I Saw It First

so the world curves in and folds
over bottomless
alto-cumulus like
a second cloud
thundering over a handful
of broken hearts
I mean for you to find
out first
but it’s always my eyes
that watch storms
rolling in

swiftly from cracks in old
dreams angrily toward
nights that cradle infants
softly

strangling sleep that holds
and heals
I am tethered to heavy
weather on one of those old
Sunday’s watching my body
drift silently into you
I mean for you to taste these
memories trapped but my
heart is pyrite and I
saw it first.

In A Dream

Pig snouted soldiers strut
like heavy cannons,
over dry wild desert weeds

I tumble behind a boulder
maybe twelve or thirteen
I had not met the cycle yet
of Mother Earth and her Moon

The others slept in the madhouse
where echoes of screams
jumped from wall to wall

I tried to burn all of us down
once, melting us into a boiling
ooze where we could flow
together the right way

but she caught me and
I was sentenced to the garden
living off tomato bugs
and raw onion

This was when there was something
now it is this
desolate; sepia spotted trap.

I closed my eyes behind the giant rock
begging the shadow to suck
me into its safe home
It whispered that I was not ready
that my temples were froze

That’s when I heard their cries
mother and brother being
cooked alive
I opened my eyes and
the pig snouted soldier snatched
the dark hole from my face

I am awake.

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.

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!