Yes, it's another poem from my vampiric friend, the fearsome COUNT ORLOK!*

Death's Head am I, silver-green
Eerily glowing-in-the-doomy-dark,
See my delicate feather-like wings,
Wings of an ethereal ghost, deadly antennae,
Scented fatally with secret moth codes.
And I stare unblinking...

I watch my own wings flap open;
My life is balanced on my fingertips,
Weightless and shimmering, fearful of what?
I dare not ask that, for I dread the answer,
The response of night-creatures baying at the moon,
As in a terrible nightmare.

And I fly forth to bring death
To frail creatures of mere flesh,
O the joy as my teeth sink into waiting necks
And proboscis-light kisses run down my naked spine,
My tongue savouring their dying essence,
A vague taste of purest *****.

some 4.5 billion years ago
the atoms that would coalesce
to ***** your evanescent features
detoured to a lonely chunk of
rock aimlessly adrift in the
Milky Way Galaxy

you stayed alive by pure instinct
fight or flight
you could not thrive
yet you survived nature's
attempts to crush you in
her fearsome jaws

bits of you walked with dinosaurs
bone fragments ground to dust and
reformed over eons of evolution until
you stood upright and found a
tongue to describe planet Earth

remnants of those dead languages
live on to this very day
they inhabit the ink stains i
leave upon this yellowed page
while folk tunes croon over
my shoulder and Dallas Green
breathes a city in multicolor

a map of the universe is etched
across your face and i cannot escape
the smirk that spread with mirth
nor erase the memory of eyes
like interstellar space staring
back at me
unblinking
for 4 minutes that felt
simultaneously like a lifetime
and the space between
2 fractions of a millisecond

you came from the Big Bang
when the cells that would form
our bodies were forged in the
cores of supernovas exploding
across the cosmos and we've
been on a collision course ever since
an unstoppable force and
an immovable object
for matter
can neither be created
nor destroyed

day in
day out
they stare at me
unyielding
unblinking
dress me up in different colors
and change when they get bored
or leave me in the dark
I see them laugh at me
cry
scream
cheer
or just sit with lifeless eyes like I'm retinal morphine
sometimes sleeping in front of me
giving up on my looks
or more unnerving things
fantasizing over what they see in me
they pretend I don't see them back
they just stare more deeply
taking their time
or in a rush
open my eyes then close them then out the door
why don't they know I think
and judge them
or do they care
to them I'm just a television

Mao’s on the wall.
Mao’s on the cat,
Mao’s the cat,
And Mao’s on the truck.
Mao’s tucked text.
Mao’s still the cat
Mao’s on the hat;
And Mao’s rendered stencil.
Mao draped in red,
Mao embalmed vacuum,
Mao smiling dirt
And Mao in slaughter;
The good, the bad,
The, “godly,” great
The ’89 slaughtered, ugly,
And as putrid as the scholars
Being spat upon.
So Mao’s tempered glass
And Mao’s tempered solemn,
Surrounded a spectacle,
When I, Mao and I,
Author and other, other and
Away, gaze eye-to-eye with,
“Before.”
His are closed,
Mine, unblinking.
I think of heroes,
I, “tinker,” butchers,
And ponder,
“Just,” and to the right of,
Right,” what is, “right?”
Would he have been?
Would she have been?
Would I have been?
“Right?”
Just what the hell is,” right?”

For every inch of her smile that her lips move, she makes my heart skip a beat, the way she bats her eye, that angel silences the demon in me.She makes me thank GOD for every mistake that I made coz they led me to her.!!
Everytime that she looks at me,I stare in an unblinking fashion and delve deeper into her,to the realms of an unseen parallel world and get the secrets of her…things that she rather not have any one know…yet somehow in an unspoken way, she allows me into her.. With every look that we exchange, I see more than her outer physical beauty. I undress her soul in a way that it want to be undressed, kiss by kiss I cover her tiny infinities, touch her heart in a way that her heart shivers and moans with pain and pleasure…and when she finally feels what I want her to feel, I make love to her consciousness.
With every inch of her that I touch, she shows me how much she has been longing for someone to touch her in a way that she feels secured, to care for her and love her in a way that she feels like a princess…
As I keep sinking into her, she lets me pass more into herself… she doesn’t push me away, she pulls me closer. She doesn’t restrict my desire to hold her closer, she hold my hands and presses me to her heart. I keep falling for her, living each moment inside her soul, trying to reach for heart, knowing very well that with every passing second of this moment, I am never gonna be able to crawl out of her..
Hers was a heart of wax that wanted to be melted and mine were words that had the warmth to  weld her heart to mine. She was a soul that was thirsty for a drop of affection and my heart was an ocean of love that would drown her in all the passion that she could ask for…Her heart was cold with lack of faith, with the embers from the ashes of love dying and I had the arms that would wrap her up and  pull her so close to my heart that just a spark of the fire of passion and love, burning inside my heart, for her, would make her wanna snuggle up in my arms forever… and I would quietly put my head on her chest and sleep…
Once she let me hold her so close to me and now she is surprised by how much I need to be with her, wrapped in her arms!!

