Life presents you with many gifts.
Some may be opportunities,
Some may be material things.
My favorite gift is the people in my life,
Especially her.

Who is she?

She is a fierce dark angel who is not afraid to fight,
But do not be fooled by the masks she wears.
Her closet is filled with them,
And she chooses multiple options for her day ahead.
They have never fooled me.

My favorite mask is the one she was born with,
Her in her natural state.
She shakes off her beauty,
Denying it to the world.
Her blue-green eyes are hidden behind books,
Or they hide under her mane of dark hair when she writes.
She will smile when you approach her,
But it is just another mask she employs to hide the pain I see in her eyes.
The masks have never fooled me.

In my thoughts she is my Bellona,
Fighting battles on a terrifying battlefield.
Her choice of weapon is inconsequential,
Her eyes and words can be fatal.

Her friendship is rare and unique,
She is my Guildenstern and I am Rosencratz.
I would follow her across the galaxy,
And together we would be kicked out of Elysium.
Deep secrets are traded between us,
A currency worth more than money.

She is a woman of many layers.
Every day is full of surprise, laughter, and mischief.
No one could manage us.
Conversations are endless,
Hearts are placed on the table.
Trust is gained and built,
Each brick of trust adding to the celestial temple of our friendship,
Where masks are left at the door.

She is a precious and stubborn gift life presented me with,
No matter how much she denies her importance.
She is my dark angel...my master of masks.
She is my war goddess...my protector and supporter.
She is my partner in crime...my creator of oh so delicious ides.
She is the thread that keeps me tethered today this enchanting life.

The soul has as its sextant the ribs opened wide,
The heart its compass in fluid circuitous diatribe,
When each to zone the geometry of Greek sky  
With its powdery fabulism of centaurs and jars
From Aesop’s wine of words, the untimeliness
Of sundials to Charybdis’s bloom of giant watery eyes.

To know oceans by the dry riverbed of my pulse,
To scale only as high as the sparrow’s tomb of my heart.

And then suddenly one day it hit me;

It didn’t matter how many pennies I tossed into the fountain
It didn’t matter how many times I caught the clock at 11:11
It didn’t matter how many shooting stars I found up in the sky
It didn’t matter how many lady bugs or butterflies landed on my cheeks
It didn’t matter if I found the stray eyelashes that fell out in my palm
And it for **** sure didn’t matter how many times I ended up with the bigger half of the wish bone in my possession

If you didn’t love me back, a wish couldn’t make it happen either

my sweetest apollo
you are the only one
i will hopelessly
freefall into
time and time again
and even as i'm falling,
i will only
thank the stars
that i got so close.

Because stones do not pray, even in their centuries’ quiet,
Because the vines are long, only for the sake of length,
Not like the drab Orpheus-song that always up-ruins.
Because vestal Autumn is a bride of noon-time rain,
A faithful stream with her white mist of suffibulum,
Beside the path whose footprints are half-notes from the grave.

[In which Aphrodite ponders monogamy, 21st century style]


She’d come far since that whole Botticelli scandal,

astride a shell, hair tumbled about her ******,  

sensuality and a taste for illicit thrill (a real wild myth)

but now the candid canvas only required a google by the Book Club’s prying judgment,

she’d since traded Olympus for a semi-detached.  


All his shirts were folded, perfectly pressed,

ham and chips congealing by the microwave  

and he should have been back before Hollyoaks.  

They met in their local, he bought her a pint and mused

over Milton of all people, his degree finally put to use,

justifying the ways of God to men.  

Impressed and tipsy his back was soon against the wall, no tricks needed.  


He kissed all over her divinity,  

admired the quote encircling her ankle, from a trip round Asia

to find herself, at age nine thousand and nineteen.  

As they made love a spell fell on her for once in a millennia

Married in months, too young, well he was,  

and her face had always been twenty-two.  

Then came the mortgage, the Labrador, the kids, the affairs.  


At the bottom of a wine glass she pondered on the irony

after all what was the point of an eternity weaving passion into the world  

with your husband’s ‘lunch meetings’ equating to rolls on Travelodge sheets?

Not her style at all, too tacky.  

She could work her charms, make everything rose-tinted,  

but the bitterness intoxicated.


On the sofa, her side, she dwelled again on Botticelli,  

spilling her beauty on a page,

passion and dexterity, a lost breed- this century was so unpromising.  

Aphrodite thought on her conquests- Ares, Poseidon, Adonis

gods between her thighs, making her mountains move,  

oceans boiling madly, bruised skies crackling with fire,  

tangled bedsheets,  

hair,

hands caressing skin and creating worlds, and…


…and on her mortal, a balding, a boring, a bland  

disappointment.


Off came the clothes, the wedding ring and the phone from its hook.  


Imagine the pizza boy’s confusion as the door opened to the sound of the heavens singing  

rays of ethereal light warming his pubescent, pock-scarred face.  

A naked, pearly goddess,

and those golden, flaxen locks snaking, seducing, ensnaring as he staggered into the rosy blur.


It was impossible, after all, to justify the ways of gods to men.  


But how clichéd.

The cover never tells the truth,
          for every story... has papercuts
when you've turned the page.
             Every fable can tell a tale,
some sweet as pie, but not all apples are
syrupy, some putrefy from the core.

For this cover shows her reading,
while rabbits playfully play.
   Not one for ill suspense..

The book was different ways to
          cook rabbit, she knew they
attended this spot.
              Know your pray,
          Remember that to be at ease
gives them a false sense of passivity.

Now when your ready, make your move..
  
The best practice is to scare, for a moment of
uncertainty will make then scatter in directions
                                                    not uniformed..

With that she slammed the books pages together,
    startled bunnies ran in all directions...
The ground around sewn with steel teeth
awaiting
        gentle steps to snap shut...

She stood up proud, that the book was true,
     not all tales are fairy tales some are truthful.
As a few were still squirming, she did an act
of kindness,  the book heavy as it came down.

The family will feed well tonight,
  she had to wipe off the fur
but there were plenty more stories
of  how to capture and create
                                          that fairy tale meal..

---

A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.


It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing. 


She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South. 


She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain. 


It all feels like freedom. 


The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.


She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas. 


Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.

It is cold tonight,
leave a saucer of sweet-milk
out for the fairies.