Callous

In the lock box of sleep,
Anxiety rattles, a bullet
In a hollow panel, rough and stained,
Splinters like fiber, glass
Hastily swept into a filmy volume
Aching for the predawn

I scheme for a premature flight
Inside metal warped, commercialized
I feel the pinching of my disk
Nothing remains the same when
I'm alone
I see flesh on skin-
Never mind

My skull is woozy
I was turned over-easy
Unscrewed like a rotten egg
And surreptitiously scrapped
This life scampers parallel
Scribbling circles like years

I run without purpose
Even suckling life, I despair
A dirty kitchen for private tears
We twirl stupidly in place,
Casting a transparent line
Hope is a noun

As I observe waste and sloth and
In spite of myself, my cynicism
Becomes ingrained
I will train for endurance
Feminist that I am
For the primary purpose of validation

In silky sea salt
My eyes are feverish, loss-glazed
Full of rage and peering
Through uncelebrated expectation
We are carbon, emotion
And little else

Timber

The dolphin, unhinged by the surf, dove
Headlong
Into the wreckage.

I'm talking myself out of it,
Sinking into moss and mica.
Like the Queen, I'm going mad-
I make the same mistakes,
I'm nothing new.

This, my cocoon, is but a
Carnal shadow of tepid, sleeping you.
We chant with each luscious bloom
Birthed on the breeze like a spore.
A coincidence.

Be the corona of my sun,
Ignorant of meters and minutes
Our glare will live in the fireflies-
Inking over my eyes, dripping down
Swollen cheeks, chattering chin.
Disorderly, delicious.

I am shaking, an unswaddled child, and
It feels a bit like free-fall.

Postcard

Camaraderie, fluid life, thoughts composed in this head and transcribed by orbs of intuition. Across the kitchen table, fruit laden, covered in sooty life they pass. I'm lucky, not only for gifts of mind and body, but for intrinsic need to throw caution to the wind.

Moan and squawk you cannot, voice oozing like syrup, and magic, out of lips of mauve. In a small package, wrapped traditionally in brown parchment and twine, you arrived on my icy stoop one night. You are an eraser, pink and squeaky, leaving a trail on my pages as you negate any foresight I, the disillusioned speaker, pretend to have.

I know one consequence of my behavior that will certainly result, but I dare not write it, make it real, for fear of flippance. What is love? I know, being human, but I have never participated, going through each motion like the shadows on the lake...

The moon tosses energy towards crystalline clouds, suspended like muslin above miles of gravity. Expanding like my heart- I might implode from the gratuitous repetition. But such a smile, such metallic mirth. A warped ceiling tin, I bow and pop. I'm flimsy.

If I Could Take You With Me

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." Camus.

We met, out of bounds
in a funny box that contained my life.
You sympathized and I shunned.
I spun circles across the confetti-strewn arena.
You were drunk and I was distracted
by your lesser counterpart.
In a place of business, I knew
you match me brick for brick.
You wooed and we both won.
How could we ever lose?
Every time I am forced to self-sustain,
I see how acutely
we delight in one another.

I have certainly depicted untruths,
images without prospect
and of a soul like a vacuum.
I have not done this deliberately.
What oozes from digits clacking on keyboards
is the byproduct of a life
lived fully and with risk involved.
A liability.
Little or no guarantee on precious capital.
You peel my petals like ribbons
and I grin, flailing yellow.
The instant in which I survive
alone
is an instant squandered,
for you actualize in me
pure joy like honey.


In life, fluid as water, time is all we've got.

Stunted Growth

Caress
me -
My heart is on the floor.
Sleeping infidelity is not a crime
I need not request acquittal
if the the act is not lucid.
I never say what I mean.

Lucidity, a quite strange concept
after our now complete twelve-hours journey.
Such strange words spoken without
transition and spliced like spare limbs
As curtains bleed, the gradient sky,
bright as day, is scarred
by cottonwood and fluorescence.
Your hands slowly played out
scale after natural scale.
I am far and away.

But only through a promise-
a terrifying yelp, can we be free.
In my spinning state, I read words
that light fire like flint.
Trying to cry, I gaze ahead
into prismatic faith.
Where does my insecurity reside?
If it lies within you
then I have yet to find it,
to find anything worth putting up with.
My integrity is fissured,
finely disintegrating,
beknownst only to me.

Even as my mouth objects,
my submerged desires surface
through seas of muffled cotton.
Had I the ability to merge realities,
sever ties, live in a world free
of obligation, possibility could solidify.
However, my heart is not
a sacrificial lamb for
the sake of my brain,
or at least it should not be.

In ten minutes, in steam and soap,
anxiety will be doused in a basic solution,
citrus and spice will fall away.
I can delve into the reasons
only when my filter is missing,
stolen by substances undefinable,
transferred from kiss to
kiss under a dark star.
Imprisoned.

In the stratosphere we hover
like forgotten dolls, with notions like
gauze in our porcelain heads.
You may choose to disengage,
but recall your frailty
in the womb and on the ground.
When presented with queries of the future,
all we have ever learned
shall fall gruesomely short.

Nectar From Tundra

Intuition stands loving and correct
And so it begins anew-

Moisture crackles my rusting hinges
Never have I dealt with such an induction
For each gram I wish a remedy.
In the midst of industrial velvet
Your dilated heart, a question to mortality
Striving to cradle brow in supple palm
Eyes, pores, teeth bulging
Heart evaporating, accelerating
Rising, wooden heel stomping toe
Through the dense, pasty fog.

This, being a battle of futility
Serves no master but Time
Bracelets rattle as we swing- limp.
Driven by reassurance, I muscle through
Achieving dedication by belief in optimism
Crucified on a bed of pine needles so long
My once-numb heart feels every stroking stab
Your hands sculpt and fall away
Spidery fingertips glancing golden
Feathers loft to safer places-

Heights protected by faith and sleet.
Heartless.