midnight blue

limits

2004-08-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

a wall like carriage-houses in belmont square
stands between here and the end of patient cataracts
slowly blocking my divisive intuition. it is as if
my life has a servant's entrance and they're always
sending me around to the back to beg for scraps of
bread and cheese. i've lived there but i've never owned it,
never bent it to my wills and won'ts. i have a key
i don't dare use. instead i come on bended knee
while pale rich men in clean brown suits meet cleverly in hallways
to divvy up the silverware.
i mustn't dream of blood campaigns
or twisted neural fever; i mustn't counteract the tears or
sacrifice for favors granted to my indentured days
with slight, dismissive nods, hardly looking,
hardly knowing my name,
hardly believing i would so boldly draw my breath from their
coveted air.
i mustn't feel the displaced tongues of homeless thoughts
or pyramids of sweat-dried salt; i am not meant to see what i see,
hear what I hear, or live where i live. i am not meant
to wander past clean glassed windows onto the deep green lawns
and the alabaster shrines. i am not meant to know my bones or
the surge of sacred energies that now and then touch so lightly
the rough skin of my shoulder
or the tender brink of my slippery thigh.

but i do. i do.

purpose

2004-07-18T05:11:00.000-04:00

past all the ripping seams and frayed cuffs
of a world gone more than a little bit mad,
i see tension wrapped in callous cloth like
day-old fish get shifted to a sudden disappearance.

the hole it leaves is filled with sand, abrasive
to the touch but soft to the eye. a life is contradiction,
clashing egos, swirling seas, a moth drawn to a flame
until it burns as bright as neons flashing, then goes forever
out.

cats don't forgive and never explain

2004-07-13T06:21:00.000-04:00

a cat is such a simple thing,
it sleeps both night and day,
and when you've finished catering
to every whim, it just might say:
"is that it? that's all that you can do
for me after all i've done for you?"

you think and think and think again,
your brain's wore to a nub,
but no matter how you try,
you can't remember a single way
she rendered you a service. "hey!
what'd you ever do for me?" you say.
she stares you in the eye.
"if you don't know, it's not for me
to tell you. you're ungrateful and
good-bye."

fear

2004-07-12T04:45:00.000-04:00

they came with sails unfurled, approached my shore
too maddening fast. "they'll crack," i thought,
and could not look away. their banners high, their cannon
brought to bear, they dropped their sails and coasted
dark and quiet in the lonely bay. "what could they want
with me?" i wondered. "i've not wronged them,
i'm not their enemy."

the cannons boomed and puffs of smoke arose
into the masts above; explosions came like blooms
of flowers sudden and ill-timed; men leapt from decks,
their sabers flashing, their boots as black as death.
i hid as best i could, i closed my eyes.
i could not watch my death unfold
so casually mistaken.

memory

2004-07-11T10:12:00.000-04:00

pictures like alabaster monkeys
parade in serried rows
dancing on their tails, swinging by
their toes. they move as fast
as lightning bolts, they move
as slow as snails; they move
however they want to move,
they prance like newborn colts

or swim like fish or hop like
kangaroos. i wouldn't stop them
if i could, for then i know i'd lose
the dainty truth of memory, as fragile
as a child, as delicate as smoke,
and everything i thought i was
would slowly vanish, row by row,
and take me with it.