Childhood is a charlatan
I have eaten all the
red lollipops there are to lick,
and my face is permanently stained.
I am a constant victim of curiosity.
Free time flies away
on a paper airplane.
I left my wherewithal
in a cubby.
No one ever told me
just take three licks.
Take your licks now.
God filtered through rain,
six color promise.
The sun he forged
burning my toast from
the immunized difference
between us.
My promises are colorful too.
Purple promise to my husband,
to love the landscape of
his judgments.
Red promise to absorb his kisses,
squeeze mine out on his
body like a lotion.
Yellow promise of waiting
for him in the gaps.
Intricately,
the neighbor paints the windows
with the image of his bare chest,
feral abs,
face that cleans itself.
His wife will come through
the white front door
with a basket of
feline flowers.
Like lace
they will crisscross.
and I will close the blinds.
The tree wears a brace.
Summer is only half southern.
Among the roses
atoms splitting.
I reach through torn air.
Past it –
a gummy planet.
My life will live on
without me.
Hair and schedules
are only shells.
Nothing stands well
against the climate
of persnickety evil.
The tree’s chi sinks into
its roots.
The roses,
meanwhile,
fire their hopeful signals
at random.
The ghost tries my
new furniture,
finds it comfortable,
sits inside me when I
refuse to get up and
make way.
I’ve not been inhabited
by myself in many days,
so this is refreshing.
But I itch.
He doesn’t quite fit.
The last of the rain
hides under the chipped bench.
In a burrow ten feet away,
Summer and her bulimic brood.
Children stare at their faces in puddles,
faces framed by the
rainbow slick of motor oil
in the water.
What hallucinogenic heat
pushes a woman to the docks,
makes her surrender in
the family boat named
SS Hypatia?
Powerful palling
cannot cut the concrete.
A young girl filing her
fingernails will tear it
to shreds.
Life is beauty
too high
and devouring everything.
What machinery can’t do,
a Valentine doily and
a lollipop can.
Girls grow in to women,
request houses of firm foundation,
wear fake nails.
Over the years I have experimented with various ways of combining poetry with either color or image. I’ve done poems on images and Instagramed them. I’ve put interesting lines of poetry on solid blocks of color as names for those colors. I’ve tried over and over again to marry my obsession with color to my poetry.
I think I have something new to try. I’m downloading free textures online and tinting them different colors. By doing this, I am capturing not only a color I like, but ensuring there is texture to go with that color to make the image and color deeper. Then I write a poem that corresponds to that color/texture. It can correspond by mood, location, subject etc. But something about the poem has to relate to the color and image, or at the very least the color.
I’m excited about this project. Periodically I like to have something new to work on. Photo editing has always been enjoyable for me, and naturally I live for poetry. Plus, new projects are good for the mind. I know my husband has been hoping I would start something new recently. He feels it is good for me to have something I’m working on. Not anything too hard or stressful, but just something to add a little oomph to my days I guess.
To the north,
isolation escaping over ice.
I was born of the crowd
to the crowd,
my mouth pasted on me closed.
I whip my back with feathers,
wear sackcloth of spun gold.
As the curve of collective consciousness
moves us closer and closer
to opposite edges.
The secret catapult
and the old rope swing
evade notice.
Except to me,
my eyes red galoshes in a
congregation of black.
Did I ever loan him a life vest
or sell him food?
We live our lives in a
stranger’s life.
He ran alongside the
multitudes until he
absorbed them.
I died as a child,
and drew my first breath
as an adult.
Miniature Moon 