first it was the legs that simply disappeared
then the arms took the hands and left in quiet prayer
a torso should be enough to hold a head high but the heart just isn’t there
the spine is still intact and continues to play along though it abnormally curves in fear
when the eyes align
I swear I’m alive
but the body isn’t here
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.
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.
summer drips off walls and
coats black roads
we are melting into tomorrow
today was nailed and hammered by a carpenter with
a golden voice
It’s blurry, but I see it
people have lost livers and kidneys
and legs
and pets
and children
and I am sad for them, I am
from under a rock
from the depths of the Pacific
from unknown planets
where I am carried by a carpenter and His golden voice
I chiseled out an ancient face
and hanged it in my head
though it was not quite alive as I
was waiting to be dead
we trudged together through a desert
smoked a fat cigar
nibbled on dirty tortoise shells
burned our feet on tar
it went like this for twenty years
or thirty, or probably more
long enough that desert sand
began dripping from my pores
and now my skin has turned to bone
and my pretty name is aging
my ancient face is chiseled out
my brain is disengaging
and though I’m not quite as alive
as I would like to be
I am grateful for my blistering walk
through the desert sea
Tell me something. As I lay next to my sick sister
in silk, unbalanced; give me an offering.
I burn for truth, for the ignorant man
to bare his torment,
to tell me my body is useless,
to hold me as a black fish stripped of possibility
and soak me in architecture.
Make me into something better than two.
I have been a ruined kingdom
for over an hour. My bed is an ash tray.
My bones are hot with need.
Where is your urgency?
Where is your greed?
Catch my empty hand…save me!!!
Give me something sharp to believe in.
My name is a vicious mirror at a stand off.
I catch my sick sister without her gown,
as naked as the night,
a rough sling shot aiming for the key hole.
She is the lie trembling in my doorway,
the life I cannot live.
We have no place, not now!
Her knees are bruised and I am her salve.
I, her freedom.
She, my prison.
Tell me something to help me
burn this sick girl out of my skin,
to gather my ashes and make me one again.
I’m stuck in this…..nothingness.
The devil tucks me in
at night. I sleep with cannibals.
I am an apple core. Pigs food.
Where did my blood come from?
I am just a trick.
I do not exist.
My sweat is black magic.
I am invisible.
I am air particles and
part of the walls.
I am seams in the carpet.
A blue moon today
is sad sand tomorrow.
My body is borrowed,
taken by the Mexican gun
and his man.
I am abandoned.
I have abandoned this sickly,
trapped in infected placenta.
A dark traveler between
thought and matter.
The water is cold here
but I am colder.
Death is coming.
He’s tied around my shoulders.
My only friend.
My heavy boulder.
“There is a dream outside.
I am dark and imagined and
I can’t wake up….”
I have forgotten how I write.
My voice is with the calendar,
in the cemetery,
dusting off a bottle. The sun has moved
in on this town,
drying up oranges,
turning water to dust.
Today, I am a reflection.
A left over.
The wind is locked.
My phone is dead.
People have stopped watching.
I am underground,
away from cancer and traffic.
“…and the dream is inside, too.”
Light is nothing, not even artificial.
The birds are an alarm;
God’s warning.
If someone could crush my hand with
a hammer, I could stop all this.
The world is stretching.
I want my voice back.
maggiemaeijustsaythis 