It’s a bitter little thing.
As I bid it adieu
and sent it on its way,
it spun a smoky path,
bloodying the bystanders.
Finding no hosts,
and diminished in the seeking,
on it travelled,
parasitic in its contagion.
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Shortcuts
Make cuts carefully,
in concealable places,
so as not to be known
as an attention whore.
Bundled in fives,
as at Shawshank.
You and I know that it’s better
than a serious spanking.
That it’s our punishment,
our atonement,
for speaking with the Devil.
Time for sleep
I cry inside.
I see the sky
in robin’s egg blue.
Things of old
have turned to gold,
unglittering.
An alchemy,
an accretion,
to life’s masterpiece.
I fear I’m being asked
to sign my name.
There are nodding heads,
prayerful hands.
But, layered sheets of sleep
settle upon me.
Soon.
Tree
A Dream of Life by Karen Kleis, flickr
He took your lives, Colette and Barbara from Iowa, a place smelling of milkfat and hay, where your Mama was looking for you, and he buried you in a shallow grave in Port St. Lucie. Nightly a priest performs an exorcism of the Devil Tree where your souls haunt Florida.
If not today, then when?
Mister Macho,
I’m not after your attention,
nor will I give you mine.
Don’t mistake me for a doormat.
I know about theatrics,
and I have a long fuse.
Attack my kin or my friend,
and I will call you out.
It’s not bravado.
Just old age that doesn’t care no more.
Throw that punch.
You’ll likely kill me.
There are worse ways to go.
A winter’s vision
The girl had rosy-appled cheekbones, soul-grown by those blossoming blue eyes. As she looked up at the streetlit snow, she shone amid the crowd of parade watchers. The slight smile of her small mouth made me feel as if it were mine to see, and mine alone, this time.
The names we pin
Be not offended
If I don’t remember what you told me.
Or if I tell you something for the second or third time.
I need a good defragging,
And, now that we are all homebodies,
It’s excusable to forget what day it is.
The names we pin,
The borders we mark
On borrowed continents.
To be, or not to be?
To know what to say,
or whether to say it.
To loose one’s breast-felt feelings
before their season fails.
To decide
what is fitting,
or might damage,
be ignored,
or be spurned.
Suffer, does the fool,
for the promise of love,
while ships pass by in midnight’s glove.
Brainchild
Who taught
the slug-brained?
That bovine seat of thought
that runs the basic body,
five and dime.
Be wary,
for the tether of its beast
may be quick to snap,
and, the hurtling act done,
the brain-child will stand protected,
in its blameless innocence.
A cure for the chills
Me, I like a slate-tinted sky.
Shales of ice,
opaque underfoot.
The remains of thistles and rushes.
Holistic winds that purify
all but notions.
Think: How our bones and tears
have fed the oceans.
But now, I am for home.
Pour myself a cup of tea,
and think about the bubbles.
Aremyfeetofftheground 