Like Fish

The machinations of weeds often go unnoticed

but I can feel the dandelion’s dark intent.

Inside my computer are vices I can’t explain

and virtues I won’t.

What battles for more are fought silently

in a world of less and less?

I was born in a gold mine.

Gold is a poison.

like fish we die far away from home

in houses that will immediately be given to someone else

The 1st of November

The 1st of November

 

A photogenic witch is caught

with her jeans down

(Do you know even traditional witches shop at Abercrombie and Fitch?)

the day after Halloween.

Gets in trouble for being out the day after Halloween.

There is a season for everyone.

and mine for you was the summer of my life

when you were the glare I saw reflected in everything.

It is the 1st of November now.

Go.

 

 

Cinderella

Seasons of castles, cathedrasl, fortresses

go by.

Pride with his transparent wings buzzes outside the window.

What if Cinderella was as awful as her step-sisters?

 

The mortar between the bricks says,

 Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Beneath the cathedral floor princely hands wring desperately

to extricate themselves from a promise.

Mania

Frazzled fire

licks me frenetically.

My mind is the Monday after a holiday weekend

that meandered into a new month,

and the paperwork in me chafes and squeaks.

Behind my eyes I am filing.

I have begun 178 projects.

177 are exactly what I have been needing, what I have been waiting for.

1 is even better.

My eyes,

my hands,

my judgment ache,

and all I can hear is agitated paper.

Scrape scrape scrape.

 

 

Watermother

My watermother holds my heat for me

ambles through my mind reminding me

Hair won’t comb itself.

Yellow cables radiate sunshine and trigonometry.

I think about all the weeds in the sidewalk cracks

of the neighborhood where I grew up.

One woman planted roses,

A confused cloud asked no one in particular,

What does it mean to rain?

Watermother is tender.

She helps me take off my aluminum slippers,

my slummy makeup,

her mind an ever-growing equation like a cancer.

She

The machine is a tap dancer,

is silver,

has nightmares of rust.

She wears the moon on her face in a chalk.

She glows purple when she is near wisdom.

She glows purple among the trees.

 

The ribbon in her hair is forked,

tastes danger on the horizon.

And the robot who has been terrified to bathe for years

clicks his heels ever closer,

curious and cold,

while the ribbon hisses poison in her ear