It’s A White Night

It’s a white night
in a white gown,
lights are dancing in
black windowsills.

In an instant, I’m a crowd;
an infant fevering
for heavy music to sing.
My prison is cumulonimbus.

La la la la la.
The opera is inside of me.
Look inside, there’s
a phantom cradling a breeze.

I will become
a storm under white sheets.
Waiting to be swept up,
my weak field,
my broken wheat.

I see your
Tropic of Cancer
and how tumorous you can be
but I will be
better than the whiteness
that is surviving me.

At that time
I will sow the sound
of wind chimes
over lullabies.

Mozart will come sit with me
about your layers –
we won’t need them,
words don’t mean anything
after you have seen

how beautiful the whiteness
can be.

Center Of Time

Welcome home, a strawberry plant
grows out back
for you, but it
has twisted to fingernails
to scratch away the bugs.

It has a heart, ready for transplant.
I promised to die,
I admit, I’m in the habit,
but it just sat in one spot,
sucking on water cells

reminding me what it
would feel like to overheat.
Now you are here, hiding in
the desert, my fruit not fertile
enough for you
to eat.

So, you say it’s the center of time,
one hand holds it,
the other says good-bye.

DayDream

I can’t have you come back like August
without water. Your limbs shriveled and
cracking, bare knuckled,
moving like a tree
away from fire.

We built moons in the back of Cadillac’s,
coffee black leather seats
trimmed back – to make
room for the
others.

I wore thorns under my skirt, then.
I let the pure taste rise from your voice
and settle on the rhythm that
rocked us into daylight.
For you, sound lined up
and agreed with me.

You will come back like August always does;
a dirty deed to compliment me,
to bring me to naught!
But, the moon sails on
and without it,
I cannot.

The Accident

Embarrassment tugs his eyes to the
left, cradling his infant courage.
He is new skin – crawling
for Jesus – drowning
in sin.

My own infant, white lipped,
sleeps like a giant next
to my hip. My blood
is metallic lead
leaking out.

The scent of iron is dark and heavy.
Mary cycles through every
woman, he reminds me.
I know. Serpents
slither – then
go.

He is the color of silence – naked eyes
following mine, stalking my quiet
like prey. His sharp honesty
brings deep claw marks
across my chest. I
still beat
life. His eyes lift,

hungry. My flesh is real,
sincerity exposed. He prays over
me, Jesus take this pain.
It was an accident, he is just.

And Their Colour

I see how he boils
I see his skin blistered and peeling
at the surface, and
I see what lies beneath.

I couldn’t help it, his voice started out whimsy and soon turned grey.
I searched for colour, for exposure, for sound;
in every wrinkle,
in every scar I searched, but they grew dull
and duller, still.

There is only one way at a time like this,
for me, just one way.
I carved a switch, long and thin,
kissed it from tip to tip,
dipped it in ferocious honesty
and laid it upon him.

Every sharp went unacknowledged, ignorance shaded
his wounds, so I left them.
He came back for another round and
I smacked him with truth,
defiance and with truth,
and he did not believe me.
So, I left.

Then, he came back and I swat him again.
I welted and blistered his skin, this
time colour arose.
Red infection swelled at the lacerated sites,
and he boiled.
I listened to his blood and his voice boil,
and his skin gash and then blister,
but before all this
I saw what hid beneath.

Now, I stand in front of my mirror,
where he thinks my reflection is
hollow and bare,
and I see all of my wrinkles and scars
and where they came from
and that they will always be

but with their colour,
and their colour,
and their colour!

Sunday Abandonment

Keep talking.
The kitchen has gentle
butchering knives.

“Today’s Sunday. I need to speak to you.”

Take Sunday back, then. Drown it!
Slaughter it!
Sunday is starving itself in a fit of tension;
leather skin begging for lotion.

Weak days have poor eating habits.
Anxious bellies roll,
tumbling rejection
around,
around.

Unsafe.
Unsound.

Un-Sunday, then keep talking!
Your speech has sharp fingertips,
jabbing at my spider webs,
my sticky, thick mesh.

Un-Sunday, then
cut jelly rolls,
tumble Sunday
around,
around.

Without rejection.
Safe.
Sound.