Follow the rubbery rainbows to the rambunctious roses. In the garden, my psyche sprints naked through the greenery. She’s too frightened to be embarrassed. In a cul de sac, a hunter of women with a skeleton in the trunk of his metallic black Dodge Dart. She is barely evading him, and he has more stamina. I turn to tending the roses, especially the pink ones. Then the neighborhood goes dark with a blackness so heavy it falls in flakes like snow, burning and refining my body.
Sunbeams
Shackled sunbeams destined to die on the parched plains of our existence gasp a little just before they hit the ground. The sound is audible only to angels. I am an artificial light drooling over candles. My light is dusty, a little rose gold, disheveled. My God, God of pink peonies and purple pansies, strapped the ageless bulb to my heart. My heart beats because it is afraid not to. In the dark, Death holds a child’s hand.
Wounds
Polychromatic blood leaks from the slits in my ankles. In another world I plant a garden of cosmos. In another universe I lay across my lover’s piano lasciviously. But in this world, my essence spurts out with the pressure of my body weight. Why did I carve windows to sinew and bone? In my ear, curled up and sleeping, my daughter dreams of some sort of purple peace I don’t understand. My love bandages me with magnolia petals, calling my windows “wounds.”
Poem
This isn’t a poem. The white birds skim the gray lake for silver fish. In all the newspapers, headlines about the pianos crowding us out. Music will carve a hole into my head and scurry into my brain furtively. After all, silence is the top predator here, and he lurks everywhere. I slip on a red silk nightgown and dance to the rhythm of the implacable rain.
Light’s Soiree
Thin, blue line of pain
Like flame,
Dancing.
What we have is a house of
Unrequited fury.
What we have is a box with two air holes.
What we have is a magician’s playing cards.
Cascading grief rinses me. Time has been crabwalking away from me drunkenly for decades.
My invitation to Light’s soiree was lost in the mail.
Cleansed with Fire
Roses whisper about me.
Shrubs are two faced.
My eyes are berries that the hungry
Can pick.
In my hands,
the shadow of an unearned stigmata.
Hope for the eternal bliss of purposeful suffering.
Blank space is a conduit for meaning.
I fill the page with myself,
My ruby blood shimmering with neon green viruses
That unzip my best idea
Like a double helix.
The blue balloon was not my only idea –
Covering in the caverns of my 8th birthday.
Nature always takes its due
Dew
Do nothing as the river rises.
We already know next time
we will be cleansed with fire.
A Tune I May Never Hear
Sanctity knows us by our wounds,
Which fester in the spirit.
Fear punctuated with regret.
Daily I think of rain, and Death runs his finger along the S of my spine,
Asking about the weather in my
Innermost chambers of spicy thought.
My faults are electric blue,
Grinding on the dim dance floor of mortality,
Making bets on every scratch ticket.
Over the hills,
Just beyond suburbia and
Down a country mile from rural,
Is God
Playing his violin in a tune I may never hear.
I wasn’t ready to publish this poem, but my google docs is acting up, and I may as well publish it while i still have it in my clipboard.
Sublime and Barely Real
My thighs are a miracle of alabaster silk blooming like a rose. My secret scent is rose, vanilla, and extravagance. The language of flowers flows monthly through the corridors of my core. Essentially, I am his dream he holds at night as he sleeps on a game trail by an angry river. Soft, yielding, sublime, and barely real. I press my faintly glowing flesh against him, warming him. He’s got a letter only my envelope can mail.
Untitled 26
My body is a twirly slide. My body is as soft as a spring day. Stars are woven in my hair, holding my mind back from coating the universe in glitter. Women stitch centuries together in parlors of pearlescent priorities. They always have. I run my personality through the hoop that doubles as a halo in low light, my backbone embroidered on a cream color cheese cloth.
My Celestial Home
Raw reality sizzles over the thin blue flame of my imagination, charring some facts and leaving other truths underdone. In my celestial home, I sweep stellar crumbs off my dining room table and wipe down the windows with tears. I have velvet covered books on stargazing in my shining foyer, and guests from universes of universities. Light belongs to me. Darkness siphons off my life day by orbiting day. Malingering suns pierce the authenticity of cold.
Miniature Moon 