poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized

This is dying / This is living

grayscale photography of two woman kissing

Photo by Fernando Favero on Pexels.com

Don’t say / that word

case we defame / or endanger

this moment / and the next

cresting night waves against recumbent shore

your arms molded from sand rise and fall

to my perpetuate weave

and we are

like flowers awaiting sufficient light

to open fully

a miracle each time the pallet of

senses born over with each song

held in my chest like women who wet their lips with the sore

chaff of flax before threading it into life

we make our reality

each elbow gracing air with untrained response

ballerinas finding satin undercoat

beneath dance

if leaves covered us, they’d say

Fall never ran out of color

your diminishing form as you lean away

gasping for air and back again into

perfect vision

there are only circles, nothing is

straight lined nor willing to beg for its supper

we two have earned our share of peace

many years of violence

the thrum and rub of pain is an ever

present crystal, hung against day

a kaleidoscope of far away places

we both realized that ache lying

just one layer beneath fevered skin

for you are

this enchanted place within me

a mirror of sea water washing over

the hardness I tried to place in armor

in lieu of a heart

your beneficence and the

arch of your neck bent in sleep

a field mouse of russet and dream

I would gather everything holy

pour the past down trilling drain

vanish with you into wings of night

two stars indivisible, our energy tracing

electric center of the other

this is dying and this is living

neither of us can mouth the enchantment

no longer necessary to verbalize motion

as birds gather their passage to dusk

swooping like dancers ushered from stage

and after everyone is gone

our love shall endure

a hidden thing

blazing brightly

in memoriam

fiction, life, poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized

her inferno


a voice

something still alive

someone trying not to scream

they make a sound that could only be described as an

oral ache

stretch of sinew, wide mouth, no noise, neighbors hear


there has been too much pain for sound

still tears come, when you think there could be no more

nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows

behind well constructed facade, beneath masks

the woman with her head in the oven

probably wrote a decent poem before she expired

smoothed her apron down, sent her kids to school

before turning the dial high

her own sounds of anguish and the hiss of gas

a sigh of sighs

the postman can knock on the door and you can open with a bright

false smile and he will think to himself as he departs, she is such a happy

woman always with a nice thing to say and a bright grin, I wish my wife were

half as content

close the door, gather the rope, sling it securely

the same woman who turns the dial high

prepares her demise with thoughtfulness

she is tutored at deceiving

sickness overwhelms her and she is on the floor tearing at herself

watching from ceiling, a woman unravel and be unable to re-knit

she feels in her solar plexus, in her very marrow, the scourge of loss

she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it

the idea time assuages pain, is a falsehood

hers is a road that will always be wet with tears

her eyes are closed and she is imagining how it is some of us

never stop hurting and others can brush off betrayal like lint

walk on unperturbed.

in the silence of her house, the clock in the hallway unwound

she feels the walls closing in, the very sky descend

all her madness like balls of yarn, have no where to pretend

they are okay

she is demented with hurt

voiceless, personless, no-one to reach out to

her arms are cut again and again with the switch of abandonment

she was once someone’s baby

she was once someone’s love

lapsing into unconsciousness in hot overflowing bath

crimson for her unshed horrors, streaking clean floor

did not need to use her own hands in sterile afternoon

washing line blowing emptiness like fallen maps

now she is dirt and dust and a woman without bones

she is sinking into the soft hiss of gas escaping gratefully

if she had the courage she’d light a match to guarantee

her inferno

she left one last message on one last machine

lost in time and the rolling hours curling their faces to the wall

her tinny voice breaking and crackling over distance

saying goodbye without saying goodbye

for even in death she pretends

everything is okay

and when you come home at 6

the table will be laid, your shirt for tomorrow pressed

hanging like a specter

its loose arms waving

in mute appeal

life, poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized

Holding Water

What I wouldn’t say out loud;

At a dinner party, when the conversation turns to

matters of personal identity and the such.

That I live in a country where

self-confidence is in the very water alongside Chlorine

And possibly many pissed out Pharmacuticals

I don’t know how they import it or how they bottled it

in the first place

but everyone takes a long swig

and grows up self-important and rarely doubting

their worth

A la the internalized cheerleader

I must therefore hail

from an island of thorns

because I didn’t get inoculated against

the sumptuous barbs

my skin punctures at the slightest retort

I bled easily even after I cauterized the wound.

Necessarily, this has caused some


people don’t get how

someone can hate themselves

be a painted sin eater

for all insult

until that gobstopper of internalized anguish

turns on them and it feels like

it’s always been about hating the self

Such a natural elegant process of self harm

looking back in the mirror

wishing she could erase

the very DNA, the very face of her.

Now I have a second sight

for bullshit and fakes

and often I’m told; Give me a chance you never know!

But O I do

and I stay away from the saturating crowd

as they live their camera-ready lives

to the fizz and hiss of the insta-bulb

wondering if I will ever

feel differently or if this

deep phlegmy cough

will inhabit my very soul and become

a new lingua of self loathing.

Sometimes I see girls who

could have been me, but grew up

in a different world where

presumably they were inoculated against

self-hate at an early age and given a healthy dose

of worth and manifest ego

they seem like an identical twin who

was raised on grass instead of hay

in the sun instead of snow

and even though they still possess

the abhorant figure of myself

with her squinting mash of ancestral sabotage

I find I like aspects of them

as they flourish weed-like


there is a shadow

watching them


if I had grown up just like them

and taken my Happy Pills along with my self deception

what would I have gained?

What would I have lost?

