Window Shopping

Down the narrow store aisle
shelves bulging with merchandise
resembling a hoarders hallway
but here, things are brightly lit

my fingers move lightly across the tops
of changing objects
like piano keys.

Pausing a moment,
felt like holding a note
I stalled in the lane and was
nudged from behind,
my bag shrugged off my shoulder
snapping me
out of kaleidoscope vision-

I craned my neck
backward to acknowledge
someone-apologize-but-no one was
in the aisle with me.

I continued along, slightly unsettled,
when I was then most certainly pushed
by another consumer of wares
in another aisle
on the other side
of the store
of my body.
I did not bother to look,
nobody was there.
It was easy enough to ignore.

He had been waiting in the car.
He found me,
he wore an misfit smile.

He touched me for the first time in
five years,
intentionally
down my spine
reaching all the way
into the realm of dreams
softly.

Quickly and deeply
under flourescent lights,
he told me how he fell
in love
before
and wanted to tell me
what he saw, then, recently,
but I wouldn't understand
nor could I heft its weight.

Cradling a rectangle mirror in his palm
the images he saw
expanded and contracted
at will-with a pinch and pull,
until it all grew too large
and thin and had to shatter
into shards across his feet.

His grip had been too tight.

Through a screen,
it was a dream
I see, I said
like privacy glass.

Nothing was hidden here
or there,
it was simply harder to find.
If only the advertisements
were to scale,
the distance could be measured
between desire and death
marked down
with a red tag.

Marriage is easier to get into than out of.
It is easier to get stuff than give it away.

There is nothing new
nothing I want to buy,
I said at his head facing
his phone-without looking up,
he offered,
You can order anything you like online.

I stood in line with a metal box of pranks
in hand,
You found something, he finally observed
the waiting.
Who is that for?
Me. I'm the only one I know who falls for
these things-
even when I know how they work.
I'll buy it, he said.


Image credited by New York Public Library, no date, no source info given. In Public Domain. 

The page of gathering places

Chin jutted level with the horizon line,

arms clasped around thin elbows which palms

cradle against the abdomen, the body becomes

a sensual veil, loosens its threads, the carpet of moss

appreciates the spaces across smooth rocks such as

She-

And I hear her voluptuous sigh

giving weight to attraction,

attention and focus upon

the tiniest moon

as though the stars were an entourage

of criticism-

She begins again, stainless in the mud,

I inquire as to what is bothering her,

what matters more than

rocks and trees-

She beheld a single sheet of white paper

which explained her glow,

scratch that she noted and tore

it into thin strips

but would not say another word edgewise.

I knew I would piece it all back together

when she smiled, opened her shoulders,

spread her wings and sang

like a mocking-bird.

There were too many notes, index cards

and pages coming back, 

returned to sender and un-

deliverable-

Yet we agreed

on something so stark

standing on different patches

of land and future, undoubtedly

paper was better than plastic.

Painting by Poul Friis Nybo (1869-1929), 'Reading Woman' c. 1929 in Public Domain. 

The beaten path

Curses
lain across footfalls
shadowing
the marked path

Treacherous crags
protrude guilty edges
into skin
under brittle nails

The way weather exposes
the external
and tries to wash away
shine with light

Circling eternally,
erosions never cease
such as this
degradation of morality.

The darkest parts
are tethered to these heavy
steps
Taken

for fugitive
methods of moving gifts.

A body spent is
a blessing saved
for another way.
High noon

obscured only our difference
by degrees,

illusory of our self-images,
and how much distance

must be made
to be come
one with a same
destination.

Too late
to take back
steps.

Any other way
could not have been
more direct.


Photo credit: Carol Highsmith, taken 2015 in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. 

Assemblage

It was a group photo
taken of a womans' twenty
assorted pets

on and around a green
velvet couch,
all facing forward.

In order
to capture it,
one had to be there.

But anyone can easily put 

together what happened
after
        the click.


Painting by Rufus Hathaway (1770-1822), 'Lady with her pets', c. 1790 in Public Domain.

Nasty Bird Woman

Nasty woman.

Mean spirited old bird. 

She knew she was evil

and she tried 

to contain her corrosive

spirit, 

blanketed in righteous robes

of recycled plastic number seven,

which frayed at all the visible edges.

Rough is not equal to sharp.

For the safety of her loved ones

she played Nice,

but her costume did not fit

anymore.

She was swollen, frumpy

in her misery, her resentments

festered like puss,

she reeked of infection

and abhored the

good scents

like innocence.

The green oozes out

leaving a slimy stain

where she once stood

her ground,

she makes it sound

like she is stuck

in her own trap.

A trap is a trap

when open.

Witches always walk

high and mighty

as if they were born

for power,

mistaking strength for malice.

Weight was all she could do

well,

I found myself 

standing over her well,

peering down 

into the depths of her Hell

which widens like a sinkhole 

swallowing all solid ground

and livlihood in her proximity.

My nose shrinks.

It smells rotten. 

Literally,

those that profess they possess;

intelligence, honesty and tidiness

are ignorant of the obviously sloppy lies 

they leave everywhere 

like litter-

who left this here?

There is a fine left to pay.

It will be collected,

any-witch-way.

Lastly,

How in Hell

does she sleep?

Champagne and Mexican pills.
Her flute overfills
bubbling over
the limit.

Artwork by George Romney, 'Tom Hayley' in Public Domain (date unknown). 

To: Night, There will be no words

Moon shimmer atop the sea
                              Take me
Into your crested,
              Closing, wet black
Mind-
          If I
Stand here,
                   listening to your
gentle snore, rhythmic as
                     White noise
No one voice
Rises up

High moon,
                    Mid-nite, we stand
edge to edge, like the
                    Folded note
I tried to sing
                   To you, like serenade
I made a solid
                        Offer,
of my devotion
                        Hereby

Anchor leaden legs
that sway and stay
in Place
              seemingly,
ceaselessly churning in places
                              vast, liquid,
Beckoning as foreign skin,
sucking in
                  the air between
Us,          as a magnet may
Be attracted

The Other
shore
is out there,
We stand here
and just Believe
We must.



Painting by Winslow Homer, "Moonlight' c. 1874 in Public Domain. 

King of Sandcastles

All the little boys begin
by feeling the power
of costume and cape

learning man versus
nature-
good guys and bad guys

until one day
the costume
becomes a uniform,
clean lines
disappear and
superheroes
become firemen

capable of brazen acts
of valor.

Before the selflessness,
all the little princes
are pranksters,
putting a single grain of sand
inside the oyster shell,
into the monks shoe,

and these became pearls,
of course
time
refined
things.

Little girl, I was called
Firestarter,
and practiced the title
often on bridges.

I have never seen the Sandman
in my sleep,
but in my wake
I feel the sand
filling me in-
side.

Apropos of the ritual 
I chose
to be buried alive
after I say
I do
wish
to be cut by pearls
into innumerable
and indistinguishable
pieces of myself

made up
of ashes and rust
as it must be
my nature.

I must confess,
the arsonist
admired his work
while I wed

the King of Sandcastles
before the tide rushed in.



Photo credit: Galveston Island Sandcastle, Texas, taken July 2011 in Public Domain.