Tag: creative writing

My Disease

A little thunderstorm runs around my feet

Then skitters under the sofa.

He is one of many.

I see them in my cabinets sometimes

and once walked into millions of them in the attic.

They scattered.

 

A feral book leaps off his shelf and

onto the lonely sofa I no longer sit on

because I cannot linger.

My disease watches me all the time,

nestled in my skull.

It will attack me from the side

Rip my smiles open and empty them out.

 

I work all day to stay on the move.

Light is always trying to hide behind the future

so I am constantly pushing millions of beams forward.

The shy scent of water cloaks me

as the desert outside the window searches for me.

More bones are always needed.

 

My disease sings.

My disease plays.

My disease paints the back

Of my eyelids with sand.

 

The thunderstorms feed

on my crumbling tears

Third Eye Witnesses

She harvests roses,

rivers,

righteousness.

The world watches her sleep.

Birds peer through her window

like so many anxious dignitaries in a

court of intrigue.

 

She wears the scent of sun

in a vial around her neck.

He will hunt her better nature.

color his prayers with her name.

 

This is yearning –

to be jealous of the air

because it can touch her everywhere at once.

 

In his suit of wool and guilt

he watches her pick bouquets of breeze,

spinning in a plain of demolished satisfaction.

 

At night, he whittles mathematics down

to an immaculate paste of 2

and rubs it over his body

Tomorrow he will wait by the light

and draw her in with his want song.

A Love Story in Math

7 is in love with 0.

0 is lovely,

has the DNA for heaven and Earth

and whatever the Hell my old job was.

7 is proud and strong and knows he is luckier than 6

or his ex girlfriend 8.

But he roams into the rafters of primacy,

of sharp eyed division,

and the comfort of 0 –

the way she gives of herself

and doesn’t exist,

is missed by him,

who can see only her perfection on the page

her gift for making others greater.

But beneath the tired eyes of mathematics

.000001 is also in love with her,

and is much more in reach

and glad to be.

The Dream is Dead

Ok, so the dream is dead,

or not dead really,

but dying

under this beautiful house that loves me,

with her feet sticking out of the crawl space.

She was from the East,

and wanted to go further,

to every palace and battleground in Europe,

to be hunted by crocodiles and lions in Africa,

to waddle with penguins in Antarctica.

 

So what if things did not go as planned,

if the mice cry in their nests?

Who cares as long as the man is good,

the mind has its medicine?

And, anyway, someone else will have the chance

to slurp up the Earth’s beauty,

when Terra Firma

is older and even more graceful;

she will have my place when she is older

and more graceful.

Lemonade and Cyanide

Sylvia and I

 

In the kitchen I drink

lemonade,

cyanide,

white zinfandel.

 

I love the way we share secrets,

the way we are secrets.

 

The children are at school

and I don’t know why.

You can’t be taught to be radiant,

to sew your smile on each dawn,

to pour yourself like perfume from a pitcher

all over the house when you are empty.

 

Let’s stir our drinks.

The ice is so officious,

teaching us how to die with grace.

 

There are no cookies to bake in the waiting oven.

We just can’t be that sort of women.

 

My ice clanks,

melts.

The room is paler.

We burn deeper

if not brighter.

The Life of White

Beneath the whitest pearl sky

the scent of pink lemonade wafts.

The sun is glass.

 

Fields trimmed in lace.

Hoards of human paraphernalia

burning, under the magnifying glass.

 

It’s the life of white to destroy in gentle tides.

 

The bitter angels in us,

the blacker angels outside.

 

My blood pearls. A necklace to wear.

My spirit in my high heels. Give me a scotch.

Give me talcum powder.

Embalm the fog that veils my name.