Tree Legs

I have peculiar bark on my long tree legs,
it grows in layers.

When I was eight, I was a fresh baked apple pie.
My mother never told me why, but I know
it was because of the tears.

My tree legs drank them every day,
while mother explored my cold sweats.
She picked them off my forehead with
smiling fingertips. Eager for discovery!

She poked through my warm crust, straight to my soft apples,
spoiling my fruit,
rotting them with her murky breath.
I was an apple pie

until the world never died.
I realized, at that precise moment,
that I was a foul smell;
putrid. I had dried up and crumbled.

There was nothing left for me but
these long, strong tree legs….

and bark.

The Drums Began

and then they left their home,
one by one, the salty fluid pouring
into each other, God called
down to Margaret that morning;

“I know spaces between stones,
that, years ago, repressed me.
A harp was broken by an angel,
and now you shall go empty.”

Drums beat wild; a spell of evils
cast up from Hell’s almighty.
Can I exist, just as this?
A nightmare in a body?

I was given a black trail,
a tricycle, and blindly
left my post beneath the drums
to find captivity.

I listened from a noisy Inn
near the Mighty Mississippi,
its waters shook all voice
and took it selfishly.

So, I went, to a purple mountain,
to visit Mighty Oak Trees,
but my tears tried to drown
me there, drip, drip, dripping.

Heaven became worth it when
I had realized it hardly,
every stone and every man
awaited hardening,

I sat in line, in silence
with them, picking at my knees,
when fire grabbed a child’s limb
and she screamed in agony.

I found that I was not an
Angel, the devil had been dwelling
in wine and liquor and
my heart had, all this time, been failing.