Drip drop drown

Oh, the rain pitter patters to the beat of my heart

I fear the pattern drumming as the drip drops start

the devils got me in a wet grip leaking love from my parts

this storm is welling up

   

I try to quell it with my quill but I’m splashing around

the gutters filling to the point I think I’m gonna drown

floating up I feel my feet leaving the ground

I get the giving up

    

Out of control in this hole, I impart

the grief of gallon buckets filling till they’re falling apart

a soul can only tread the floods

with makeshift boats on the blood

until it all dries up and you’re stuck in the mud

     

The clouds gather and I crouch like a battered wife

It’s still shallow sheets of sprinkles but it’s taking my life

this condensation’s condescension cuts like a knife

it just a bloody mess

 

My lips touch the ceiling siphoning air too thin 

I’d call for help, but I’ve already given in

If this downpour has a drain, it’s damned in sin

time to acquiesce 

   

Pull the plug let it swirl

sewage slurping circle to hell

The first beat,

when I first loved,

it was easy to tell

I was marked in red

and I already fell

That sinister sump pump

Thump thumping

Sucking the swell

Of leaking hearts and skies

Far too late to be wise

It’s been 40 days and nights of being baptized

Whirlpools and undertows have their prize

Priming for the kill

“The New Year is more than a fresh start; instead it is rather a gradual conditioning of ends, preparing us for the eventuality of our own death.”

A lot had gone through my mind when I wrote the quote above.

Why January 1st? Other cultures have other dates to celebrate a new year.

The actual day seems so superfluous. How is one new day newer than the new day you were just given the day before?

The beginning of a new year is not about starting over. Anyone who has made a resolution can attest to the attempt at a fresh start that only results in abject failure and the return to usual habits. We need endings just as much as we need beginnings. This is why the ball DROPS. And because most fail to see opportunity in ending and beginning every morning when the sun rises and our feet hit the ground, it has to be done in a lavish and attention grabbing way such as wearing sparkly clothes, getting wasted with your friends and for the rednecks in my area, maybe blowing something up. We aren’t celebrating an uncertain future. We’re burying the past and sending it off with a bang. Auld Lang Syne is the funeral dirge for Father Time.

Government and business need to close their books. We need a sense of finality in small increments. Otherwise life seems like one big run on sentence. In fact, life’s way of getting women to quit talking so much is called a period. (I kid, but it is funny, you gotta admit). All these cycles in life… it’s just dead eggs down the toilet.

A new year is the obvious result of what must be done: Ending.

It doesn’t matter when. It just has to happen sometime.

Call me morbid, call me Debbie Downer, I don’t care. It’s the truth and we all know it.

We’re all gonna die and we need to rehearse one year at a time.

.

Boarding up my windows

To prepare myself for winter

I am boarding up my windows,

filling my pantry,

compacting my bones

so moisture cannot

penetrate the joints.

The world will forget me more

but I am resolved to

avert the chill

with hunkered down loneliness,

oceans of tea,

fleece swathed solidarity.

Removed from frigidity

I am stone

alone

with my CB radio and scanner

leaning close

listening for chatter

flares and afghans at hand

in case the roof caves

If you find me in the thaw

Put a can opener to my lips

To hear the hiss and murmur

Of  secrets lonely women hold

In their ever sliding glacial hearts

There are storms no one can endure

And measures that are never enough

To save a home without love.

Abducted

The moon is for lovers and loners

to be washed in the blue-gray light

With shivering awe

of goosebumps, like craters,

Ruminations abound in

stone hearts’ illuminations

And in the darkness, the sky

is the visage of campfires

ablaze in a valley below

In red and blue twinkles

stars flicker and echo

light years of stories of folks

These distant lights impel

a soul hopeful

Consolation in constellations

flash glowing eons of wonders beheld

Inspiration and romance

creep softly into every

fold of feeling exposed

Doppelgänger

I have been clear
I have been direct
I don’t insinuate
still you reject
all the ways I care
now I don’t dare
to talk.

I’m beside myself
but still alone
you’ve checked out
so has my clone
the lack of change
is still the same
but I’m not to blame

I’ve played the game
Of Stepford wives and bedroom whores
The thanks I get is a Cold War
Shoulder over ice in cocktail cups
I’ve had enough
I’ve given up.

