No hiss

There hung a single icicle
puncturing the pregnant moon, sinking

I came to pray to the night,
give my winter confession,
whisper visible breath
in hopes the silence would steal it
and I knew it would
because the moon, she made it far enough
to escape the chill that would expose
her leaking air;
the sound already stolen away

The round world will never know tonight, we deflated, you and I.

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Cryogenic Martyr

Winter is a denial;
playground earth is shut down and inaccessible.
I hide inside the walls and deeper, yet;
shut down and inaccessible.
No reaping chill will find me.

Merely 2 months ago,
I bent my body beneath the limbo bar
And now,
there is no space left
only arrested, stiff defeat

There is a sole rescuer
to swaddle me in Gortex and down
and eskimo kiss my popsicle nose
who reveals swingsets, trails
and margarita cold sunsets

I am the cryogenic martyr,
the suspended neanderthal of an ice age
waiting to hear chisel or drip
My own thoughts reverberating
in a molecularly small space

Such aches from stifled nights and days!
I say if such an attack
causes us to dart from shelter to shelter
that I will not be a hero today
but I will be your recon mission

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

Sparkling Season

Christmastime is so full of sparkles, glitter, twinkling… Why?
All these pretty things that catch our eye;
dangling orbs and flickering lights,
and moonlit snow we ne’er get to see,
it is all part of the holiday revelry.

Shiny papered boxes, big bowed, stacked to build eagerness,
trees adorned with flashy dress,
sparks that fly under a mistletoe’s kiss;
we gather to sing shimmering songs of soul-tingling faithfulness.

All around, sensations blink us into joy;
glistening sugar cookies and battery powered toys.

We give much less than we can all take in,
in this dazzling, hurried, incandescent season.

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.

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.

Drawn in

It’s best you breathe the night air slow;

your lungs will crystallize

if you pant

Rest the tip of your tongue

before it solidifies

into a leaping porpoise statue

Give the night its time

and the muses their silence

they scribe in frost

and show us the way

back to the hearth.

 

Seasonally Affected

The doors are closing.

A slit of light remains;

mere moments until

it rains.

Then,

I will hear the loud clap

of locks

me, shocked in stocks

imprisoned

picking at my own skin

for ink

hatching marks

scratching in the dark

mumbling refrains.

Blood fills the tank

Flood in the dank

chambers

drowning in my own

gurgled breath.

Only the rope

with the noose

holds the truth

if I want to escape

me.

The first robins’ egg

will dry it up,

no giving up

when the sun

shines once more.

The door will swing wide,

I’ll step outside,

squinting, weak

and likely unfit for release.

Unaffected Fool

The feminine winter

it’s skin, tissue paper

legs unshaven

The masculine winter,

with his even stride

believes he can reconstitute her

Let the ol’ Bastard be lost

The tracks in the snow

are so obviously

those of a old man drunk on scotch

I can see the trail,

a staggered meter

of one-two, one nununun-two,

his decrepit left hip

hoisting the burden

onto the right

and a rift between he

and an old friend

sent him into the sleet and wind

Now we’re tracking him.

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

Lovers in a Hot Pocket

It is not fear, my dear, that keeps me here

It is a juvenile resistence to peel back the sheets and face the slap of cold morning air

I cling to our heaven with my head on your chest, and my shoulder snug and nestled under your arm.

Our feet, the friction, like a cricket’s song

and your tenderest kisses placed on forehead’s hairline

Our limbs, toasty pretzel-entwined

our fondling hands speak language signs

And then, how awful we recognize time

 

The shifting blind striped light

The rooster’s pestering crow

nags that we must go

That frozen lump in my breast

Winter is the time

of year

My cold, still heart stops

I am an expressionless

face of chalk

growing too sad and tired to talk

 

becoming a cancer

that adheres

to the innards of the house

seeking regular chemo treatments

of tea

and then undoing my progress reading mournful poetry

 

Many things left

undone

unfelt cheer is my fault,

deteriorating relationships

and gardens

until the Spring brings my pardon

A dash of pepper

Black flying birds like a dash of pepper in the twilight sky

Scatter down through the naked branches that winter disrobed

Ice glazed puddles, breath you can see…

The beauty and solitude shivers through me.