A sudden cessation
A last surprised breath
A fall
Then nothing
An ignominious end
To a mediocre life
A clamber and a clamour
For divinity
Yet still better than drawn-out agonies
Words and words and words
Feeling the insistence
Of a slow knife.
Thin Lizzie
I am with the thin cat~
her love, she shows~
uncaring of sharp bones~
face pushing, pure purring ~
knowing~
how long she will be needed~
to carry me home, after toying with Joy~
and just how long I might stay.
The tail of the thin cat
It is two in the morning,
and the toik toik echo
of dripping water
seems conversational.
Whisper-hisses ask,
in fancy,
~How long is a piece of string~
~When will withdrawal end~
~In what manner will I die, and when~
Good to the last drop.
Stay with the thin cat.
She can tell.
What’s brought to the table
The note said:
Come to Ferny Forest
under boughs of night.
Follow Coyote’s howl,
for he will lead you true.
Come to our long table.
Your place is set,
and blood will let.
Nick a vein,
mind the pain.
Words of spell we’ll speak.
Obscenities we’ll leak.
And all, by morn, Medusa’s stone.
Denise Ruttan ~ The Innocence of Alders
In a moment of reckless fury, Amanda buried her face in her pillow and screamed, her breath coming out in wheezing sobs. Then, panic overtook her next, as she fought to silence herself. She pounded her fists on her bed, the sobs turning into weeps. What if her mother came in to check on her? She was making too much noise. Amanda could see it now — her mother, craning her neck in the door without knocking, approaching her bed, inspecting every line of her face as if she were a machine part off an assembly line. But the door remained closed.
Amanda was in trouble this time. She had been allowed a rare moment of freedom and was permitted to take the bus home from soccer practice. But she missed the bus transfer and was an hour late and forgot to call. Her mother called the police, marched straight…
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no tell motel
I used to think it was figurative
when people would say
“sparks flew between them”.
But, for a long time now,
I’ve known that the Old Wives were right.
And oh I have such a story
that I may never tell,
and, as people would say,
“God only knows”.
the soul
For some, it wavers, I fancy,
as does a candle’s flame.
In others, it is
compacted and hard,
unreached by the light.
Molecules from a veiled realm,
finding fate and purpose.
Unlucky are those without shields,
for their radiance flows freely,
a boon for all,
but soon tainted.
Homeless
What’s pulled us so far from shore
Tethered no more to the drumbeat of the soul
Senseless we fish further afield
Stymied by the junk of jetsam
From others who’ve been here before
And shout for joy at fools’ gold
So easy for the taking
Then turning to tarnished tinfoil.
Winter’s Witch
In a wild wind, I shoveled scoops of sandy snow. As I stopped for a gulping breath, I spied a wrapped-up lady pushing bulky mukluks along the sidewalk. Thin and straight she was, in a salt & pepper coat, and she stopped for a second to watch me throw snow over shoulder.
Walked up to me, she did, as bold as a crow, and I stopped once more, grateful for a borrowed breath. Thinking to be handed a church pamphlet, or to be asked for spare change, I thought to look into her face (half covered by a flying black scarf). I could not see whether she smiled, nor could she see mine, as we both resembled masked bandits. She had bright eyes like grey asters, and when a shock of her long hair freed itself in the wind, I thought it witchy and confused with nettles.
She reached forth with a mittened hand, petting me on the shoulder, and laughed an odd laugh, like a chicken’s cluck. When she pulled her scarf down enough to speak, I saw a sharp nose and a thin-lipped smile. “You’re a good ‘un”, she said, and her aster eyes searched mine. “Yah. A good ‘un.” Once more, that papery smile, and then she patted me again and turned to go. A peculiar feeling welled up from inside me, and I dropped my shovel and made to take her hand. “Are you alright?” I asked.
All that came was a weary nod and then the chicken cluck laugh, and my witchy friend disappeared into the snowfall, just like a winter’s dream.
epiphany
Funny, how it comes.
Boots in the snow by the mailbox.
A pause, and a seeing.
You know who your friends are,
and they’re not who you thought.
Seems you’re in the change of life, my friend.
High fives are in order.
No longer are they birds
in a guilted cage.
Aremyfeetofftheground 