Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.

She mopes around, thinking obscure things.
And clings to what seem to be her puppet strings.
She stops to stare, she stops to wonder.
She starts to cry, it starts to thunder.
The rain pours down onto her pain.
Can they see the difference? The tears and rain?
She cries for help. There’s no one around.
She gives out completely, crumbles to the ground.
Her hands shake, her eyes - red.
Her body shivers, her mind - dead.
She throws her head back and screams to the sky,
“HOW CAN YOU JUST SIT THERE TO WATCH ME DIE?”
She trembles there, shattered to pieces.
Then the clouds clear and the rain ceases.
Hushed suddenly, she stumbles to stand.
Her eyes fixed on a bright horizon of land.
She opens her arms in the face of dawn.
She closes her eyes, and then she is gone.
The only thing left are a few tangled strings.
You’ll never know what the chill morning brings.

We all share the same heartbeat.
Can't you feel the pulse of our World?

Our universe?

We all share the same Carbon,
We think we are so important,
But are merely specks in the universe

The universe blinks

....and we are gone

Born in these hills, taken away
when I was three.
Son of a coal miner who took
my mother, my brother, and me.
Drove west to the ocean, Pacific.

The kids there called me "hillbilly" and "hick."
Said I talked funny. Punched me, kicked me,
generally tried their best to make sure
I knew I didn’t belong there.
And I did not.

Eventually, though,
I learned to speak like them,
dress like them, act as if I was not
from Kentucky, my daddy
was not Appalachian, that
these mountains had no part of me.
My only recourse was
after the pledge of allegiance…
I never sang the “Oregon” song.
I sang, "Kentucky."

But, my father, he wouldn’t change.
He was proud of his heritage.
He played banjo; he played mandolin;
he went fishing, a lot.
Grew the best garden in the county,
ate soup beans and cornbread.
He did not give a hang for their Yankee ways.

I hated him. I hated my father.
until I returned to these hills.

Now I see them,
I see him,
in me.

blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

What if Snow White and Sleeping Beauty
Never woke up?
Prince Charming was detained;
the dwarfs and fairies ran out of ideas
Hope disappeared at the first bite and *****.

What if Cinderella's shoe never fit?
Swollen bunions or a twisted ankle
hindered the sparkling slipper
the Prince went away discouraged
And Cinderella was stuck, forever in the cinders

Happily Ever After.
What every little girl wants.
A fairy tale ending, with stars in the sky
the credits start to roll, leaving you with a smile
Pleasant dreams, dancing princesses in your mind

I hate to burst your bubble, but -
Some nights, princesses just don't feel like dancing.
Sometimes, they'd rather stay at home
spend the night alone at once,
the weight of their world on their shoulders

Princes can cause more stress than joy
Evil stepmothers never really disappear
Most mirrors won't tell you what you want to hear
leaving most of us girls disillusioned and dazed
in that moment we discover we're living

a Happily Never After.

Sending you crossed kisses and looped hugs
Wishing for the longest goodbyes
You are just out of my reach
The vacuous glow of the monitor captivates me
and I forfeit my love to the pixels

How close you seem, until I lay down to rest and your absence becomes known
the blankets, thin, like you, but too thin to fill the void
The moon is too cold to replace your warmth

The cold reminds me of how much I missed you, I care not to remember.

The bitter taste of tea without you
the scent has no senses to tantalize

The study conveys the impression of empty
The silence we can't share
And the chair in which you might sit
is as lonely as ever with no company but dust

The harsh bite of nicotine on my lips
reminds me of yours
and I long for them.
Soft and bitter
like the cigarettes you so love
And the death I've learned to savor in your wake

Seeing words arranged beautifully remains reminiscent of you
And poetry, itself reminds me of your breath.



In the leaves at the bottom of the cup I see the day that we met

and in the sun I am reminded of how fond you were of the dark

and in the ashes of my loneliness I'm reminded of what's to become

of us.

This feeling inside of me
Is burning stronger
And stronger
And stronger
I tried to tell you how I feel
But I keep on growing weaker
And weaker
And weaker
Whenever our eyes meet
My heart sinks deeper and deeper
I yearn to be with you
Forever
And ever
I tried to say, “I love you”
But my voice keeps on getting fainter
And fainter
And fainter
My hands sweat with anxiety
And my mind is nowhere to be found
I search for that special someone
Near and far
Above and below
And she is standing there right in front of me
I feel like I wanna cry
I feel like I wanna die
I feel like I wanna scream
Because all I feel is love
But love has taken my voice and my heart
So instead I will wear my heart
I will wear my soul
I will wear my love
In red

You see me sitting here
My eyes cast in the distance,
Head in the shadows
You wave and wait for a reply
I give none
Infact I'm not aware you've entered the room at all
Actually I'm not sure I'm even in the house
On this earth.
My thoughts, in my head
Are twisted
Knotted
Slithering just out of my grasp
Lost forever in a maze
Or a labyrinth.
A place where time speeds up
But movements slow down.
Where there's an hour glass stuck in your mind
Sand dripping
Falling
Down.
Marking the end of your life
The end to the confusion
The misery
The pain
It can all only last so long before it becomes to much
Until you get a break from it all,
Before you're ****** back into this world again.
You better hurry
You only have a few left,
But a few what?
Years?
Months?
Weeks?
Days?
Hours?
Minutes?
The list goes on - but why bother wondering
When you only have a short time left
In the labyrinth.

REWIND


When I was a girl of twenty-two years,
there was the usual blood, sweat and tears
of life that’s lived when no one is watching
and naivety is all that’s botching
things up, in love and loss
and harsh mistakes.

Thoughts of my future rather than my will.
Should I not have aborted but stood still
to own the truth of my indiscretion,
and not lied to my love but made confession?
Perhaps he would have
decided to stay?

I have pondered much, these thirty-odd years.
Renounced the loathing of actions and fears
of misguided youth that lives in my soul
but will not dissipate though I am old.
Continuing on -
memories linger.

Wondering what that one life could have been.
Wondering if that was really a sin?
I question myself each year after year
though answers I don't expect to find here
in this life -
Still I mourn.