Like rippling water distorts a reflection,
the mirror reshapes my
stomach,
thighs,
arms.

Buttons unlatch from their holsters,
The zipper loosens its grip,
Exposed are the  things I despise.

Pinching, pulling, pushing.
Nothing changes, all still there.

Not so much a distorted body,
More so a distorted mind.

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.

The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?

Ears pressed cool against
glass tables and vinyl flooring
words score high drained slowly
slow like wasps caught in guttered draining
not like velvet names etched in casing, but weathered like bricked and beaten graffiti –
Waning like wax always melting

Tools: spelling and grammar – uncheck

Don’t fret too many gerunds grounding air suffocating hearing between the lines that past lower truths out straight in dirt and stinky face: eyes drawn with pensive staring
lines drawn global remains of words unused: boycott form because it isn’t daring.
Adopt sonar because it traces the smokestack between eaves drop
and scrap metal hearing like thorns prickled cut by cleaver.

Clink, clink, clank.

Unlatch cellar doors of images fixed in meaning: glances slanted
heads poked out behind legs enchanting ink under eyelids.

Clank, click, click.

Wishing: Sunday morning came to rest and the cat perched rest without the windowsill and the space between my legs lost meaning.

Forgetting: Painted houses haunting furniture misplaced, training lessons in memory fading.  

Dreaming: Sounds dipped in vegetable oil, Van Morrison in teething states caring.

Still lost without my last breathe wondering…

Baggage within
      trappings of illusions,
love packed away
  in neat little compartments
gathering cobwebs at
     makeshift improvisations,
dusting intermittently
      if by chance a light
           should shine,
never wholly untangling
    the snare
mid a labyrinth of
      transparent entrapment,  
as violin strings continue
      to unlatch the same old key

When on a crisp morning, her blush in daylight

speaks to me in silence, suggestive sweep

of eyes scan notice looks, smiles, select

moments for admirer to choose chance.

~

First touch is hair, fingertips enter,

while soft languor covets skin,

just this, enough to arouse eyes,

hands feel blessed teasing love.

~

lips drawn toward a meet

of anticipation, smiles become

ready form to grace each other,

eager, anxious delight begins.

~

Your taste while I look inside

sultry eyes, saying go, go

draw my hips against yours

hands slide and shoulders …

~

While now tongues play

gasps and fever arise

my need to taste all of you

begins, soft lips, just love.

~

Our bodies now connect,

I feel your ******* as we

begin to breathe in one

another’s *** – *******.

~

a blouse began my passion

that now slides along my chest

feeling your ******* draw to

my waist, I’m eager, eyes close.

~

Will you please unlatch my …

yes, as zipper falls and finger-

tips touch inside sliding sweet

lips delve into a grasp of me …

~

I lean back against today’s wall.

it's 11:20 pm
it's a moon-risen domain
rusty truck of Ford 1978
unlatch the faded tailgate of white and pale turquoise

off a Denton N. Elm highway
sitting in the heat of the ocean air.

The trees but a silhouette
and the moon a rustic orange
feeling heavy sentiments of cascading hair ending in curls
sickly eyes with blue shadow and glazed look that pierced.

2 minutes of absence growing fonder
and I wanted it to last for much longer.

Season after season.
I've gazed upon you
through my window.

I've seen the snow hang low
upon your branches.
With white upon red berries.
I've watched the snow melt away
to reveal new buds,
opening,
ever so slowly,
to leaves so green.
In early Spring.

I've watched all the creatures
hop, climb, and fly among
your branches.
I've watched the birds taste
your blood-red berries.
I've seen songbirds...
Nuthatches,
finches, and chickadees.
Come to the feeders.
That hang from you.
I've seen the squirrels steal
seeds from the birds.
As their little paws unlatch
a little hook.
I've heard the birds sing among your
branches.
So sweetly.
I remember when the chickadees
built their nest in you,
and then watched their young fledge.
I remember the year the woodpecker
came knocking at your trunk's door.
As he drilled his beak into you.
And made a hole.
After that.
You were never the same anymore...

