No pillow comes without residue.
At our age, blessings come in small forms…
hands cradled together,
words buried in sweet breath,
unconditional nights,
uncontrolled…..
Tell me about your exploration, about
fingertips trickling down
courage….
spines do not break easily, do they?
I met you today,
I see your influence and result,
you probably know
that I see through blue eyes,
saturated by the way your fingertips move.
He never went out and shot someone.
When he gets hot, he crumbles like
dry wall.
Yeah the petals come off, but it’s not
his bullet. His bullet passes through
everything but glass.
At that point, his nerve is out of his mind.
He runs on instinct.
I look at it as reasoning.
He doesn’t want it to fragment.
It’s not effective, but
if I have a BB Gun that looks like a 45
and I point it between his eyes,
I’ll make him better than what’s out there.
I see that one arm is stubbed
by something. No one else can see
this, like it isn’t true.
To them, I am tragedy,
and I let them.
I am a hot potato
and they drool over food.
My crippled hands shove their
mouths full of muscle.
They like it raw
and tough.
So, I give them my back bone
to gnaw on,
they snap it like baby pea stock.
I spend two years in the ground,
done with legs
and feet
and toes
and balance.
I buried myself in dirt,
living with termites.
The thing about termites that no one else can see,
is that they aren’t true. To them, we are tragedy,
and we let them.
He may kill me
in plain love, He has
done more already.
His words are iron,
a heavy chain crushing
my fight.
I left a sleepy hill
for His voice.
My feet ached with disapproval,
but I went, as a soldier,
and shall we fight?
I hold armour in my lungs,
but my hands are wasteful,
braided together in conversation
with God. I would be proud
if I had it now. I would offer
everything, but question.
Here, He comes!
Don’t be late. I think
we settle on a couch, sinking
into resentment, I feel His chain.
I am not, but is He
free??
It starts with a doorknob,
a brass trombone turning out
mouse squeaks.
Tiny little mouse pellets
squeeze out of my pores.
I watch them drop to the ground.
Still, waiting for respect.
But, it started with a violent door.
Swinging away from force,
away from poison palmistry,
which, in fact, I read.
Which, in fact, I understood.
Or it was the mouse being
meek; naive.
I swing with doors now. After wooden frames
attack my conscious, I become sub.
I create layers of plumb paste up,
licking drywall,
growing asbestos,
swinging from summer to fall,
landing in winter igloo’s to be swept away
by spring baby sprigs.
Only the mice can bring me back.
Salt sweeping palms turning
yellow bellied
rats, wringing out gathered droppings
of last year.
Only the mice remind me
of stagnant feces laying around
my house,
my home.
And with a cold, slick doorknob,
I turn my insides
out.
Emily
walks with rotting feet
turned out
old
birthing hips
rock
with her jellyfish
spine
her path has become
as thin as her
starved bones
a
tight
borderline
between survival and
extinction
Emily
with her nervous order
steps
slight
whispering steps
onto
an aimless rope
an unambitious line
unstable
intimidated
weak
battered
uneasy
shrinking
Emily
walks
Oh! The bugs are marching
one-by-one
in
my head, my head
my head
it’s latched on by
commitment
Thank God! Else it
would have shaken off
with rickety waves of
apprehension
I am standing on
thousands of microscopic
bug legs
strutting,
fashionably strutting
in hand crafted
black leather wedges
chewing up
the poise that carries me
through rocky terrain
mixing
creating
cement bricks of
disquietude
trampling my resplendent
garden
of backbones.
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!
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