Waiting For Alignment

She says to watch the waves. The tides are mixed, we wait for alignment.
It could take years….and in the meantime my bones slap against the equator.
The water is low.
Fish flop belly up with baby jelly beans dangling in reverse….the tide is turning.

Zenith encourages direction. I am vertical; midheaven.
God is intersecting.

What house do I belong in?
Am I breast and bone?
Am I flesh and blood?
Am I fire and system?

She says to watch the waves. We can go from there. The sun must first come
over the horizon. I strain East. I feed on the ecliptic axis and wait 90 degrees
like suggested. I wait

until I fall beneath the Earth. X lives here. X is virulent and understood.
X is ability and invasion.

She says I have to learn how to be with the disease. Who I am is bound
and fruitless. I will never find alignment when I greet
X in such short periods. X will never release the bacteria and set me
back on land,
on shore,
on sea,
where I can wait with the tides for alignment,
and drown out the suffering.

The Box

My soul has hands that feed my mouth
delight boxes marked “poison”.
I have second hands that are language.

I gave up youth for silent lips that
spread too thick. Two plump
pulsating cream puffs injected
with secrecy.

The boxes piled up to a thousand acreage;
a still wall with a calm face,
sipping tea with the Queen of servitude.
I have become a slave to iron curtains
and black rods.

Once upon a decade ago, I slept with
meaty warriors with bull-dog ears.
They carried sturdy death machines that
slaughtered innocence.
I heard them slice my siblings
to hamburger, while my stable body hid
in a homosexual bed.

I bled out of my ears for one tight night,
then woke up to the funerals.
I faced a casket with strawberry frosting
trim, small china pieces laid across
the mahogany lid.

I tipped with warriors, drinking their poison,
swallowing fear in full, single gulps.
They offered me a butchering tool
and I pulled it in, deep through
tissue and cartilage, into the warm cherry
pie that was wrapped inside my body.

I melted with metal. I succumbed to
murderous beasts that carry
angry weapons,
and without useful hands,
or mouth,
I became a box.