Serendipitous find of leather
on a day that had no verve.
I become fashion.
I am worn by the lost crowd
moving with their backs together
from day to lustrous day
counting the costs of mutual identity
behind their eyes.
I like the scent of my old leather journals,
of my own eye thoughts.
Purple is in a ghastly mood and I am tired of putting up with her crap.
She calls me crazy,
refuses to be seen with me when I step out my door in my tiara.
My eyes are diamonds and my lips are freaks, I tell her.
You will have to live with my fashions.
Purple peels right off my dress and down the road,
And suddenly I am a museum of skin
beneath the glass of a transparent dress.
I shimmy.
Blue leaves his porch and says,
You need someone who will treat you right.
Lemon lime personality.
Sharp neon shards of Me-ness taste
like candy, burst into flame
if touched by a friend.
My lips are coated with white quartz,
Multi-hued lipstick slathered on.
My personality breaks off in shards
like hundreds of tons of rock I once saw
fall from a cliff into a river,
but hopefully not hitting that hard,
crushing with unimaginable weight,
stabbing nearest and dearest with the finer points
of meager personal philosophy.
Beneath sinister stars
I am attacked by sunset
stealing my hope at gunpoint.
God I am terrified of the back of my eyelids
My thoughts travel to the indigo north.
I wish I could leave this square painted room behind.
Northward is snow scented Heaven.
The hot tub is a cauldron of desire.
You slake my thirst for you in the dark
while the neighbors burn in their beds.
The Saturday thrill and Sunday chill
of you sliding my bikini bottoms off,
undoing my top
makes a furious steam.
Enter.
You own this place.
A bush with two roses –
one grousing grouchy.
Grungy soul like the nineties sat on it.
Gray clouds seep slightly,
a spray paint making skin more clear
through coverings.
He cut me and I bled green
because I was young.
Because he removed a thorn,
I shook down to my roots.
With his pocket knife he smoothed me
from heel to head and I became a rose
the envy of every other rose.
Number Jungle
5 has keys. 5 jangles.
Closes cabinets with hips.
9 slithers up the glass windows,
copulates on the roof.
2 lives
in the succulent old birch tree,
sipping insipid syrup leaking as though from a sieve.
Trees hear each other cry.
Fighting with a chipmunk for nuts is 4.
4 with big teeth and base instinct
who made the terrain with his little claw year by year.
3 is a sucker for Romance languages,
estuaries that burn the thirsty livid.
See the gators muscle through the delta
unaware he watches hungry.
7 churns in the puddles
bites mosquitoes til they welt
8 carves slices of watermelon beyond the fence
spitting seeds
into
a
hole
in
the
ground,
listening to them nest and
fight,
content without toys
1 sings high in the breeze,
perched on a cell tower.
Unattainable music,
sweet sweat dripping from him
a rain of sugar.
A melancholy running over the world,
trampled rows of arthritic wishes
trying to dust themselves off and carry on.
Dust feasts with minute teeth on a handbag.
God is a diamond, multifaceted, sparkling
rainbow colors, knife sharp, hard cutting.
And red He let loose in the world
to give us one drop short of enough to drink,
to leave us one inch short of His height
requirement, roiling within ourselves,
connected by an energy that knows us.
Quarrelsome boas cannot decide who will
take my inner drive
and so it is passed back and forth like a dish rag.
I once did the dishes all the time but hid from the stove.
Now the stove, dusters, sewing needles all hide from me.
I remind my back to stop bleeding.
It is enough the knife slowly turns.
Don’t advertise it.
In that house we gave nothing of ourselves,
because we admitted to nothing.
I am a fish still alive in the pot.
Temperature rising.
Temperance gone.
I hope the hag cooks with good wine.
No.
I refuse to breathe the water,
absorb the wine
I am a woman for whom jetted tubs were made.
I step out of the vat
not even naked
with all the shame heaped on me,
and I strangle each snake for laughs.
Here is my drive
on the floor tired and pitiful.
But here is me.
Knives removed,
stripping naked,
drying off.
drying out,
deciding drive is not enough…
and I have more
Miniature Moon 