I want to shed my skin
to let Birds alight
on the ex-posed whims
Is there a meter I must mind
or a syllable I must grind
to please a language that was
indeed meant to be mine
Yet now I am Its
and it refuses to be she
who opens her legs to me
And now I remain forever blind
and unable, utterly
to produce a brain child
“And so I think my mother is death”
Gasp! Sounds the hall
“Our mother is death”
Screeeeech! goes the microphone
She clears her throat, wipes her brow
“Death must be a mother”
Aaah… the sigh runs through the crowd, nodding heads bob in a wave and chairs creak under the relaxing rears.
“So”, she says, daring to let an infant smile curl upon her lips, ” we stand here, moving towards her, away from her, and through her; dying several times before breathing for the first time, and then waiting for the final embrace. And while Life, the mean school teacher, frays our edges and whittles our hearts into strange and unique shapes, the cleansing fire of Death brings us all to primal ash.”
Yawwwn! goes one, beginning a chain of eyes drooping like dominoes
“In one way, however, Life may not be so bad after all” She says, eyeing the clock and feeling sweat pool in her armpits,
“The shapes don’t really matter, perhaps.”
ehehem… a throat clears, and then a few others
“It’s your chafed contour,” she gulps, “glowing like a halo when you allow yourself to stand in the way of light, which promises you glimpses of divinity in yourself and others…”
Triiinggg! goes the bell.
She sighs, now with a full smile, “…before we turn to ash”
The walls of your womb have begun
To draw my vermilion blood
You drew lines with sticks and chalks
in my soft, moist earth
while I cooled feet in the soil
with tomorrow sown for mirth
Now you’ve shown me a sky scarred
by ruby-eyed planes
and scraped by ivory towers
that I must climb with bars
Joy, sincerely feigned
and have my country heart devoured
it’s venom that moves me now
since the day I was bitten
with your blinding diamond teeth
It’s venom that draws me to death
in your fire, I glisten
Its smoke of my flesh I breathe
And for now I move, a beast
caged in robes of elite
glide with wings of a preying bird
carrying bleeding, mangled feet
Blues of dawning hearts
they swirl in quivering skies
shall we paint ourselves red
shall we turn to ripe
shall we turn to glowing stone
pierced and waiting to be thawed
or shall we swim in the violet whispers
open and soft
never home
gleaming one moment, tearing in another
drenched in electric thunder
Shall we soak the sun for its vital incandescence
and lose our contours to its heated whims
Shall we lean into one another
and taste the fear and thrill
of being
in flight
Made with love, whatever that is
Here’s a porcelain doll
For you to break with your kisses
Warm but cold and no qualms
Honey charred your eyes turn to
The pieces of her scarlet
Ripe and crushed, beyond undo
The heart shaped throbbing garnet
“It’s just China” blushing you say
“Fashioned for final crash
Mindless, thoughtless, too much to pay
One could not be too rash”
Her Gaze of glass, your spine of steel
Spirits of smoke in both
Shapeless, weightless, none can feel
brittle shells of broken oaths
One day happiness will come to me
Draped in resplendent gold
And I will turn away from her
Wrath in my blood, frozen cold.
There’s a shining pin in my skin
For each day spent in trance
Painting verses for the steel world
Never caring to glance
As the moon of my soul, revived
slept sans a lullaby
Twisting and turning and writhing
Poisoned by each muffled cry
Cratered and greying and aged
before his time to bloom
He mourned the tideless waters
From his violet tomb
Impaled with silver beams I bled
Then seeking my old shell
And crawling into its darkness
Sang for my heart’s burial
The moon has drowned in my world
But elsewhere, has begun to rise
And when it rains outside my door
Memories burn in my eyes
They fuel my dreams ablaze
Char what’s left of my days
Hissing, they rise in steam
Till only a carcass
of me can be seen.
I dance on thin ice and feel
the aged winter trace
Fractals on my skin
Cracks are born beneath my feet
Each time I prance, this maze
Of crystal babes sprawls in
The wrinkled cradling arms of snow
And I dance, debonair
Tease the cold that waits
To pull me close by my toe
Embrace my soul bare
Take the cadent bait
Of my heart and spirit and being
To lull them to eternal sleep
Returning to the silent womb
My final lilting scream
I write these words
To read your mind
As you try to read mine
In these words that sprang
Into being
On this blankness so white
On the surface of which
We smile back at ourselves
And we weep tears
That fall and pool
In our own eyes
And sometimes
Just sometimes
A strange hand
That comes into view
Cups to hold a trickle
Or reaches out
To be warmed by the joy
It’s yours today
And here you are
Peering into the depths, oh my!
Of a canvas that shines
A dance of dark and light
Will you see me?
Or will I see you?
Or will you see just you?
You just might
We shall see
We shall see
To all those who hear me
here’s my tale
To all those who know me
here’s my tale
beneath a veil
a face so pale
it breaks when it smiles,
ever so frail
it’s a tale
it’s a tale
not a maiden
it’s a tale
it breathes and it lives
it flits and it sails
treasures in a bale
it carries for the sale
leaving no trail
into the dark vale
do you know my tale
Alas! I must have failed
lost it in the rale
as life set to sail
The End so prevailed
I have lost my tale
do you know my tale?
Oh, do you know my tale?
