i hope to wake

It started with a fury when my daddy pulled the strings
I felt like a guitar, like someone else was playing me
And now I'm here and I don't complain, I just don't understand
Why I'm walking in my sleep, a stranger in my own land

And I don't know why my mind opens at night
And I don't know why my lungs feel so tight
I will never know why
Darkness is light
Wrong, right
Black, white
...Everyone's fists here are clenched for a fight

I hope to wake today. God forgive me. I'm tired of sleeping.

You know, Oscar taught me something I recall every day
Since the time I read my friends like characters in his play
And I think of them back in their cozy white halls
Where I hang an ideal, like a frame on their walls

And I hope to wake today.

lit

I was born angry, like a firework
My mother had no lunch on the 4th of July
I was filled early with the whitest flame
Some Holy Something I could never deny

And when the flame was lit
All my colors burst
And all my pieces fell in places
Where the others thirst

Ashes for ashes, my firework
I was too much a rainbow for the night-time sky
I took a plane to meet the sun
No food in my stomach, a tear in my eye

moving

The scent of my mother's home settles at my feet
It wraps itself around my bones in welcome
I watch all her treasures march out the door in royal retreat
My childhood echo chases in desperate plea to stop them

The red wall is white and my blood grows white too
I unhinge each knuckle from its grip
I can't sit here forever in my indoor forest
Blackberries sing of summer but I can't take another trip

Here God was always good to me
Here sheltered from the crowd
And now this knowledge makes me sob out loud

We have no claim on our home
It will soon return to dust
But oh how I treasured these skins--even with lust!

Here comes the transformation
Here comes the change
Here comes the emptying

Swallowed in the love
Lost in the missing
Exhaling all of our fears from this being

shadow love

I feel like a shadow, peevishly following my corpse through the street.
I don’t have eyes to see you, my hand is a vapor to your touch,
But I sense you reach for me, and it is all too lovely, and it is all too much.

I feel so flat and earthbound in this dark, frail silhouette,
And I’m wary of your hunt within the boundaries of my printless tread.
I do not like this suit of dust, it is uncomfortable; I would go unfed.

But I sense your touch.
It is too lovely.
Too much.

emerson*

She makes me feel so small
And question the value of being tall.
She’s so obliging to my every request;
Energetic condescension at its very best.
Thrilled to come, thrilled to stay,
I watch her running through the day.
She says the most outrageous things,
Curls bounce to every song she sings.
She’s such a poser, a tiny bulldozer—
A warning to those who try to enclose her.
She’s sorry she doesn’t fit in that cage.
It doesn’t suit her three year-old age.

missed

I miss a feeling of wandering from home
I miss the ache of tearing apart
I miss belonging to a body
I miss what warmth entertained my heart

I miss who I was when I kept you in view, but
Of all that I miss, I miss missing you.

the temptress was tempted

My heart turned a key when you walked in the room
All the faces lit-up of everyone that you knew
I was the stranger and mine lit-up too!
You were that good.

My heart peered through my eyes; you ignited the stage
With your knives and your forks beating jazz with a rage.
I felt my heart slipping right out of its cage!
You were that good.

After the music stopped you came to rest
You sat down beside me now tired and blest
But I heard you beating on inside my chest!
You were that good.

I smiled to catch your smile mirroring mine
I was your poison but we both felt fine.
Forgotten She who waits for you, is that a crime?
I was that good.

Creeping...under my fingernails
Drooping...eyelids that jetlag fails
Leaving...me reason excuses veil!
I. Was. Tempted.