Running in epileptic circles
my dreams that can't even escape
these malemetal mindtraps
securely locking up the bodies of the
evildoers happening to catch my soul
between the stainlesssteel and whitewash
and scratchy blankets on my cheek
my eyes sticking, body convulsing
and the Watchers! I can't take it
I feel my sanity quickly fleeing the beady
unblinking soulless inhumanity
black warts on the ceiling
I frantically count relying on obsessive compulsions
to sleep. I sleep out of the sour sweat of fear
but sleep only leads me to
running in epileptic circles

It was all taken
bare. that's how I was
naked labrat surrounded by
murderers
leaking sanity nastily
from artificial orifices
All the world part of perpetual seizures
running in epileptic circles

Twelve Kings
Twelve Queens
Twelve Lords of the Sea
Twelve Ladies of the Earth

Forty-eight hands linked
Each palm dry and smooth
Resembling the leafs of a
Spring maple
Slender strong arms
Elbows slightly bent
Linked hands
Forming a sphere
Of perfect measures

Forty-eight violet eyes
Unblinking
Twinkle like stars just born
Every pair staring within
The sphere’s center
Slowly
Unraveling the prophesy
Of the dancing pebbles

Twelve sunless days
Twelve moonless nights
The ancient guardians
Read the puzzle of the future
Their violet eyes
Unblinking

As the hour of the
Nightingale’s song
Breaks the silence
The pebbles of prophesy
Freeze their dance in mid-air
And between the watching eyes
Of the guardians
And the nightingale’s song
The pebbles shatter
In unison
Into fragments of
Broken glass

Each face bordering the sphere
Turns an ashen white
Each expression soon
One of hollowness
Forty-eight
Pale hands
Tremble
Forty-eight
Violet eyes
Overflow with tears

Each shattered glass
Liquefies into a
Deathly freezing ice
Extending outwards
To the helpless world
Surrounding

Each guardian
Raises his and her
Face up to the moonless night sky
Their tears freezing
On their cheeks

As the liquid ice
Sweeps of their toes
Rushes up to engulf
The rest of their bodies
Screams that opened holes to other worlds
Shrieks that shattered every stone and breathing lung
Manifest in terrible echoes
Reaching every corner of the
Atmosphere

In the empty space
Where once planet Earth revolved
Around the sun
Now countless numbers of
Ice shards
Dance…

Unseen and unknown eyes
Watch the
Dancing ice shards
Lost in the blackness
With deep sadness

Earth
A planet with so much…
Fire
Water
Soil
Stone
Air
Nature

Everything….

Man lost the connection
It once had with nature
Blinded by
Manipulation and greed
War and hate
Control and corruption
Power and destruction

In twenty-four hundred years
Those whose souls
Remained pure
Whose eyes
Remained open
And all elements
Will embrace
As lovers

Opening a new
Window
In the fabric of worlds

Late night thinking
Unblinking and sinking
Rethinking my choice of words
It's absurd
Everything is so blurred
Fragments shifting through holes
I take on all these roles
What lost souls

Late night thinking
Tinkering with memories
I need remedies
These fragments slash through flesh
Fresh wounds fester
Exposing new memory holes

Late night thinking
Should I have said that
Combat of my mind
Memories become no mans land, blind
Confined within the crevices of my mind
I just want to unwind
Let's leave all this behind

Tomorrow, perhaps, you may find
Some peace of mind.

