Famished and Beaten
Like a broken punching bag.
I can't take this abuse.
                                       My mind tells me this.

Unconvinced or scared
To slow down and observe.
A road full of stop signs.
I look forward and move with no sign of worry.
Tickets s
              p
                i
                 l
                  l
                   i
                    n
                      g
                         from the glove compartment.

                                       My mind defines me.

Shadowed palm trees.
Dreams of sunny weather.
Snowflakes drowning the sun.
Dreams never last forever.

                        I'm glad it doesn’t last forever.

Muffles from the late night arguments.
Neighborhood dogs intruding into the conversation.
Stay out of this affair!

                                     We are not good kids.
                                     Say the divorce papers.

I hope street corner hobos
Don't whisper for spare change.
I would spare change
If change could spare me.
                                                          Change?
Rearrange the emptiness.
A reason to find time to seek.
Shadows hiding from sun rays.
                                             I am the shadow.

A discolored and obscene dream.
Wake me from the night terrors.

                            Before I scream.

My mouth is dry with the taste of the smoke and yearning,
Incense sticks lit on my tongue with a lick of whiskey lighter fuel.
Burning down to each moment where the ashes of you
Would fall off my tongue,
Until there was nothing but ashes by the end of the night.

I shed everything but
the pencil skirt and stockings.
I suffocate and sundry and
drift into my boy's case of
suede leather, where he
trusts me to miscalculate
his competence and its
Saturday, the morning,
and he says, I love you
in the morning, Sarah.
There's stroke and nip,
at every turn of the trail
an adoration for what
he calls my soul, and
he asks for the routine
obliteration. A violence
always whispered.
I'm velvet everything.
Velvet tongued.
Velvet *****'d.
Each portal and contour
a soft place for him to
land, to dispose of his
fear of death,
but what am I supposed to
do with it, the fear of death?
But this is my burden
with the light skipping
through the blinds. Simpler
times, there were, I think.
And a last name he means
to hang on me, always soon
and very soon. Dishes in the sink.
Eternal moonbeams and sun rays.
This is it, I'm afraid.

Half the man I was,
I enjoy but I don't laugh,
I hum but I don't sing,
I move but I don't dance,
I care but I don't love,
I am me,
but only somewhat.

He's a heister,
Now detaining my precious,
Aloof and so vulnerable
Yet he is careful
Scared to crush the gem
Into smithereens
For it cannot be the same
Once it is broken

We do not know what we do
Not know even that that we
Do not know it.  For might
Not some lost language
Of our infancy that we
Were born knowing but
Got covered up by disuse
Was forgot-Say a fluency
Of tonality akin to speaking
In tongues- a language of
Great power and subtlety
If we could hear it spoken
Telling us to Wake Up
We would then remember
And be transformed-cured
Of all diverse complaint
Healed of all injury.  I
Do but say such is my
Intuition that it is so and
Maybe so for all I know
A mysterious sleeping
Truth all but forgotten
May be revealed again
In its first pure light.
The beginning of All
Ever beginning, a glory
So new that it cannot be
Remembered but yet is
Always known to love.