Ambergris

Ambergris encrusted earring lays
beneath receipts and change.
A tangible reminder of a night
long since past.

A powder-caked quarter settles
for change for a soda, still
wears the memory of our last dance.

I wonder what happened to you that night?
You kind of just disappeared from sight?

Whatever happened to me must've happened
to you; we both
kinda sorta disappeared from view.

The strappy black heels hiding behind the door
have been replaced for a more sensible shoe.

One that doesnt' remind me quite so much of you.

Days that you don't cross my mind
are still far between and few.

Everything's been blurry these last couple of weeks,
my eyes don't focus too well and the right one sort of leaks.

I'm missing who I thought I was and what we might have been.
I'm certain I'll get over you eventually, but when?

Big Love

I have an elephant named Love.
Begged her to stand still.
Instead, she pirouettes
too close to grandma's china.

Her trunk wails a familiar tune
Anita Baker and Luther Vandross
dare not croon, in mixed company.

Maybe James Brown, though.

Tail swinging, feet stomping;
Her mass can't contain her
excitement.  Anticipation of
the rare treat, a true friend,
she is complete.

A girl can't help to jubilee
at her first taste of destiny.

                             --For my You

Dear Emily,

Your words rest
in quiet proof
of an unfettered life.

Spared public shame
and private scorn,
never heralded: wife.

Not from your father
forced to cringe
from a stranger's touch,

Nor be belle
of any ball.

Life, for you, lay undefined,
waiting for your pen.

In your words lay
humble truths and
worlds yet unexplored,

a testament to
freedom, neither
cherished nor deplored.

No expectations
nor demands, no
pedestal from
which to fall--

One doesn't have
to have seen much
to have seen it all.

Baklava

Like so many layers of phyllo dough
my grief compounds itself
each time
my life touches death.

My grandfather's passing crushed me at five,
then a friend at thirteen took the joy out of life.
My mother, too young, muffled the world's buzz,
cocooning me in strife.

Each death weighs on me like
stones on a grave.

Each wave of grief
crushes me.

Daring me to be brave.

I want life how it used to be.
I want to be saved.
I'm exercising futility-
I know there's no escape.

FaerieWolf

Three glistening gossamer girls decreed
an end to Summerlin's tyranny.

A stunning new breed was revealed
to share the talents we most revere:

Keen eyes that slice through the night sky
fast wings enable the beast to fly

Ears both pointed and made of fur
disclose this animal's both Fae and cur.

Light and Dark, predator and prey
signaling Summerlin's end of days

For what's to come of us People of Trees
when Wolves use wings to hunt Faeries?

Gossamer

For some of us, childhood only grants
a ghost of a chance, a gossamer
thread of truth and right in the midst
of the stony silent cave of our lives,
lined with dank walls dripping with empty
promises and forgotten dreams

In the cold and alone, leaning
against the hard walls that line
all we know of life, we must
ignore the dripping water, the formation
of the stalagmites. All movement
leads to more stagnance surrounding us.

We must close our eyes and hold
out our hands, feeling for the spiderweb
strand of hope, careful
neither to let it fall from our grasp,
nor to hold it too tightly, making
it snap, dropping the end

in the muck, losing, forever,the line
that spells freedom of the soul,
freedom from fear, freedom from
the desolation we see around us,
freedom from the isolation
that haunts us.

That single thread of truth holds
the promise of nights not lying
in stoic silence, afraid of the
boogeyman waiting to snatch
our dreams the second
they awaken

within our subconscious.  We must
hold that thread with brave tears
and trust that we will not always
feel alone
and not quite of this world.

This Poem is Unkind.

My poetry is not kind.

Great poets take us on emotional
journeys.  We bring our baggage
and we can follow along.

Not me.

I leave my reader in the dark,
on a strange street.  Barefoot
and costumed with only a glow
stick for light. A Flimsy mask
pops your tender ears every
time you try to conceal your fear.

I lure my reader into a dim
house, exuding pale blue light
with strange plants.  I tell you
that there are Smurfs living in
those tiny trees.  And you believe me.

When you find your way
back to that unfamiliar street
kind strangers seek to distract you,
hide me from your line of vision.