The bright stars all wink
Moon staring down unblinking
The night sky's embrace

I don't think I'm in love with her face or her toned body..
I think I'm in love the way she stares into the perpetual crystal blue sky..
I'm in love when she try to define this absurd world ..
I'm in love the way she sprint into the crowd of small elderly gentleman to replenish the loneliness..
I'm in love when she tries to conceal the soreness of her soul with gentle smile ..
I'm in love the way she express her emotions in riddle..
I'm in love when she curiously observe the eternal nature...
I'm in love the way she talks passionately about her goals with her bright unblinking eyes...
I'm in love the way she rest her head on my shoulder when she get tangled up in the rollercoaster of emotions...
I'm in love when she close her eyes while she listens to the sounds of the wild sea waves...

Fill the hole with nothing
Not the concepts that you hold dear
They could betray you
Into traps of torn parchments and holy relics
Binding. Entrancing fascinations
Keep you gounded on parables. Freezing real hope
And when you crack the mirror
Egotistical graven image
You will begin to see the truth beyond
Sights you're shown by the elders
Who've invested so much
Monopolized love and ****** it
For power's sake alone, they grasp at straws
For God's sake, they created him
To frighten and ******* all thought
Contrary to the maleable mold
On the bottom of progress' feet
Atlas scrawled his secret to releif
Don't give up. The whole world rests on the shoulders of honest men
Work diligently. Work nobley. Look out for others
It's the calling of the strong to protect the weak
Without this system of brothers, the weasels will feast
But the world pushes back and it doesn't seem worth it
After all, what's the point?
If not for anything else, then for the joy of being
Able to discover and learn
It may feel tedious and painful
Just to exist for the purpose of spreading
Life needs persist its unstable reaction
You can put it off 'til tomorrow
And live in yesterday's safety
Gaze at the horizon unblinking
Focused
Feral
Integral gear
Turning perpetually into itself.

On the deck of the HMS Randalls
Were sorry array of antiques
They would amble about in their sandals
To a chorus of ominous creaks
The crackle of bone upon gristle
With a litany grumbled above
Just give them the slip
If you feel a grip
Like a handful of dice in a glove

In the galley of HMS Randalls
Where the tables were ******* to the floor
There’s a chef with a dwarf where his leg was
He was bombed in the Argentine war
If you ask him about his ‘prosthetic’
He just winks and he taps on his nose
But the dwarf will admit
That they make a good fit
And a noteworthy total of toes

At the engines of HMS Randalls
With her overalls smeared with blood
Stood cannibal kind of mechanic
By the name of Veronica Spud
Her hunger has never been sated
Or her eye been the source of a tear
Her teeth have been chipped
Into screwdriver tips
And a spanner protrudes from her ear

On the bridge of the HMS Randalls
Sits the captain, Geronimo Spent
His unblinking and pallid expression
Say he left but he never quite went
But he puts on his hat and his jacket
He fastidiously logs his report
With a secondary list
Of the passengers kissed
As he figures that life’s too short

**

it is always nights like this, where everything is so quiet you can hear beneath the absolute threshold, when i begin to wonder if i am going mad. technically, if one were truly losing their mind, they wouldn’t take much notice to the clarification that their reality is nothing but intricate lies spun by their brain.

pushing onwards within the dark, i can feel it. a whisper of a dance in memory slices gracefully across my cheek. the hungry caress of a lost lover. it is a random number between three and four, counting the days of sleepless solitude; as my lover is playing tricks on me.

it is just before dawn. the house breathes and groans like a wretched soul trapped in a bottomless pit long before midnight. in the gray morning light, delicate wrists stained with ink serve as maps through a desolate labyrinth. “lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

from the corner of my eye i see shadows of uncharted men that feed upon the protective covering, encasing us; separating our world from theirs. the barrier is a shield at best, yet doorway at worst.

try to detach your eyes from their persistent, wandering gaze; and you might just catch a glimpse of a shadow gliding out of sight.

don’t second guess yourself sweetheart, you know exactly what you saw.

shadowy figures slightly out of reach, but still quite visible – gliding silently amidst, whispering quietly to those surrounding. looking directly at the figures, a gauzy lace veil delicately masks and covers each shadow.

unseen claws shred the thin barrier before it is tattered and torn. one by one, little by little, each figure sharpens into perfect visual acuity, wholly in sigh(t). as you slowly inch back, eyes unblinking with disbelief, their voices are no longer whispers.

the gaping pits of opened mouths drown you in hollow prattles, screeching rasps; the cruel high pitched icy sneers of laughter.

