The Dark Island

A gold poetry rests under hand,
he was a painter and
a wrinkle in life.
I am his daughter.

On his lap, music
listened to my breath,
he was a sweet harmonica
smothered in vodka.
I was a drinking flower.

I scooped his footsteps with
a shovel and
slept in his smokey shadow.
In his order, a drunk soldier.
I am covered in armor.

He coughed,
and spewed me
out into a cold ditch.

One day, I painted him red,
myself blue,
and put him in a box that
blocked the sun.
I drifted with his body
along an eight year ocean,
until I became this,
a dark island.

Marionette

If I tip over, a body will fall out of my own,
a body made of bone twigs and red yarn for hair,
that jangles against itself like a marionette.

Her eyes are shaft buttons that sparkle like
they are not made of plastic, but
rather sliced from the most precious
part of Earth’s insides,
perfected and sewn to her face
by God’s tiny hands.

I am double edged.
I am a shadow inside of a shadow,
black-on-black,
in black.
I have been carved out by time
and circumstance,

and the sharp blade of bad decisions has
carved her stone out of me.

I am hollow, but she is free.

 

Overlay

The woman with the old walls
painted new walls in her
home

Burnt red was smothered with
pale yellow,
a non-fattening banana
ice cream
wall.

She covered up the old walls
often, burying
old lovers
and gross mistakes. She could
scrub the greasy
instances
but  her eyes will not pick
out the dirty spots
without
a finger,
that is not her own,
pointing out
the
places that pollute
the walls.

Even if her eyes could show her,
her elbows do not have
strength enough
to scrub
scrub
scrub
the past away.