Bare

What's a girl to wear
with so many scars to choose from?
I want to project my very best
when I'm dragged to the prison pyre.

My pale blue, retro conscience
brings out my gang / green eyes,
but it's lizard cracked, tarred and patched,
and the dial is stuck on Vice.

My gene pool flaunts my ass
like I'm melted and poured in it,
but it's pseudo-suffocating,
so I hesitate to wear it.

With so many scars to choose from,
oh, what's a girl to wear?
I want to project my very best,
so they'll have to burn me bare.

A little Jasmine's Jetsam for Open Link Monday at Real Toads.

Nevermind

A zen koan
melting,
Rumi-d,
and gone goddess.
A riddle
and a promise
held in secret self
divine.

A blank spot
for knowledge
between instinct
and insight.
Illumination -
attainment
of Nirvana
is mine.

Playing around with Shawna's #16 Word List.
Submitted to Poetry Pantry.

Monkey Mind

Time turns turgid in meditation
thanks to a miscreant monkey mind

that disrespects the demarcations
I attempt with ethereal candlelight.

With daily dementia and nonsense
and effervescence in his burlap bag,

monkey mind swings a treetop perspective
and uses zen to scratch his ass.

For A Word with Laurie at Real Toads

Naked Nights

There is something naked about these nights.
They cattail cold around my legs
until my flesh fails
and my bones brittle
blue to black beneath my skin.

Ragged in my old, pink robe,
I drag the small hours behind me
like a limp -
phantom limbs
splinted in silence
and aching

making mockery
of the amputations I've undertaken
to shorten these naked nights.

Gifts

I give you what
you tell me to give.
You give me what
you want me to have.

Orders placed.
Burdens shouldered.
Gifts exchanged.

Snow Ice Cream

When the snow reached my knees or better,
I'd get out the big, green bowl
and make snow ice cream.
I was twelve and unsupervised,
and I had few inklings
and even fewer concerns about food safety,
but I knew what I liked -

two raw eggs dropped in a bowl of snow,
a dash of vanilla and a slug of milk,
sugar, and more sugar
all stirred together into a sweet, sticky, salmonella slush
and popped into the freezer
to ferment and fester to a creamy concrete.

Oh, it was like eating pure, unprocessed heaven!

And, it's a damn wonder food poisoning didn't send me directly there.

But, deadly as it sounds,
I didn't even come close to dying that snowy winter

despite being twelve,
unsupervised,
and doing exactly as I liked.

For Open Link Night at dVerse

Merry Christmas!

Autobiography

If I pull me from the poem,
will the words stand on their own?
Will the heart still beat?
The blood flow free?
Or, must the flesh hang on my bones?

Numbers And Words

In numbers, I'm naked -
"maybes" calculated
on the anxious
abacus
of my ribs.

In words, I am a feast -
a banquet
for the beasts
unleashed
by what actually is.

For Open Link Night at dVerse

History Of The Prairie

Death whelped

white
walks-on-two-legs dogs
with iron, root ripping jaws
and open maws
for hands,

wire
fences surrounding
sod busting,
soul rusting
allotments
numbered like graves,

and wind
at the backs
of widows
and wet-eyed children
weak and wandering
west
to get ahead of the storm.

For Hannah's challenge at Real Toads

Venus

I didn't have time
to look at the moon that morning.
But I heard that she had never shone so bright.
A crescent call, come hither to her Venus
just before the dying of her light.

Now the sun declines
to pick apart this darkness
that layers like laments
on a lover's tongue.
Tired
and still as a tideless ocean,
endless as the song
I wish I'd sung

pretending to be Venus.

A disaster of a poem for a special Wednesday edition of Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads.

Note: The disaster I'm trying to depict here is the dying of the moon and sun.  I had this up for a bit yesterday, but I was really unhappy with it, so I took it down.  I reworked the first stanza; hopefully the whole thing is a little better.  Anyway, it's either this or a death of a pretty flower haiku.

Ambling

Linoleum longs
for the life of tile,
never seeing
that walked on is walked on.

Serendipity struggles for structure,
and silence seeks a voice.

Filled to the brim
with emptiness,
I bed down
in the briar

to Ambien amble toward slumber -
my butterfly of choice.

A few ink-stained words for Real Toads and Open Link Night at dVerse.

Mass Produced

Image by Daryl Edelstein

We were 

young,

witty,

sexy,

and straight off the showroom floor.

We had that new girl smell,

and we were hard as hell

to handle.

Then,

one became a mother.

One took a married lover.

One joined a faux ashram downtown.

We got cracks in the glass,

droops in the ass,

and engines making funky clunk sounds.

Quality control was slipping.

All our warranties had been let slide.

Wheels, years, and odometers rolling -

from latest models to classic rides.

For the Mini-Challenge at Real Toads

A Mother's Christmas Wish

Santa, dear Santa,
so jolly and nimble!
Don't bring me a gift;
just help me assemble!

Come in from the cold.
Come out of the weather.
Come in; I've got cookies -
help me put this together!

For Words Count with Real Toads

Holy Grounds

Pilgrims pew to get a view of God;
she never spills the coffee.
Faith is found in holy grounds
held by steady hands.
With the sign of the Sunday crossword,
St. Creola gives each a blessing
and a small to-go-with-God box
as the Queen purrs, "Come again."

Having a little fun with Ella's prompt at Real Toads.  Hmmm . . . which Toad's "home" could this be?

Ugly

I have an itch
for something meaner.
No more pretty words.

No fuck-me flowers,
no petaled lips.
No star strewn sky
or moon wet wish

can touch me today.
Not when I feel this way,

and everything's ugly.

For Open Link Night at dVerse

Two Views Of A Night

Oh, this honey hewn night!
I am manic with just desire
to shape your sugared stardust right;
put wax to fire
and fuse the fork between our wicks alight.

Oh, damn this forlorn night!
Our grand affair ground down to sand
by clash and drive and spit and spite -
you're just a man,
I'm sad to find; just a man of blacks and whites.

A form wordle for The Sunday Whirl and Kerry's Challenge at Real Toads