Thick wool eyes
Flutter uncertainly in the morning
Tumbling out of their spinning dreams
And into the darkness,
fingers fumbling in the cold
For the light switch,
Eyes sear and water with overflowing light,
Feet curling on the cold floor,
Hands blindly grabbing at clothes
Thick wool swimming lazy circles
And softening your mind
In the early morning

want to run back to the frozen frame in late may
shadow on the solid ground with a red tentative foot trying to move forward.
silent frame
quaking inside
tumultuous, skitter-scatter thoughts that always made me doubt my sanity.

want to run back and hold me
want to run back and tell me that to err is human
to doubt is to begin to see the wrong that is happening all around you
to scream is to know
that you are in it
and to know that you are in it
is the first step in getting out

want to run back to that freeze frame
hurt him
hurt him till his face is a blur
so i don't have to see it in my now quiet, late-night thoughts
any longer.

wish his face were gone.
see myself ruining it over
and over
i don't want to be a murderer
but what you did to me
placed such hatred in my heart
that the light cannot comprehend
the darkness that lies dormant.

Ten years ago when
I got divorced, I
owned 6,000 books,
a riding mower,
a house on an acre
and enough other stuff
to supply a Syrian
family for a  year.

Now I live in a three
room shotgun apartment.

A year ago I embarked
on a minimalist frenzy.

Out went the LPs,
the vintage stereo
equipment and radios,
the remaining books
(a Kindle is a
minimalist's best
friend), most of the
furniture (no one visits
here), boxes of magazines,
all the clothes not
worn in the past year,
all of my gadgets
and, best of all, my
wretched teaching job.

I wanted to pare my life
down to the essentials
and see what remained.

Now I live on practically
nothing with practically
nothing. I give my
occupation (when asked)
as Poet. That gets
wonderfully baffled looks.

I am eccentric to the
extreme and love it.

The cat and I, an old
anarchist and mute feline,

make the perfect minimalist
family living out the dregs
of an obscure, minimal life.

We are what we are, free
from the tyranny of things,
content to quietly
careen into whatever bit
of future remains to us

enjoying the minutes,
ignoring the years.

   ~mce

Was willst du, was brauchst du?
- what do you want? What do you need?

Would the smell of my hair,
Or touch of my hand surfice?
Or prehaps solve everything?
Or do you need more?

Possibly the sound of my breath,
Could ease your beating heart;
Heavy and upset.

Or the taste of my lips against your own,
your neck,
your skin
- prehaps that could help to still your sense of unease,
Your certainty that nothing is quite how it should be.

And if not, my dear,
If all my attempts remain futile,
And lead to no bettering
The last I have to offer are my eyes.
Look deep, lover,
Pull me apart, piece by piece,
bit by bit
- and do not be frightened by what you see.
Until no doubt remains that you know every colour,
line and speck and space.

Then tell me, sweet one,
Is it all gone?

He wanted to know her
he wanted to touch every inch
of her imperfectly perfect skin
to know every scar
to know her tiger stripes
from growth spurts and pregnancy
the pieces of metal left in her
and the dislocated bones
all had their own stories from childhood
the day she was caught on a fence
the tom boy in lace socks
her mum had dressed her in
for Sunday school
the ripped dress as she fell in mud
breaking her right elbow which to
this day left her with a bone pointing out
he wanted to spend days
just looking at her scarred face-
her upper lip – sat in the changing rooms
after a gymnastics competition
playing catch but the bottle of water
went right at her face
her forehead – walking at ten months
trips and falls, she hits her head
on the way down face to face
with the rockery -
incidentally the rockery where the cat
is buried
poor thing was stood on many times
as she was learning to walk
he counts the freckles on her left cheekbone
which on her porcelain skin
shine like Orion’s Belt on a clear night
he loved every part of her she did not
he memorized every feature that made
her “her”
he knew the truth had always been there
right in front of him since the first
time he saw her naked –
her naked soul exposed a long time before
anything he could ever make tangible.

© Sia Jane