Ash

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

Colored flames flare the leaf that dies.

For a moment, the madman lucid.

Sweet milk in the sun turns putrid.

The bonfire kills the thing it lights.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

You may find that devils may care

To catch and keep you with them there.

The young may sigh, slow, and sicken

to find their tongues gray and thickened.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

A snare denies its bird the skies.

Don't be so proud, sure and boasting.

See the rooster, plucked and roasting.

The grave may loose the one who dies.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies. 

_______

for Sunday Muse #182. This is a quatern. Thanks to LiJade.

Internal Injuries

I hear dead people.
1965 continues endlessly,
elms rustling in summer breeze,
baseball and Beatles cards spread on the sidewalk still,
screen doors and monarch butterflies fragile but immortal.
You can stop now
(don't stop)
you can stop
(don't)
you
(don't)
stop.

Don't listen. 
Drop the sound out.
Roll with it if you can.
This house has been on fire for decades, why panic now? 
I hear dead people,
jumped up from eternal rest or damnation
telling me what they always told me:
child, you're fucked, and it's your own damn fault.
Can I stop hearing it now?
Can I stop living
(don't stop)
or start?
(don't start with me)
or
(you)
me
(us)
stop.
STOP.

1965 continues endlessly,
elms rustling in the summer breeze. 
________

for Poem As One-Sided Conversation at Toads.

 

 

A Pyromaniacial Glossary

You likely think living in a burning building is a temporary thing. 
No. It's a lifestyle unchosen--a birthright.
Nothing gets old here, that's true--
everyone wears the latest oily rags.

Kiss me, taste my turpentine lip gloss.
True love for ten minutes, 
then a hundred alarms,
a million exits.

Containment? Oh fuck, you're funny.
_______

for Friday 55.

 

Floral Arrangement

When time has come for me to rot,
forget forget-me-nots.

Place touch-me-nots upon my grave--
no rose, nor lily, nor daisy;
and dig it far from madding crowd--
the loud, the false, the crazy.

Say few words, if any you must--
and lace them through with laughter
that unrepentant madmen know--
then silence ever after. 
______

A flash 55 for my BFF's weekly bacchanal. 

 

In This Room

Here, in this room, is where I left it. 
I carry a key,
cold between my breasts, hard against my heart,
that I will never use again.

You--reaper, slayer, bitch--
I bear no mercy for you, no kind thought.
May fire ants climb up your cunt and kill you very slowly,
and the balm stay in sight just out of reach.

Here, outside this room, is where the husk-body walks.
It lives, while the heart that was its passenger browns and curls beyond the door.
Love for my familiars is strong
but the rest I have driven nails through and fed to bald-head vultures.

Killer, drooling lunatic, dust-souled woman-forgery,
I spit on every mote that's left of you;
I feed your ghost great troughs of hate,
and curse you for killing me, again each day, as long as I have memory.
_____

for Susie's "If Death Were A Woman" challenge at Real Toads.

 

Candlehead

in a cup of ceramic moon bone,
i nest my ignited constellations.
i keep two eyes--
one for hot, one for cool--
kiss me and taste the entire sky.
______

this is my attempt at a tanka, for Real Toads. my dislike for oriental forms is widely known, so if this doesn't fit the bill, please choke on a cherry blossom! 

Frankengirl

There were thieves in the delivery room--
they stole my face.
Later, in the doctors' lounge,
my mother's obstetrician lit up a Parliament,
waved his hand and claimed that the wind must have done it.

The wind, emboldened,
blew through my head where my face should have been.
"Where is your heart?
"Hand it over," it crooned, as if it were a demented nanny.
I hid inside nightmares
until the room got too thickly blue for visitors.

Soon enough, my mother ditched the damned neighbors and attacked.
I rolled myself into a ball and kicked myself away,
though the rigged tilt of that house always brought me back.
I went through faces like a deck of cards,
all of them wrong,
all of them trailing shame like black kites.
I liked to play Fire,
and soon we went through addresses just as quickly.

So now you ask me, all these years later,
"Is this your face?"
It is a face.
Why don't you kiss me and find out?
If there is a cave-in, just stay where you are and breathe shallowly;
You may be all right, 
because I only have so many matches,
and there is no telling if the wind will whip all the way down there
to the scream-place where I left my jagged mirror shards 
lined up and waiting like euthanized dolls.
_______

For the Real Toads mini-challenge. Art by Kathryn Dyche Dechairo  

The Cougar

A cougar ate a priest
who had been hiking away from God
because God
was too demanding.

As he was being consumed,
the priest said,
"You have teeth like votive candles,
and eyes like chalices.
You are the church I was looking for."

The hungry cougar was kind
and took in this wandering priest.
She tore each muscle from the bone
so that the priest would stay--
despite lack of faith,
and despite good sturdy boots still ready at the trail's edge.

They came for the cougar, of course.
They called her a killer,
and spat tobacco juice as they spoke badly of her
while loading their rifles.

When they found her and took aim,
the spirit of the hiker priest spoke from the cougar's mouth:
"Ecce Agnus Dei."
I'll be damned, said those keepers of good established order,
and then they opened fire.
_______

Ecce Agnus Dei = Behold the Lamb of God

written for Hannah's challenge at Real Toads.