The Queen ties her rainbows from the ball

I entered the living room on Sunday in the late afternoon
with a basket of soiled laundry and on the floor lay the Queen,
sprawled out in a melancholy pool,
lyrics from her lips left hanging there aloft.

Drained and slightly dazed, she did not notice she had been singing,
her face was painted with dark minerals. Naturally,
she was shocked to see me, her pupils opened even more,
And her cheeks became velvety.

A little surprised to see her this disheveled way,
I asked if she was expecting rain-
teasing her mud faced tribal marks.
She said her body hurt, seriously, she had been dancing all night.
She did not want to break out.
With her toes pointed in my direction, resemblance spreads
like cold air. I am just stretching, she adds,
reaching out and away even more.

Interrupting us came a gentle tap-rapping at the door.
And after so many months of the same still frugal
air, the door began to swell inside its crust.
With a mustered force, she pried open the door,
as if held against her and boldly before her came an unexpected visitor,
A hint of something she mist, it had started to drizzle
and then it began to waterfall.
Her secret words had been heard, the clouds gathered to listen in.
We watched and welcomed this change of skies and days,
hearts and pace, pools of passing light and piles of cotton,
rectangles without edges, these divine Sundays,
spent simply
content in the castle with rain rolling around.
Another week cycles through and she has grown from Princess to Queen.
After all these loads I have carried, I  dutifully reflect the greys I've gathered,
the sun shifts and she thunders through
her bedroom, the walls tremble.
Busy casting rainbows by skipping stones,
she practices powers with her crystal eyes,
rocks, refracting pain into pleasure
from her chest full of gold

knowing she now controls the weather.








Painting by Xavier Mellery, 'The Artists Daughter' c. 1882 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mud day

Thrust outdoors into the somber metallic dawn whose grey washcloth
dripping with fog covers my exposed face and outer extremities, slips into
folded crevasses, as in the crook of an ivory neck, exuding an aroma of must
flooding pores make a body all the more aware of vulnerabilities,
small against the vast backdrop erasing evidence of the transference between strata
and stratosphere.

One leaden foot lurches forward despite the denial of movement on raised skin,
my hair collects the dancing beads and leaves my cheeks ruby
in the shameful way that I have seen how my hair stays grey instead of brown when wet,
and yet no time has (a) past...

the mists persist in making all clouds disperse
at our feet collecting weight on lashed eyes dropping diamonds between the sharp tan blades
repelling the chance for new life, making the bed of earth condensed to gather all the necessary elements for the making of a Mud day.

Painting by Frederic Edwin Church [Public domain], c. 1869-70 via Wikimedia Commons.

Decorating mud cakes

Apathy spreads so easily,

thriving amongst any localized

biodiversity.

Ears sprout in fields from yellow seas

of mono-cropping. The wind grinds down

our meals into muted mush, nourish us,

the sun glows, chicken,

adapting itself in ambiance to the best

propagation of pessimism and

immunology in world-wide webs.

Saturation is more suitable for delusional

desires by dreamers who water down rainbows

as casualty.

There is no wonder

anymore.

Where does the marrow go

when our spines shrivel...

Clouds cure any silly thoughts of happy

or stupid glee, i.e. beauty. Muddy skies slog unmixed 
clods and none bother asking why

Life continues this way.

Over our heads. 
We would never see any reason

for it coming

down

in all shades of brown and grey.
We wont look up. 

Painting By Rogers, Gilbert (MBE) [Public domain], c. 1919 via Wikimedia Commons.