a moment like that
like this
is crucial
lightning strikes,
dry heat
radiation
takes place
of
the sweet kiss
on my cold shoulder
I find seconds
in days
that last
forever waiting
to speak
whisper even
because tragedy
has hands
that rip through
this soul
this particular soul
that sleeps
like a demon
in benediction
that opens a
bloodshot
mouth
in his direction –
even the desert would
freeze over
if it knew him
Summer has changed. Shadows walk loudly
through the forest.
I never thought I could multiply this way, but
you help me heat the sun. Now I’m locked
in the middle of a road
that I don’t know,
your feet planted in front of my knees.
A door falls asleep. I meant it for life.
Poisoned fruit for useless tongues. Then your
taste proved me wrong.
I lay on my back
and watch the morning cry. I made the forest
lie, but you’ve been lucky.
Jack the Ripper crossed the river and hung
up my soul. Now I chase the dark for you.
Curl up raw, stranger. Where is your
husband’s thick pockets?
You must be one of those different
colours.
I’m dead on my feet, you’re
sleeping in the gutter. Five days
in February – we both struggle.
Half a dozen snowflakes
ring the city, one man
hangs high above the river
two blocks down –
I can’t get my gown down
when I hear the secrets –
you shiver under the ice
and I like it,
biting my bottom lip, I’m nervous
for the next move.
Who’s it to be? Me or You?
All is well and dead on this side
but you look alive –
try to get a grip around your neck, but
you slump over
the cold.
Where did he go with his large gloves?
Are you beating like a cat fish or more
like drums?
Your colour is looking frozen.
Don’t pull those tears off too early or
you won’t recognize me.
I’m sorry for you, sister, losing
in this land, but when I see your secrets,
I tremble from a cursed realm
and I am ready to fade into the big city,
9 o’clock,
locked up with something like a vacuum cleaner
and let you go.
I haven’t drank you for an hour,
or swallowed the sharks
swimming in your pale
manhood.
The road gobbled me up and
I do not miss your cancerous tongue,
all I smell is rubber
and all I want is the moon
to take me to bed
where I know what lives under
the sheets.
I know the blank ceiling page
and the rotation of the clouds,
I know how I cycle down,
a tornado scripture
burning my steeple to ash.
I translate you into languages unknown,
too complex for me to read,
the devil’s tongue,
a serpents spit,
a good muse when the fire rumbles
me to numbness.
Separating skin from a tree
is a faint task, like
twisting glass back to sand.
Long, narrow veins exposed to chaos,
leave their limbs. I climb inside
them for hydration.
I’m a fish, shallow in water,
borrowing lungs from
a human.
Don’t make it glacial,
blue is the true color.
It is royal.
It is blood.
I am oxygen and it feels good!
My husband left me sweltering
during the ripe moon. I grew
ripe, too; a full cherry
hunger in a bottle
of Gin.
Then this tree, he’s latched on
to me. I pour my fingernails
in. He knows his strength
matches me tightly.
We seize together on Earth’s early
tremor, and just as I start to peel,
layer by layer,
his exposed veins melt into
venom, he turns me,
my swift hourglass
resets, twisting sand
back into glass.
I can’t name you or call you by your name, at this time. You are streaked against the glass, your guts are spilling out.
Be brave and talk to yourself. You deserve to hear the truth as much as I do. Wait. No.
Let me tell you.
You’ve soiled yourself again like an elderly flower. I came to change you, but you won’t have me anywhere
outside of your bed.
Well my bed is too nervous to have you, so I take my voice back instead of shaming you. Wait. No. Let me hand it to you. She is braver than you.
Have you heard what they call her? Does she even have a name? It doesn’t matter. She is stronger than water and moves like a rock.
I bricked her, I blocked her,
but her head is tilted right to the life-sized bottle of wine at her side. At this time, I can’t call you, or name you, or love you, or hate you.
I answer only to the thin
glass dividing us,
that let’s nothing in.
The best part of the sun, where it melts away for its own reflection.
To prove something.
We stand in snake skin and
leopard print, digging for
bones of the extinct
while money blows up the noses
of our youth.
I thought about you today.
Your early reflection smoking
life into you,
black coffee lungs watching the sunrise bring life into
the rest of us.
My skin is hanging up now.
I am melting away for my reflection to do the same.
To prove something.
Hunger drips down her lips
with metallic intent;
the air is busy,
and unfortunate.
I follow her startled shadow
across the sky, where she carves
her birth,
adjusts her lie.
I am an untruth,
a moment of virtue,
a black sheep stretched
over her flowering plateau.
This is no place for love,
or for night,
or for sky.
This is a burial of the
sick compromise
of her and I.
Ten thousand light years from Orion’s Arm,
my eye is naked and
distinguished. Your small satellite orbits
my dark regions with aim.
I am uninhabitable with my gas,
and dust, and hot stars
spiraling in mass distribution.
Call me Sagittarius A….
and I will call you instable,
with your fictional planets
swaying with indefinite motion,
your thick Dwarf Elliptical
cancels out my Galaxy
over and
over again.
Dark Mountain, whisper across
my valley, my spine.
If ever I turn like calm tide
it is toward your hot appetite,
sweating sweet pine across
empty June nights.
Blood echoes throughout
my arid river. I am twisted
in expressed wish.
Your land slides;
hands down thick mounds
of victory –
for you. For me,
you are empty;
the last trace of you drips
from the lips of
another – but where is she,
Dark Mountain, where is she?
maggiemaeijustsaythis 