Truths we’d rather not see
Raked into the compost,
buried deep–
Used to feed vines,
growing twisted,
roping round,
A soul stilled
in one place.
Category: relationships
Words in the Electronic Ages
What we know of words upon a page Read, learned over again until sated In the richness found. Then turn to the electronic blue haze Where even words resonate, echoing fade. For the sweetest lies, a believer craves. Then scrolling over plastic flowers dancing, The words of a lover’s refrain found Written once too often In wooing others On the same blank cards With pictures of bears. The words like Cheap plated jewelry’s shine Turn black in the bitterness On the day some thought Something pure, pristine was born. Then, finally, is it known the words Of the poetic, the romantic Are but rhetoric and lies Written and said More than once But promised For one. The gravity, the gravity A black hole.
SMOKE THE CRAVING
I debate:
Should I buy
That pack of cigarettes?
God knows I want too.
The store clerk
Stares at me
As if I’ve lost my mind.
I nearly answer—
Yes, I have and other things too.
Please, God.
I just want to feel the smoke
Rush through my lungs.
Skimming, skipping, speeding
The way pictures crash the dam of my heart.
I am flooded.
I’d rather be flooded with waves of nicotine.
Yes, it’d be a blessing to drown in nicotine.
Reveling in the stench of smoke
Would help dull this taste of bitterness,
Would dull this craving for a sweetness
I can no longer have.
And why not?
What’s it all matter now?
A slow roll kind of Catholic suicide.
How long could it take?
I mean, really, at this stage?
“Ma’am, can I help you with somethin’ else?”
Says the clerk behind the counter.
I am still standing there,
The crazy lady,
Trying to wring the water out
Of the water bottle I just bought.
“No, thank you,” as I walk away.
So, no slow roll Catholic suicide.
At least, starting not today.
But this patch of bitter taste,
This patch of craving for a sweetness,
Are sewn with double stitched seams
On the underside
Of my skin.
Fairy Tale
Once upon a time,
It starts.
To begin it not
Acceptance since—
It is as it has always been.
Love and loss,
Desire and lust,
Sex and sin,
Pain and pleasure
Twisted and braided into rope
To bind our souls
Struggling against the rope
To escape such exquisite pain,
Yet seeking
To find within such passionate pleasure,
A relief to modern existence.
All too willing
To believe anything told–
From fairytales to lies,
Finding comfort
In a fool’s belief
Of such romantic notions
To ignore photos displayed
Of wine and treats arranged in twos,
A photo of the same card given,
Wishes of happiness in the margins.
It is here that words told
And appearances do not mesh.
Make a choice of what is true
And believe in faith of carnival games.
So one can curl against
Such soft warm skin
As if it contained a potion
To wash away the stain
Of sin and bring the happy ending.
Winter Destruction
The cruelest time is winter.
Green, nesting in the folds of flower petals,
That once basked in summer sun
Withers,
Crackling in dryness.
Then comes the stomping,
Crunching of ice.
Innocence destroyed.
Two Trees
In the woods,
two trees stand,
equally rooted
firmly in the ground.
Yet, as if deciding
it a curse of solitude
to try and touch a Sky
who never reached back,
one turned
to touch the other,
leaning its trunk
against its forest mate’s.
And so, I found them,
standing as lovers,
one resting upon the other,
limbs entwined in embrace.
I turned,
wishing not to disturb
what I’d found there,
and walked down the trail.
Modern and Clean
Let’s play house
Without the home.
It’s all arranged so prettily
No mess, no fuss,
No dusty hairball under the couch
None of the huff and puff
To blow a life down
Just learn to float on the surface
No need to swim in the deep
Keep it all to memes
Or 30-second bleeps
Nothing more needed
With all things clean
History
Spun out from the centrifuge
Twisted in helix meaning
Strands entwined, twisted back
Stretching toward history within heritage
Search through the montage of time
Sift through pounds of truth and lies
For a few ounces of purity
Measured out within the mess
The now was the past
Where to walk
We travel back
On twisted helix roads
To the selves we were
So very long ago
And learn
The future braided
In the past
With the now
And made us whole
Trash at the Curb
Trash by the curb
Cardboard boxes nested
One within the other
Standing upright, resting
Against the edge of the smallest,
An old collage Walmart picture frame,
Matting included,
Old photos still within the frame,
A wedding, a first baby then a second,
Graduations and first cars,
Pictures telling a story of a family,
Colors faded by the sun
Having spent years by a window
After Eruption
Rend the earth again
Tear, rip through miles of rock and soil
Till the swollen, rounded,
core lies exposed
Bubbling, glowing,
Sputtering out
Reaching tendrils of itself.
Note the flow,
Time the pulses of heat,
Beating with undulating life seen and unseen.
Then watch the viscous liquid cool,
Solidifying against the pain
Of each cold breath you expel
Stilling the beat of life.
The transformation to cold, hard stone
Within the earth’s crust
As thus,
A mother’s heart,
Torn open once too often,
Stops.
