My mourning gown My stinging undoing A wreck, ruined and breathless As my lungs insist –
This firesong was ours without a doubt Hearty passion, intuition, entered at our own volition Look through my seasons Look through my eyes Onto the parts of me that no one else should ever see Onto the pieces that should be left to obscurity Douse the melting flame With breath and touch and gasoline – With lips and mouth and quarantine – Where starched sheets tangle, like our legs As kiss becomes one spark to flame Within thin walls pressed ears could obtain Soft moans, in peaks of cherished pain Reckless marks on tender skin Taste so sweet they should be sin And mortal, crimson petals bleed Passion purring rhapsodic need Velvet smooth against the rough To singe so sweet never enough
And in my mind I live to dream Of angel wings we laid upon, as over skin our fingers crept til dawn – Fingers drenched in the sweet obscene That, after pulse and breath did still Did hold filter-tipped to our delighted lips Bleached, thin strips, of menthol flavored nicotine
Into your eyes I remember; I fell unbound Silent, sweet, searing sound To fade, to die as mortals do These lips immortalize what was true
My mourning gown My stinging undoing A wreck, ruined and breathless For what no longer does exist
You Were the highway of my childhood – Aspen birch skin, feline green eyes, waterfall, platinum tresses Curves and legs Hollywood voluptuous in a small-city girl; You were Marilyns prelude Your joie de vivre lighting the Hollywood strip, pale, candy cane pink kisses trailing behind you You inspired eyes of desire, and I I chased your magic – It followed you everywhere, although you rarely noticed I tried to catch it in a jar, but it was trickier than those fireflies that lit the lilac bush in summertime I tried to lure it onto my palm, but it was fierce and wild But as the years fell away, you did, as well Clouds of fire Rolling through the sky Roiling, toiling angry monstrosities Beautiful chaos like your embattled eyes Violin lips pressing a haunted melody against every blissful season, chilling each pleasant breeze Blowing icy kisses that frosted the ocean waves as you stood barefoot in the cold, wet sand Lingering somewhere that could never be touched… Captured in a Polaroid, your hair whipping in the wind, face turned sideways, eyes numb, like your smile And I dared never ask the question – Since your demons easily tripped you up And your spurs, and quills shot to attention, punching through your delicate, pale skin Like tarnished armor that kept you separate, kept you scarce and alone But I remember how I played in your shadow, looking up at you with adoration Heel to your toe – The whole world rose in your smile and danced to your laughter And should there ever be a measure of my soul It would be those breaths taken within the span of your ethereal wings Moments when your love unpeeled times grey shadows to reveal exquisite pastels beneath And, having forgotten who I was I found myself in the glint of your soft, fragile, velvet eyes While your lacy wings wrapped me in their lilac-scented sweetness… We brushed against, and pushed through the clouds that ringed the mountains Carbonated wilderness full of specters drier than a dead desert – Coughing up their putrid sawdust, choking us But you gathered me up and without hesitation, dove into the sky Wings beating a lullaby Flew past the sunflowers and marigolds To land in the clover-dotted grass Where we tended to our nicks and gouges And the world righted itself, surrounded by a cornflower blue sky… Your silhouette unfurls and I reach out from my dreams, my fingers sliding through empty air Drops slip beneath my lashes to flow down my temples into my dark hair I don’t want to open my eyes and admit nothingness – But it resides there, the yin to my yang Kitchen table coffee mornings were a best part of us Each time I traveled back, feet on the blue concrete landing, peering through the glass panes into my childhood Hand on the doorknob, eager I remember the time the egg shells cracked and I hid in the bathroom, sobbing – Unable to understand how I could make you so angry I still don’t know what happened that day, but I hold it close to me, along with sweet, candied moments Now that I can’t hold you This morning, I feel separate, scarce, alone, and wish for a lullaby; I’m looking at the sky Wishing for that fierce and wild in your long ago As you darted and dodged, hovered and swirled Prisms of colors, purples, greens, blues and lush black Wings that kissed my cheeks with tenderness as you flew by –