Entice you with treats
you know are a trick.

Until you find the car,
crawl in the back
and ask why I like to
dance on my boyfriend's lap
in the front seat so much.

And I offer you five dollars
if you promise
not to tell mom.

Lihue

Father suffers
emotional dysentary (a full cup leaves
no room for others' fluids) Father's children pare
and cut themselves
unleavened people denied a warm stationary
place necessary
for a full rise.

Alone in Paradise, our baker beams at his
perfect loaves, thinks of Dalmations and Annapolis.
Lily white communion blueberry pancake wedding
band collection and three family
albums carelessly left stateside.

And here she comes on flight 2953
seeking redemption for a rocking of the hips, swallowing
peas whole with milk.  You can't
get there in the car you're driving.  Mister
Oblivious and his missionary
family.  You-kuh-lay-lee, Ooo-kuh-lay-lee,
What the hell, it's a fiddle.

He won't give you
what you want.  The Deacon
will never fall to his knees
begging absolution.
Nothing personal,
blood doesn't drip from a stone.

Chalk it up to a weekend for two
in Hawaii.  It beats anything else he gave us.

La Mer

I.
In plague times, people thought the disease
passed from a glare, or spit,
that humours were scales, or guards,
a line of defense against illness.
Words became poison.
The wind, cursed.
Curses came too, like venom
from a woman's mouth.
Forced into seclusion
for seeping her fluids on birthing blankets
crying out as a person escapes
the prison of her body
jealous now, and lonesome,
the child's freedom haunts her.

The only solace is peanut butter kisses
on a tired sideways face
sucking chocolate milk from a straw.
In the dark, he looks again like a fetus,
blurring features from an ultrasound.
It's like he's come home,
no longer the stranger who eats at different times,
and runs while she types,
who speeds cars across the tile,
while she hides behind a book and a headache,
ashamed to say, "Never leave me again",
who knows her body rejected their bond,
that she pushed, screamed, cursed him out
to become something new.

Something dies when a child is born.

We don't say it; we take motherhood graciously,
but in every silent kiss,
each washed knee,
a plea is made,
"Come back."

II.

Women gave birth to nation's leaders
and warriors alike, priests and scientists
who, after deserting their womb, grew to write Leviticus:

Women are unclean. They cannot be touched
during their moontime.
They must hide their brazen
leaking for a month, or three.  Live in shame
for doing what we praise the Almighty for.

The plague finds blasphemous times,
and feeds off fears.
Lines are drawn
to fight the natural order
of bugs, death, shit.

We wash, kill, and create air-conditioned havens
from other sentient beings.
Spring is the time for fucking.
New life springs
from our wanton loins
as from reptiles and insects.  We're bigger,
no, we're smarter, no, we're made in God's image.

III.

A man gets his day in court for raping
a 92-year-old woman.
Twice. "The Naked Burglar"
wears a suit for his big trial.

IV.

In plague times, women's leaky organs
made lies out of prayers.  The rain
could not be trusted, the sea
brought bad winds, and midwives
were murdering thieves.

They were also Searchers:
The first morticians who read dead bodies,
wrote cause of death, and waited
for a surgeon to check their work.
They could not be trusted.
Men could not cry.
Women were doomed for bleeding.

Humours became hysteria,
and the plague of woman raged on,
through the cotton gin, to abolish slavery,
and ban whiskey in its wake.
Women hold office, run Nike, and bake
pre-formed cookies.
But there's still Non-specific Stress Disorder.

And the rain.
That, still, cannot be trusted.

Growth

I remember a white dress with red satin trim
dirt caked under my fingernails, between my toes.
I was three, and you were explaining
to me why I couldn't plant an apple tree
in Florida.  I couldn't understand how a place
good for growing so many other trees
couldn't grow apples.  I dropped the core,
seeds and all, into the earth, in defiance of you,
and of nature.  I dropped it in a cold corner
near the front of the house, and sat above that spot
all summer, sucking ixora nectar
as I waited.
No apples grew out of the earth
that fall, but that core took me into the ground,
showing me the secret to growing things unseen.