I watched your life slowly end.
Another year.
Another season.
More dead branches to be severed.
Fewer buds.
Fewer leaves.
As your story slowly drew to a close.

Yesterday,
they chopped down what was left of you.
But I will always remember you.
And I thank the Lord for the joy
of beholding your beauty.
Of watching your story.
You have blessed so many creatures.
Including me.
Farewell,
Beautiful Mountain Ash tree.

i tie myself to her every blue move
then try to pull out,
unspool,
the knot in myself
so i
follow you both home
then bruise in the black
hide in the bush
you’ve been beating around
write my petty poems
swallow my love
feel the cold creep
the glossy warmth
you hold i now
cradle memory to my
red cheeks
so i
unlatch my tongue
from my loyal teeth
and
let the blood run
into someone else’s mouth
you know I’ve always seen in green

When we were mourning
The loss of our friend,
The pain didn't seem so bad
Because you and I went back
To work in the sheepfold.

But when you took that job
In the vineyard last week,
Pruning young vines,
I found myself in the field
Without your ears to listen,
Without your eyes to see
The pain my heart was beating.

Now here I am,
The loss of two friends
Pressing down on me.
Sure, I can still meet you to
Unlatch our metal lunch boxes,
Talking with our mouths half full,
Sandwiches our wives made.
But on most days I am alone.

Here in the grazing-grass
There is no one
To hear my thoughts
But God
And the wind.

I need to Say It

I need You to Hear It

But the Words are Locked up
And Voiceless without the Key
To unlatch the Cages.

If I Release them
Will You hear?

Will I hold Your Heart with Love and Care?

Or will it slip through My fingers

To Shatter like glass

And disintegrate into a million pieces on the floor

Either way

The outcome is unknown

But at least I showed You my Heart

That's what matters at the least

...

Right?

My eyes unlatch and hollow bones come to life
Gravity presses me under
Carving my own space into this world
I wish it were that easy
I wish i could understand why a hellish sphere of flames drives people to insanity
Makes my skin glow, riveting down my spine to the intangible corners of my morality
Back to an eternal loneliness, just me and my silhouette
All my worries in harmony with reality
Lost at mind and found in thoughts
And forgotten in a grassy paradise where the only touch is thoughts left by others
buried and grown nipping at my legs
Yet this a serendipity  
A serendipity to have something holding me back
Tearing the skin off my pale hands
Tangling my chances until they find me
Maybe another day

O vicious household gods of Rome
you Manes, Lares, Muses, Fates
who justified patrician homes,
whose reign this poem celebrates,

Allow me now, in retrospect
to excavate, then analyze.
Depravity with cause, connect;
depriving you of alibis.

Relax your stiff noetic poise
as my plebeian pen records
through lyrical poetic noise
the crown imperial crime awards.

My lines, like foundlings, long to ****
a mother’s milk in measured draft
and dredge some gold from Tiber’s muck;
Lord Christ: illuminate my craft.

ROMULUS, let that wolf-*** go
and REMUS too – unlatch that breast…
milk of Etruscan madness, flow,
with empire’s crimes forthwith confessed.

We will not blame your leaden wares
nor ergot mold in rancid bread
for genocidal state affairs,
brutality, and martyred dead.

The Circus, leering, restless, loud,
cheers gladiatorial excess.
The haunted forum’s phantom-crowd
awaits the tyrant’s next address.

He speaks. The wind blows through the arches
stirring up the roadside litter.
Trumpets blare. The legion marches.
Empire’s aftertaste is bitter.

You were Antichrist. That is all.
We cannot dignify your past
or glorify from whence you fall
or praise the mold from which you’re cast.

Christ traveled far from Galilee –
came, saw, conquered – and on it goes.
Our king shall reign eternally;
that she-wolf’s milk no longer flows.

"Goodnight sweetie," my mom says as she turns out my bedroom light and shuts the door.
Instantly, my heart starts to race and I whisper "no, not the dark.
Please don't leave me alone with the monster."
I lay in bed clutching my little dolly with the blanket over my head as my vision blurs.
Even though my blanket is warm, I feel my body go pale and cold.