I might resemble them but

I suspect, I would be nothing like them

except in the cracked glass of us

broken and repaired many times

until they can stand no more

to hold


life, poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized


forgetting-Jef-Safi-FlickrOh fear

You who come unbidden at dark or dawn

And crawl with your hunger to devour

The sunrise of rational thought

How alluring your poison, when defenses are sluggish

The gris-gris of delirium and other exhaustions

Make abundance in quiet mist

I think of safety, it feels like a celebration for another person’s life

Not this chipped bail, not this sweat stained pillow

Where lately dreams have possessed fangs

And nightmares are not always caused by eating cheese

Many years ago, we sat you and I

In the mouth of my midnight kitchen

And like Sendak envisioned

I rose in morning dough, a naked thing of pink

Then, in the hours that believed themselves immortal

And a sinking feeling would be replaced by exuberance

The feeling of lying down in an antique store, in a fur rug

Imagine, imagine, nude swimming in milk, turning hands over tails

All shame evaporated, just the joy of unspoilt youth

A thousand dreams away from clammy hands and furtive secrets

How resplendent I’d be, lying beneath you without guile

Our limbs mirroring the other like a corridor of emotions

Responding in kind

Tender without history

Lay your heavy bag here

Come into my envelop

Where we can meet against the other, in eternal epitaph

Watching the crudeness of the outside world sigh and catch fire

Like plucked flowers must lose their breath

And dying comes as you hold your breath

Seamlessly we turn to each other and create

An oasis in the nectar

There it is

There among the aubergine desert

Taunting with its indefinite

life, poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized

Something of

Joan_of_Arc,_by_Gaston_BussiereThere is something

about you

they said

and they were right

in that way that isn’t universal

she did have something about her

and then she gave it to you

and you had

something about her

locked around your filigree neck.

When you whistled

only she heard your call

came running time and again

hands powdered with flour or words

losing each moment

something about her

because that is what happens when

girls give it away

without thought in little hand-made envelopes

as if it, and themselves, were

a paper boat let loose to rent

how then to remain whole?

they have to have it

to be




or they stay as tinsel in corners

gathering misapprehensions dust

no one remembered to take down

after the celebration was over

as hollow as old marzipan

left to suck up dry cupboard air

when placed for safe keeping by soft-hearted child

leaching color onto old towels

still smelling of beach and sand

how to build on sandcastles turning to powder

how to make bread rise when it rains

or dry clothes in damp

girls who grow from weeds

standing on asphalt

as cars spit exhaust and the world

is dirty and cold

how do they remember

the something about them

to keep going?

when rivers dry and the shape of regret

lies like a trace of memory

itching in place

we find our strength through

lifting others toward light

where for a moment they remember

in the purity of being held

tightly with grace

something of


life, poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized

Spilt milk


I don’t have your poise

or formidable intelligence

I haven’t inherited your coloring

or the savagery with which

you tear people out of your life

I used to believe I was weak

because I felt so much and could not

turn away in anger

a trait much prized and perfected

no, I was

clumsy enough to be feeling

and try as I may, the ice

did not stay in my veins

just as resentment doesn’t hang on me

an internal coat

nor grudges devour

my peace.

While i am not always happy

I do not fashion that unhappiness

to break and grind, the bones of others

I was told so many times

I was nothing more than a dumb beast

trying in vain

but those people were proven wrong

for this dumb beast

accomplished everything she attempted

perhaps just to prove them wrong.

It is my road

the one alone

and I ache for you when it rains

like the six year old

listening for the sound of your key in the door.

I cannot expunge the pain, I carry it, inherited, a scar of many faces

you were a pattern I mimicked, knowing nothing else

maybe now you are released from your bonds and I from mine

we will be free to make our own new lines

though if I could choose, I would return

to the feeling of loving you, within your murmur

for yours were the first words I heard

curled in a c within your body.

You can cut me out and there I gasp

but I am tied to you,  as the sun will

pay her travail and always love

the moon

climbing out of what we always knew

to lay wreaths of crimson in homage

to spilt milk

poetry, prosetry, Uncategorized


My forearm

Has your fingers circled around it

My waist

Your hands meeting each other

The tattoo of your movement

Across the salt of my plains

You chisel my rise and fell my present

Into your eyes I tumble

As velvet dark becomes elongating heaven

Your fingers brush my cries with storm

I am beneath you, as infinite waterfall

In your shadow, from your shade

Eclipsing to return, cycles of moon

Blur what is real, against imagined.

Over time we learn

neither exist more than other

it is our capture of this moment

held in elapsing abeyance

within some sphere beyond consciousness

evoking mislaid emotion

flame lit against sulphur hearts

and we climbed the mountain, sweating and fatigued

thinking … why even bother?

Those wise voices, challenging us as children

take each experience, infuse it

with the richness of YOU

here’s the camera, snap a shot

twenty years later, we are still staring off

color changes over time and people

will leave and return like cuckoo dolls carved into


Unexpected are the faithful and true

we smile because we’re told to

soon sides begin to droop, if held too long

spontaneous and a little dangerous

leaving the washing for another day

floors need cleaning, beds changing and perhaps …

if we stand still and instead, wait

they will see our outlines if

they’re not in a hurry

but everyone is too preoccupied

with staring at the red moon

to notice our climb

over the globes circumference

flying we take hold, of each others seek

a creature of bush fire and opal.

She told me once

don’t wear them, they are bad luck

I polish now, the angles of my semi-precious face

to ensure nobody knows my true thoughts

save you, you who built

the universe and with your existence

I have no need of foolishness.

We are what we are, because

there is a flower blooming

only at night and

the frangipani spell stays

rich and heady

all through the long


of our union.