Incarnation In Red

 

"Go to this place," I was told

or perhaps I told myself.

"You will be no one's darling,

and you will always be cold."

So I went, wrapped in damaged flesh.

My mother said, "Let's not show her to the neighbors."

In time, I showed myself,

swinging from our elm like an ape.

"Doesn't she ever stop talking?" someone asked my father,

He answered, "Not if I have anything to do with it." Bless him.

Once grown, I did all the usual things, had all the usual hopes.

Passed out with strangers. Saw spiders on the ceiling.

Angels came in dreams, and as animals.

I was helped by a man in a western shirt, and another with a Fu Manchu.

I decided, more than once, not to kill myself.

I was healed, more than once, simply by asking.

Always, I had roses wrapped in broken glass; I said a million times,

"I can do a thousand things with red, all of them fucking gorgeous."

"Why does she think she cannot be loved, why does she think she is ugly?"

Time said, "Because all the mirrors are warped, and the devil loves constancy."

"Go to this place," I was told,

or perhaps I told myself. 

I was gone so long, I stopped believing, except to be certain

that I am no one's darling, and will always be cold.

_______

Image at top is a manipulated image of Sleeping Lady Mountain, Alaska. 

Music: Lisa Gerard Sacrifice

What I Did Instead

 

Swans came to me 

as they frequently have,

in flocks like nuns

and in nightmares

rising from lilies pressed

in the pages of a bible.

"You must forgive," they said,

"to turn dust to bread."

Wearing a black masquerade

mask, the nearest said,

"You will feel better." So I shot it

and immediately did. 

A crowd cursed me and called

me a devil. They kissed the swans,

held them like bouquets,

offering them to me like scripture.

Now, I carry a thorny rose in my teeth

and wrap the vines around the beaks

of every talking bird I meet. 

I eat my black bread with red jam,

my face a volcano, my heart a ringing forge.

_________

for desperatepoets "wrestling angels". 

image: unknown artist, found on Pinterest. 

Music: The Animals It's My Life

The Blemish

In the morning, the blemish appears.

Haughty mountains, snow-topped, hard as weapons.

Brave explorers dying in a violent wind.

The blemish brings with it

divorce,

financial ruin,

the sniggering of false friends who ride in your ears.

Blemishes through history:

the canker of Robespierre.

the pimple of Marie Curie.

the cold sore of Trostsky, as he folds papers into bullets,

himself the hapless one,

sitting in a chair with an antimacassar,

a revised edition with limited press run.

On the thankless mountain side, Sir Edmund Hillary

examines a blemish with gloved hands,

his visage cracked across the cheek in a broken mirror.

The sherpa sniggers, riding in his ear.

Upon return, parades,

dinners,

divorce,

disaster.

The appearance of the blemish betokens the icy  marksman,

behind you there,

delivering the avalanche

dead center, mid-beat, shattering.

_______

First, There's A Dead Guy

First, there's a dead guy.
(There always is.)
Who cares? 
They'll figure it out in an hour.

The actress has red hair. She's quiet, but
simmering, like Emily Dickinson stirring chili in the afternoon
with wavy-glass windows steaming up
and a clock ticking in the hall behind her.

It's her hair, you know.
And her face.
I can feel it, that shift inside, sliding me into a time-fall.

I had forgotten the sensation on the sides of my fingers
as they curled around your green Henley at your hips.
They had never been born before that.
I had never been hungry before that.
My desire for you created me entire, on the spot. 

You had red hair. It was quiet in your dorm room,
like the air before a rare fall funnel.
I lifted your shirt up over your head,
lifted out of any life I ever lazed through up until then.
I never knew I could kiss someone
and carry that kiss like true north under my skin.

All day, I'll be thinking about
your scent,
your easy smile,
a time, place, and two girls
who stopped existing years ago, 
but who drop by unannounced and find me out.
_______

For Bjorn's flashback prompt at Toads. Last night I had the most intense dream about someone I knew when I was at college the first time (I went back later). But though I knew who it was, she had morphed into actress Julianne Nicholson, who played Detective Wheeler on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I probably need years of therapy.

Hiding

I am hiding where you can't see
me, down where the roots find 
winding ways and secret water,
daughter of both silence and 
random lightning strike.

I am hiding where you can't touch,
such a stand-offish lonely sort
aboard a black-winged bird
absurd and glorious in her particular 
vernacular of singular songs and caws
jackdaws and crows
know better than a professor at his books.

I am hiding in the red detritus
I might as soon worship as any
many-strictured deity, and yet,
getting it wrong, being found out--
shouting and giving myself away,
saying yes, I really do reduce to
blues in the afternoon sung by
my own traitor voice on these pages like a kiss.
__________

for Fussy Little Forms: Chained Rhyme.

 

Gypsy

There are red-haired Gypsies, you know.
Have you ever seen a blackbird against a pink sky,
or a silver ring balanced on its edge beside the bed?

Red is the fox, the bad wound, the roadside house
abandoned for years,
but once the first home of the then-young, now gone on.

What I wanted to tell you was this:
how I kept a wasp in a jar--
how it beat itself against the hard glass air of its artificial world
until, out of pity, I set it free
and it stung me in my throat.

Ever since then,
there is never enough water,
but always enough anger;
I have sent cardinals into your dreams to be my messengers,
to try to explain
that my silence is my love for you.

Now, today,
the wasp's sad mate has come
as I was gathering lilies,
to sting me on my wrist, just above the onyx bracelet I wear
but which did not protect me.
Her sting is harsh, and now her pain is mine
and it is merciless.

Her revenge makes my eyes water,
and forces my singing,
though some would call it moaning.
Our house will disintegrate,
or burn,
and it will have been my doing.

I don't expect to find, ever again,
a soul that can reach me like yours has.
With my silence broken, any answer I might receive is drowned
by my own endless grinding shrieks;

still, I weave a bright red message through all of it--
come back.
forgive me.
dig into the wasps' nest and find my heart.
_______

Nice Girl

I'm a nice girl
Most usually,
And ain't nothin'
That you done to me...
But if you hurt the sun, the moon will know--
I'll chill deep blue and sink down low
To fuck you up bad
And cut you cold.

Do you think I'm joking?
Did you think that if you broke her heart
That I would sigh and just forget?
Did you think I'd not use blade and fire
To leave you just this side of dead?
I'll fuck you up hard--
That's what I said.

I'm a nice girl
Most often times,
But if you cross my sister
And make her cry,
I'll use every magic,
Every edge,
Every blasphemy
To make you see and feel me
Much better than you ever did for a girl you could never deserve;
Do we understand each other, sir?
I'm going to fuck you up wicked,
So bite on this
And I'll begin it.

_______