it’s just like a gunshot
these hot words in my head that force
blood to move
for once I am not tar
and the girl on the back of this page
she is certain
I will find a way
she sings it “goes on and on”
and it will
If I don’t stop it myself
In here, out there nobody sees. Pomegranate seeds shred through my teeth and we accept it. He smiles and of course it’s beautiful.
A blood moon grows 10,000 times what it was, in here. Out there, nobody knows.
I count, up to seven minutes in Heaven and wonder, in here.
Out there, nobody waits.
Everybody talks.
Everybody spits venom in the eyes of people they love.
I love him for the birds, he just doesn’t belong in here.
This desert is mine.
I sleep on cactus beds and wait….with time.
The sun is mine. I’ll keep it in a locket for those days that get dark, in here. Out there, nobody notices.
I smile. He smiles, and of course it’s beautiful.
talk about orchard red petals on wood tables
plate upon each other
soft eggs whispering to candle wax and I am
just buried in wallpaper
trapped in a past life
guessing on about oil in still life canvas
on a second thought my eyes shift
to roll back
and he slithers up toward my lips
because if he could he wouldn’t exist
yet here we begin
just two pieces of black ice
melting pastels into sunset
and if we could get it back together
from memory – where it is what it was –
we would pluck tiny pellets from
pomegranates in winter
for juicing
individually
without each other
I’ve settled on darkness. Where some cluster of lonely iris might climb through my tear ducts for solace, i empty space and time.
She is on her way, like last years’ frost bite she brings her shards of cold. One year, I begged her not to go but some things are not always.
Oh, she is constant. In her gray dress of mist and seasonal affection, she blends in with reality but time doesn’t stop for anything.
Once her smoke blows over capped mountain tops, I turn away from him, wrinkled from exhaustion. This effort, this tremendous light encompassing mine – I am minimal.
Nothing.
It will always be walking through tough cement, lemon rinds and jack-one swift sailor high on a Black Sea
drifting for eternity, fighting off starvation, making friends with an idea.
Love is not sold on silent blue moons or Ancient Greek mistresses riding them bareback
but deep inside a reflection, an abbreviated determination that divides calm nights.
I watch you pray for those hours. God isn’t listening;
He is creating.
those words hang stolen
weeping willow feelings
a translation
so desperate
so sudden
a panic slighted by
memories that
only sleep can
bribe from
a hidden cave
i think
i thought of you
as love
a piece of heaven
dangling over
a crimson counter-top
tempting my
sensations
a reverberation
of a gift
offered only
by the Universe
you stole
them from another
love
that flourished
in a time
that I could not exist
not 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.
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.
Amaranth, on my back, off
the edge of life.
Dangling cords fall
like snakes, I hanged them
there to dry
me out. With you,
it is cold.
I can’t say that. I miss you,
but I do not. Have you
been tempted to rip her
skin off and put mine on?
My back is off
the edge, now
life is seeping through
my toes, amaranth
dangling, a love letter
for you.
Ink is raining again.
Stan, on the radio, rapping tattoos
onto white-trash girls,
sitting, spinning on bar stools.
The highway is moving ninety miles
back, to late August madness,
cars are splashing
into phone booths
left over from big cities
and light houses.
But ships don’t come in
like they used to.
The calm of the sea
isn’t the color of God’s
angry finger anymore.
Caterpillar!!
Across the back of my shoulder!
“To rob.” “To pillage.”
“To suck the ink out of every living thing.”
My name is not what matters.
The alphabet is random.
My fingers have no pattern.
I’m bound to and wrapped around each syllable
like a piece of cabbage.
An appetizer. A long, soft caterpillar
eating my way into you.
maggiemaeijustsaythis 