He's coming to get me, this is my final night
And no one will ever know how I died

I somehow hear the window unlatch over my hearbeat drumming in my ears.
I pull the blanket further over my head and try not to panic.
Keep it together, maybe he won't see you.
I hear the footsteps approach my bed.
My face is wet from tears and my whole body starts to shake.
There's a tug at the blanket and I know its all over.

"Goodbye mommy."

STINGING* twinges of bitterness,
and pale shades of hurting,
pang inside my chest;
throb within my center-most core...
I've been skinned, ripped raw,
by love's unrequited grief ~ ~ ~
I can't *NOT hear the raging voices -
those that are bellowing, screaming,
bouncing about, their echoing words;
accusations, deep inside my brain...
misery-bearing voices, incessantly asking,
asking their intrusive, probing questions,
and demanding that I see;
that I recognize the truth,
the truth behind my suffering...

                     (THE voices speak...)
"are you ******* stupid??? -
as well as beyond any and all hope insane???
it's forever the same!!!
an unavoidable occurrence!!!
the outcome destined to never change!!!
but somehow, this is where you've come,
the grounds upon which you've landed,
once more, yet again, despite!
thus, it is held in your own hands,
the significant bulk of the blame lies... ~ ~ ~
"your unwillingness to relinquish,
your loathsome, hoping dreams,
pleading vainly on for a change of results,
while ignoring, forcing into hiding,
how well aware you are,
deep inside of yourself,
that all that will be, shall be the same;
precisely identical,
to each of those times gone before -
exactly matching, the consequences,
eventually to arrive...
shameful, your stubborn, fierce determination,
so encumbering, powerful, so strong -
you fought, knocking down your knowledge,
and your own inner truths!
an utter foolishness -
foolish and ludicrous, the denial;
the denying of that which you should,
instead, be all too closely acquainted with...
refusal to acknowledge the power that is,
in this, contained, and ought not,
without dire repercussions,
be lightly ignored or denied ~ ~ ~
"strange, it's so vastly idiotic,
and now, the pitiful disgrace that is-
-is you; what you've allowed;
permitted yourself to become,
just for the sake of that-
-that nonsensical, ugly emotion;
the feeling which you call 'love'..."

I'D watched while, my misguided,
rebellious self, went sneaking -
crept up to the forbidden door within-
-within herself, and,
ever so quietly,
reached for the lock to unlatch,
then saw as it was freed,
swinging slowly, silently open... ~ ~ ~
this door, that I've been taught,
in a past chapter of life, years ago...,
to be a passage far better left and ignored;
one better kept shut up and locked tight ~ ~ ~
but this door, so irresistible -
...one I've forced myself to learn of,
yet repeatedly, purposefully,
have allowed myself to forget, and,
indubitably, come to be reminded of,
after a time, incessantly over and,
then over still, again and again...
I brought in pain and animosity,
and they've found a realm to reign here ~ ~ ~
how sickening, that through fault,
that it's all only mine,
and mine, alone, to conquer;
to settle this, my creation,
this that is, my current fight...
so oh yes, regretfully, but true,
I must be stupid,
stupid indeed -
- just a stupid,
stupid little girl... ~ ~ ~

You are not 21, college did not grant you 3 more years of life. Please be careful, this is my body too.
2. If you have come across beautiful minds to explore, don't be so quick to build a home yet. Start with a tent. And if they help you pitch it, things will be less likely to unravel.
3. On the first day, pack up your tent just in case. Because you are never the only being in a forest.
4. Don't bring a map, build one. Ask to explore the mountains and valleys and hills of them. Tell them it's for your geography project.
5. Don't really have a geography project.
6. When you come across a river, there will be no bridge. Others who have traveled here have probably turned back. Shock them, and swim.
7. People may try to stop you, but remember they may be the ones who don't know how to continue. Not everyone you meet is a blessing.
8. Not everyone you lose is a loss.
9. Listen to your mom, she's been through this before. Even though you are characteristically different, college is always the same.
10. If you find yourself missing someone who doesn't miss you, remind yourself that that is not love, that's co-dependence.
11. The difference between love and co-dependence is that one of them will burn you.
12. Love will never start the fire.
13. You don't need to be an architect to build your walls around you. Some people will tell you that you need blue prints but my father never once looked at directions and he created your home.
14. Don't bring the problems of your home with you. Nobody wants to see those shackles. Find the key, unlatch yourself, and run.
15. I know you are tired, but this is the way.
16. Keep your room clean. The clothes on your floor hold on to stress. If you keep everything in order, life will stay intact.
17. Know when to speak. Sometimes words are not as necessary as actions.
18. Step in love with yourself because if you fall, that means you have to find strength to get back up. Always keep yourself upright.
19. You are a universe in yourself, a crowded nebula of light. It's okay to get lost in yourself, because you will be immersed in the stars.

