If We Could

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

A Different Skin

Blue brick stone eyes,
like four leaves, I am in luck.
Liquid doesn’t drip from rock.

Not all skin is the same.
Some grow into cat-o-nine tail,
but you…

you douse poison like a God.

I am witness,
without religion,
without faith,
without hope,

out of the blue,
brick stone eyes
came to me

an old idea –
a different skin
growing on me.

Time Travel

Boiling over, I am scraped off the bottom,
the block I belong on,
57th street where the crows sing.
Time travels around the city
-back and forth-
like it doesn’t matter
swooping through me each time.

I swing like a pendulum inside
my brain talks so fast
future and past, but all I see is the street
with a man parked under
his life.
I can’t tell if he’s dead or alive.

He might be another.
From somewhere I haven’t met
with guns and
drugs
and sex crawling up the walls
I’d kill him to tell it all

but he can’t.
His mouth stopped with his heart
a long time ago.
Time comes back again
and I am standing in the kitchen

wine pouring from the window sill,
put a pie out to dry
sugar, there’s no room for you and I
still want to be here.
The clock is purring like a new motor
ticking backward

and I’m watching my mother.
In X-ray, I can see right through her.
I see her fear and her
weak little shoulders – I am a caged, feral animal
ready for the world
My muscles grow stronger and stronger
I spit on the caged bars and twist them from
existence

now I’m standing in the corner
face to face with death in all its honour
a coffin, a casket full of
skeletons of the past
that merge my cells together
maybe we never were two
time splits here into thick poles

North and South I spend my dreams
in Antarctica
reaching for the coldest depth
I can find
freezing myself in time
where nothing happens,
nothing changes,

I’ve let life tick its last time by.

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.

When You Come In Three’s

I have more than I am worth
when you come in three’s .
I sleep like a fish on a hook,

but only on the outside.
Inside, I am writhing with
want,
need,
gripping my thighs on to everything.

It has been one year and a hundred days
since I saw your fingertips
but I keep that to myself.
Time has stolen us longer before.
Remember?

Remember those black days?
Remember cigarette ash stains at the bottom of
beer cans, while a thin man drummed
and you drove us away?

We never went anywhere, but to sleep.
I took the backseat
while you drove off into distance,
into caves.
When I awoke, I found myself alone,
but I found myself,

and you,
came back to me in three.
Your fingertips teasing me while I sleep,
like a fish on a hook.
Outside, but
you are in.

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!

Dinner With The Snake

Dammit! I’ve run out of talent.
My shoulder blades went with the
postman. He took the world
out,
to a yellow and green Earth.
Before he went,
he dusted my back, made everything possible.

So, I went, then,
to the bags and the boxes. I unzipped,
ripped,
tore in
to avoidance, packaged away
in the belly of a red snake.

Before I sliced him through his
happily ever after, I built a
midnight picnic
on a grease infused concrete.
We drank everything
red,
light,
collected.

We had beautiful words
through midnight and on
till dawn. The snake rolled
his yellow eyes to the back of his throat,
swallowing
any chance he may have had to strike back.

I leaned in with quick penetration,
slitting
the long, frail line of happiness

then,

misery was back. And with it….brilliance!

He Bags Them Up After

He bags them up after
he watches me give my limbs
to a wood chipper;
a test.
A Loyal Test.
A Bloody True Test.

He knows that we are gambling.
Everything is in.
Stakes are high.

Gangly arms and
gorgeous legs
hit,
kick,
scratch at him through
plastic.
It’s not that he doesn’t care to play,
he is convinced.

The taxidermy came.
Took a thousand dollars with
my useful pieces,
said he would come back tomorrow.

I waited.
He waited with me,
with my bloody mess of me.
He poured my tea.
He scented my herbs.
He kept my perfume.
He smiled approvingly at my test.

After sleep cauterized my wounded
lady,
I woke to the scent of
constant devotion hovering
around my limbless torso.
Hair brushed, breasts held
firmly in black cotton.
A smile of approval

and
limbs. Arms, legs,
kept,
stripped of death fragrance,
nails painted
with pretty sincerity.

His gift to me.

Overlay

The woman with the old walls
painted new walls in her
home

Burnt red was smothered with
pale yellow,
a non-fattening banana
ice cream
wall.

She covered up the old walls
often, burying
old lovers
and gross mistakes. She could
scrub the greasy
instances
but  her eyes will not pick
out the dirty spots
without
a finger,
that is not her own,
pointing out
the
places that pollute
the walls.

Even if her eyes could show her,
her elbows do not have
strength enough
to scrub
scrub
scrub
the past away.

You Think You Know Me? You’re Probably Right.

If you think you know me
or about me
or of me,
let me just tell you that
you are probably right.

I am smeared across pages
of different lives. I’ve been
blotted out, erased, ejected,
regretted,
embedded, let-go of,
set on fire,
strangled with wire
mangled to unrecognizable.

I’ve been sized up, down,
replaced, shamefaced….

graced with YOUR presence, haven’t I?

I’ve been lied to, laid on, pushed over
pushed around, pushed to the ground,
bound up by the useless,
wound up by the senseless.

I’ve been messy for a great length of time
I wait for the right time
and it always passes.
I’m days behind trying to
find myself, but I
hide well enough
that even I can’t seem to find myself.

I’ve blinded myself
with selfish ties, told myself lies to
handle my life – just to survive – revived
old times, but

times have changed
I have changed.
You think you know me?
You’re probably right.
For that time in my life.