Inside Out

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.

Sclerotic Dolls

Back to my dolls. Back to familiar,
sclerotic faces.
Mother gave me one to paint. I chose
the sea for her eyes
and
cuspidated obsidian for her mouth.

She was a fill-in.

Mother howled in on muscle pills,
red cheeked fury
steaming the air, burning my hair from
its soiled roots! My bedroom door opened
itself out of her way, scarred from past poundings.

I dove under my bed, throwing
my rock-like doll to stand as daughter.
She never turned into an
apple-polished quail. She just stood.

I laid in yellow paint under
bed frames; thick structure.
And never gave Sclerotic Doll
a name.

 

Yellow Belly

Where are they? Oh, I have lopped off
both stones!!

The pair hung below
unused –
what should have been bold
is now shriveled.

What disappointment!

Do not fear, dear Man,
they will be kept well,
here in palms;

in succulent, sweaty,
sweet feminine
palms.

Cyclone

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!