Mary

Mary

Teetering small, pale feet
On the edge of the pool
Fall back fall back fall back
Feel the water reach up
to meet you
Sink you
Thrash you
All on a balmy summer day

Some comfort found in her
Virgin white ceramic face
Grace in stillness of a statue
Centered in an alcove of a cathedral
Surrounded by crimson poinsettias
I look at her face
Mary was a woman,
She must have suffered
Mary was a woman,
She must have felt loneliness
As sharp as desert sand in your eyes

---

She is a small creature body fitted with
A fierce wolf head
Behind bars, behind chains
It's the lock down of night
I can hear her begging, can you ever
ignore it?
If you hear the warden coming, do
you run
or do you free her?
Let me out of this prison
It's not me, it's you
It's not me, it's you
Go now, remorse is so much
better than guilt
You can light as many candles as you want
Prayers evaporate the moment they're spoken
I request action
I require sacrifice

Not Enough Time

Not Enough Time


It's a dull thudding pain in my brain
and you said you'd be busy
All day
It's all about time, sticky caterpillars emerge from leaves
I need more time
He's an angry man
A small, hard-boiled man - a closed fist man
He taps his watch and forces a heavy sigh
Because there isn't enough time

These are the rules I tell myself
There's a sour taste on my tongue
But every sin is washed away
If you follow the rules:

1.) Don't get mad, it's like a dog's frothy mouth
2.) Don't get hurt, it's like a panicked insect caught in your sweater sleeve
3.) Don't talk too much, no one wants to hear that stack of cymbals dropped on the floor

Well then what?


You asked if I was okay, and I said
Yes
Because good girls remain positive
When questioned
But I fear the leaving, I dread the draining
As you walk away

My throat closes, a knot caught as I swallow
When it's night
And it's raw
And you're not here
I can't say I miss you, the neediness will reek on me
Like sweat
You'll sense it, you'll run

It's not like you have a choice



I keep these moments like a pill
Under my tongue
So it will be absorbed and flow
Through my veins
How my lips felt against your
Unshaven face
How I laid in bed that afternoon
Inhaling your lingering scent
Long after you'd left

Nerve

Nerve

Emily Dickinson wrote

A poem a day

To quiet the beautiful rage

To manage the hauntings and dreams unfurled

To express thoughts that ping in the brain

Like a dropped penny on a hardwood floor

Beneath her feet

In white dresses, searching through those

Wild nights

Can I hear her now?

Quiet now, my father is coming

Quiet now, the wind clatters the thick panes

As a little girl

Death came a knockin’

Like Jehovah Witnesses on a field day

Choked fists pounding the front door

The bedroom door

The pantry with its boxed secrets and packaged sadness

We weren’t sure you’d be home but we’ll be

Damned

If you don’t pay up every time

Stop

Your message was clear, boy

Needn’t repeat it, boy

We’ll see you around the way

You think after years of scraping fish bellies

I’d actually beg?

Stop

Two girls hop scotch on cracked concrete

A tune spinning from their small, chapped lips

“Lose me once, lose me forever

You weren’t that important

You weren’t that clever”

Once the rain hits, this chalk lexicon washes away

Words were never so temporary

Their bright colors can’t prevent the cleansing

And little girls have to grow up sometime

The Crocodilian Desert

The Crocodilian Desert

She can’t stand the visage of extermination

Can’t stand it when loss is a tambourine clanging in her

Ear

Can’t stand it when mortality corrodes her

Eyes

Can’t stand it when death follows her

Home

Walking through a crocodilian desert

Bleached armadillo carcass on her left

Like leather shells abandoned on a waterless beach

Trails

Teeth fangs crusted in sand – those gritty incisors

Watch your step

Don’t look at me that way

They can’t hear you, ya know

Back on the urban homestead

The torn white plastic bag dances like a ghost in the street, caught

By the wind

Will it be okay I want it to be okay please be okay

A car swerves to miss the gust filled beast

A hollow moon rises above the trees

You leak tears for those that don’t love you

You cry for your silent, foreign momma

You wipe the slick snot from your nose and you weep

For her

For yourself

You crave self-pity, ooze regret like a toxic glandular slime

It fills your body and rots you from the inside

Out

I got out

I abandoned the crocodilian desert, left the sand spinning

From my heels

Heart striking fast in my chest, my legs pounding

Running through a thousand sunsets I see the forest

I taste the nourishing, warm mist - it’s inches from me now

The mums bloom out of season

The mums bloom out of season


Let's blame it on the stress
Woven above our heads like spider webs
Let's blame it on the anger
That tip our raw fingers like salt
Let's blame it on love
Exhaled like breath on a winter day

The mums have bloomed out of season

Fits quivered exploded from my ribs like
Cascarones at Easter
Rage stung my tongue I'd swallowed
That hornet - a sour pulsating velvet body, wings
Dampened by saliva
I did not see the light did you?
I'd woken up screaming
Did you?

No

The pool that swelled beneath your head
You kissed the carpet
Left a thousand phone calls unanswered - their rings cut an airless
Room
Voices unheard you knew better than that
You let us all know
Mums will bloom out of season

Silver, slick fish slipped from the net
You couldn't get a grip
Examine your palms to see scales, a bit of fin
Sail away
Dive into the freezing water, waves wash the tears right
Out of your eyes

Like they were never there

Guess my future has always been sewn up
Like stitches of a doll's mouth
I don't say it's better
I say it works


---



Don't dissolve me in the gutter, don't
Let me down
Every muscle breathes you, every time I part
My lips I kiss you
Every hollowed out heart I've held in my hands
Can be repaired
Please repair me (yourself) - find your sewing kit
I need this now

Prayers for Girls

Prayers for Girls

I remove it like a winter coat during the first thaw
of spring
the ice blankets
laid on the ground this past season
melt to reveal
baby green fields abundant
Next comes the navigation
it crops up like crocuses
it needs your attention now
it's no longer simply a trail
in the deep umber woods

Magnolia

Magnolia

Soon the magnolia tree

On the corner of Middleham and Turtle Creek

Will bloom fresh velvet cream petals

Leather leaves with fall, curl, brown – sink into

The earth

A biker chick lives there

She can see the magnolia from her

Bedroom window

Old weather worn Wranglers

From a man she’s never met

Hang as curtains

She can see the dew kissed blossoms

Forming slowly before her eyes

Almost as if they’re real

A disconnected stereo speaker

Serves as a nightstand

It vibrates in the darkest hours

When midnight is memory

She sleeps

---

You left me in a boat

Drifting on tides, I can feel the

Sun bleached paint stripped planks under

My fingertips

My eyes reduced to hot sweat squints

A horizon may be near, it may not be close

And

You’ve taken a residence in my mind

And back rent may be due

If I ever make it to shore

To find her plane

Bones, compact mirror, aviator goggles and cap

Driven into the sand where she fell

Caught by wind, taken so high, the continents a mapped

Outline below her

Propelled above deep green seas, swallowed by clouds

Tumbling

From a cockpit to gulp air, flail limbs, the ground

Came up to meet her

I want to find her plane

Unforgotten, I sift through the granules for her wind-buffed bones

You loved me

You loved me

Back rent may be due

Upon my arrival

I’ve pawned those memories

To gas up my bike