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Gnawing gnats

My couplets are crude. My eyes  bleared, with strain and sigh. Long night ground colors. Darker than cased blood, Light as fish eggs. I wonder where can be found some driftwood  waving a dying hand. Maybe at my bedside? Clean cut over slogging saw, Death better than doubt. A grand ending gives everything A punch can.

New Year

First day in a new year,  clean as linen; assured as a scissor cut. Cups crumbs in the curve, unfolds till drum-tight; Trims odds and  ends till nothing left.  For desire doomed to despair the room is made.  A wish in curlicue is your wage. For a substanti al soul, no cure is but spared. In all its solidity, a drag will devour you one-piece one-bite.

'Checkmate.'

I’m sick of not knowing.   A life bereft of surprises, In that I revel with tremor. The calendar  shudders at any touch. November is all but over. For his own life he fears. Confident the day stauches a rivulet of possibilities, I want to shove the knife And carve out of me a fountain of roses. To see the landscape, whatever is running under this hide. I want sobering cuts.   They give me a tease. I want peeled truth.   They dismiss with a tickle. Never will I thrill at anything   in a baby-proofed cell. A baby’s life is locked in itself. A baby’s pain gives motive for wonder As if pain is a novelty. The unwrapping grows wearisome. Doubts begin to envelop me   That the wrap is the gift. If I wreathe a garland about my neck, That, at last, might stir a ripple in me.

A drinker’s baby

My father gulped vine From a bowl, Scrabbled four grapes  only From a glass In his lonely carousing Near dawn. I counted As one tumlbed After another, Another and The other .  At what I didn’t understand I giggled. At the wall, The drunk man pelted his rage, Gathering wool under the stain When the day broke.  Lilac kisses in the chalk, bedded  violently ;  Where my future to be found: A sour-scented splatter.  My wailing took march; My mother's howling strung to a melisma. Once where had bloomed innocence Cannoned  a great war.

Hairs are starbursts of tiny thoughts bundled in the million

1.  I always wear my hair short. I wonder how it feels to let it sprawl. And I become sickened with dread for not knowing - would I like a nice mane for myself? Now I understand why people paint on their skin, puncture layers of tissues and run rings through the nose. They just want to know. 2.  Now it’s months since I got my hair cut. When my fingertip skims over the end of it, I, startled, seem to have met another self. 

Maybe

I want to be loved so let me. But not by many. I want to be heard so let me.  But not once for all.  I want to be rude so let me. Even once too often. In the gleaming teeth I see the world beaming  And myself wailing.  Still I want to be loved  Just by you. Maybe. Just about enough.  Maybe. Maybe.

Beware

The sorry look in his sockets  coagulated  when I waved away his tray of apologies with a vehement gesture. Don’t be sorry. Beware.

Eat prey love

He washed honey with hot water down his eating pipe.  I said it’s drinking flowers with a straw of bee.  He didn’t see the cruelty of the joke.  I didn’t see the futility. 

3 a.m.

Fumbling words moved my drowsy mind to a laborious clarity at midnight. I grabbed my phone and typed words in an order that best framed my state of mind, tying back my elusive little thoughts in an obedient pony tail from an unruly mop. The flicking cursor winked at me, encouraging and tentative, as if to make sure that I’d spilled it all out, with a pair of caring eyes, those of a stomach-pumping nurse. This made me sick. You sentient jackanapes! I thought with venom in my hiss. Then I shut off the screen and sent the words to no one.   I gazed into the hallow of blackness, silhouetted by the fuzzy rims from the signal light on the air conditioner, time grazing my drenched-cold skin, every second that passed ticking a welt on it. Another night’s gone white. I thought motionless, under my heavy breath so moist that I could squeeze it for dewdrops. I wouldn’t want to bury my nose under the cover - that would be action involved and I’d rather die. In my small wishful thinking, everyt...

a featured poem

My desperation for words is taught His nose is statuesquely tall What my almond eyes mouthed I wish he could tell