New skin

I grew up knowing what cruelty was

it curled at the corners of day like

a well fed tiger.

Sometimes I did not think on it much

for I was preoccupied by my own

sense of emptiness and self pity or

just the song on the radio at that moment.

Years later I feel it

just beneath the surface like

new skin, flinty and unyielding, unfamiliar

and somehow horrifying

bleeding like a bruise

as yet unseen.

Maybe the brittle disappointment of

my ancestors, their sagas of

grief, shifting quiet loss, building

like ant hills awaiting flesh to

pierce with poison is my

only purpose.

There is shame in realizing

I am guilty of what I abhorred, this

softening violence, a compound fracture in

my psyche, alarming long held belief

I was kind

when there is no nice affability in

what I sometimes feel

only a wish to burn

deeply, leave charred and dead

those who would harm me or try

to fight, thinking me defenseless.

In that, I inherit the family tradition

of haters, long held like tarnished

shield, we have only endured by

cutting down those who would harm us

we are warriors without goodness

we fight sometimes because we like

the taste of spilt blood on our sorrowful lips

it is a necessary thing, I realize, that I am the last.

So when you tell me I am kind and good

do not use those platitudes so keenly

nor trust entirely, my motivation

I am every bit as wild as that feral

hungry, you bring in from the cold

who scratches you deeply, first

time you mistakenly take her purr

for pleasured trust

for I

know no such.

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Faith

My love

it is so hard to keep

faith

with every day there are changing shades from day to night

sometimes I am comforted by fireflies and evening moth

who dual beyond the porch, betrayed by flicker and swat

I imagine the patterns of her wings, that magic sting of light

so short their lives compared to ours, so rich and meaningful I would infer

sometimes it is the exclusion of pain gives me rest

when I can at last unroll my carpet and forget

carrying the weight all day, a vase of ache absent of flower

to place this nowhere and have it melt away

I lie in the bath and heady steam dissipates reality

in those musings there is only the delight of a girl

seeking her passion in lingered meandered imagining

and you come to me, full of health and unharmed yet

by cruel flint and staunch of your absent conscience

and you lay me down and make of me what you will

a thousand pieces of me broken and rebuilt

which I give with my all, for you were and you remain still

far more than sense can convey

in the hour of day when dreams are gone to sleep

I see the cruelty of your take and take and take

the hunger of your keep and how I was but a thing, in your

cabinet of curiosities to be taken out and squeezed when you

thirsted or when times were hard and you needed the succor of

kindness to tuck you in, nothing of you was sincere or loving

all that I held dear possessed the sound of my own breaking

it was as if I had become pupil to mistreatment

learned many times on illiterate whip of inheritance

children soon become acquiescent to disregard

I didn’t know how to be worthy and you took my pain

pinned it to a velvet card and called me Opodiphthera Eucalypti

my blush and powder, the soft rubbed fur and bleed of color

round and round my pattern and maze, sucking from thistle

the gypsy without, I live in silk and attraction to light

pollinating only the fruit of predators like yourself

as you pinch my wings with your greed and whisper

my lunar, my atlas, spin your silken web across my longing

for I have never learned my worth and you wish to

gobble on my spirit as you may an Autumn apple

the fragrance of your dissection

my love

it is too easy

to stay my life in wait of your call

watching others continue onward and myself find

nothing but the covet and anguish of a prisoner

if I had the strength to

I’d hurl myself against the glass

leaving a smudge of myself in technicolor

for children to press their noses against and wonder

oh what ever life could make such a kaleidoscope

and in these mixings of burning and yearning

parched by want and crushed to nothing

the dancer emerges broken and fragmented

to spirit into night her ether and the longing

she is free of her torment and bound to the wax and wane

of one who has rubbed against and been caught by

a terrible rope, woven with obsidian, the shade of pain

my love

it is too hard to remain

faithful

to your brand of hurt

and live in dying with every pursuit

I have long imagined I am already prepared

for the hour, the moment, pain exceeds its curse

and slipping like oil and water and vinegar bound

we change from solid to infinity and beyond

where only the stain of who we were and what we bore

that burning need to consume, that hunger for

all the poison within your sickening and how

never did you rest until the very perish was wrought

standing still like a girl reaching for

something invisible

my love

it is the fresh unopened rose

and her tightly closed promise

shall see tomorrow and claim

the glory

for I will not be there to witness

this new day and those trespasses for this comforts

me in such a depth as if every kind of anguish

were salved by the knowledge this too shall end

and you will dissolve in time

beyond the fragment of what has been

into the very air like things we cannot yet see

whirling and catching the air in relief

for moths have never lived long enough it seems

to know their beauty and how it is

for us who live sometimes too long

and rise to see another day, alone

Unrecoverable

Showbiz

I am not a singer

you will not find me on stage

I was never her

she held a sway over you, a celebrity

that I did not puncture

now I see it was always

you and she

I was never there with you

I am happier that way

though it took some mending

for no mortal coil wishes to be deceived

or possess no value

be a thing of ridicule and promises

empty and fanciful

least by silver tongued claimer, with beautiful eyes

some seek big cities, bright lights

those of us born beneath incubator bulbs

among shut out people with dull familial instinct

want something sincere and reaching

not blistering and hot, a thousand egos in a city that doesn’t sleep

I spent

a long time realizing this

I wasted time trying to change hearts

that can’t be altered

though time, for a writer

Is never truly wasted

and emotion

for a lover

Is never truly without value

even if it was only I, who loved

there is a place for all things

and I know now, what to do

the next time someone

spoonfeeds me dreams

says; It’s only you baby, it’s only ever you

I’ll check

who is performing behind their eyes

before

giving

mine

How many women does it take?

