return from the end of the world
the sun speaks to me only in warnings,
brazen, brash, challenging
and i can’t quite meet his eyes,
so i make my own overcast, look down
toward hushed mysteries; fate
tapping her feet in a rhythm like
a heartbeat; i fall in love
with each tiny cataclysmic crash
as it passes, unperturbed,
and with every breath and swell
the tormented metals of the earth shudder,
making themselves known to me
through the thick muted skin of my feet
and reassuring me, in turn,
that i exist.
title track (these are the tears of things)
i have never been one to let scabs heal,
so how can you expect
me to let this pass painlessly, fade
into a diminished humanity?
i think really what i wanted was a
cataclysm, catharsis,
but all your outstretched hand withdrew
was a sunset, crimson glow fading
to leave goosebumps on a hard-worn dignity.
The last throw
went to balance, and though
she tipped her hat
to fire, to ecstasy and wild joy,
i’m left behind in a frosted limbo, wondering
where i will find dancing stars
now, surrounded by this nebulous,
ebbing reality.
untranslatable
A hollow-eyed Sisyphus heaving senseless longings
defined but unsung for a decade,
an eternity;
yearning for the sake of yearning,
I, trapped inside the skin of fantasy,
a starving child on a floor of dust,
a dying woman they will bury in mud
dry-eyed, knowing that
regardless,
tomorrow will come.
Speak of this to no one.
It is my soul they stab–
or, what I think is my soul
when no one else is looking,
foolish shadow the color of blood-tinged clouds
rising again and again to its knees,
sexless and fluid
–without even knowing, hearing
me liplessly plead only
with the idea of you,
never a whisper of desire out loud
to a bitter world, no
not even to you,
to you, strange subjunctive phantom
of my present’s damp sweet dreams;
serpentine, sharp;
your cuts will be no less
exacting
for their ignorance
and this gets too near the subjectivity
of my own truth,
littoral point of no return.
consciousness
not so much a stream but
a torrent, discontinuously melded
by glacial tides, angled emotions;
not a new way of seeing, exactly,
but my own voice, legible.
my own small fingers,
connecting pad to roughened nail
with each of your splayed ones,
flower petals pushed closed
by a hailstorm of denials,
a firm refusal in the meeting
of eyes.
cobalt and gray,
sea-colored glass
through which you view
the dreams you thought
abandoned you at puberty;
awake but almost…
there. The instant slips
between closing knuckles,
eluding coherence, dandelion seeds
shooed out by puffed cheeks
to sprout on the wind.
And you thought it was over.
diary
I can smell the rain on the wind
the warmth in the air it lofts skyward,
soft and soughing.
Untame spring unfolds her wings,
sings in words I cannot yet hear.
There is existence and then there is existence.
Today I tremble because I am
afraid of both.
.
.
.
“diary” has also recently been featured on another Muse’s website, accompanying some amazing art. Check it out here:
http://febrilemuse-infectious-disease.blogspot.com/
.
negation
On a day two days after Palm Sunday,
there were no births, and,
therefore,
no deaths.
Instead I sat at my cold aluminum desk
and threw out words like pennies,
watched through grudged windows
the skeletons of trees endure.