I will catch Harry Potter's ******
because life is match
lets take our pistols to unlatch
scratch them all till i die scratch!
i'll sew bad ideas  batch
i will detach because im crosspatch!
this is  final war to win, no rematch
i wont back down because i'll outmatch
this poem to bad people despatch!!!

There's a problem eating at me
I'm attached but I need to unlatch
Because this thing is tearing away at me
And closing up my heart
Causing blindness to worldwide kindness

An Optimist I am
And I fall over and over again
But I haven't lost my legs
I get up and I beg
For God to sustain me
Not to refrain from me

Some things can leave you feeling small
You gave it your all
You expected to grow tall
With love and invincibility
But all you have acquired through this is a sense of invisibility
You ponder: How could I have been so silly
But you know
If you never tried
You'd never know why it's important to live and fight
For life, for your life
For what is right
To live a fulfilling life

When the river is blocked with a pile of rocks
And everything is just clogged
You're not going anywhere
But the certainty of staying is comforting yet delaying
That's when my heart reminds me:
It's time to be praying.

And I break down
I resist
For in this misery I persist
This sickness is so sweet
In it I find a distorted relief
Who ever knew you could find comfort in grief?
My prayer at first is brief
Quick sentences that cut to the chase
Like numbing actions in attempts to erase
But God says: No, no, you've come to me, now I'm going to open your heart even more so
And you feel big and you feel small
But you know that whatever happens, you grow
He breaks you down, he lifts you up
He exposes your mindset, but He never gives up
On you
The unique one
Dazzling and one of a kind
A child of God
You, God's child
Ain't that grand

What a relief
More than relief
You've risen up from grief
Yet again, you can see!
The scales drop from your eyes
And no longer do you roam the streets
Like a beast
Seeking it's lost feast
With an inconsolable appetite
It seeks pleasure all through the night
But nothing would ever completely satisfy
The animal we have inside

When we attempt to tame our inner animal
Many times we fail
We can get disheartened and say: I NEVER PREVAIL!
But turn to God
And he will be the wind in your sails
Propelling you to prosperity and love and care

No matter what, I leave this to God
I've tried too hard and now I have nothing left
I've given too much and I've made myself blind and sick and deaf
Please God, rescue me from these murky deep waters I drown in
Stretch out a finger and pull me to safety
Remind me of my worthiness and an outpouring of love place in me
Let me trust this spontaneous turn
Because it's not quite spontaneous, for You have set out my path
Before my conception
Any time I call on you, you replenish my soul with a resurrection.

There are things in life that seem so good, seem so fine
I say, If only I had that I would be fulfilled
But I trust my journey, I trust you God
You are my unfaltering Rock

If it were not for death then we would not have life
So let me get rid of what is not serving me anymore
Embrace life and milk it for everything it is for
I know that if I just ask
You'll give me more
More love, more worthiness, more compassion
Bless me and allow me to live my life with passion!
Heck, I'm only here once,
So let's make this happen!

I'm manufactured like hand-me-down clothes.
Worn at the seams though I'm not old.
Elastic stretched out,
zipper caught on its own track,
my buttons won't snap.
The threads at my knees tear
revealing scarred skin that won't disappear.

But I can roll the hems,
unlatch the zipper,
replace the buttons.
And truthfully, I like the look of jeans
with rips at the knees
so what if it reveals me?

