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

Poet

 

Loving you is like dreaming I am made of water

and then trying to run within myself.

I hallucinate a sun that rises in you refracting,

while the real one grows dull and tired turning grass to hay.

I compose ridiculous letters on bird feathers about the sky and its desires

with dust ink and lead bindings, to be read in the dark.

Nonetheless, all the brilliance with which you rule me, all the fascination you wield

is just a trick of reflection and depends upon this whim I dress up as magic

like a rabbit out of a hat, a thing that seems like a better thing, grand, ordinary, pure trickery.

____________

for Linda Lyberg's Poetics: Breakfast At Tiffany's. I used the following quote:

“It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.” 

― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories