And Poison

Oh God! I am not hollow!!

All this time I have been lacking parts,
I have not. My bones and intestines
and muscles
and heart are curled in stainless steel.

These inside pieces are flexing against metal,
but I have been watching while
little and big hands tick around the clock.

It is morning, my crusty eyes meet the sun.
My hand brings water and poison to
meet my tongue,
then suddenly night grips me and we dim,
in warm embrace we rest.

I am with baggage and a stamp, on my way
to mirror a bride,
or a student,
or just “myself”,

without a key,
or a book,
or a groom.

It is morning and my crusty eyes meet the
birds swimming in last night’s weather.
My hand burns from last night’s torture
and brings poison to my tongue,
then suddenly, night wraps its
pretty, long legs around me and we rest.

Where have I been recently?
Where do I want to go?
To a mirror, without a groom?
To a classroom, without a book?
To my “self”, without a key?

It is morning and my crusty eyes greet me.
My hands sting with reality as I rub last night
out. I have unrestricted bones and muscle,
and poison,
and poison,
and poison.

Midnight Hollow

I feel him rummage through my midnight hollow
fingering my heart,yet he will not follow.

His calloused hand move like hours
I blossom and bloom, but wilt like flowers.

I yearn for his stem, his waves, his oil,
then a part of his lips leads me to recoil.

I ache for touch, but my swells still clench,
I turn toward him, the reward of his wrench.

How is skin so familiar? Fingertips so strong?
This is what happens, when time turns for too long.

My pillowcase creases with the gnaw of my fist,
daylight is easy, but night can’t resist.

He is planted so deep, so deep in my dreams,
my body is taken by the past that screams.

His hands tick, with the minutes, away,
with the rise of the sun, my light starts to fade.

Deep in my screams, I run till I wallow
into the dark, my midnight hollow.

Good Bye

I woke up in a puddle with his memory
wrapped around me. The angels were heavy tonight.
I welcomed him back from the dead tonight,
but he did not welcome life.

He must have been tossed down from Heaven,
after riding Angels bare-back. His jaw was clasped tight,
reminding me of December when the snow fell so
hard that it dug into the backs
of the trigger happy.

We watched death fall out together, a few flights
up, before he dropped the dog on his tail.
Life must remind him of amputation now.

He took me to his rickety, flimsy boyhood.
I scolded him about the thin boards
nailed together clumsily,
and told him that this was not a safe place to be.
He protested it’s security.

He never asked for his old things, but I had them.
They were treasures.
Old t-shirts, books, jewelry. My frustrated fingers
rummaged through
everything that he could have come back for.
But, he did not want.

I told him, “do you know what it is going to do
to me if you die again?”, then I realized that he did not breathe,
or pulsate, or belong…

my eyes began to flood, and then I heard a voice,
from silence,
from life,
from inside…

“Oh!  This is her saying good-bye!”

The Twins

I have been brought a morning in bed,
yellow hands expand my eyes.
I rise as a vulture,
slender billed, nut beaked,
baking for a sun day.
The night salted me; an open wound,

the darkness delivered my twins.
She was duplicated, the little girl,
the golden daughter of heroin and hope,
she was on ice,
waiting for me, to grow.

It was a discrete joy, a time to prevent
a murdered life, to create
an identical heaven.
This time, she was mine.

But, the golden splatter was received
as the sun rose above
shadow boxes, as my blemished hands
become liver,

and we yellowed.
With tattered feathers, “we”
became “I”.
No duplication.
No sweet, heavenly replication
waiting for me, to grow.

About My Neighbors, After A Trip

Brown floor cloaked. White flour
trail.
A leader.
A small fridge opens its wide mouth, letting me
greet its cold insides.
A rot banana.
Mucky carrots.
Luggage.

They showed up, under the door frame.
Two men drenched in
charcoal. Carrying meddling
Polaroid.

They captured broken glass,
dirt masking success,
frightened eyebrows.

My own eyes flashing back at them.
Flashing a peculiar
father who dragged my luggage
by his ankles.

The key shouldn’t have worked.
The key should have squawked in the door,
at my pink dress,
at my black heels. But, its entrance was
easy, mandatory.

When I got back to picture frames
and silence, I found
my products of life
in boxes
on a neighboring balcony.

My apologies, I said,
you shouldn’t have been bothered.

And they weren’t.
They would not be bothered
with white powdered jelly doughnuts
or
a girl,
with rotten umbilical cord
wrapped around
her neck in her dreams, every night.

Seas Of Insanity pt 1

Faintly nights
sail me out to bad seas

where phantom mermaids
sprout silver razor fangs,

the evil legion
of
uncertainty.

They breed for war company,
not companionship.

My body floats through a
blurry
night vision,

disarranged,

my color changes to corrupt
as
salty thin waves shift
to fit
a temporal sea.

These are MY waters!
Taken by vicious fish women
who
slant
unstable nets
to the West way I wander in

my abducted waters arrest me
in mesh tangles and drag me
down,
down deep,
to the bottom of the bad sea.

It is here where I find them,
or they find me,

sick ghostly’s with their guns
and their sabres,
with their sick hats and masks.

I find them in mirrors, metal trays,
window glass, silver spoons,
lurking as gauzy shadows

at the bottom of the mad
seas,
bad seas,

They are women,
stringers
and
scribblers,

jumping from balconies,
blasting out their brains,
taking madness away from themselves and
handing it back to me,

in fins
and ferocious teeth that finally drag me
away from the mad, bad seas

away from uncertainty,
from faintly nights

to meet
the first blush of the sky
over seas of insanity.