petrified with terror and shock at the shadow’s newfound ability to speak, you acutely notice that the house is creaking and wheezing. you can hear footsteps on the opposite side of the house, and with your eyes averted, they are gone.

with this, you must take into consideration that i have spent far too long with eyes wide shut, drowning in utter fear fueled by morbid curiosity for this world: things seen and heard. each is a cancerous tumor mutilating my mind beyond repair.

to me, the shadow figures’ tattered veil appears to be a doorway, a portal to another universe. this sheer possibility spawns the magnitude of infinite and parallel universes.
much like the shifting hallways concealed in an e(in)ternal labyrinth.

amidst this never ending maze, man is forced to wander blindly from birth to death; where he then circles back around to his exact place of previous conception, only to be born anew. condemned to blindly roam and repeat his unbroken cycle for all eternity.

in this labyrinth we are all gods, we are all monsters. each creation story is universal, yet individual to each new life.

the sinner and the saint are both born into divinity.

Morbid nights of endless past and future
A darkness i'd endured in unwavering solitude
A tormenting blight forged with evanascent hope
My identity had all but lost its face

A maiden forged from the scales of heaven
A twist of the warm dark waves of locke
A brown eyed hue of sparkly dews
Sculpted out a beauty divine
A never ending feast, crave my lifeless eyes

A smile is all, darkness be gone
Your laugh it strings every beat of my soul
A glow you eminate, i stray not away
A simple whisper, i waver not from your side

The nights of yore are long forgotten
Unblinking, blinding lights i endure
Hope has taken form, a beauty undiscovered
Deny this you may, an unmarked angel you are
forever mine to protect

No excuse for the things I could not see
the pain in your body overwhelming you till the point that you would cringe and cry
teardrops falling as your knees gave way to pain and
where would I be?
What was I doing?
Nothing.
And then you'd feign a smile and hold close to me and tremble
just barely shaking because you were afraid that I'd find out you were in pain
and you had no right to hide it
but I have no right to know of it
your past, your present
none of that.
Seeing you close your eyes usually unblinking
trembling softly as if due to the breeze
you made me feel at ease
and where are you now?
What are you doing?
Are you all-right?
Excuse my ignorance for not knowing sooner
that which I was not meant to be informed of
sort of just
came into being
and I can't help but worry that you'll go away with the knowledge I have gained
and I'll be alone here.
Who am I to worry?
Lover, passionate kiss
Yet all the while your pain grew
and what was it to me?
What did I know?
Nothing.
Please, excuse my ignorance.
I just wish to know that you'll be fine
because everything changes in due time.

walk me to the end of my dream
and to the start of my nightmare
lull me to sleep till the break of day
and rouse me into pained wakefulness
show me my sweet hopes in terrible flight
and detach yourself from the woes of my day
as love dissipates into a hallucination
and what was most unlikely takes shape
before my enraptured and unblinking eyes
I dare hope that it is all one huge concoction
but there's no tragedy in being wrong

Bus lines, known and missed.
Streetlights, gleaming, brisk.
Cars showing signs of movement,
And never stopping.
Their lights unblinking as they move straight,
Across the highway, the crisscrossing pathway
That when looked at within these moments,
These moments of semiperfect feelings and emotions.
The streets and cars and lights and buses all feel
Right.
They engulf me.
Their metaphorical resonance echoes across the chambers of my chest.
They move into the once perceived place where all emotions call home.
The thoughts settle. I allow the words to flow out from inside of me and into my my thumbs as they pound away, silently, on my keyboard.
My heart is a city.
It pulses.
It beats.
I am alive.
I am Bright. Tall. Proud.
Content.
Me.

No one is ever home, and i knocked for awhile but got bored.

I even looked upon the lords and was largely ignored, so i forged a new line in the sand, and made better time, as everyone else contemplated their stance.

I have better chances alone, against the oncoming storm, and i no longer have a gun, as i have vowed to help the ones i hate, as i stumble in the grace of the time it takes to replace these friends of mine that i have made while trying to play nice.

Silence is no longer a disguise while every one is talking, and its obvious that that's all anyone does, with hollow meanings, demeaning the trust we claimed in the love, and it has proven to be too much, as i hang on the empty words, praying that the curse is dispersed across the sea for the stars to read the ***** versus of the creeds, inscribed in scribbles that ripple into cursive versus from ancient servers to another dream.

