those words hang stolen
weeping willow feelings
a translation
so desperate
so sudden
a panic slighted by
memories that
only sleep can
bribe from
a hidden cave
i think
i thought of you
as love
a piece of heaven
dangling over
a crimson counter-top
tempting my
sensations
a reverberation
of a gift
offered only
by the Universe
you stole
them from another
love
that flourished
in a time
that I could not exist
not for you
Bring your church to the key – back rooms –
chimney sweep – flushed with soot –
black like cats – deep in Winter sleep.
Bring your arm to my ball – and chain
me up – downstairs – I
am a slave
to black waves of adultery –
and let’s not leave out the China, please? – In
the hutch, where dead mice sleep.
Take me to your temple – here, now go
to sleep – shackled to me –
wrapped in spite –
or luxury.
I won’t drop or swallow – your metal is safe
against my chest – One of us
is naked on the inside –
Christ would like how we make it here –
every Winter –
while the cats let the mice sleep.
Her conversation created craters
around fine dining – she
is one glass too many,
I read her like wine before we sat down.
The light was getting too frisky
when she reached South for
my heart.
Her eyes crossed like a thieves fingers,
pure white bled through.
“I thought I knew you” she said
as I mopped up the puddle of hatred on the floor.
More often than not, I’d plant false
seeds of little baby heartlings
where the girls’ pretty fingers would reach,
but now I have turned.
My shape is funny. It fits like
butterfly wings.
Honest. Divine. Free.
She wears a wet blue dress
and if you undress her
she is not vulnerable or
violated. She is a curved
and proud body;
fertile.
He is molded. He is ceramic mannequins turning sick
against the sea. Noon splits pavement and silicon swallows
in a frenzied gulp.
She is airless, something to know and fear.
When clouds steal our stars, she calls to the moon, carrying all of her love and loyalty back to shore,
while he steals her pearls
in the dark.
It will be several days of confession.
I have starved myself.
I have been hard and violent.
Each doctor takes note, takes opinion,
takes my blood and stirs
it in his coffee.
It’s Monday. 9:30 A.M.
The sterile tile has been examined,
the hard carpet, despised!
I twist dismay into the carpet fiber
with one foot,
the other taps out
awkward silence.
Sunday was a long day of struggle.
I ate out of the palm of a man,
tugged at his whiskers and
kissed him.
He had a candlestick, long like a lady,
using its light to sort me out.
I had only borrowed trust,
I had to protect myself.
He became a smoky tantrum,
a raging death match forcing truth
out of my swollen mouth.
It was a Sunday of ruin.
Confession came, thick bees swarming
my tongue,
a blur of black and yellow before
I fell hard out of life.
I woke up to this Monday, a dream,
a foggy span of blasting conscience .
And this is just the start.
and who was I at midnight?
Your throat on firewater, swallowing
baggy, flabby tongues.
It is no matter,
tonight is seven hundred stories high
and I am ready to jump. Before I do, though,
I remember you
and sitting on your lap,
the shot,
the bounce,
your heavy gunman.
The moon has a chain on it,
this I never told you,
I put it there myself, several years ago.
It lingers patiently, sleepily awaiting me,
tied up and braced for thunder.
I will come pounding from the top
of your world, the last one I was shown,
up seven hundred staircases
to reach,
to grab,
to attach myself to the moon.
I have a long connection from brain
to chest, in gentle condition,
you were always soft,
not like this scratched metal chain
stabbing in to thin purple veins, on purpose,
a reminder.
A reminder that it is always just after midnight,
no matter what anyone says.
I’ve been digging through past lives for
months, searching
for fingerprints
in five feet, eleven inches of
deceit dust covering everything
I know! How many times did he shed his skin
back here? Dead parasites are proof!
He was on the roof when it caved.
Climbed over four hundred days
with water and
a bible.
He left spoons and mattress burns below him,
tribe familiars blossomed following his climb,
extending gratitude,
tribute!
And he climbed, praising God, until he reached
Grace,
humble resiliency…
We sang!
We cried and we sang!
We wrapped our hugs in packages with golden bows,
throwing them to a skeptical world! We danced, twirled
through moon phases, a
fantastic celebration!
Then, a sharp raucous!
Brusque thunder crushing eardrums!
Blood poured from our ears
as the noise devastated. Bible pages
fell like confetti over
our joy; a tearful,
thick pollution!
We cried!
We fell and we cried!
We wrapped our memories in boxes with golden locks,
sealing them, our treasures. Silently, we
remembered, our Requiem,
a tribute!
All we know is that he climbed,
and that underneath five feet, eleven
inches of his dust, it is
in God that we place our
rusted
trust.
maggiemaeijustsaythis 