Janus

By doorways and walls, I pass through
with two faces. I am honoured
and assassinated by fruits and
seeds of the people.

They move their lips, I hear deep shrills.
They whisper like big cannons
at battle. I keep each as a sacred
stone; I throw each as a poisonous tale.

Today, God loves my motion. I merge with
Galileo under seven planets
I am his Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea.

But tomorrow will take me suspiciously.
Medusa will come to show
the bogus end of Venus and her beautiful phase.

White weasels come in pack, they smell her
insidiousness; she sits coy on my tongue
while I am categorized.

Back to square rooms, black chairs,
flat carpet,
doorways,
walls,
I pass through with two faces.
I am honoured by amber vials,
assassinated by the pills.

They move their lips,
I hear fuzziness and laughter…
quit laughing at me
quit laughing at me
I am a statue,
I am trapped here.

My Name

just the beginning,

slithers off wet lips
like it’s charming.

“Mmmmm.”

Mockingbirds and Mallards
sing of my
slick footprints.

I step in.
I step out.
He stepped out.

We spread together as far as Summer would take us.
We flew down south in high, asthmatic screams;

nocturnal – fugitive.

At first blush they call,
crested blue,
aggressive,

at least to human ears.

His after tastes like a razor blade,
but I am a glutton

and so they
chirp, chirp, chirp.

Apollo

Peel my eyelids away from my face
help me focus, help me see
reach into my center
kiss my galaxy

I spin madly away from this life
gnawing on dead space
his fingers spread deep
white laced with heaven,

I swirl toward angels and hell
all at once
He is Apollo –
Both God and Demon of love

I puff on his glass , inhale his acid
He takes me to paradise
with wings
covered in black ice

When he yanks me back to this truth
I fall to my knees and pray
I want him to stop
but beg him to stay

He smiles
then rolls his fog down my throat
God gave me my heart
but this Demon has my soul

They Try To Erase Me

I never had been born. It was old hands
that sketched my frame. Hands that knew how to suffer
wisely. It was a gift
to my bones, a curse that shifts
with weight and time.
Clocks wait on scales to tip time. I am rushed.
Blood cycles through my life.
Old lines outline my eyes. I am timed.

I slept with a man
and was traced. He recreated me; my child.
My simple face on a prettier canvas.
I didn’t wish for this.
I didn’t dream.
She just belongs to me.
I drag my bones along aching seas
each step pains deeper with memory,
with time.
Dark lines shade over mine.
They try to erase me

From my bones, I cry.
I cannot be
an easy sketch of a memory.

The Child Within

I promised a seven year old girl
that
sixteen years would never happen

“don’t be afraid of driving, it will never happen”

in her rancor,
she pissed off a ten
year old girl’s
silhouette –
it was a hollow
young thing
but

outlined in
potential

the young early version
stepped into her
vacancy,
thickening
throughout
the
void
angry
silhouette,

she ripened

in body,
in vocabulary,
in age.

Sweet,
sultry,
sinister,
sixteen,
finding small doors
leading to
thinned
ice,

crystal air
loaded,
ready to explode.

She picks at
glass plank
floors, pulling
strips
of her new tool.

That young one
so afraid,
timid,
playing hide-and-seek
with her
developing
womanhood!

Enough!

She clutches
on to
her
shard sticks,

carving away
at her pumpkin
arms,
her pumpkin legs,
digging her out…

that little
phobic brat,
quivering around
her
prime
poisoned internals.

I made a promise
to the little
one,

sixteen would never come,

now here she is;
butchering
my promise
and
my child.

 

An Accidental Abortion

The snow concealed the ground around me
as I reached inside and
clutched for the new
soul
flourishing.

My clutch turned into
a grip of uneasiness as the
new soul did not
reach his hand back for mine.

In a trepidation, I froze…my hand came
back to me covered
in blood….red body
fluid trickled down my leg, speckling
the snow – warming the frozen
blanket and
revealing the solid ground below.

Blood so bright in the snow, soaked brown
in the dirt. Blending the colors, ignorant to the
trace of the
part of life it just consumed.

I screamed at the ground!
How dare it soak up
the little
flourishing soul
as if it was nothing! A piece of
my very own soul!!

Not a word of gratitude or comfort from the
dirt for the forfeiture of
my nurturing body!

The Stew

I am cut into pieces, boiling
in a stew. A quarter cup of the fingers have been
diced away along with
a chunk of the right breast,
both little toes,
the bones and muscle in the
right forearm, a kidney,
and the fallopian tubes.

Salt dances painfully on the wounds of
what remains of the body. I cry out for some relief!
There is nothing.
Anesthesia will not behave!

The stew boils about, my pieces
become soft and
flesh falls from bone. The crockpot screeches
with the heat – it knows!
But, I do not blame the crockpot. It
must perform it’s duty.
No choice for a hunk of metal!

I scream again! The pain! Where is comfort?
Where is solace?

Ah! Cooking wine!
Take care of my wounds.
Take the pain away…..
After some time, the alcohol performs it’s own duties.
I relax!

I hope the stew makes it to all those empty mouths!

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.

Never Surrender

Her name is inked across my wrists, so that
when I want to slit them, I don’t. It serves as a reminder,
it serves me well.
It protects me from myself.

Everyone has them, those moments when
life holds you by your throat. You wish it
would choke you,
but it won’t.

So, you dangle in the air, solid ground
swiped from under your feet. You grip on to that
tight embrace around your neck, holding the hands of the suffocator,
trying to pull him off. You search for air,
gasp for breathe, struggle and try to survive. Each time you think that
life has beaten you, it releases it’s grip enough for the oxygen to
sink inside your lungs and tease you with
relief.

Eventually, you want to let go. Let the struggle continue
without you….and sometimes you reach a point that you try.
When that point comes around
for me and I want to let my blood drain free
I see your name
and I am reminded.
I have reasons to keep fighting.

You Are Leaving.

Picture frames decorate the carpet, broken glass
laying on top of smiling people.
The words hurled from you at a speed I couldn’t recognize
and blew the memories off of their chosen spots in
our home.
Around me, lay the shattered moments that I
treasure. I can barely catch my breath.
Time has froze, I’m useless.

I sit myself down in the middle of the debris,
the pain is flowing from me as if I became the Falls of Niagara.
I barely notice the glass cutting into my knees – feeding
me full of the poision, leaving me with scarred memories of
this moment that will never hang on a wall.

Moments – that feel like years – later, you are sitting
next to me in a truck. You are driving, we laugh, we stop,
we hug, we kiss. I feel my eyes flicker once again.

Then, I am home again. Hanging portraits on the wall. Careful
about their arrangement, they must be just so! I hear a doorknob turn
behind me so I turn to greet you with my love, but
time freezes with the coldness in your eyes and you tell me, once again,
you’re leaving.