I close my eyes to wake, but still asleep, i just hope i learn something cheap to pass the day, wide eyed and unblinking, i get to thinking that i make my fate, that reality is shaped from my attitude, and that only the absolutes that are believed to be true can be true, so in knowing nothing i can pursue the untruths of my disbelief and we can be in unison even when all over the place.

Their fur is like silk
Their paws soft as moss,
Their pupils dilate and
Chase things that are tossed.

Once worshipped as gods
Now they're merely our pets,
Though they wear a facade
That says "Cats don't forget."

They still think that they're sacred
And mankind is their slave,
So they walk like they're royalty and
Take the act to their grave.

Some people despise them
Say they're cold and ungrateful
They look like rats, they cause mayhem
And they're just not playful!

I see something different
When I look in a cat's eyes,
I feel an ancient wisdom
Behind their jaded guise

I am transported back
To scorching Egyptian nights
And see within their pupils, black
The starless desert skies.

An intelligent being stares back at me
In unblinking contemplation,
My soul laid bare before two orbs
The color of amused satisfaction.

So next time you see one lazily
Sunbathing on its side,
Close your eyes and feel
the ancient spirits that
It carries deep inside.

DEAR MOM I AM HOMOPHOBIC

   Dear mother
My guardian angel and protector
Am afraid to tell you
He was staring at me
When i went to the loo
His cold gaze pierced my back
And his unblinking eyes sent jitters down my spine
A creeping feeling enwrapped my whole being
When i turned his charming stare held me prisoner and he smiled at me

Mother i could feel his look perusing me like an art book
From head to toe i was studied
I felt naked as his hungry stare undressed me
To him i was a piece of an apple pie
I could make out gurgling sounds as he swallowed dry saliva and licked his death black lips
Lust was painted all over his mane covered face
Mom i was really scared
I regretted stepping in that club

When i returned to my seat he bought me beer
My liqour thirst was hard to bear
I betrayed my masculinity
And accepted drink from a **** sapien of male fraternity
My mind was having a cold war with my soul
Wierd thoughts tormented my intoxicated body
Where did i stand???

He welcomed himself in my table
With a gecko like grin etched on his face
"You are handsome"those were the ugliest words i had ever heard from a man
My owl like eyes bore onto him with blazing anger dancing on my eyelids
I was shaking not because i was cold but murdering instincts were elecrocuting my adrenaline
He mistook my silence and commited a cardinal sin by placing his manicured hand on my thighs
He winked as his blinking broke the speed record
I cleared my throat and i knew it was time to recorn

He thought his tactics had worked
I withdrew my hand from my pocket raised beer bottle as if to toast
He hastefully followed suit
"Chee....he never finished as i bathed him with my beer
"Hey ****** am straight"i yelped as i crushed the beer bottle on his thick skull
I heard a deafening yell
The rest i remember is being frog matched into a police car
So dear mom its not my fault am in jail
Am here because i fought
Mom am not a law breaker
Am here because i am homophobic

gOd

must have
   been somewhere else
      for he had forgotten there
  is a planet called Earth


squall of the morning harboring at bay
the howl of the wind rampaging
  through the tired streets,
  i take no sorry hints from the bends
and turns, nor did i hear the gutter weep.
  only the baritone snarl of the swathe
    of brute air through the entire vein
      of the city.

here now is the voluble thwart,
crumbling in the heart of it
   are mere species, the slavered hounds
    of being chained to verily existing here, even the infinitesimal
    were not spared in the glib downpour.
  
windows shut deep into stillness,
the automaton shadow submerged
in delirious light, as winds once again
   with unannounced perditions

   uplifting the nails, tossing the
  alloys like birds swift in the catapult
of breezy flights, lives sojourning,
     some left only a scarring story,
    or just prodigal and nothing else.
carcass stench carves its reek
      in the onlooker, the rat **** foams
altogether with the brine, a cesspool
    of unheard screams dwarfed by
      the circular roar of the grey behemoth
  showing only its unblinking eye

running, searching for a place
    to go less terrifying
         than this, a bearable departure,
   or a hopeless sling at rescue,
luckless imperative,
       today's vibrant children,
ashen tomorrow,
      gone.

The flowers of the dawn
Unfurled its petals
In pinks and reds
A solitary Venus stands
unblinking in the black sky
And with the dawn vanished and was gone.