I wear the clothes of my mother and sisters
what they loved is now mine to claim
for it doesn't quite fit them anymore
and perhaps some seams ripped
but that I can fix so it will fit me.

The clothes I wear may not be new
and hold old hopes that won't come true
but it holds old love too.

Summer falls whilst winter flows
upon the blossoms of forget.
Mementos of a time long gone
wisp through flashes of thought
before sinking on the edge of the equinoctial rim.
Skeletons cackle with the thought of hell
nestled in the depths of their empty eyes,
then washed away
we lift our necks to
breath in the thick condensation of death.
We forget, then forgive
We harbor and let it fester
let if fester...
let it feed and grow and love you with a corrupted pleasure.

Come!

Have my soul, steal my heart and let it go
not.

We must sink alone
tangled in the lines of algae and slime.
You alone and I alone, and when one dies two others go.
Build up thy sin, squeeze lust through a pure soul.
Detach yourself
from everything
unlatch my hatred.

Mamma poppy don't treat me the way she used to, no she doesn't even listen
It's frightening how my eyes light up to this tin-foil glisten.
Take me in your arms or better yours in mine.
A new way to feel momma's old touch &
Transcend these blackhole times
Black tar sublime
I'm finitely fine
I'll unlatch from this hook and swim from the line
I'm just waiting for clearer water
Where i can define myself as more than a junkies daughter
I'm finitely fine
Someone please give me their touch because all I ever do is destroy with mine

“Have you been to the Melrose café?
I heard they have the best lunch there”

“I always go downtown for coffee
helps you avoid the goons
and the smell of trash coming in through the door”

Francis St.
The neighborhood with the crooked spine streets, the intolerable hunchback it was in the armpit of Korea-town.
The snake stealth slither you acquired to get to the 7/11 down the street without your teeth being pulled out by a gun. In the 80’s the back wall of that convenience store was littered with
no-do gooders, the typical teenage gangster with ironic ****** white shirts and a mouthful of *****. An army with no motive.
Buzzards learning how to haunt instead of hunt.
In the afternoons it was speculated that they melted into the hot cement, an intimidating presence that smoked marijuana and made their cars jump.
With fear?
warmth?
happiness?
Who’s to say.
But times have changed. The hungry graffiti on the wall became the emblem of what had been, and what had survived. It was no longer us vs. them, it was me vs. you.
There’s a hostility that sinks into the earth and made the children more aggressive in playgrounds that endorsed healthy living; a melting *** reserved only for the diversely attacked and passive aggressive scrutinized bunch.
I lived on that street in the peach palm, salmon slapped building where I witnessed a domestically abused woman with a shattered nose smear her blood across the windowpane of the front door while I checked for the mail. Her hair was bleached and it hung dead on her scalp like sun rays that had gotten seasonal depression. Her face was a gauzy mess of a nosebleed. I felt for that woman the same way I felt for the slugs that people threw salt at. A sadistic addiction for soft things; There were bruises where there shouldn’t have been and I felt like the imperfections on the wall looking but unable to be seen. And I wondered if she could see me. She crouched on the corner of the steps and waited. I didn’t know what for. I could hear sirens, I could hear footprints of her abuser coming closer and picking her up like a rag doll. Opening the door and disappearing into the night with the sound of high heels slowly going mute. I stayed there until the blood dried. The next day the stain was gone and I wondered about all the other blemishes around the building and if they had the same disgust to them. Were the discolorations on the carpet of the hallways just violent memories?
I could smell the poverty inside that apartment. It clung to me like it held on to anyone.
I was guilty of it creeping into the beds of my nails while I tried in futility to wash it off.
Despite all the books I read, all the times I refused to step out of my room in fear of experiencing too much I was not saved from observing a lot of things. There was a cathedral church a couple blocks away that you could see outside the living room window and when the sun set. It almost felt like the presence of god looming just beyond, always assuring me that yes, I had not been abandoned but it wasn’t abandonment I worried about but about becoming what was inevitably seeping into the tap water, into the people with the olive skin that can’t unlatch their own cages.
Of becoming the shadow of a civilization that revels in the darkness.
I wanted to be a pageant queen on television with the pink lipstick instead of a statistic on the news of most likely dropping out of school and hiding in the crevice of welfare.
I wanted the palm trees without the choke-hold. I wanted the cool California weather without the open fires on July 4th, the firework setting flames to nearby homes telling me that this was the hell that came with freedom. The American dream was served in the oven and why won’t you accommodate to these standards you ask me and I don’t know how to reply.
While other kids played in their backyards and learned how to ride bikes, I learned how to survive, how to walk the streets without being murdered. These are good skills that transfer into college resumes.
So the roots of trees would come out of the ground like fists and demand reparations, they would sneak into the pavement and break car windows with the intention of stealing radios that they sold for a good penny. They carried knives and cackled at the neighborhood watch because all eyes were on them and yet nothing changed but I want to change, I want to change you chant.
Nothing will be the same since I lived in Francis st.
Named after the saint with the smugness in his smile and the gluttony blistering out of his dress.
Will you comfort me in my hours of need oh gracious one?
will you drink these sins like Catholics drink Jesus' blood on Sunday morning?
Is this blasphemy a reason to instill death between the hours of 2 and 4:30?
I’m always chasing on my knees for the knowledge that is taken away from the destitute culture that the ghettos become. I wanted to go back to the mud and dig all those lives that crossed mine and tell them that they could run after their intelligence. Save them from the quicksand. That one doesn’t have to be shot at a party for being raised by criminals. That cars that drive slow at night don't always have bad intentions.

