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.