In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

Take me to where the tour bus is parked
And share your three day old bread.

I don’t care that the bus is empty
And that the seats are dusty and torn.

The sun can’t claw through the grimy
Windows. The heat is only an incentive.

While we bake in the shadows, Argentina
Breaks through a sudden frost, tangos

Budding like flowers through late freezes.
Hundreds of miles away and within,

We will break bread. California is soaked
And Texas swept by cool winds. Our hands

Simply tour our chins and collar bones,
The crumbs on our pants. Thirst imminent.

stunning

The trees
became more
tree
as I
moved
away

Their branches
were gnarled,
constricted,
like vocal
chords before
The
Scream


The
space
between
them
Roared

From tiny fractures
in me seeped
sap
and
Blood

And the trees
Were more than
Trees.

dans mes rêves

june; liquid heat,
that quenched our muscles
and froze them before the possibility
of motion.

dans mes rêves, i saw
because i wanted to see
cornsilk
paler than wheat...

Labels

Labels

I am labeled a
little girl
seen and not heard, dressed in pink and pretty smiles
emotions veiled so I cannot rant the truth
and the seething bitch in me is curtailed.

and when you failed to be a parent,
I was labeled CASE #125774

reduced to a number-
the little girl doesn't exist anymore-
the rooms are overflowing
so he fixed me a bed on the floor,
slithered inside me and made me his whore
and when I played nice with wifey, I settled the score
only to be labeled abandoned...
it's printed on every inch of me
as I am passed from one home
to the next
one bed
to the next...

a pivot girl at your request.

Label my body
too this, or not enough that.
I will not be dressed and objectified,
like some paper doll.
Label me Angry… Damaged… Dirty…

I will peel them off, pick at the residue
and dangle them adjacent to the snapping, licking flame
and watch your insecurities and ignorance,
your pride and your prejudices, curl into smoky spider webs

and I will tear through them every time.

chasing rabbits

Alice dear,
Your Mother painfully threw me
Upon seeing your vanity mirror
After I had painted it over.
Ochres swept scarlet taboo forms,
And admiring my fresh masterpiece,
You laughed,
How you laughed!
Overwhelmed by such novelty,
Screams of protest high,
As She flung me to the cobblestone.

My Alice,
Your Father banished me promptly
Upon seeing your vanity mirror
After I had painted it over.
Brushstrokes built swirling damnation,
And gazing upon my new masterpiece,
You laughed,
You wept,
Distraught by conflicting worlds,
Bittersweet tears traced,
As He evicted me from your sight.

Oh, Alice,
I crept in your bedroom window
And saw your moonlit vanity
No longer painted over,
Chipped away.
Smudges replaced by familiar shadows,
Intaglios of imbroglios,
Just beyond the glass.
And you, turned away from the frame,
You wept,
How you wept.
Willingly restored to repressive Reflections,
To mirror just Mirrors.
No want apparent,
As I silently left your sobbing figure.