Butterfly Wings

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.

Eden Aquatic

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.

Tell Me Something

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.

 

Intruder

I am younger than insult.

My hard body soaks in salt water.
If you like it, I will bottle it,
a beautiful, gentle tea.

I smell steady. Like a brief cut
across my fingertip fades,
so will this scent. Let me package it.
Let me blush while you reach for
my confessions,
let my heart run a rabbit’s run.

Touch my breath,
intruder! Take me as a stranger,
open legged;
a boiling black tea.

I gracefully apologize.
This is me.

Monday Confession

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.

Another Part Of The Stage

In three instances, a quarrel. They just happened.
You can imagine, living with an audience for
several years, one might crave affection from the graveyard.

Adorned with diamond rattler’s around her neck,
she hissed! A victim losing her fingernails, clawing concrete,
speaking at a bouquet of guns against her head.
She hissed and spit whore
venom on the Church, on God’s appointments
on the blood of her own Mother.
There was plenty of talk in her head,
like she hadn’t been cooked all the way.
Little Birdie,
we called her.
It.
Whoever she was!
And this, the first quarrel!

The most vicious influence was the lonely lie.
Her handsome face, her warm fingerprints
marking the dry surface of men, her pretty
negligent smile. A suspicious flattery.
We hate that word ‘lonely’. It sounds too much  like
her long, cimmerian hair falling out of
nonsense, into the hands of Marcus,
who was legal and wise.
She was sick with her voices,
but her art flowed with age, though an age she would
never meet. She was never a companion,
never a graceful daisy soaking in a glass on the windowsill.
She was sour. The yellow tart.
She was built by a man of taste,
not by a woman of fertile soil and thick roots.
She was the feel of scandal for fifteen years,
a southern discovery of poor breeding;
thus, of the quarrel! The second!

Until we found her. Marked on
a cotton morning, her delicate apology.
Her body rot little overnight, her palm held smudges of
the colour of  kisses she blew everywhere.
The undeserving. The unpolished drunkards
sleeping in her
empty stairwell.
Most people like that war.
The soldier falling on
desperate knees, giving her awful consent,
her soiled white handkerchief surrendering from
the cup of her bra.
This is the third quarrel. The one they want to hear.
Was there a symphony of blood?
Was she wrapped in her velvet curtain and dropped
from the top floor?
Who played the piano? Who picked up her body
and decided that she wrote this score?
Even the tears cried for her gossiped about this act.

This was the starving quarrel.
Fed like a good husband, yet hollowing still!
Maybe she was a little wild
and sick with threats,
poor Little Birdie, her nervous
beauty gulped her down like a glass of Brandy.
She was tired.
And this, the third quarrel. Act Three.
Curtains down.

And Their Colour

I see how he boils
I see his skin blistered and peeling
at the surface, and
I see what lies beneath.

I couldn’t help it, his voice started out whimsy and soon turned grey.
I searched for colour, for exposure, for sound;
in every wrinkle,
in every scar I searched, but they grew dull
and duller, still.

There is only one way at a time like this,
for me, just one way.
I carved a switch, long and thin,
kissed it from tip to tip,
dipped it in ferocious honesty
and laid it upon him.

Every sharp went unacknowledged, ignorance shaded
his wounds, so I left them.
He came back for another round and
I smacked him with truth,
defiance and with truth,
and he did not believe me.
So, I left.

Then, he came back and I swat him again.
I welted and blistered his skin, this
time colour arose.
Red infection swelled at the lacerated sites,
and he boiled.
I listened to his blood and his voice boil,
and his skin gash and then blister,
but before all this
I saw what hid beneath.

Now, I stand in front of my mirror,
where he thinks my reflection is
hollow and bare,
and I see all of my wrinkles and scars
and where they came from
and that they will always be

but with their colour,
and their colour,
and their colour!

I Think Of You Every Day

It took only his few words in sight,
tied together on specks of dust,
sent to me on the back of July’s
thick breeze.

I stood as openly as my chest would allow,
reading his words from the hot pavement,
soaking in a fresh idea, feeling
his tone
settle deep in my ribs.

It is not an uncomfortable place for him,
for me,
unlike the others. He is a choice.
I gather his aromatic movement
like a lilac wedding bouquet and plant
his image between my special vessels
and skilled capillaries.

At first, years ago, when I kept my eyes
and cheeks naked, it
was not a choice. His parasitic words glued
themselves to my eager young ears, prepared to host.
Now though, his silvery voice is
passion fruit,
a red sweet juice that saturates me,
and it took only his few words sprawled
in the hot July pavement,

“I think of you every day.”

Doubt

Some disagree, but doubt is anything but honest.
Honesty is kind, with soft feathers and
shear hands.
Doubt is a bone twister,
a body gripper that bounds muscles.
Honesty is a graceful night moon pouring
star flavored wine
over sense and vision.
I sip it.
I soak it through my layers, letting
it moisturize my dry husk.

Doubt is a dry fighter, black robed,
fist packed. It tugs. It pulls
ideas and shoves misgivings.
Doubt is a thundering cloud,
pounding immediacy under
stagnation.

We don’t move.
We don’t know movement in doubt.
We struggle to stand. We are children, wary
of ground.
We make cliffs out of green hillsides,
yellow, wispy flowers become the attackers.

We are the attacked.

For My Friend Who Looks For Raccoon Feces On Her Back Porch

We do not have friendship,
or handshake,
or hug,

or your banal Tupperware parties.

You do not pout your lips in
sympathy when thoughts
of
my china doll bite your cheeks.

We do not plan swing-slide
adventures
for little skinny
blonde boys
and girls.

I do not smile and nod
as silly intoxication drags
misery out of your voice anymore.

But, you are my friend, soberly watching
for Raccoon feces, while your
husband throws the TV at you.

Once, I watched with clean eyes, while his dirty
ones stabbed you
with a sharp
pint.

Your voice never drags that up when
you are sober,

you only speak about the Raccoon’s.