he sleeps twisted inside of me
hands tight on my bruised lungs
if I had a voice
with him
it would slice my own tongue
and when he moves to awake
his easy turn on my hand
burns through everything I know
one slow thrust into my dignity
and I split in two
and I don’t know
which one is me
a blue bird twines
of wire
where sunflowers grow
your air is twisted
like she
unthawed
in your
affection
an aroma far
from lonely
i find dizziness
underneath
liquor
we are empty
never simultaneously
the glass is warped
i’ve stood here forever
waiting
for the
freeze to pass
Helios in
a winter solstice
unconquered
I am fire and light
come to me
For this time being, she swept dirt away from dirt and from cactus and captured the memory of a small home made of partially buried lava rock and desert rain weeds. She swept Earth away from itself, angrily debating existence. And it was comfortable.
She wanted to sit and invite a sister and a mother to laugh and admire her desert. Without a roof. Without water. Without time. She wanted to stay and wait for a summer moon to smile at her with pride, with knowing.
And night came, but the desert never becomes cold. Coyotes came to practice midnight and bury sharp hunger through the necks of jack rabbits. The universe came to cover her head and remind her of tin roofs and frail wood spines of old women that shriek with each step she steps.
How cold the desert becomes in that small house.
Elvis is alive. Fact or fiction. Electric theory travels across a nation. She meets guitars and drums and sex and drugs. She is seventeen wild in a broken city. She is chained to an old lamp-post that jolts to life at sunset. Her lungs are clogged. Smog takes over. She inhales a damp determination for life that doesn’t smell like rot.
I meet her at twenty two and Newport Beach. Carpet stained by black top walks and coffee. It’s an LA Times kind of morning. Knit tops cover immodest mannequins waving to her from window cages. He head hangs to her knees. Cracks in the sidewalk taunt her. She is guilty and broken. She doesn’t speak or mimic or cry, but she can hear intent. I give her symbols. Ice. Shadow. Flight.
She chooses to choke.
Summer leaves her. I leave her in an hourglass. Her slim smile leaks through the sand. Time is running out.
She starts talking to the desert. A language I can’t understand. Ink leaks from eyes to her young lips. She tastes words for the first time. I stop to watch. She is thick with rage. We are intense and struggling. Our muscles melt together with neurons and we know each other. We are scared.
We see doctors and pills and whiskey and we time it just right so that our bodies do not fail. And we buy reviews and our way into a new way. Oranges explode and we drink fruit rinds. And I miss her when she is not there. We discover each other but we do not know. What is truth? Where does it begin and with who? We softly debate existence and beg for an out. Shamefully we beg for an out.
And here we are. In the middle of the Earth. Gravity. Cells. DNA. Still so unsure. Still begging for an out…
until we step into his driveway at midnight. Our hearts shake. His sharp hunger examines our every layer. One hand behind our neck. We stop breathing. We are out.
When it is day, I do not recognize
this land. We live on
moonlit love and hard water
soaked in oak barrels.
When sunlight takes over
this land, I do not recognize
his hands that
lay me to rest with Strigiformes
and kiss my skin to death
his voice blurs my vision
when it is day, he is
not him
he is a reflection of a
fermented sea I drown in
every night,
when I swim away from this
foreign land I live on.
Over and over,
dry skin flakes off my shoulders,
crumbs of a younger me,
revealing new layers that nobody
has seen.
I watch the girl in the mirror watch
back. We do not know each
other and, I think, we never will.
Brown floor cloaked. White flour
trail.
A leader.
A small fridge opens its wide mouth, letting me
greet its cold insides.
A rot banana.
Mucky carrots.
Luggage.
They showed up, under the door frame.
Two men drenched in
charcoal. Carrying meddling
Polaroid.
They captured broken glass,
dirt masking success,
frightened eyebrows.
My own eyes flashing back at them.
Flashing a peculiar
father who dragged my luggage
by his ankles.
The key shouldn’t have worked.
The key should have squawked in the door,
at my pink dress,
at my black heels. But, its entrance was
easy, mandatory.
When I got back to picture frames
and silence, I found
my products of life
in boxes
on a neighboring balcony.
My apologies, I said,
you shouldn’t have been bothered.
And they weren’t.
They would not be bothered
with white powdered jelly doughnuts
or
a girl,
with rotten umbilical cord
wrapped around
her neck in her dreams, every night.
The Fog glances at me, as if
I am a seventh morning
in black coat prayer.
Twice, I have been veiled by
The Fog.
Twice, I have ridden wounded winds
to secretly watch
dead men bathe in weakness.
I have hidden in The Fog from
sneer,
from shame. But, guilt has giant hands that reach
deep, plucking sin from a wrecked womb,
pulling it out,
into the open world.
The Fog glances at me because she
knows me. She floats toward me with her warm, white
blanket, wrapping me up,
away from sneer’s,
away from shame.
Cryptic House of Knowledge,
I stroll,
I shift around your
halls – the deep and starving
space – hungry for
ambiguity and definition!
Where is the edible material hidden?
Do you have a frozen room
where you store it for keep?
Not frantic, but fixed!!
I want!
I need!
I am fierce on my knees….
I beg
Give me what I seek!!!
A deep rumbling vibration rips through the floor, knocking me from
my roots. I hear my bones crunch and snap as I hit
the concrete.
The House answers. It is evident. Strong.
The rumbling becomes deeper. It is here!
I roll against a wall, for
a seeker has no haven.
The building ripples and rips,
the walls shred
and crumble around me.
I am still.
I watch as a cyclone tears down the
structure that protects me, ripping through cement
and stone
destroying all that I had known.
The outside light came pouring in and
I am exposed!!
The cyclone stopped in its spot,
turned, it found me.
My frightened frame could do nothing.
The heart could not beat.
The lungs could not breathe.
My body and I just sat in fear….
The twisting tornado did not move
from its place, but
targeted my eyes,
smiled
and I understood!
maggiemaeijustsaythis 