Inside egg shell
ostrich bones
form over
and over fire
ostrich feathers fry.
Summer twilight
under seas
dead fish float
trying out moss
5th Ave
cross streets.
It’s a like
a thumb’s up
a smile
a laugh
a new thought
a new way to say
life lives to die
concrete
it is.
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.
One story
up, under a roof,
under a perfect yellow moon,
I wait.
I watch oxygen expand
into greatness.
Midnight sleeps an ear ache away
from me snoring.
Oxygen starts its engine, then
shuts off again.
God grows in a cradle like a
ghost plant, a living reminder
of what is yet to be dead.
One story
below me, kids are
throwing stones.
An eye for an eye,
till war takes them both.
When tonight catches up, it will
pluck spots from the day until
we sing the song of
the crickets.
I will wait for God to grow
out of his cradle, strike a match
against conscience and finally,
rename me.
Sickness comes at interludes, when
light burns brighter than
sun stars, when Anger dashes in
to catch the aftermath.
We battle for the scenery.
Touching base, both reaching for
the flag, for proclamation.
It is mine. This sickness is mine
to water or see to wilt.
I find no fault in either,
both are stars of polar regions,
imploding a billion light years away
from me. I will awake with sweaty palms,
the enemy dripping down my back.
I sit in the night, like a sauna,
saluting the grace of the Gods
for keeping what is meant for the skies
quietly away from these hands.
My medicine will come clockwise, sneaking up
on me, on little twinkling toes.
I never miss this time because there is no
better place to live or to die.
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!
Emily
walks with rotting feet
turned out
old
birthing hips
rock
with her jellyfish
spine
her path has become
as thin as her
starved bones
a
tight
borderline
between survival and
extinction
Emily
with her nervous order
steps
slight
whispering steps
onto
an aimless rope
an unambitious line
unstable
intimidated
weak
battered
uneasy
shrinking
Emily
walks
maggiemaeijustsaythis 