7-16-11

Fingerprints melt across the sky,

Signs of your hand,

Each breath a motion.

Your hair,

In tangles,

Silhouetted against the

Backdrop of your genius.

Little children

Fly through empty heights

Hunting for their next delight.

Echoing around your feelers,

Friendly glowing lights

Inviting me to come.

They're singing for you,

My love,

These tiny bow-legged brothers.

They fill in notes I forget,

Taking up my stolid slack.

The whole orchestra crescendos

And while I sit,

Eaten alive,

Your gentleness surrounds me.

Lover I Don't Have To Love

I was walking down the street and I saw a cat in a tree. He sat there, smiling through green glass eyes, black as night, with diamonds sparkling round his throat. He spoke, trying to gain my understanding through a language I never knew. I wish I had. I wanted to listen, to help the trapped cat – afraid of heights and too stubborn to admit it. He kept calling, begging my assistance, so I dialed 911, but no one answered. I guess the world was full of real emergencies. Ones that didn’t involve me.

My heart lived in that tree, stuck there with that cat. I stared at him, he stared at me. I think an hour passed, or maybe only ten minutes. I glanced over the bark, its ridges telling a history I wasn’t old enough to remember. Only nineteen, only a girl, still caged in by the ideologies of my parents. My insides revolting against them, rotting away in silent cynicism. A breeze blew by, I didn’t notice, except my hair broke the contest. I lost, averting my eyes while trying to tame the fire flowing around me.

The tree, a species unknown to me, stood gloating at my folly, at my helplessness. Its leaves, the deep green of late summer, asked me to touch them, though I refrained, afraid to show my impropriety. Each one had a number, a name, a life separate from those around it, and their black master presided over them all. He wasn’t a captive, merely captivated. When the breeze threw one or two of his subjects in his face he swatted them away, punishing them for their forwardness. He stared down, haughty on his lofty throne. I was a bug, a mere inconvenience, nothing for the great king to trifle with. Hurt, I tuned and started to walk away.

He called again, this time louder than before, a plaintive cry – maybe he was trapped more than I thought. Maybe he wasn’t really in control. Maybe everything I thought was a lie.

I ran back, reaching for him and his glistening collar bones and he leapt, five feet between us. He flew like a raven, like a seal in water, straight towards me, determination and anger creasing his eyes. I was wrong.

He wanted to smother me. He wanted to steal my soul. I wasn’t ready to die. I closed my eyes and caught him by his jewels, a loud crack resounding with the fall. There was no cat. The bracelet rested on my finger, its owner missing.

I stood, staring at the gift in my palm, placing it tenderly on my wrist, letting it catch the mid-morning sunlight. Its brilliance blinded me. I smiled, then faltered. What did I do to deserve this? Why was such a precious gift entrusted to me? I glanced around, worried someone saw the exchange, paranoid of my jealous neighbors, particular the witch who lived in the house this tree belonged to. I had already stolen one of her possessions without her knowledge; I don’t think she’d bear the loss of two.

One of her little brats came outside and I felt the bile, so I ran. I ran hard. I don’t think she saw me, but she saw him, lying in the grass with his empty green eyes, cherry smeared lips, and barren neck. I heard the scream follow me down the road but I didn’t stop running. I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t stop.

Tea Today

I bleed out

cushions

entwining my back,

roots of tubes

shoot forth from

my thighs.

He merely sits and stares.

I'm consumed

by Godric's greatest frenzy

switching

black to white,

moldy grey

gone.

He stares through green glass eyes.

Blue stains

entrap my arm,

the baby's lost

in thickets

full of

puce-ish flowers.

His eyes that never knew.

Sinking down

through half-formed

thoughts -

rough weaves,

writing sits unread

crying for attention

I give to Matt instead.

He leaves me with those eyes,

forgetting my once live state,

seeing only pools

of human non-existence.

Mallory Malloy

I am a Ghost.

Mallory Malloy.

Melding into faux leather

Turning green to match my ire.

Who is she?

That strange thing crouched in the trash can

Waiting to burst forth,

Buried in a sea of paper towels.

She's bleeding pity

On those pale pink walls

Seven called about,

But the endless barrage of cattle

Never hear over their

Noisy swallows and timed defecations

While staring at those same pink stalls,

Chewing over last's months columns.

Paradise sits above her horizon

Teasing worn out eyes

With their failed attempt at spreading God

Through glimpses of our own created Eden -

My own eyes close with vines,

Grass grows out my ears,

She took her belongings with her

Leaving me boxed on spinning wood

Without saying goodbye.

I am a Ghost.

Maurice - Part 1

There's a man following me,

Always lurking

On the edge of unconsciousness,

Floating three feet higher than he should.

I haven't decided if it's God,

Or Dad,

Or Great Uncle Percy-

Who's bookcase lives

In the bedroom on the left

Under a display of poisonous teacups -

Or maybe none of the above.

My overly vivid imagination

Tricks my eyes on

More than one occasion.

Still,

His image,

Not nearly as frightening as hers -

That terrible woman last night

Who tried to eat me whole -

Is a constant companion,

A chilling Maurice,

Warning me of a future

Even he couldn't escape.

Evening Drive

Air hair cuts spiderwebs in my neck,

With sixty miles of wind at work,

Each end a scabbard sharp, unsheathed.

Hello strand whose name I know,

You've blocked leftover graves

Keeping them at bay,

Simultaneously calling me closer.

He hasn't spoke in four years time,

That old cricket-

The one I've known for years-

Crawled out of his unmarked grave

And into my passenger side glass,

Singing while a stranger's lights

Fly closer,

Over stains of people who were,

Ominously bright.

I am no deer.

I open up,

Harmonizing with a monster I never met,

Not till this night.

It's beauty takes my breath,

Sound, blue black,

Floats away behind her.

Edith wraps round my head,

Working her way inside

Through visions on my skin,

Stealing my expected solitude

Not knowing why she came,

While a silver slab sits idly by.

now

Our currency

sides in teas,

and flowing fabrics,

and thousands of

hundred dollar shoes

only worn for

one weak time

causing so much pain,

but torture

willingly permitted

is really an

ill-fated quest

to recapture what we were.