I Am Not The Same Size

To speak up on Sunday
when religion strikes like
the back of a hand

would be a sin. To question
a written truth bound
by message and baggaged with
fear

would be unthinkable.
But I do! But I do!

I let those words of hymn drain
slow down my throat,
digesting each He and Him,

and I am not the same size
as my companions in these walls.
I am unworthy.

I am faithless in my tongue
because I cannot taste it.
But I do! But I do!

I am full of confession, I swallow them
like bone slivers after the fasting.

My prayer is splintered by
knees on the floor.
My Dear God, humble me more!

Not In These Years

Delicious Sunday,
absent of the jam of people,
of masquerade.

My kite lifts off fevered shoulders,
enters frothy clouds to
mourn buried dreams and fly.

Asleep, on grass waves, I surrender
to stillness,
expecting great ends to
fall upon me.

I have won no roses
by thievery, I am oiled,
scented by the White snake
who coils her spirit as an
act of love.

If I was a child, I would
have expected this,
but not today. Not in
these years.

Berries and Bullets

The night is thick with hot lead,
bullet dust. His empty pockets
strangle his hands that once were full
with pride.

Beer drips from his words, he buries his head six-feet deep in my lap. Catching the scent of love, he moves faster than tomorrow.

I laid out my arms,
and across the world to make it,
but his poison comes with the smallest gesture,

his lips against my back, a
hot cyanide whisper as he rises,
“I’m sorry.”

He throws on his shadow like an old jacket, hands back in his pockets.
5 a.m. I’m alone.
Face down in a puddle of his poison, I drown.

Tomorrow will catch up with me,
I’ll eat the sun for breakfast.
The earth will grow wild berries
and he will come to find me,

on a Hot Sunday,
melting lead
back into bullets,

he’ll spread my arms by my wrists, untangle my naked fists, furious at his abandon…

but, for him, I will lay across the world to make it,

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.

Orchestra

Sunlight spills out over the sky
and I watch the women dance,
strings from Heaven attached to each limb,
red lips painted with French curls,

I love them so much.
I loathe them so much.

They lift off the ground with majestic beauty,
gliding from toe to toe.
They seem to sleep on clouds,
pretty ballerinas that Pas
around town.

In the library, they seat quiet children
who are stainless and educated from
high value,

they swim in holy water with
moulded figures sticking out and I drool
along with the men,

and I love them so much.
Oh! I loathe them so much.

They fall like pink snowflakes,
kissed with Latter Day sprinkles,
the daughters of God who walk on Earth
next to me, searching for my palms,
serving me with the grace that Sunday could bring
but I will not listen.

I cannot.
My ears have been cut from my head by
Van Gogh’s paint strokes,
Mozart is pounding his fingers against my
chest in C-Minor, and
all of the words that have ever been written
by limbless men
and lipless women
sing as a group of cellos,
rooted deep in my naval,
where I began.

Sunday Abandonment

Keep talking.
The kitchen has gentle
butchering knives.

“Today’s Sunday. I need to speak to you.”

Take Sunday back, then. Drown it!
Slaughter it!
Sunday is starving itself in a fit of tension;
leather skin begging for lotion.

Weak days have poor eating habits.
Anxious bellies roll,
tumbling rejection
around,
around.

Unsafe.
Unsound.

Un-Sunday, then keep talking!
Your speech has sharp fingertips,
jabbing at my spider webs,
my sticky, thick mesh.

Un-Sunday, then
cut jelly rolls,
tumble Sunday
around,
around.

Without rejection.
Safe.
Sound.