But if I do, I’m afraid I’ll sink


I’ll sink

Free
Fall
Ing.

In
To
T
H
E
Depths
Of
He
LL.
Unlatch me
F.                     C . e. L. L .
R.              Y
On.       M


Anyone here
Is this site working
Is this page
Being
S
E
E
E
E
N!
Hello
Angel
Ina--
Wake
F
R
O m
Y.  O
R   U
Dream's.

When you smile
when you smile
the darkest of nights
can be  so bright.

When you smile
when you smile baby,
my heart skips a thousand miles
and i see heaven in your eyes.

When you smile
when you  smile angel,
heaven's gate you unlatch
and to eternity my worries you dispatch.

When you smile
when you smile sweetie,
i mistake lemon for melon.

Ah! when you smile
when you smile  dearie,
you remind me of Nefertity
seems she stole your identity!

Oh! when you smile
when you grin ageless beauty,
like a hot knife through butter
you melt me  aproper.

When you  smile darling,
you give me fever
and i want it forever
so sweet a malady
and you have the only remedy.

She looks
me in the eyes,
for just a moment,
as if it helped her to say
“I am only going to date you
if you just go to confession first.”
I think she wants me
to clean my soul
before I shave my chin
for her.

I unlatch
the wooden grate
and feel what it’s like
to look through the holes
of an Irish potato sack.
It’s the kind of guilt you feel
not having enough
******* for the recycling,
again.

He accepts
my quiet words,
Metabolizing them,
into fuel to keep nodding,
and I think of that stolen ******
in the back pocket
of my Sunday best,
between the fabrics,
and pressed by the polished wood.

Back to the sack insides
still, he wants to know,
the anatomy of my soul.
He wants to trace the outlines
of my spiritual blood vessels
all the way to my spiritual
heart, tucked behind spiritual
lungs. So he asks,
when I’ll come again.
I’ll need another two dates,
for the three date rule, to apply,
I think.

Her shaky hands unlatch the window

She greets sadness as an old friend

As their time together goes on

Her wounded rhymes play out into the afternoon

She whispers soft verses of white winter hymns

As night falls

Sadness

And the dancing shadows

Become her only companions

She shuts her window

And locks it tight

Hoping sadness never departs again

I. The Funeral



Take the rosemary

they have pressed between my toes

and use it to garnish

your next glass of wine.

As you drink

make a toast,

not to merriment,

but to lamentation–

to the remembrance

of thy maiden’s death.



Cheers! to the unity

of our most unwavering

disgrace.



Cheers to what

has been broken.