It was raining the day the movers truck pulled up

piling furniture into the back, exposed to wet streets

everything dirty and unfamiliar

when you take your safety out of its box

when you unlatch your secrets

and expose the insides of a locket

sticky mouths seek to further that exposure

until nothing of your peace remains

but the belly of your secrets on display

as if you were sitting in class without underwear

as if the abuse etched in your soul were a t-shirt

as if his fingers weren’t in the dark but had been

dipped in luminescent paint and everywhere they went

left their grimy imprint / yet you think

this horror may have been the very best thing

as wretched as exposure may taste

at least it wouldn’t be a case of disbelief

how many women does it take?

for one person to not hesitate

how many must say;

he did this / that happened / we are not okay

because of this / why do I have to prove / with gore

and soiled soul / the truth / why isn’t it sufficient that I say

why why why

did he lay a hand on me?

how many women does it take?

a juror in the Bill Cosby case disclosed the reason for his guilty verdict;

I believed he was guilty because he said he had drugged girls

hearing it from the horses mouth got my vote

are we bidding on a horse? Did you check the inside of his mouth?

what of the SIXTY women who spoke?

their voices do not warrant proof?

were people just speaking words?

to deaf sign posts stating;

move on / get over it / don’t make a fuss / why should we believe you?

one person has lied before / you must be lying / that’s our automatic default

what hope then

for one girl?

one single soul

violated in the dark

of a house when all is moved out

and she is left inside a shell, within a shell

the echoes of trucks taking memories

somewhere else

how many women does it take?

to be heard.

This is all I want

This is all I want

I want to separate you from the lie

divide the rotten from edible

keep the true half

this is all I want

I want to deny and I want to rewind

to the place you first made

me feel

there underneath the lemon tree

with tin ornaments chiming

like informal instruments of hurt

waiting for master

there as sun dappled river water

turning brown to copper

you crushed my fingers together

knotted my heart within yours

there in that sharp aspect of honesty

dissolving fear

you could not have lied then

looking at me with your onyx eyes

hiding nothing

there when I opened my chest

everything waiting within the wings

poured into you

we mixed ourselves in each other

blood, tar, tears, bruises and wishes

changing color, swapping features

indistinguishable in rebirth

I could no more tell you where I ended

and you began to exist

twins of sorrow, born to feel everything

finding each other the only salve

when it got too much you would

grip me tightly and we’d see

the reflection of us in the water

shaking with light and misunderstanding

as if time could not contain

all that we felt

 

this is all I want

for you to say you were not

a figment of my imagination

a missing part of stepping stone

to the other side where you stood

waving and urging me on

cross over

here I am

I promise

I will never leave

I hear your voice low and

reedy, carried by wind down stream

my socks are wet

my hands tremble

I reach for you

grabbing chalky air, dry with claim

where you were once whole and certain

now dark water is still as glass

I see myself reflected alone

emptied of promise

The high & the low

Whilst you in your helium balloon

parodied cause

for attention and reward

the high & the low of cruel regard

I observed your shift and nuance

they say hawks are not smart

my IQ would concur

we watch those who

flail in baskets of grandiose words

promises made by false hearts

unable to suture

truth

they are the ruin of

even those who knew

their fate would warp and turn

evergreen from copper

plunged by impatient fists

with metallurgic use

those fevered minds

hoisting mercurial delusion

as flag over reason

swim shallow at day break

tinkering in their playground

and we who are

fatigued by empty surety

hold on until the cold burns us

lapsing down into clasping water

where no echo of their vanity shall show

but a still surface of glass reflecting

would that they could pause

finally see the error

mouthing lessons

unheard by fools

with inflation and sharp need

for the clamor of diffident stranger

over the solitude

of one heart

beating in

deep freeze

On the other side of rebuke

I used to say

O talk to me

open your maraschino mouth

pull the glazed words out

until they come undone

now I say

keep quiet

stay absent

I have found what I didn’t yet know

standing on the other side of rebuke

we forsake our blazing joy

under the suffocation of those

who demand all of us

and none of us

I spent a life time waiting

to stop hating myself

when the girl with the sparrow in her limbs

took me by the hand and bid me dance with her

entreat I may rinse my history in her cupped smile

held under chin like buttercup tells fortune to

gilded child, with her smoothness and her beguile

latching emptiness and filling it with stars

bursting over us like white flames caution the acrobat

to walk steadier in the marsh of emotion

I didn’t think I could start over, my chapter was

dulled by the passage of hands holding me back

she knew I could

when I lost my footsteps on the other side of rebuke

she picked me up, held me still until my heartbeat

slowed and the music filled me anew

Only one fall

When we met

you treated me as if

all the world did no longer matter

so long as I

was within your sphere of sight

you said

sunlight was always

warm on the top of my head

turning me golden in your regard

as echoes of reflections

cast like arrows from dark windows

reaching up, tall glass shining down on us

I knew

a person on a pedestal

has only one fall

a fracture deep in marrow

hurting more than broken bones

when you finally

stop seeing my light

I will love you more

when you finally toss me aside

it will hurt me greater

such is the game of chess

of uneven love

a synonym of unevenness

two people who thought

hurt and pain could never

be part of their bond

becoming the greater sound

like blood in my ears rushing

filling up my cries

into pillows not stuffed enough

to stay dry

(art by Lorenzo Mattotti)

Doigts croisés

Watch the fingers

of the eater

parting her meaty pieces

enveloping her meal

she will eat you alive

if you climb onto her plate

you may think it impossible

but cannibals waste nothing

in their pursuit and sate