red again

I am empty
and aligned
with the horizon

lace
fallen to my feet
in a flash of
white.

even fallen tokens
disrupt each others
beauty, grief turned over.

The scarlet sun shifts silently
to silver moon,
the sky moves all night
until she is red again.

ashes ashes we all fall down

I am not
who you think I am
I have marked my skin
with trenches and valleys,
my body a no-man's land,
a mine field
of blue and purple veins
beneath wind-thin skin
disgustingly plump in my reflection
I have stared at food starving
but resisting
when I pull at my hair
it comes out,
brittle and henna-red,
but my hands are full of ashes
and my mouth is full of dirt
and i wonder how i'm still here...

the journey

Moon-soaked,
she emitted
a cold radiance
that made all
who loved her
leave her alone.

As well
they might-
hers was the single
silver track
upmountain
to the moon.

just a thought...

Just once I'd like to sit on the porch steps and have a long, slow joint- rolled tight and even, staring at the crickets and the neighborhood's prelude to night time activity; and feel a simple emptiness, an isolation from everyone and everything-- and for awhile, feel as if there wasn't a soul in the universe who knew of my existence or my pain...

inert

she's bringing it all down upon herself.
she winds her watch and feels the difference in hour.
but the difference is a season, it's a year.
then, she sees;
she's scoring years upon her thigh
where birds could dance along the raised skin.
where happiness graced her closed-mouth grin.
she chooses mellow music,
she chooses her,
she chooses you.

she thinks that, in films
when the unreliable lover rushes back
to proclaim everlasting, undying, irrevocable
unconditional
love.
how convenient for them
that their object is waiting,
instead of clipping their toenails.
or in bed with somebody else...

she often thinks that would happen to her.
they'd be pounding at the door,
and she'd be brushing her teeth.

they'd give up
and leave.

cadence

her spindly figure
gracefully paces the tread
finding its rhythm;
an adagio that builds to andante
in just over an hour,
and this is only the beginning.

the hollowed eyes
of her vacant visage
peer critically around the room
fueling the only appetite she feeds

her gaunt frame is bent
over the screen,
her skin stretched taut over
scarred white knuckles
as her hands grip
the heart rate monitors,
melting away with
each new calorie burned...


She pushes through the enervated lull,
her bone-weary body nearly wasted
when her pace quickens once again...

I follow her gaze
to the corpulent
figures who are powerless-
her strength increases
feeding off the emptiness
and the aches of hunger
in her gut

the incline increases,
elevating the pedestal
on which she observes...
her stride reaches
prestissimo.

now weightless,
her lithe limbs
in rhythmic cadence
barely kiss the tread,
proving their strength
as she persists

whittling
withering
wilting
into the
wonder
of exculpated bliss.

dreary sunday

she's felt it before,
the fear to turn her back
leaving it bare.
feeling their
whiplash tongues.

an absentee
for many motives-
eight hours becomes twelve
as you push to the grind
and drink, oh drink,
social alienation
prevention.

but within herself
she prays to be stronger
than this.

she waits for her
to return from work
and finds a restful heart
in the making of simple things.
most contentedly
etched in graphite...

you win

The darkened, starlit sky
with its sapphire-green glowing fringe,
gently mocks me,
inviting me
to step forward-

to look down
from this rooftop
and let my eyes
play tricks
in the darkness-
grow dizzy with height
and feel weightless
in the obscurity

the illuminated city
glows on the horizon,
a smoldering innuendo
signaling it’s time
to sit on the ledge
and think-
drink
deep the errors
of your years
and balance the books


I'll admit
the temptation
is fleeting...

[s]trapped

a small perception, a blank
of words and time

and touch.

and i realized then,
we never said anything
that we really meant

when you wrote reams
that weren't for me,
although they had my name...

a literal take.

cold, unpitying sun,
dropping in through the windowpanes
sullen as a truant, cast-off and browsing.
the light is unwelcome company,
revealing your face like
a well-kept secret,
white and masked by a cup of
oxygen –
you are suckling again, overlarge infant,
crooked in the lap of the bed,
eyes pacing slowly
under your dream-rimmed eyelids,
like sleepless tyrants.
with every breath, you expel another moment,
another muttered minute, and the
O2 tank plucks it up
sharply.

those daisies
aren't lasting long
their heads drooping like idiots:
squint-eyed, gandering from the lips of the vase.
their brown-touched petals
fall in such abundance when you breath
so I keep replacing them
and you keep breathing.
they are nodding, weary heralds.
dipping, the sunlight pushing among them
like a boatman.

your face, collared blue,
your eyes retreating like a snails, shellward
until they leave only catacombs, ghastly chambers.
you don't cry anymore – I do it for you,
and you turn your head away and your hand
grows stiff, scaffolded with an index of loose bones,
hollow windchimes;
the quietest most delicate promises.

you
are a facsimile
skin sticky and color-changing, depending on my mood –
amphibian. cold, light-winded priestess
I bring you news of the outside world:
the blossoms are bowing their heads,
a wake for autumn, and the trees carelessly
toss out their leaves like hand.me.downs
south-bent birds unzip the sky
but somehow
the new daisies are holding out

but
only just
barely –



they
emancipate their petals,
weeping for the loss of your pretty hair
mourning for the white choir
of your bones under
the bedsheets.