Little Golden Girl

Sounds like you are lost
right behind where you are almost are
What are you doing here?
Swiping what I have to say about that?
It is I,
making sure that no thieves take the golden honey
from the hives.

We all are natural friends to befriend
the bees, but you have lost your way.
On the way, your treasure melts
away into a way to let go.
You’re almost there, save me!

Honey for everybody!
I hope I never see another world
covered in seagulls.
The bees are enough for me.
Little golden girl
you are perfect
in your comb
waiting for the right time to
find your way to where you almost
can be.

I Love Her More

She has a name hanging
in a back orchard somewhere.

Cowbells are ringing. I gave it up
like an omelet to a woman married
to perfection.

I am missing limbs for limbs,
heart for heart. Who am I to promise
life to another broken life?

Her name stands on a balance beam
between two tongues, heated tongues,
a melting puddle of ownership.
Where did she come from?
Where does she belong?

Tug-of-war. I own her more.
Someone who should have been born
is hanging in a back orchard somewhere.

I let her go. I love her more.

a life of a ghost man

It is hard to believe in a dead man,
a ghost,
a life,
a life of a ghost man….

a life that hands my limp direction
over to those that can control it.

They must have told him,
the people,
that his core was rotting,
that his brain was infested and crumbling?

That his daughter was sick with
raw nerves and would never get better?

If the bombs in Vietnam hadn’t sawed his
spirit away,

if his own father
hadn’t dangled lily liver from
the ceiling,

maybe he would have heard
the people,
the ghosts,
the whispers of his daughter’s twisted,
raw nerves grasping
for contact

and saved me from rotting with the same
crumbling infestation.

The Bone Yard

I fold my dirty body next to the sun as it falls to sleep across a boneyard.

Our Daughters sleep in there, clinging on to life and on to death.
They strip down to breast and bone for swine,
gnawing on their own skeletons for some Great Man to tame them.

They play in ash playgrounds, burnt down by thieving snakes of virginity.
Our hands can do nothing.
Our Book does nothing.

Our Sons are bound, shackled by veins to elusion.
They strain, barefoot in the desert where demons build their muscles on doubt and hesitation.
Fear is a great interruption to the infant shadows that remain young nuisances
until trepidation grips its claws around their hollow shoulders and carry them away.

And, as the boneyard grows next to me. I lay, with burnt wings, in a chill that never dies.

The Children In Their Sleep

A woman wrinkles over her chair,
soaked in religion, 
piling God’s children on gravel. 
They eat with her disciples
where bread is dry, yet
milk is sweet. 

I stand by with clover. 
I paint the children green and set them up
as chess pieces. 
Confused feet step over boundaries, 
but it is her game. 

Her weight stomps chicken bones. 
Her voice pours like gravy 
over our heads, till I put them to sleep, 
and the lullaby’s rock me
as I bleach time from my head. 

The woman is asleep
in God’s arms, I rest at his feet, 
and the children, 

in their sleep, sing. 

Texas LongHorn

Up north, near borders and manure,
a woman lives with a Texas LongHorn.
She grows red potatoes and
asparagus in spring water.

She nudged her children
with long pitchforks, for all the years
that she could.
Poking,
prodding,
until ladybugs and snake skin
wrapped her
thick construction sick.

I had a son. White ash hair,
marble blue sight.
The woman’s Ladybug’s tampered him.
So, he trampled them!
One after another.
Crunch. Crunch. 

Like good mother’s do, I told him “NO!”
He cried.
I sneezed,
and when I did, my poor soul
escaped.
No woman blessed me.
No child cried.

But, that woman! That woman with her potatoes,
and her asparagus,
and her giant Texas LongHorn
grew beastly horns that
poked,
that prodded,
sharper than pitchforks.

Fruit Family

Some children have spiders in their
brains, pressing buttons at bedtime,
stopping nightmares,
praising mothers.

Other children have tapeworms.
Cynical parasites eating
juvenile appetites and vertebrae.

These children,
my children, come from
fertile plums and pears.
Summer fruit preparing
for decomposition at summer’s end.
As  time goes, so skin shrivels,
hardens,
plump curdles into plush and seeds
become fossils.

A fossil will not suck nutrients from dirt,
as it should,
as parasites do,
from Summer children.

These children prepare for
ripening. Drunk swans arrive in spring
suits,
mild pink bakery sleeps
through exchange
while a Summer child
tosses rotting
petals.

These children sit, arthritic,
decomposing. Smiling at
baby ripe fruit family.
Seeds,
fruits with  tapeworm scorn
creating  fossils for family to mourn.

She Snaps Like A

She snaps like a
twig from a
dead oak tree
She snaps
her fingers,
one,
two,

THREE!!!!!!

Standstill! Who will
draw first

Three sisters, count them.
One.
Two.
Three.

Huddled in her meat cleaver,
she leaves them.
Dead meat.

Red, raw
meat for the taking.
Marinated to
manipulated savory.

Three girls with
guilt blonde hair. Three
scared
little witches, fixing burns,
breaking dishes.

That’s what happens when the
flip switches,
she twitches into
rags –
stomping floorboards,
dropping little blonde
hair into body
bags

feeds dirty lies
from her
mothering, smothering hands.

The Orange Hatter

She is the orange hatter. Holding
orange rose blossoms
against black lace.
Bride marrying
a fish;
a plaid, handsome fish.

He watches her walk,
holds stern hands together,
to keep
from touching
a brunette flower in gold trim.

She is beautiful, the flower, with
agony’s gaze.
With child.
Matching orange bouquets with the bride.

Flushed in the background,
a lemon princess smiles.
Throwing innocence on
holy ground. The only
child left.

Left by Mother, (un-photographed),
because
Mother had no bouquet, just
a bastard lemon child
in a basket,
in July.

July has taken more lemons than
given. From dumpsters.
From wombs.

Some, children of children.
Some, children of
addicts,
victims,
shame.

Some, children of a flower in
Gold trim, holding on to a matching
bouquet
of a Bride.

In The Desert

June,
avalanche came with hammers,
pounding cradle into coffin for me,
smashing off these fingers that wanted.

(St. Louis opens boiling arms
while I drag these
empty things.)

I searched through snowflakes
to learn how
to carry rubble,

I came too late!
It was next spring.

I fell!

Debris soaked
by snow melt,
carried down river,
handed over to desert land;
an arid cough.

Dry woman are vultures!
Using neck,
hair,
steeples,
as steps. A pyramid!

Waiting for their turn.
We reach
pyramid tops
with them, our own tears betraying us,

slipping our own steps.

We fall,
down,
down,
down,

bottomless!
Hopeless!

While dry woman take our
place
as Mother.