October 25, 2007

Shambles

Lowering myself by noose-like contraption
onto familiar territory, where sulfuric air
floods my withered breathing apparatus,
I find myself rapidly overcome by a
hundred hellions bearing a thousand
burning questions about the land of
velvet fingers and immaculate hearts
but the only answers I can give them
are sighs of defeat and tales of disgrace

Yet we dance to this frenzied tune
in leaps and convulsive twists and turns
until we fall like dead things in a sad heap
and there my lips form a wry grin because
here with my people I can do no harm
to flourishing souls who would pull me up
out of the stinkhole of self-loathing
And so here in the brutal arms of the
maniacal rogue I shall stay.

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October 10, 2007

The Death of a Small Star

Molten thoughts of mad escape
bombard the unsure mind
And failed attempts at normalcy
reveal the cruel design

But no one sees the blessing
as it slides beneath the door
It's mistaken for a silverfish
and smeared across the floor

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May 4, 2007

Dissolution

Night comes on again
like wave against rock
to eat away, with infinite patience,
at my swollen brain

and to swing me around,
its wide eyed and mindless
partner, in this electrified dance
of conscious oblivion.

Its aimless hands
sweep across my heavy lids,
setting thoughts recklessly afire
in bursts of mock inspiration

and its crackling voice,
sharp with doubt and regret,
weaves with night sounds a symphonic
masterpiece of unrest

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May 4, 2007

Shadow Men and Rowdy Hearts

The heart is rowdy and dangerous when bored
It shines light on dark things
And makes romance out of blood and bruises

Or, in its more subtly destructive mood
It gives wings to strange thoughts
And leads one playfully up a steep path

But we do not think about the descent
When the heart makes its case
And claws come out and guns are drawn

No, we plunge blindly foward like soldiers
In a battle we cannot win,
Firing into the dark and unknown

And I swore I wouldn't fall prey to the beast
Yet here I am at the cliffs edge
Chasing after a flickering shadow (man)

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March 19, 2007

A Taxi Ride

The world lurches
and I clutch my purse with curling fingers
before trying to melt seamlessly
into the black leather seat of the taxi
(which smells faintly of cigarette smoke
and disinfectant)

And when the driver,
dark skin paled and glistening,
turns to politely ask about my day
I feel the thrill of a decision to be made
(What with so many occupations and aspirations
to lay claim to)

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March 18, 2007

An Eternal Midnight

"Just one more day of rest."
I say and roll myself in stale sheets
where all I want is swiftly presented to me
in grandiose flashes of vivid thought
and where no prying fools can accuse me
of DOING any wrong or failing tasks

And there I hibernate
while once churning waters turn tepid
and the cool air turns so still and thick
that my fireflies freeze in mid flight,
their ethereal lights fading out so that
I'm trapped in an eternal midnight.

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March 7, 2007

The Narrow Mind

When blood is not blood
and the mind not mind
the shell is true to form
but the nerve impulses lie

When the heart is sluggish
and belief an electrical glitch
the sound may issue forth
but no will backs the word

And the eyes may overflow
and the hands tremble
or the mirth blossom
or the ire burn

but it stands so:
When blood is not blood
and the heart not heart
It logically follows that I am not YOU.

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Photostat

She sends down a menacing rain,
the lemon drop tears of Venus,
to patter on my bare head
and wet my hair
but I am quite unaware of the deluge
and I throw to her my little gems
so she can sell them,
roadside.
I dance a shadowed step
through avenues
alien to her
and gush sweet intimacies
until she calls me on my thought,
a cuckoo's egg, she says,
and snaps back in a whiplash kiss
to curl around my ego.

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Bones

Doom kittens crawl with flopping steps
toward sick rooms rank with faux
flower scents and antiseptics
And they laugh their mewing laugh
in defiance of all the rapid decay
that scatters a life's memories to the dust

A bustling nurse rocks and coos in one room
and then comes rolling, unwelcome
and frowning solemnly, into mine
And behind a paper curtain a dying
man proclaims, "Take note, my dear.
Not all prisons have metal bars!"

Pitching and tossing, a kittens claw
piercing my vein, I hear myself reply:
"Too true, old man. My bars are made of BONE."
The nurse hisses, snake-like, and, turning,
purrs out the feeble beat of my heart
before trotting out with vials and numbers.

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The Waiting Room Dance

In waiting rooms china doll thoughts run rampant
With pouty rosebud mouths and fluttering lashes
And one has to pause and briefly wonder:
"Did I turn off the stove before I tumbled out the door?"

In waiting rooms mirror eyes flash like fireflies
And disappear behind listless lids
While fingers fan out garish pages
Boasting monthly deaths and births and separations

In waiting rooms one thinks of every drip and drop of rain
And every deed that must be done
And every thing that is blue and not blue
And anything really, but the failings of the flesh.

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Paroxysm

synapse fires off
and bent fingers pull at
rigid shoulders and crooked neck
a stiffening and a release
a push and a pull and a pirouette
a song sung with a trembling voice
and a twitch of the eye
It is unbecoming but enticing
in the way of afflicted things
tied down things
a rumpled green silk dress
over small, strained arms
pale ice limbs that burn and twist
as they rise, shudder, then fall.

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Half-Travel

A thick jumble of vertebrae
Is the faulty core around which
My flesh-self grudgingly wraps itself
With so little concern for symmetry

While all my thoughts and feelings
Garther and spin and disperse
To make up the body I inhabit;
A glittering network of electricity.

The bones grow introverted
And, pressing in, shove me out
Into a different kind of battle
Where I dodge rapid-fire ruminations

But there, at least, in open air
Thought may birth composition
Without such cruel mind to mortality
Leaving me free to journey ghostlike yet alive.

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Nine to Five Thirty

Highly unusual to be so unaccountably afflicted
This angry student would know why
And which cells are to blame
Or which chemical is so unforgivably imbalanced
And setting so many signal fires ablaze

And this young romantic wonders why
God cackles so with distant laughter
At his ardent little daughter, an artist gone blind
A pianist with broken fingers
Jagged bones pushing through thin, pale skin

Not so unusual to be so disastrously waylaid
This indifferent cynic must confess
That we are decidedly alone here
And there is no help to be had from doctors
With exotic excursions to plan and execute

And this young fool can't help but wonder why
With all these so-called humanitarians
Dancing pretty two steps around me
There is such a lack of time for true healing
and such an abundance of monetary concerns

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The Rhapsodist

Very interesting, this feverish song,
open though it is to blood and loss,
dark as it is of eye and thought,
kindly it lowers me down to please it

and all my fingers crawl along it's surface,
It's pale and strangely iridescent skin,
so that our mad duet caresses the clouds,
Never for a moment pausing for breath.

effervescent as the world may be for such poets
and as melodic the sound of our descent,
there is no sympathetic call to lead us home.

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