Her Husband Jacob Buys Gala A Ladder

for her birthday…
its very practical

And the diamonds lay unused, ignored, in the jewelry box
strung on silver ropes
chains that tangle and look like spiderwebs

trapping dew- now where did he see that little excerpt
about the dew collectors that fired his imagination
with little firework pictures going off in his brain

pop pop
pop POP pop

little gadgets that collect the rain and feed
the tender shoots of plants- it would WORK

he thinks gleefully.

Gala climbs her new ladder, cleans gutters
Jacob thinks of stringing wire or maybe fishing net
to keep the leaves from damming up the flow

and how pretty it would look
the dew strung on the net
like diamonds.

Reaching Out Blindly, I Send You Water

I think I wrote you this poem,
but
I dont know who you are
or where.

The leaves curl upward when they sense rain coming.
Cup your hands to capture the manna that falls- some one,
some where, hungers. Some one thirsts.

the water gurgles to itself as it travels down the gutter
to the sea- theres a story underneath,but it runs too quickly
for you to capture more than a trickle as you reach out.

The other night she bathed in blue water, with bubbles.
She said she was taking a bath in the sky.
Remembering the womb, she smiles upwards.

I want to put on my longest swirly skirt and walk along the edge
of the sand barefoot and lean forward into the ocean, drinking it in.
I am craving salt, I want the brine to dry in ridges upon my skin.

Im sending you this poem
like a paper boat upon the sea sent by a child
who never understood a storm or saw a wreck
in hopes that you will understand the why
-and send it back.

Here

Time is a tree growing, and spreading.

Tip a drop of ink in the water.
Watch it expand while it disperses.

I am growing older, smaller
drop me in the Universe,
watch me expand, and disperse

Everywhere and nowhere
The leaf borne on the wind.

Lit

In the photo that you slipped
to the newspaper guy on the corner …
all those broken springs and shattered hands
and arcs of broken rims
- I couldn’t help but see him, even though there
was no body, and nobody.
Every small man part of him reflected
in cracked and broken time
caught in a thousand different frozen moments
all those broken faces-
I didnt need to see him
to know that he was a bomb, ticking.

In The Middle Of The Night

I was always afraid of them, secretly.
Repelled but attracted as well.
I remember the first time I picked up a baby,
and the mix of terror and joy, the feel of power.
I used to wish I was adopted,
but I have a family, somewhere.
Once I remember where, I will go home.
The bleeding will stop.
Fear is not just in the mind,
it strikes the heart, the hands, and the gut.
This poem is about someone else
but it could be me- or you-
or anyone
whos heart is beating faster
at a sound in the night.

About A Bitch

The collie dog races after sheep
wants them just so-
genetic selection- generations of sheep gone astray
leave the remainder in packs,
easily led.

Somewhere under the disposition
that wrestles children and fetches on demand
is the tenuous connection
to her pack,
to the sisterhood of hot blood
and the rabbits as prey
racing the long grass.

It comes down to genetics,
a thousand generations and a
hundred thousand years
of sports and runts and culls
that separate a collie from a wolf.

A wolf would chase after the sheep, still,
but with a mind on meat.

Thursdays

I was down in the Disney Wing a few months ago
to visit them all- Cindy, Ari, Beauty-
God, they all sounded so fucking whiny,
I was tempted to rip out a few well placed curls,
but the closest I came to losing it was when ol’ Whitey
decided to tell me for the millionth time
what it was like to be kissed awake by the
oh so flatulant and obviously gay windbag she had to marry
- not because he woke her from the spell, mind,
but because dwarves dont believe in condoms
and The Happily Ever After Crew down in
Management knew it would screw up the burgeoning franchise
if anything got around about a not so chaste princess.

But I managed to smile, knitting calmly while I did my good deed,
visiting with my stepsister and her shut in insulated
and not to be believed ( or believed in ) crew of monstrous princesses,
the ones who started to believe in their own press,
until the press morphed like a wicked stepmother’s spell into
pressure and instead of becoming like diamonds,
pressed from coal, they split or cracked and ended up here,
Where Management sneaks in doctors every Thursday
who prescribe and prescribe and prescribe
and screen every visitor-
even a lowly and wicked stepsister like me.

I used to plot rescue. If only for the sake of consternation
and the egg in the face of those Happily Ever After Bastards
I used to sit and plan dramatic rescues.
Cindy doesn’t want it- she would miss talking to the mice, she said
and she doesnt know how to do anything but clean houses
so why not stay where she is? The food is good and I bring flowers
most of the time, so what is freedom except hard work
and a harsh world that no longers believes in the old tales?

Ari agreed softly- she likes it when I bring new cds,
because she really CAN sing, mores the pity but so few people
appreciate a pure voice in the face of slick marketing and gimmicks…
I showed her an episode of American Idol and thought
she was going to have a stroke-I didnt hear her say a word for 3 months.

They all have different reasons,
I’ve heard them all, muted voices barely stirring the dust
of the summer afternoons- it’s why I come to visit,
to be blunt, because it’s always summer outside this room,
and winter is not my favorite time of year at all,
so I sit there as long as I can stand to listen to the bullshit reminiscing
without trying to stab them all with my knitting needles.

A harmless little old lady who was typecast as second best
but who escaped, never the less.

Escher, The Calendar, and The Sea, Retreating

Describe for me that moment when the Escher moves,
when the black and the white slip
and you see the hidden,
realize it was as close to you as back and front.

Negative/Positive strobe effect.

Janus was killed by a glancing blow
to the side of his head- a traitors death.
He had two mouths, no one could ever believe him
so he rarely spoke.
He saw past and future, but now escaped him.
So he escaped us.

February comes from februa- purification, but also febrile,
feverish. Fertility, from being struck by thongs of ramskin.
I wish I could believe in that.
Wish it was so simple.

Accept what is, the line ran
until the tide swept in
and melted the words and the sea swept the sand
and scoured everything to virgin cleanliness.

What is? That means nothing or anything, I raged,
I could search from hell to heaven
and never find that answer.

And the broken lips of Janus whisper,
a sussuration like the water draining back from the sand,
that a result is not always the point of the search
that he loves me still,
but I don’t know which lips he’s using.

Singing

There is a myth under my bed. It simmers, burbling little noises into the night- it wants to be like Pele when it grows up, it tells me, when Im asleep and can’t answer how silly it is to want to be under that kind of pressure, only able to explode under very rare conditions every few hundreds of years.It would be better to be an apple, I tell it, half seriously- an apple gets eaten, an apple bears seeds to grow more, be something; turn into a tree, become something, I say while I’m still asleep and not really saying any of this, but it would be silly to want to be an apple too, I tell the little mythlet.
We argue in my sleep for weeks, I never see any of it but the edges trailing across the corner of my vision, a veil ghosting across the landscape of my mind, which is turning to the God of the South West Wind looking for him, looking for the answer to a question that my sister asked me before she went away, looking for a WORD for the little piece of the heart that melts when Lips comes, warm across the sill and dragging you and your myth out into the deep.
Because the word is not love.
It is not music.
And my sister asked me, and I want to know.

Spiderwebs

The rain turns me jeweled
spangled refractions catching the light,

but you rush by,
never noticing the display.

How do you touch a heart
with no hands?

What happens to the unnoticed?
Where goes the unshed tear?