In a fit of maddening remorse–

for this time the madness shall be tangible–

tear away the silk

lining of this

****** funeral bed

like you did tear

away the curtain and what

hid behind it.



Tear it away!



Tear it away like you did

tear the rat,

like you did tear and discard

the honour that did lie

between thy maiden’s legs,

like the river’s rapids

did tear away thy maiden’s life.



And once you have

sheathed your sword–

I entreat you–

kneel and bow your head

in surrender to the lilies

that lie before my grave;

you will caress their stems

and kiss their petals

in the hopes that

your love–the love

you did deny me–

will breathe life back

into these water-logged lungs.



But just as it is certain

that the flowers,

in their cyclical phases

of nature,

must bloom,

it is also certain that the dead

must remain dead.



For there is nothing so definite

as the blooming

just as there is nothing so definite

as the dying.



–Post Madness



II. The Drowning



My gown billows around

me like the slick

ripple of a mermaid’s fin.



I can hear the Lady Siren’s Song

and all of its guarantees:

liberation of this life’s

betrayals and heartbreaks,

liberation procured

by the certainty of death.



I **** the nectar of her voice,

drinking in every crescendo–

every last staccato–

of what the water has

promised me.

I **** the nectar of her voice

as I had so foolishly

suckt at the honey of his

music vows,

the same way

his own babe would

have suckt the milk

from the swell of my breast–

my babe to be

that shall never be

drowned by my sodden womb,

my babe whose mother–

certain in what proved to be

the uncertainty

of her lord’s love–

conceived him

in a bed of sin,

a bed of dishonour.



So now, my sweet child,

I do not object

to the deluge that

threatens to drag us

beneath the current,

for perhaps

this is the only way

to put the dishonour

to rest.



So float with me,

my sweet nymph,

and let us both dissolve

into spirits of the river.



–The Pinnacle of Madness



III. The Heartbreak



I, A maid at your window,

mouth glittering in anticipation

for your sweet, valentined kiss.



To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia…



And so up you rose

to unlatch the chamber door–

to meet the nestle of

soft, petaled lips.



Doubt thou the stars are fire,



Doublet unbraced,

you undressed

and to this, My Lord, I

so willingly followed.



Doubt that the sun doth move,



Corset loosened and

gown discarded

with you, I did lie.



Doubt truth be a liar,



So certain I was of your love,

that sin no longer daunted me.



But never doubt I love.



And certainly I was proven wrong,

for in the escapade of our passion

we did touch so dishonourably.



–Pre-Madness (The Inciting Incident)

(I snuck out of the house yesterday.)

Quietly,
Don’t make a sound.
Shh.

The window holds my reflection in it,
It tells me,
“Don’t do this.”
“This isn’t you.”

I ignore the pleas.
I unlatch the bars,
And lift the window open.
It squeaks.

Be quiet.
Don’t make a sound.

I pull the screen up along with the window,
I squeeze through the opening.
This is it.

I feel the grass under my feet,
Freshly misted with dew.
The crickets chirp,
“What are you doing?”

I continue on.

I run through the grass,
Leaving footprints behind as evidence.

My feet hit the pavement.
Rocks digging into skin.
The night renders me blind.

The moonlight shines down on me,
“Where are you going?”

I reply,
“To see my love.”

I’m half way down the street.
I feel you there with me.
I feel you warm right there.

The dogs caged in the neighbors yard howl,
“Turn back! You shouldn’t do this.”

I look at them,
With finger over lips.
Don’t make a sound.

I reach a slow.
Legs burning, out of breath.

A car slowly hums behind me.

I get in.

The seat hot against my thighs.

“Buckle up.”

I comply.
The engine turns over,
And everything that was forward is now behind.

We pull into an abandoned parking lot—
You know, the one by the 66 Diner.

The car stops.
Seats creaking,
You turn to me.

Windows fogged,
With your tongue pressed to the inside of my cheek.

Car dark,
With my tongue pressed to the inside of your teeth.

Quick,
Be quiet.

I have to be back by dawn—
No one can know that I left.

‘Till then.
The night is ours, Chase.