learning-to-fly

The cream colored wraps that bind them Look as if the fibers will tear: Thin onion sheets to give way at any given moment And the raisin contents inside will shrivel and glisten in the light. Puckered like disease and leather, Once functioning bodies Now hug their knees in brine. I am too wrapped in thick papyrus or cotton, A peel that mimics theirs. My sinews look tired and vacuumed. I mirror the sad wretched state of dehydration. Vinegar and relief scuttle like Kafka beetles Under my cloth. Deflation rather than release from my own broad layer, The strangled air is sucking oxygen for dearth. I turn and show myself to them

Go on, pull your antics. Let's make our circus dips and swirls. Paintbrush dancers, Gentle creases frowning carnie eyes, Veterans of the trade. Crazy, absurd, all glitter and lights; Disguising nostalgia. That's theatre. The pregnant chords of alien music, Birdie flutes, With matching birdie girls, thin, flaunting, Corpses of a dead era. It's the familiar, don't you hate it? But we can mask it with our sugary stench, If that's what you want. No matter how many young hopefuls Scream, popping their lungs like zeppelins And honeying their throats with gravel and exotic smoke, Yelling, 'we believe in true love'; It doesn't make

I listen to the sounds they speak And mull them over slowly. Hold them in the space below my tongue, Running my cracking lips along the spoken word, Rough, bitter, membrane of dry, outdated wit. Although their feelings register-- Click and bounce to turn A scholarly, analytical wheel-- My mind is set on bluebirds and Ophelia: Innocence inevitable and disregard unworthy. Now, impatient and aler, They write me kinder-notes on simple book With blue, shifty ink born of shaky hands With grotesque ghosts Shuddering up the fingers. As light, I prism away, a rainbow pirouetting on the wall. I skip in the rain like Gene Kelly While th

Red ecstasy, like crushed lipstick bending in on itself at the knees, creaking and needing practice. Flecked turqoise, suave reeds saying please pluck your arm off my back, thanks. Joy and Pain, wearing white flowy dresses, manifesting themselves in my limbs, energy flowing into my perfect fingers; albino and shadowy. Waving like puppets "Goodday" but never "Goodnight". Everyday before I crawl into my bed as a cat, I say a prayer of protection. It's on ripped paper, hanging above my head, pressed against the wall like insect with yellowed tape, feeding on the power of the plea. I feel like Macbeth, and magic. I don't think

Spider creeping Spider crawling never knowing where to next. Eight directions Eight connections frozen still or moving Quickly! quickly! before the fatal footstep falls. Are you dead or are you sleeping? Teach me to be silent yet. We can learn a lot from spiders how to listen- how to bite.

I sip my drink slow and easy. Flowing like honey, blossoming in my throat. I like cream in my coffee, thank you when all the cool cats drink it black. I let the feeling expand in my stomach, beaded like mercury, parachuting from chaos into control. My head reels from such emotion, digesting and rolling in my organs. I feel dirty, like the color of coffee. But never black. Never charcoaled beyond recognition. Liquid love, juiced misery, or is it all in my mouth? I'm shaking now. The coffee is taking all my warmth, stealing it away and hiding it. Hide and go seek, it writes and boils. Trick or Treat. But I drink it slow, so I w

You chose me. I have been thrown into a boiling sea where I keep my head above only when you hold me. All melts. Shivers creep across my neck like small spiders legs. My neck is smooth and soft where you lips caress it, singing it into nostalgic sleep; into a childs lull. Our inner rhythm is thrown, hand tracing hand, echoing each other's song and dance. Our kisses laced with coffee, and secrets. While we roll on the pregnant, thrashing ocean the spawn of an age of confusion, of FUBAR, of risks must be taken. This is our island of security. The wind our music. The storms fury our cushion. Giggles explode to keep us from