Misogyny

I have seen too much trouble
Weight, heavy in my heart
Gravity yanking at tears all the day long
I smear ivory peach
over the purple and red under my eyes
and muster up enough of a placid gaze
to deter questions

Notwithstanding,
the twenty-somes are hitting on me
relentlessly
I’m so low
and don’t understand the beauty they see
and frankly don’t give a damn
What they want isn’t there
They don’t care about me
Bastards like these are the reason I’m empty

I am a paler blue than you are used to

I am a paler blue than you are used to

I am milk from the breast

The blind man’s eye

The morning sky

 

 

I am a paler pink and it’s not like you think

I am the dead man’s skin

The winter cheek

Wheezing life, oblique

 

 

I am twisted spine wrapped in barbed wire and twine

The clink on dinner glass

The old barn in the wind

Weakened, thin

 

I’m a softer gray than I was yesterday

I am the abandoned school’s window

The late autumn fog

The belly-up pollywog

 

 

Trapped beneath ice

I am a horrid last gasp

The precipice teetering boulder

The secret the dying man told her

 

 

I am all that fizzles

The last millimeter of wick

I am the faint sound of haunting

That is actually nothing blowing in the wind

 

 

I am the last straw the cow devours

In a land of famine

Digested four times before

The final feast is never more

 

 

I am the fraying shroud

on the cold slab

the scratching dry quill

the unfinished words of the will

 

 

I am the ruins

behind the undergrowth

I am the ship on the ocean floor

a splinter on death’s door

 

 

I am a palor of green

A mold on the cheese

I am the child that floats

the hanged man’s throat

 

 

I am a gutter of leaves

after four months of rain

I am slime

I block the drain

 

 

I am ash on a bonnet

the clay on work boots

I am the broken ax

the recipient of forty whacks

 

 

I am all that decays

I am all that stops shining

I am all of the hues

of adieu

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.

Happy Birthday

Everything’s on cue

you wouldn’t know what to

if I told you

The annual let down,

the frown

is coming around

I’m all anointed

in the disappointed

I’m appointed

to be alone

in a clattered home

and write these poems

to get relief

from unchecked grief

and ignored beefs

It’s another year

and I’m still here

on the same tier

assumed to have provisions

but the incisions

show derision

I will display

and communicate

a need for an embrace

Alas, I am nobody’s princess and

just tissue wrapped crimson

my birthdays are just lonesome

I am a reflection

of decades of disconnection

and rejection

I can’t help but to think it’s my own fault.

Mellowfluous

On days like these

ink creeps down the confessing page

rain slides down the windows

and blood weeps slow through my polar veins

the coffee perks and drips in sync

and someday soon

all these liquids will efface

amalgamize in a swirl in the palm of my hand

and I will smear them down my sullen face

Harbor

No words can touch the tender love

of mother holding babe in arms

nursing, whispering, dreaming, singing

it is the harbor away from harm

.

The child’s heart, a seed

from the mother’s fruited tree

grows before her very eyes

into ripe maturity

.

With guarded heart, she tends his scrapes

wipes his nose and meets his teachers

watches him shave for the first time

and roots for him from the high school bleachers

.

The letting go comes very slow

if ever it should occur at all

she sees the man before her

yet to her, he’s still so very small

.

No words can touch the unspeakable grief

of mother holding babe in arms

an urn of ash from a horrid crash

her harbor utterly disarmed