Packing the pack
in the name of that
which held no more pain
It was time to hit the road again

Doubts linger with the rising sun
But the choices
They are few

The oceans
The mountains
The deserts
They hold the views

Chasing the dawn
Chasing the beginnings
It is time to begin again.

The pack holds the few essentials
For the journey's road

Long and arduous
Peaceful and calm
All moments are held
And pass on by

Time to go is all that is known

Laughter and glee
Loves and loses

Time a ribbon
Unfurls in the sky
Dragging all along
Down
To that endless highway.

Just a visitor
renting space
along the way

A pause to watch
This very dawn
Then heading on down the way
again

The road
It begins in the dark
It ends there too.

You think
Too Much –
The comments fly,
sting,
punch,
bite.
As if you are always
Worse than you are –
You are Fine –
Fine?
What defines Fine?
Average, the usual –
The arrow’s slow trek
around the clock,
unblinking, relentless.
Endless.
Too Much?
The water is rising
just over the rim,
peeking at me,
daring me
to spill over.

Sometimes I think I died;
Unmoving, unblinking, unfeeling.
Poison sits in my veins.
It doesn't flow, it preserves me.
A grinning death mask
Hides what rots inside.
Empty mind, still heart.
Unaware of those that mourn what
I once was,
Unable to comprehend.
Hair grows, hours fade.
Yes, sometimes I think I died.
I'm just waiting to be
Laid to rest.

you wait like a fisherman
in the edge of what lakes
for not just any fish,
a specific terrain underwater
a definite current,
that makes such and such
hardier, skin rainbower, sleekier,
don’t say it’s fat
or long, and it’s enough
what feeds its meat
what horrors did its fins run off from,
what did its unblinking eyes stare at—
is what makes beautiful
that is why you crouch
and wait the wait of ages,
if you die of hunger
it is a worthier death
than to eat just whatever bites the bait.
The beautiful is worth the wait.

I

I’m not playing here

this is real

like looking up and wondering a little

about nothing really

clipping thought coupons

into a phone

on the backs of Denny’s’ receipts

that’ll be worth while on sale

maybe a cradle

a rocking chair for an aching back

or a shovel

'cause that's all that really matters

II

but I cannot bring myself to

do what we (brothers) have done

videotapes donutting for unblinking eyes

blurry words, maybe

faster than (the) sea

mathematical and black

reflecting (truth)

what really matters

the violence of things that mean something

that pump the kroovy

that crumple old

inky receipts

thrown

III

they warp the desk

spinning the world into the anaphora of a pale blue dot

a period

a full stop

IV

before the wall
came down,
there were lines
12 hours long
for bread and kielbasa;

and nuclear warheads raced
rhetoric east to west,
and back,
and rhetoric won...

I sat on a train
westbound,
idling on the left side
of the border

the 'gestapos' stormed aboard
with their black leather boots
knee-high;
stern angled faces
missing smiles;
eyes of winter
and steel,
unblinking....blue,
sending chills through
and through

'you,' he said
pointing at me

his open fist
flipping the universal
'come here' signal...

60 minutes later
he conceded...
reluctantly...

the 15-year old
black face smiling
in the mug shot
on my passport

was indeed....me

not some ****** student
trying to flee
the misery
behind those curtains

to freedom...

without walls 12-feet high
topped by razor-edged rolls
of barbed wire;

without food lines
12-hours long;

where choice
and opportunity
know no bounds...

~ P (Pablo)
(8/7/2013)

Alice liked the soft
voice of her mother,
the telling of stories
as she fell into sleep.

She liked it when her
mother hugged her
tight and kissed her
goodnight. Her father

seldom came to story
tell or hug or kiss or
such; seemed it was
too much. His voice

was deep and harsh
as winds, his eyes
dark and shark like,
peering without those

feelings of love or
want or admittance
into his realm of deep
concern, cared neither

if she drowned nor
burned  nor if in her
dark hours she counted
unhappiness on her

fingers and toes; he
was her father, but
one of those. She liked
to hug and kiss her

doll, poor substitute
for a father's love,
it sitting there in hers
arms unblinking and

smile-less as her father
did; feelings not there
or if so, well hid. Alice
kissed her mother's brow,

her arms, her hands,
her fingers, too, what
was a deep sad fatherless
or seemingly so, girl to do

to bridge the space or gap,
but sleep in her mother's lap