art teacher

faint pencil marks,
vague outlines of shapes
are my future now.

under your hand
shapes become figures,
figures acquire faces.

before i can color
pale faces,
you rip fantasy in two.

i am thrown into reality
again,
unwilling.

but i remember the faces.
i take the pencil
to replicate,
to color
the world you dreamt me.

arthritic

they say
we are two joints
that work in harmony.

but we wore out
the cartilage between us.
i no longer want
to follow your rhythm.

it�s painful to think
of the past,
but more painful
to be here now.

i wish
some greater force
would dislocate me.

until then,
let us smile,
pain muffled
by clenched teeth.

poetry, pure poetry

(in the voice of the Savage, from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World)

four half-gramme soma tablets
lets others see
Shakespeare daily
in the feelies
and Obstacle Golf

you ask me
why i abstain?
soma would let me
see everything
as Shakespeare

but poetry
pure poetry
is made
more beautiful
against a backdrop
of ugliness

ultimatum for the playwright

with all due respect,
you didn't identify
the protagonist.

i think i should be the heroine.

i watch her
from the wings,
makeup plasters a smile
on my face.

we switch places
but the stage is never mine
for long,
you have us constantly
usurp each other.

decide.

make me
a fixture
or banish me.

a life
without roots
doesn't suit me.

myopic

i thrash at veils
that are dark to you
but unseen by me.

i�m not hiding.

my flailing arms
only strike air.

i draw closer
but you order me
to stand still.

your eyes� shortcomings
let your mind
create perfection
from hazy images.

the myopic man embraces
his condition.

good-bye, adeline

we made you
out to spin poetry
from slender fingers,
with a mind
for languages,
history--
everything we thought
beautiful.

you were all our odd little ideas
lumped into one,
but we had nothing
to hold you together.

unborn,
never to be born,
we loved you
because we loved
to chase impossibility.

release from house arrest

everything outside shouts
�come play,�
mother new york sighs,
closes her eyes
and opens the door.

but she strikes out the lights.
the door slams shut.
inside i am faced
with a changed mother
i dislike even more.

this is her lesson:
i am attached
to her loathsome familiarity.
no place,
not here,
not anywhere
will answer all my dreams.

the door reopens
and the invitations to play
are less appealing,
but with one final look
at mother,
i run outdoors.

the captor's lament

i didn�t want to let go of him
even though it was my hand
that pushed him out the door.

so i held onto him
through the earrings.
the silver butterflies clutched
glass stones which
his soul had colored purple
to reflect its own regal nature,
or so i told myself.

but the butterflies flew away,
caught in a thief�s burlap net.
and i was left standing
at the open door
with no one to greet,
wishing that i could call him back.

i�ve locked myself in the cage
in which i had kept him.

stalemate

her cheeks were rosy
like the horizon
as the sun sings
its daily swan song.

facing me with lowered eyes,
she said nothing.
it was useless to comment
on the number of times
the sun had set since
we last sat together.

her hands fidgeted less now,
and were no longer mottled
with magic marker stains
as they had been in our better days,
but they still were outstretched
in my direction.

sitting there i wondered
whether this sunset would bring
a night with her
or one without her.

we moved to speak at the same time.
but both paused and stared at the other,
not knowing if the same word
was formed on both pairs of lips.

reverse disowning

Fingers curled around my shoulder,
you smiled and waited for the light
to turn green. I pretended to be blind
and ignored you, hoping that this car ride
with you would be short, fueled by a wish
as short-lived and as fragile as sugar glass.

You had always said that I was your looking glass
image, down to my eyes and broad shoulders.
But if I could have had just one wish
in my mother�s womb, I would have light-
colored eyes like my mother�s, and ride
on her legacy--not yours, that of the blind.

Even with corrective lenses you were blind
to other people�s feelings, giving my mother glass
after promising her diamonds when you began the ride
together. You left us, after ten years, on the shoulder
of the road, for another woman who could light
your lantern of lust again�every man�s wish.

I hate to admit this, but I used to wish
that some day, I�d peek through the blinds
and see you. I had insisted on keeping the light
on for you, but the other side of the glass
never showed us your return. So I had to shoulder
the pain of being left behind and continue my ride.

I vowed to never look back and that my ride
would never lead to you again�nor did I wish
it to. But now you wanted us to stand shoulder
to shoulder, like happily reunited family, blind
to each other�s deficiencies. Your anger burst like glass
under heat when I told you I had turned off the light.

You couldn�t understand that all lights,
even mine, eventually flicker and then die. Your ride
back to me just led to a dead-end and the glass
barrier was impenetrable. And I saw that a wish
denied broke the man who had been blind
to emotion. But I did not offer you my shoulder.

I, too, had glass in old wounds and my wish
was to hide them from your light. Ride on,
blind others from your pain. We all have things to shoulder.

end of the drought

my soil was parched.
i can�t even remember
the last time a storm
rolled over my plains.

but then you appeared
on the horizon, without
thunder or lightning
as warning, and now
i�m being pounded with
all these foreign things:
arms around my waist,
your cologne on my shirts,
and all this talk about us.

will parts of me erode
as you permeate my life?

i don�t want to be a desert
anymore but i don�t know
how to absorb you.

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