I know it's late, but I'm
At home alone with
A couple of six-
Packs and a guitar and the
Love of my life just gave
That Old *******
Cancer the finger, so I'm

Drinking and playing and
Singing until my liver,
Fingertips and throat are
Bleeding
Since the radiation and
Chemo don't have to
Make her bleed any

More, and
I've got something to celebrate
Unlike anything I thought I
Ever would in a life that
I mistakenly thought of
As rich until
This.

I look out of my window at
Stars and a moon that
Pretend not to
Give a **** in their
Neutral shining and stuff,
And I'm less poet than lover.
I've got all night

For this evening.
It's mine, and like
All else that is: Hers.
I know she's with friends.
I know she laughs.
I hope she misses me less
Than I do her,

And just celebrates her
Beautiful new
Lily-like blossoming into
Deathlessness.
It's as alien to her
As Life to a
Newborn.

It is becoming
So hard to be that monster
That people admire
Like watching a Trainwreck
Which gives the simple
Something to talk about
And getting older
Makes it more difficult
By the day
I have rendered myself so frail
Fighting a young man's war
Without the concern
Of becoming the old man
Who calls the shots
I fill with worry
That when that beast dies
Because I can no longer maintain him
No one will love
who I actually am
As I wonder
If anyone
Actually ever knew

I love the sound you make
In your sleep when the hair on
My chest tickles your nose.

It's the most beautiful grunt.
With your make-up on on a
Saturday night, I'm stunned;

Can't breathe, but without it,
Fresh from the shower, you are
More woman than any.

I've been in love before, I've
Taken in a girl's morning
Breath and thought the smell

More refreshing than that of a
New book or guitar strings, but
****, I love the scent of your

Self.
How do you spell "love"?
I don't know. I struggle with

My own name when your
Eyes look up from whatever
Wherever and

Punch mine right between
Themselves with the force of
A grateful supernova.

You rub your cheekbones from
Smiling so much,
And I have found a feature to

Worship like a deity they raised
Pyramids for back before
They knew beauty from

Goddessness.
I am a lover of moments.
You breathe, then I.

You are a lie

Don’t - life slips through your fingers
Even Poe could not grasp time
Stop hiding in illusions, coward
You are a lie
Shattering another’s dreams
Even if you don’t understand
The destruction you cause
One day you will wake up
To the reality of ‘what ifs’
As you look at withered hopes
And dreams that you hide behind
You are a lie

Kelly Rose
© March 13, 2017

Like an alien in a spotlight
With her magnifying glasses on
My mother as she worked, up all night
Did invisible weaving till dawn

I would watch her when I couldn’t sleep
Honing in on that hole in the suit
Intently, her concentration deep
Weaving tiny threads enlarged like jute

In other-worldly light she labored
I was afraid she’d lose her eyesight
Watching her focus never wavered
Her face all aglow in the lamplight

Invisible weaving, I inquired
How tediously she plied her craft
Worked for the money that she required
Made the warp and weft of fabric last

Reconstruction, undetectable
No more burn, or tear, or fabric blight
Weaving magic so incredible
Its wound now perfect by morning’s light

She taught me much that I’m still making
From her life that now I’m grieving
Sewing, crocheting and great baking
But never invisible weaving

The picture of her life that mattered
I now see how she toiled so finely
And that the wrinkles in the fabric
Of my own life splayed out so blindly

The vision of my eyes, bedazzled
Incandescent, her face in the beam
Unaware how her mind unraveled
As Depression stole her ev’ry dream

The threads of DNA defining
Who I’ve become I’m now believing
My mother’s hand in that designing
Of my own Invisible Weaving

In honor of my mother, Edla Sylvia Fitzpatrick, on this International Women's Day

PART I

Hey! Ladies & gentlemen!
All you girls and boys!
Put away TV remotes!
You have *some NEW TOYS!

We have a job that's just for YOU!
It's easy! You can TRY!
WE WANT A PERSON IN THE GRAVE...
Just hear our slanderous LIES.

You know that woman over there?
She don't do as she should
She's had a hundred boyfriends
What's more she beats her kids!

You know that guy downstairs from you?
Investigation's goin' on
Law Enforcement knows about it
MOLESTING KIDS IS WRONG!

NO! DO NOT CONFRONT THEM!
WE have a way to delve
Heaven forbid they know you KNOW
So they DEFEND THEMSELVES!

No. We'll do it THIS way...
We'll do it real SLY
Don't worry bout a thing my friends
Don't matter how they CRY...

Just go ahead and spread the WORD!
Tell everyone! Their friends!
I'll teach you some OTHER TRICKS
To help make their life END.

If we do things all just right
Use my sadistic guide
You'll see that we can cleanse our world

BY THEIR SUICIDE.

Don't worry. It'll be easy.
It's quite simple to do
You will find that you won't mind...

BE GRATEFUL IT'S NOT YOU.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 3/13/2017

There are times when I'm overcome by this feeling,
That I want to die before I turn 30.
I don't know why I've become so fixated by the number,
Maybe because it's just over five years away,
And five years flies by in an instant
Without me making any progress with getting better.
My life stopped existing at 16,
So I still have this childish, biased view of age,
Where anything anywhere close to the halfway point
Of the average life expectancy feels 'old'.
I'm just so afraid of blinking and realising
I've missed out on my only chance of youthful enjoyment.
And there are people in their 30s who climb Everest,
Who jump out of planes for fun and who travel the world,
So I know it's stupid.
But it feels like five years from now
I'll be wrinkled, with cracking bones and a stomach
Too weak to swallow adventure.

My daughter sleeps to the sound of the ocean
softly, gently rocked
forth and afar into dreams and nightmares
a soft static blanket
the assonance of water

My daughter sleeps
to the sound of an ocean that she has never heard
a loop of imagined waves that have
never wet her feet
she has never run screaming and laughing
from the imagined horrors of seaweed, foam
Tangaroa’s arms enfolding her

As my daughter sleeps, I cry
as salty as the swells she’s never seen
in this landlocked room
slowly falling from my cheek
to land on hers
a soft saline baptism

As my daughter sleeps, my thoughts fly
wondering how I can fill her
with the awe that something as elemental
something as capricious
something as beautiful
can exist in this tattered world

but still, my daughter sleeps