But the lioness deep down roars
To fight for the man you once were
Regardless of fruitless scars
I’ve earned
I suppose I’m still willing to be burned

…for a cause worth fighting for.

My heart is a hoarder

I don’t need a butler
I need a soul mate
You selfish fuck
You’ve discarded love for the clink in your cup
My heart is a hoarder
Every dirty scrap of love
Is in here somewhere
But I’m nowhere, like you
buried under guilt and grime
Ashamed to let my children see
I’ve held to precious things too long
Until it makes me ill
And I can’t find what I’m looking for
Your caviar and coat tails
Will not clear a magic path
To aortic spasms
Memorial chasms
From diaries stacked lifetime high
Deluged in rivers of nights left lonely
And mountains made of apathy
Covering the spans of space
Inside me where you seldom return
I have a big fucking shovel
And a rented 2 ton trash bin
At my ready
All you have to do is
Look in my eyes and
Give me your time

She was rusted shut

I am shaking the rust off;

you dance below

as if it is snow

and you are a child

wild

with joy.

once I shine

I will be with you boy

our new start

will be

polished

to blinding

and I am finding

corrosion through tears

just puts me

in proverbial junkyards,

a discard.

it’s this hard

to say sorry,

scrub myself clean,

ask wizards for hearts,

abide in your

absurd dreams.

I’m the trophy of redemption,

the machine of simpatico,

and a tool

with rosy cheeks,

ready for the sequel

to my virgin ignition

You are the oil of ambition

to reach a place like home.

Addiction

Our congenital ghosts,

those haunting habits,

permeating every drop of DNA,

sprinkled with the crumbs

of our ancestor’s sins,

are difficult to cleave,

could make us bleed

centuries all at once.

Carving it out

is as immense a task

as retrieving past breaths

fooling death,

and choking elusive phantoms.

These family trees

with gilded limbs,

wrought in cancerous desire,

bound in wires

mere mortals strive to prune.

Changing the course of fate

is a futile feat

but I’ve seen great men beat

these invisible wraiths.

To strangle an unseen foe

proves an eidolon from a hero.

I know there is power in you;

enough acid

creeping through your veins

to erase the possession,

and etch lessons,

you will never forget.

The missing bulb

Of all the words in infinity

there is but one that’s just right

Like reaching into the darkened skies

to pluck a star so bright

I pull it down and plug it in

to complete the string

You are the exacting gem I want

amongst the everything

 

vibrations

vibrations

in perfect sync

with the quiver

of my cells

every pluck

my heart swells

guitars, harps,

ukes, violins

banjos, cellos,

mandolins

they all sing

with their entrancing strings

matching the pulse in me

trembling

harmony

Fair-weather Friend

My joy is gone

with the sun

but was that me at all?

My woeful winter

could be my center

My fair-weather friend,

leads me on.

  

All the fancies and the foils

those sweltering nights encourage

leave me when frost bites hard.

The lump that’s left

is the real me, I guess

That boisterous party girl

is a facade 

built by summer’s

glimmer-prismic holographs.

  

She cares not 

about the worries

in my frigid core,

that fair-weather friend,

damned doppelganger.

Reports say she’s South,

basking in radiance

while I am here 

crawling through fog 

and puddles

of quiet sorrow.

 

I know she returns

because I give her substance,

soul;

and I tolerate her

so I can be included

in the follies of

unfledged communes.

 

 So pathetic and dismal am I

that half of me leaves

for half of the year.

The Golden Years

They sit in their electric chairs

like ignored marionettes

and if that switch did more than lift them gently to their feet,

it’d animate them more than they’ve been in the last 10 years

  

They’ve grown far beyond old;

their eyes, Dali’s clocks

drooping from their twiglike frames,

their old oak fingers, twisted and gnarled 

around their rubber stoppered third leg,

their proverbial leaky faucets dripping odes 

in the key of Chinese water torture…

They’ve lost their grip on life,

too tired and weak to clasp the hand of death

   

Every prayer is a plea.

        

Although they are slow and decrepit

they want something swift

that comes easy like dawn

but it’s long past dark

and it has been for sometime

still shuffling, unseeing

with their knobby, arthritic knuckles

full of pills, 

their silver crowns adroned with geriatrirc mange

their mortal masks, sliding

ever closer towards hell

mottled and be-moled crusty brown

        

Have you ever spent all the seeds from an apple,

cut it open 4 times and put it back together

and left it sitting out for 1,000 days?

