Tag: poem

Guide the Leopard Home

With rainbow ease I
sew my image on the mirror.
I have not blinked in days,
and now I see through
clouds to the dancing dead
shimmering in copper.

When I was born
(between songs)
my self was already old
and imprinted in glass.
When my face begins to crack
the glass will implode.

My self was born some time
between yesterday and
happily never after.

I need mirrors to make me remember
the things I once had memorized,
the monotheistic candle wicks
I must light,
To guide the leopard home
through the silo of night.

Self so stiff and soft,
stitched ad infinitum
in eternity.

Invention

Insolvent, insolent, innocent invention,
An open blister where money
And sleep sink,
Tucked in their skin.
He invented the blister,
The pit of pity.
His cash split,
Leaving him with hunger
And insubstantiality.

And yet, like a name,
The blistering invention is as
Unconscious as it is unwholesome

He needed a place for his
Incomplete necessities,
And he crafted one of dark matter,
Negative space.

Dominated by a Day

Tomorrow lies in my bed
As rugged as a coast.
I marvel at the sleepiness of my fist.
Where has my fight gone?
Has it left me for another woman?
A woman with more steel in her back,
a chest of gravel?
Tomorrow hums,
Brawny and blue and wastefully.
I adore extravagance.
He wants to tell me what to do,
I luxuriate in commands.

I am no longer holding my dice.
They burn in the green fire writhing in the corner.
This is not my game.
This is not my life.
It is time to surrender.

Earth and Water

Obese clouds

in shades of sweat pant gray and

office tile white

promise rain to my dry, dry Earth.

The ants have been doing their rain dance for days,

twigs like tiny stilts the building blocks to their effigies.

I have been wrapping rainbows around my wrists,

sculpting the scavenging ground into beautiful lakes to

attract the clouds,

tell them there is room enough on this gregarious field

for earth and water.

I wait every night for the sea to spit my husband out,

undigested and handsome.

I like to straddle the dry lake bed,

the navy sea,

and wait for gifts from ether and water.

Hope

The afternoon latches and lunches

on my milky breasts.

My chest a shelf that weighty demons sit on.

Outside in the rocky yard Good Health and Old Age fight.

My eyesight is incredibly blue

and the world is incredibly pink,

so my life is biased toward purple.

I am as executable and cuddly as a queen.

The river is dry.

No baby boys float in baskets among the reeds.

My body floats off to sleep,

my mind sinks into self,

diving deeper and deeper to the mulberry core.