Pretty talking like
soft sugar in the air
like snow while wind admires herself
in the mirror.
Space sparkles kindly on our undulating cities,
the land groaning with the weight of buildings
that rise and fall with generations,
while our beloved build
and we try to furnish our vainglorious homes
with ourselves, diminutive,
wispy, fleeing from the thoughtless force of the wind
The Glitterati is at my doorstep.
Did I know I was a star?
Yes, I admitted,
Because I am always burning
And everything is so dark.
But look at the sunshine,
all your sparkling!
Around me the air is still missing,
and my soul died trying to fumble home in the dark,
so I say nothing and close the door.
Scrapbook Page
They beam summer red
dribbling on her mini thigh
while the nurse checks her labs.
He is her comforter
a teddy bear when the catheter comes.
Tiny text. Fair font.
A spray of sea.
A wash of greenery.
His mouth opens crazy
eyes bulging
to make her shriek
with gladness
Outside each frame
I sit rigid behind the lens
frayed
frazzled
grateful that my miniature joy monster and I
are never alone.
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.
“You Look Melted and Poured”
I am melted and poured
into a sheath dress with lace overlay,
my scars making it look like a cookies and cream filling
has been poured to fit a sexy mold,
but with maybe 20 pounds too much filling –
the molding bursting at the seams.
Too often I have been too rich for my wallet
Too free for my cage
Too fat for my shell
But now I shimmy,
break open the mold
let the skin sing electric under a sunlight sick
of being filtered and blocked.
I am free.
In a bedroom deep in the jagged heat of Georgia
I am a queen and I need no molds,
cages will not hold me,
And my wallet is not the only language I speak.
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
She steals steam after the summer rain,
rolling it off the asphalt as a carpet
she will lay in her den.
She was named by the tesseract
snarling in the backyard.
Instead of her period each month,
she turns blue
and Inspiration knows she is fertile.
You are so cuttingly engineered,
designed with impure
perpetual function in mind.
What does it mean that your gears shudder
torturously
at the turbid passion chewing a gash across her left hip?
She is a reluctant dreamer,
afraid of who she’ll see tonight
beneath her eyelids.
Outside you wait with muscles and wolves,
and a knife that only turns in the dark.
Your name is on a sealed record somewhere playing over and over.
Your hand is a voodoo doll.
Watch her bend when you close your fingers.
Miniature Moon 