I don't know quite how to reconcile it: your path, born in death and destruction and pain
and your mind, utterly clear, calm as the ocean, but for the cries of seagulls

twelve

hush, hush
little bird, hush
give me your rings, here.
place them down.
you can't keep them, not now.

see this sky

your bare feet in the earth

      I'll swallow you whole
              to flutter in my throat
              you'll scratch me bloody
              my liver is poison, galling

I snapped a twig in leaving
the youngest daughter,
she took fright

                                 the eldest I married
                                 golden leaves crowned her
                                 silver branches at her breast
                                 the diamond studded shoes
                                 soles worn through

and when I gave her your rings
   I could feel your feathers
   and my heart thu-thudded
                    against ribcage barred willful
  
her sons
engorged by the ground

you grow still, at last.

dusk is drawn, and you grow still.

anger

don't try to take anything too literal from this one, it's just vague ideas from my head, a narrative, but it's all fictional. romanticize me if you must but I'm not she. Oh, but the lipstick is real.

Cheap pearls drag from your neck
you wore your mother's perfume
borrowed her stockings, when varnish failed against the ladders
bandaids on your heels
the shoes are too high, you'll carry them home,
falling from fingers loose with wine
                                       with cigarettes
                                          was that your first kiss?

The lipstick in the drawer was dry,
a relic from the eighties. Or some year gone.
Anger, you thought you had it,
            you didn't think at all.
The peppermint taste on your tongue won't hide it.
You've chipped your tooth in red: it shows.

I want to speak to you through the years,
into the photograph, smoky eyes smudged adolescent
drill it into your stupid fucking head
They don't love you, they never will, they never will, they never will

- is it a prayer now, a serenade to you, a jaded birdsong melody?
- or is it just my bitterness shining through?
- I'm sorry.

It was your first kiss, after all.


                                                                                          

Song for Asche

Asche, darling,
While it is true
          that I have every intention of losing myself utterly in you,
In the black-veined halo of your  reason,
Have patience, my love.

I'm learning. I'm working on it.

You chill me, darling,
You freeze me to my core,
Because I know your mind
- hidden behind cloud-grey eyes -
           as surely as you know mine.

I have floated in the calm skies that lie there.
Behind the shock of madness.
Beyond your dream of death.

And when you stand
Triumphant as a god, your father's dignity, your ancestor's power,
In the mist of the dawn,

         (vision blurred to white)
         (the clouds are as ashes)
         (they fear you, my dearest)

I will be the one to rise from the bloody noon.

and just like the serpent, I would swallow myself
bent double,
blaze of purity

to feel your skin
soft
against my hips.

I'll count the prayers again
passing beads through my fingers
clacking like teeth in my palms,
and I promised myself - promised
that I wouldn't shovel soil over my head

Blisters and bones cracking under weight

if I close my eyes
nerves cauterized
this earth
feels a bit
like you.

We never got the damn scales out of the teapot.
I never could understand it.

Turn to water even at a touch
I want none of this weakness

Scissors

A while ago (I forget how long, now, maybe a year, maybe more) I had a dream that distressed and fascinated me greatly. I took a pair of scissors to the flesh of my stomach and sliced away two long angled strips of my fat/flesh: one straight down the right side of my abdomen, breast to hip, another horizontally across the base of my stomach. I could feel the pain of the first one even as I did the second, and it left two gaping cuts, red - but not bleeding - edged with the yellow of fat. It hurt, even in my head. I bent double in surprise and shame at my actions and held the skin together frantically with my hands, but I felt a little satisfied. Where I bent, the wounds gaped and buckled.

I felt a bit like that yesterday: the dream was in my head for a lot of the day.