Dangle the ego on its ribbon and leather
the heart wrapped in black weather
suxxess
and acess
snap tight
toggle the lights

X-rays and scars
titanium sealed
that limp
throws the angular
hip
Baby when I watch
you recede i know
the stars
above this tangled
wood with its steamy
ghost
and clots of river
Polaroids draped
on the machine

limp lidded eyes for
the camera
mouth ad lib
spies for the
drama

Perceptual infantality
Mentality of added
Arrogance prideful in
Ignorance
Thinking more but
Knowing less
Doing more with
Soul suppressed
Getting farther in
Your skin
Seeking deeper
From within

Once upon a time this was me. I was a preteen and somebody or something aggressively beat at the back door of our modest board home terrifying me and my sibling. We were often left alone when mama and daddy ventured out at night after a hard days work. There was 7 of us kids. I'm the eldest of 5 girls and 2 boys the younger 3.

Canto One ~ High above the encampment of Illian, near the inaccessible waterfalls men call The Psalms, Claire sings a last lament for her beloved grandfather lost in war. Her white robe and long hair struggle to reach him so far away, but Claire can only ponder the funeral pyre’s smoke so many miles away.

Canto One

She’s an image sleek of black and white.
A zephyr hurries east in flight
to bear a vanquished soul to rest.
Her silken robe would fain protest.

The swelling fabric left behind 5
as are the threads of locks entwined.

O Niagara

your flow of water is eternal all know
the world divides into two as
Bill Clinton once said
Those who have seen the Taj Mahal of India
and
those who haven't...

I wish he had so said
about something as near home
as the Niagara Falls
put to shame as natures gift of natural wonders

the flow is constant
millions of tonnes fall per second
even in winter
Save in a rare year
Niagara also freezes
so does my heart

this handset is heavy
comforting as a handgun
I toggle the switch and
hear some hum and
static
Outside the switcher hisses
its air dryer and rumbles
a content fever
I push the dirty speaker to
my ear already greasy
from a four day run
and dig in the old precious
coins...check their faces
carefully like old friends

In my wildest dreams
I never thought you'd reply
a lost poet on Neopoet
read by all
but commented upon
like grass
on my head totally bald
though sparse

(hair still glowing)

This is no farce
I searched you in
the streets of Ontario
in Florida
and South America
Argentina,

It lies with in these darkest corner of my self being
The secret no one will ever know
The secret that I'll take to my grave
The one no even my friends or family know not
The secret that my solo only knows
The secret that I have that will slowly kill me
That will slowly devouring me alive
Into a deep dark trench with one light in sight
except the light of that dark secret that know one will know no one?.

hurdles
the day erodes
I think of dictionary
and riddles
a water cooler gurgles its
divers ode drawing me
on a slide from the reverie
the x-rays come back
the bone of course is not
healing
the driver of the body is
on cruise control
flinging through the twist
of gears...one bad brake
to another
a cigarette smartly set on
a determined bemused
mask of chagrin
the lip waiting
the chrome lighter on its
slow expendable sigh of
fuel that evaporates