The Sweet Blue Child

The sweet blue child

fears nothing more than time.

Pink rimmed eyes

and thick chapped lips

and a loose arm drags behind

as her red mother leads the way.

All here and in the maze of space

simultaneously.

Lacking the strength to collapse

into the fetal position,

or into my cashmere arms,

she stumbles from foot to foot.

A wet glaze of tears;

fresh and freezing to the cheek.

The crimson mother, a distracted

and thick women,

swims through the crowd

Each breast a sagged cushion

and the stomach, a low dipped pool.

The sweet blue child

knows how blood works, and

knows how blood changes

when exposed

My indigo baby

Won’t dare breathe

or let time do it’s ticking

on her body

The fall

I'm 13
Mommy's locked me in my bedroom
not by force
but with her words

I'm
afraid of my own body
and what it may attract

She
reads my sins aloud
from an unlocked diary
once under a mattress
and steals all my pens

I'm
left wordless,
three floors up and
aimed for the balcony

The real need for flight
comes with the curves of a women

And so I steal away the screen
and connect all the hangars
and all the leotards
and attach it to the bed wheel

We all knew it would snap
and my 13 year old limbs would smack on the barbecue
and my body would line with fresh bruises
alive in its new bones

At your first glance
I'll be thinly lined as if with a scalpel
and the knees will still bend
and the lung will still float

Come to my hand
The thick flab of skin
dangling from the thumb
Knuckles bared
a white bone

The flap from the nail to the joint.
an earlobe of flesh
Holding it in place
reconnecting to its root

Funny how pain distracts one
wrapping the wound
I return to prison
unlock the top latch
and stow away to my barred bed

Sink into the sting
Into the reality of gravity
I've found my vice

The Flu

So much sick so little time. I have the flu and it's giving me writer's block:(

Baby

I want to collapse into your arms

Lung Cancer

Limp cigarette dangling

An orange fizzled spark

The slow receding ash

And the smooth white waves that seep away 

noiseless






Anger

Love poem to younger self

Sideways on the bed

Her hand clasping her cheek

The hint of afternoon sneaking through the window

A gold bar of light touching her skin

Drawing out the shadows of her body

The thick thigh

The clumsy limbs

The arched spine

The shoulders-a fall of silk

The hair a rumpled muss

A stray touching her lip

Her eyes dark and wide in curiosity

Each breast a heavy swoop

A pale hint of cold surrounds her

A case of youngness

Is the fault

To Sissy

To sissy, sitting at the register

Golden haired and rosy

Counting a thousand pennies

I hide behind the shelves

Of Grammy’s craft shop

Touching all her ribbons

Picking the one

That will make me most pretty

I love you sister

The Train

Sweet sweaty blood sucked on by mosquitoes

Flattening the brush with my curved young body

The eight soldiers of a spider flicker

Everything crisp and breakable

Eyes level with the train tracks

At the rocks' shudder I place my pennies down

Say goodnight to Hamlet, shutting his pages

Sound the alarm at the far off whistle

A tube of smoke and a rattled metal wave

Tossing textbooks to the side

Saying goodbye to my October lovers

Planting a final seed among the wreck

Nearing, quickening, the angry rusted cage

And jump

Arms out, knees muddy, stomach an excited downward pit

Hello my loud and heavy Death

Sweet sweaty blood sucked on by mosquitoes

Hiding out in the attic

At the sound of your footsteps

My hand full of almonds,

a book of Hughes

and one yellow jolly rancher

I tiptoe out of my skin

Leave it in my bed for you to take

and hasten to the attic

I open her up and climb her steep stairs

careful of her creaks

A pitch black hollow case

I'm screaming in my old bones

at the coldness of your shadow

Sucking steadily on my candy,

laughing off how naked I've become

I've formed a hard scar of pink hairless skin,

it hasn't any nerve left

We've no room for any beauty in our world

to show itself through our highest window

even in our darkest night

I see only the reflection in the glass 

of what you created in her

At moon rise I drift between his arms and mine,

I suck between candy and hate

Death confronts me, asking, "why do you stay?"

I lay my body on the tracks like a damsel to be flattened

and stand when the whistle blows

because, my life is also hers

and my pain must swallow sin

Daughter is just a pig for the slaughter

I've married my fate,

I'll live for my torture

and dissolve all my being to a flat scab

I pick up my body and crawl down the steps,

hands splintered and heavy,

barely anything to give

I thank her for her time,

she closes in relief,

and to the young bedside I take my soul,

and kiss real eyelids that flutter with dreams

My body drags itself to it's chamber

and though to fight is torture,

She screams in the king's ears

She takes the swift ambush of bruises,

the body a cleaned out cushion,

the time passed in the counting of wishes lost,

the blood dried and the tears sticky

and scrubs her skin in peroxide

Embracing her future on the inside

leaving the king crying and empty

Telling herself she's still alive,

her stomach a fist full of pits,

her mother a beautiful mass of sobs,

the future queen unaware of her future,

the king a frightened distraction

Knees up he sits by her bedside,

and all he's done immerses his skin