Anathema; Reviled and shunned, by my own hand, having written my own, detested story Pages turned where the voice that speaks, my own, creaks with cursed harbingers – That I am damned, and detested, within my own cruel, disordered mind These sharp and rusty fragments do not dissipate in this ill begotten wind That blows through the hollows beneath my cheeks, through stiff joints and swollen knuckles Brushes the low curve of my spine producing tremors that embalm me like a thousand feral gnats Lapping at my meringue flesh, pricking it with their tiny stiletto teeth, as if I am a succulent – My plump flesh ripe and sweet However, their hordes are merely demons smelling my earthy scent, a dead giveaway of my wretchedness I am witch I seek no harm to others, only to myself, and on my behalf must admit that I am full of wrath I call the clouds, the wind, to roil To chastise myself for my grievous errors, upside down and sideways, singular and plural – Threefold when webs cling to corners, and ruse slithers up the walls, my minds eye blinded – Unfolding a collateral morn… Debris crunches beneath these funeral boots, antiquities phantoms smeared upon their withered soles Briar and bruise, cut and burn mars skin with a map resembling a tortured playground – Like the one long ago where my 5 year old self first met its shadow… A circular teeter totter from which I fell and broke my arm in two places; A greenstick fracture There was no teetering… nor tottering… no movement… only sitting Barely the space of a few feet between ground, and girl The beginning of wreaking mayhem on myself for my helplessness to exterminate abominations How else could this occur? Perhaps I bore marshmallow bones? Or were they volcanic; Full of holes and feather light? Some believe that there are accidents, but the rest of us know there aren’t From the time that I could tie my shoelaces My mind at war with itself My heavy eyes observed the intricacies of the universe – The pecking order of oblivious mannequins There are few saviors, and none blessed me with their good deeds during those 2am night terrors As, swept up in soft arms, we would creep into the brittle, cold night air… When he, fulcrum to her lever Ran amuck through the wormwood fields, leafy oils seeping through his skin, staining it green Until his mind was gone and his demons breathed, inhaled her forlorn miseries – Throwing them back at her in a cyclone of blood Brutal, metal zig-zag teeth leaving bite marks on her tender faith Droplets of bitter crimson climbing up the hem of her precious wedding gown The only bit of good in the bad; She would not collapse, would not pass onto her offspring the feeling of forfeiture But even with her clever, feline, agile tenaciousness Her medicinal, crafty armamentarium of spotless, contemplative infinities, intuitive planes, and transcendental artistry She could not separate the heart from the hurt, the child from the tarnish, the soul from the shame I am a product of primitive gardens; Seeds that bloom threads of dark divination – Harms that need not be human faults, though they be! I screech and scream in red splattered so brutally across creamy walls that it settles; Into silence – I am a ghost in Time magazine photographs Bleeding and bled yet revived and fueled by fury; A porcelain pinata exploding with a parched bloodlust Come Fall I feel its nearing – That inky wash staining my skin and eyes Its dark, dreary appendages, spider-leg fingers reaching for my spirit, clawing at my dreams A childs memory mottled with guilt Its skulking shadows magnified on the wall in the candles flame I am a chromatic aberration, circles of confusion along the path of chronic calculations – Energy exhausted, to determine sacred ground, where my eyes need not plead for, nor fear… love Mugwort tea to bless my dreams, yet knowing that I can’t undo those parts of me that now travel through each lifetime I can’t spell an answer when the question is irrelevant – Whatever determines what remains, so shall it be And I can scream red, can cut off these scars, dig deep and long, break these wicked bones rip my hair, my lashes I can rage that I will not become the results of blights, and plagues, and ravages –
Of brutal things wrapped in pretty bows (vile atrocities should be thrown to hell, but even hell doesn’t want them)
I can fight the good fight, but as the long, grey shadows of fall slink over my face with their cold, wet tongues I am all I am, and although I loathe certain things that have brought me here I loathe the abandonment of myself even more
I could not save her from his thieving arms I was a child with an angelic spirit whose wings were torn, ripped from their tender seams Left on the floor in a crumpled heap, in their shattered bedroom – Holes and glass, metal and wood, paper and pierced photographs; What vile dream is this? My child is a monster I invoke the clouds, the wind to roil at her strength While my wicked eyes send heartbroken tears down my lonely, empty face
I am witch I seek no harm to others, only to myself, and on my behalf must admit that I am full of wrath
Theater of Sorrows 