The Hearth in my Heart

Trouble

The kind of trouble

that comes from solitude

is the kind you should worry about most

and also the kind you can best control

Lack of Vision

Hell is what you see

when the rest of the world is blind

Let us not pretend

that we cannot see

and become silent liars

muted into cotillion manners

dowsed in plastic frill

and bound by bleached teeth handshakes

History is written when thinkers speak

visible truth goes streaking

shocking habitual deniers into sight

There is hope, yet,

of gradual human progress

without concealing,

open dialogue

without a script,

and building relations

without fumbling for a light switch

Reverb

when you touch those strings
for hours after it reverberates,

adrenaline shaking me delirious

like holy spirit epileptic manifestations

in the aisles of your rhythmic temple

romantically cleansed in the murkiest of baptisms

                         

you sing,
and it carves me hollow,

scraped clean, empty,
guts and seeds, stripped bare to the rind and lit up smiling

   

every note

standing hairs on end till I’m a forest

lost in the bewildering wilderness you croon

these heart wrenching choral confessions

that unfurl in wooden ribbons

from your oaken diaphragm roots,

rising up and out, scratching and grabbing air

growing into every open ear,

holding attention boa tight

your gnarling lyric branches

weaving through every orifice

choking the sun with sweet darkness

 

 just keep me captive

tethered and chained to your next word,

my lungs asphyxiating

in the black ink lagoon

you’ve spelled your lines and measures with

I’ve got it bad, this malady of your ballads

I want to manifest all your everythings

tie myself in strings

and set myself between your knees

the devil will believe me

             

I want to zip the flesh down from my neck

peel back my ribs and beg for another hit

your bow, in viscera slicing strokes

each horse hair cut, gut weeping enchantments

you play and we offer blood

I’m not sure who’s sacrificing

but I’ll give anything for more

there is no coming back to real life after this

this narcotic need to feed on

more scores

 

Venge Binge

Wait up for me, boy

and you best leave the light off for me

you don’t wanna see me comin’

through the dark

I’ll be pregnant with rage

and you’re due to be the daddy

I wanna see the whites of your eyes

sunny side up,

your liver paired wonderfully with onions

an’ I won’t cry a single tear

I’ll be pounding you into skirt steak

with the knife set we got on our wedding day

and wearing the cloven hoofed cherry red stilettos

I bought on your credit

to match the splatters

every speck, atonement

for every drop of chardonnay, scotch and keystone

that replaced your vows

and how

I quit scoring my skin

to quiet your heart

and now mine screams

to tear yours through your ribs beating

to be julienned

and marinated in the cabernet reduction

it deserves

and for dessert,

your coque eclair

sans hair

on our formal china set

in the kitchen

with a candlestick

Dirty Wind

blow your hot gossip in my ear,

it makes my pinwheel spin

it generates the wind

that makes us tornado friends

ripping up roots that ran deep

tossing frailer trailers into troubled heavens

to have them crash

spilling our secret whores,

lipstick smeared, bra strap dangling,

10 mile scattered garbage nobody would want

if it was free

you wanna rape somebody’s trust

and have it traced back to me?!

we’re all closet nose-pickers, butt scratchers

daydreamers of greener grass,

a tighter ass

and infatuated with wrecks

but heck,

game’s off when your shit’s on deck

blow your putrid gossip in my ear

until it cranks my windmill around

you gave me power and you’re going down

I’m going to the source to return

your dirty breeze

wrapped up in brown paper

and a tag that says return to sender

yeah, I’m the ender

I’ll burn the news stands down

until they tell me something

that will make

lives

better.

 

 

White Rabbit

There is so much I can be doing,

so I procrastinate sleep

there is so much to dream,

so I delay waking

Where ever I am,

infinite possibility

making me late.

Lovedrunk Punch

Your kindness, a bribe

that buys my silence

For every kiss, a squelch

celebrated with aqueous amber

The heart is damper

and cannot swim

when it’s so wet

I’ll bet I’ll forget

how naive I am

and go back to being more naive…

The love you wanted is gone

and now it’s permission you seek

from the hollow of what was your wife

When you’ve already taken it

with your kindness and kisses

your brainwashed misses

drunk with the fairytale kool-aid

while you romance the bottle

strip the throttle

and crash.