The clock has gone awry,
running backwards and sideways
so that 3 slides into the darkness of nine,
and then back out to the simpering light of four.
See me between the seconds,
holding myself in a ball,
my 20s leaking out of me like sweat.
Category: poetry
A Ghost of Light
A ghost of light
passes elegantly through the room
and I see him reflect off the windows
the mirrors
my polished toe nails
Bill of Rights
Amendment 1
The closet is sated. 600 pounds of clothes
nestle on shelves and in corners.
What have you said in the cunning tongues of cashmere and cotton
that you have not said with your strategic absences?
Be silent. Be naked. You have that right.
Amendment 2
Do you feel your fears nuzzle against your ribcage?
It’s time to extinguish the dark, you skittish lover.
You have the right to vacillate, but no right to time.
Amendment 3
Burgundy secrets slink behind the columns
in front of the house.
Do you smell something February and blue?
Follow your nose. It is your privilege to do so.
It is your power.
Amendment 4
The committee decided you don’t have a right to this right.
Amendment 5
Monitor the horses in Chincoteague.
Paint their hooves red, yellow, and blue.
Climb your ladder.
Watch art born.
It is your birthright.
Mutual Identity
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 and Blue
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.
Personality
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.
Depression
Beneath sinister stars
I am attacked by sunset
stealing my hope at gunpoint.
God I am terrified of the back of my eyelids
North
My thoughts travel to the indigo north.
I wish I could leave this square painted room behind.
Northward is snow scented Heaven.
Enter
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.
Love
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.
Miniature Moon 