January

I’ve settled on darkness. Where some cluster of lonely iris might climb through my tear ducts for solace, i empty space and time. 

She is on her way, like last years’ frost bite she brings her shards of cold. One year, I begged her not to go but some things are not always. 

Oh, she is constant. In her gray dress of mist and seasonal affection, she blends in with reality but time doesn’t stop for anything. 

Once her smoke blows over capped mountain tops, I turn away from him, wrinkled from exhaustion. This effort, this tremendous light encompassing mine – I am minimal.

Nothing. 

The People

Starved out of politeness, cockroach-kicked feet
walk across a blue night.
My lungs are stuck together, breathing in
radiation from the hot air
blown in my face.

The people, the people glow
white teeth at every camera. I see
the teapot boiling,
steam rising,
whistle blowing….

my ears ring out electric chords,
far from the classic, ghostly shadow
that sprawl across my nerves
when they start to shiver.

They eat very little,
or a lot, or they drink
or not,
or they lie and mispronounce their own
names on purpose and move around mountains
blending in with the tones of the town.

These people seem largely designed, I
walk on needles. I am little and not
proportionate. I dream about
ages, and eggs and other meals
that are not enough on their own.

Is anyone? Enough with just their teeth and
their camera and light?
“She’s only crazy,” says my mother.
And the hills are long monsters leaking
into my brain. I’m dizzy
and distorted. This image.
This image set up in sanity, or not.

Just A Dream

The vile’s are filling from the back of my knee.
One full of life, a gifted excretion,
the other full of poison, waiting to take the former’s place.

I am set out to chill. Overnight. Alone.
I don’t mind except that the
sounds become so loud
and all the movements in all the world
become heavy like a rock.

I used to dream that I stepped out upon
the softest land,
barefoot,
soaking comfort in through my pores.
How quickly the dead tree branches would poke
up and stab me at from
beneath the peaceful ground.

I used to dream, but now silence
sharpens itself in my ear.
It is a carved loneliness, perhaps from
the other side of the grave
where the ones I love have finally made room
to love me back.

This side of life ties me to boulders and
smashes my ankles with hammers.
My bone fragments roam about
under my skin
wondering where they belong.
They cry out to me, but I
do not know where they go.
They are just fragments,
and I am just a dream.

The Painted Lady

From the tip-top
of the towering
fortress,

where productions
remain silent but still produce,

where every rehearsed act
plays on, as if
unrehearsed.

Nobody would know the difference unless
they were watching
from the tip-top
of the towering
fortress,

the place that the universe bends for,
dances for,
multiplies for.

Once, a painted woman sat upon
the tower,
supreme and hungry,
watching
different casts perform…

her muse!

She was born with a gift.
An Eye!
A Wandering Eye!
At her command, her left eye would jump
out of its socket
on hunt
as the hungry painted woman
wished.

The Eye knew not the exact
silage, but
there were markings,
specifics, that the Eye knew to watch for.

The painted woman waited,
high in the clouds,
imposing on conversation
between wind
and
weather….
waiting.

Soon, her Wandering Eye would
return
with her meal –

soldiers, fighters,
carpenters,
shaman,

each had a purpose.

The painted woman would accept her
prey, swallowing them completely
in to
herself,
writhing them in and out of consumption,
pulling them deep into
digestion, her stomach
aching for more,
more, more!

She touched
and kissed
and drooled on
each of their gifts
using each
as her very own until
she was
spent.

Then, she would take her lust-probing eye and
retire,
leaving nothing of
her pillage behind!!

A snake,
overflowing
with lasciviousness!

One day, the brushed lady
was brought a tender
slice of
musician, with sad,
blue diamonds sparkling so bright
that when she saw her reflection
in them,
her left gift, was
immediately calcified,
a vegetable!
Useless!

She barely noticed!

They stood together at the tip-top
of the towering fortress,
oblivious to
acts,
actors,
and
actresses.

All the muse she needed stood
beside her, with a box of suffering chocolates
and rust roses,

begging
her
for consumption! On his knees he
pleaded for
use!

Baffled by his strange request, she conformed to
habit.

The painted woman accepted her
prey, swallowing him completely
in,
writhing his body in and out of her consumption,
pulling him deep, deeper into
digestion, her stomach
aching for more,
more, more!

She touched his gifts,
gently kissed his gifts
caressed each gift as if it were her own
until
the bewitching young
musician was spent, sleeping inside her body.

This had never happened before.
She knew “withdraw”
not “succumb”.
How dare he retire without her!
Leaving her here,
alone,
on the tip-top of a towering
fortress without
her only friend,

her tool!
She panicked when the script
started
in the world below. Its silence
sounded different
somehow.
Heartsick.

At that moment, the lady,
standing at the tip-top of the towering fortress
flung herself
from the security of the towers’ height,
diving to join
the world below!