Invites me through streets of crumbling red brick
And puckered limestone walls.
In the city I see buildings frail
Their flaking facades like the paper thin skin
Which hangs on old men's ribs.
Archaic decorative shop fronts,
Now weathered and wisened,
Watch me with faces creased
And cracked like my grandmother's hands.
Who would have predicted the
Gerification of these places,
Now in that limbo between demolition
And National Treasure?
Just like the old people I see
Quickened by man-made medicines,
Pulled another inch away from the icy grip,
Will this building too,
It's bones now strong,
Dressed in the finest architectural features,
Be forced to stand on,
It's demolition ever further away?
jealousy which wraps
itself around ideas
and expressions
entwines, clutching as if
around eggs- waiting
for their maturation
envisioning their beauty
as they hatch-
explode with force
like small grenades
of envy and
selfishness.
I have a snakelike jealousy
which grows and
sheds its skin with each
new emotion you bring.
I have a snakelike jealousy
so beautiful and graceful
smooth
with red plastic hearts and
bloody lipstick stripes
all wax and shine
A snakelike jealousy
which holds and embraces,
warms and comforts,
pulls and constricts,
taunts and squeezes,
Holds,
Smothers,
Compresses.
I have a snakelike jealousy
so beautiful and necessary
it clings with teeth
like arrow barbs
cutting and making you
bleed
so red like Valentines
and first time bed sheets
I am so creepered by snakes
pulsing like memories
pulsing as red as a reverie
Searching with turgid fingers
A memory of earth.
Tonight the digging.
Somewhere hidden
A treasure
A pearl
An echo of beauty
A shadowed recollection of ecstacy.
The moons of his eyes have made me a she-wolf.
It is that time of the month
When the full moon risen wil be swallowed whole.
For me, it is, to selfsubjugate
To point my eyes to the floor
Lower my breast to the ground
Forget my strength to run and hunt.
Naked, I should be a vessel,
An oyster full of pearls,
A cornucopia pushing forth over-ripened fruit.
But who am I?
Hollow as a tree trunk
Void as the moonless sky.
Grip his neck
Awakens those who by custom sleep
Except at this time
When eyes are forced shut
And the bliss of activity
Hides their footsteps
Along goosey flesh
Five fingers cold
He turns to see
A projection
An arrow of light
Focused sharp by five cold fingers
Head thrust forward
He feels them stepping, skipping, tripping
Along soiled skin
Their gait like a heartbeat
Like the pulse which melts
Five fingers cold
She has sloughed off her dark veil
Here fully ripened, a lotus pearl
Bathing in the dark above
I, too, swim in her icy flames
I should not be here
Will she send the lunacy again?
We mortals do not learn easily
Cautionary tales are faded by the heat of puberty
Spotty Red Riding Hood was eaten by a bigger wolf
In a retro sheepskin coat.
We have buried Actaeon
R.I.P.
This voyeur creeps away
Unknowingly a stag
Til that night's passion pulls blood from me
Bitten by the Huntress' hounds
Now pulling her black veil to her bosom,
'Hail Diana
Don't feast on me
My flesh rots
Don't feast, Don't feast
Nor plunge your hand
To the heart-
The palce of the life dew
Warm and red
Like the tears of Our Lady
Or stains upon the wedding bed.
A rose
A worm
I am a maggot's feast.
Buried long
But soon to rise
he burns, he burns
Upon the skies'
"But I am milk
And for my kin
I rise, I rise
On darker skies
None can win
My veil of silk.
I am unending
A priceless virtue
A mother
A lover
I shall not hurt you
My son descending."