off left to dry on the ground.
the act of showering is to be clean
but you can't concretely see your arm
so how do you get to cleaning when you can't see?
how do you continue to hold on to hope when the feeling of
the need of warmth is pushing unto every square inch on you?
when you know the moment you turn the shower off
that coldness comes rushing in.
leaving your skin prickle displaying bumps
like that of a feather-plucked chicken readying for the feast.
Now you've got to resist, and hopefully they say he would flee.

Then you step in front of a mirror, remember its dark.
meaning there is nothing to see, but the fog is there to feel
bubbling in your face, churning your skin.
you know this darkness is not good for you,
but you embrace it like well a known friend
reeling in its obscurement, applying layers of cream.