The Lizard Queen is a punching bag,
A doormat,
A sadsack,
A figurehead.
What even is a Queen of Lizards
Anyway?
No Queen who ever commanded respect,
Nor learned any grace,
Wrecked limbs grasping in the air for
Balance she will never know.
Wrecked feet flailing out from under her,
Akimbo, unnatural, untrained.
When they jeer at her,
She lets them.
And she calls herself Queen.
When they demean her,
She is a thousand times patient.
And she calls herself Queen.
To be Queen, unrecognized,
Is to dole out watered-down chicken soup
To one's own stupid soul,
That thirsts for solace.
In the end, they will push her further,
As far as she can go,
Bending her back to the limit like
A blade of yellow grass.
And when they've forced her to the edge of pain,
They will be incredulous and tilt their heads,
And as always they will ask,
"Doesn't that hurt?"
And she, meaning to say,
"Not yet,"
Will instead say,
"No."
And smile.
And call herself Queen.

I never wanted this body
That rebels against me
It's too big
Too heavy
Hard to carry around

I never wanted to have to eat
To have to void
To have to cure sicknesses
To have to accept pain in my joints

I never wanted to know youth
Only to grow old
And I don't want to know
What's going to happen next
If I already feel old

I would be willing to skip to
Death
And commandeer the wispy vessel
Of a ghost

I would not even miss sleep

Worry is a talisman
That I touch and count
Like a rosary
Every bead is every thing
That ever might go wrong
And every touch wards it off
Worry uses up my hands in
Counting beads like an abacus
So swift is the movement of my fingers
That they are a blur
So involved is the action that I am
Paralyzed to do anything else but worry
It is common that we are told
Not to fear making mistakes
That each mistake advances experience
And confidence
And brings us further from worry
But having made the dreadful mistake
Whose birth I counted over and over
Whose bead I held in my hands
Sweating
And seeing what it held for me
I want you to know that the things you worry about
Are as bad as they promise to be
And as much as worry is paralyzing
So is every thing you are trying to ward off

Take my hair down from its braids
Take the jewelry from around my neck
Take these bracelets like golden shackles
And take me back to my mother’s house

Take me back to my mother’s house
Where I was happy as a girl
Lay him in the ground facing to the sunset
And I’ll rip my hair the whole way to her door

Break my china, throw my dowry in the river
Rip the curtains from the windows
Strip the floor on which I made my marriage bed
And take me back to my mother’s house

I am an animal, not a girl
With sharp teeth and a spine
I am not fit to eat the scraps of men
I am not fit to be a wife

I have been touched by death
He has run his cold fingers through my hair
He has claimed me as his prize
And he wants to wed me at my mother’s house

The world destroys the smallest beautiful thing
each puff of perfume
and spoken word of compliment
will fade alike in submission to the nature of air
which is harsh like a jar of knives
Every period of sanity in which the mind grows
like a flower out of a crack in the cement
is razed with prejudice and leaves only blood
every room whose windows are open
letting the curtains billow out into the middle
was once mud
will someday be
nothing but
rot
ruin
neglect
and mould
My eyes are tired
they feel like stone mountains whose crags nestle hearty windblown trees
(someday they will die)
and my feet are the calloused paws of an animal running from a predator
(someday he will die)
who is there when I wake in the morning
(someday the sun will die)
and spends the night-time catching up to me
(someday I will die)
I cannot bear the cycle of the seasons
I cannot bear to watch the world
destroy
every
tiny
lovely
thing
I cannot build
even a single card house
nor have even a moment’s respite
that I do not fail to appreciate properly
and I know what happens when sleep catches up to me
for even the bliss of unconsciousness becomes another wrecking ball
to yet another flimsily stacked architectural tragedy of responsibility
my arms and legs are not connected to my self like they should be
they are tethered by belts and strings that I must constantly keep taut
and should I lapse I’ll fall apart onto the floor
like a stack of dropped papers
like the mess that I am
Like some
wretched
flowing
puddle
of
goop

I can run my tongue over
The scars in my mouth,
And taste the names of a
Thousand useless sacrifices.
Somebody show me how
To turn a profit.
Somebody show me how to achieve success
Without having to reap penny after penny
Just to make up for the ones
I've lost.
Somebody show me how to win
Without only breaking even.
Somebody show me how to be successful
Without leaking blood and spinal fluid and sleep
Into the final product.
Somebody show me how to save my quarters
Safely in a jar.
Somebody lift me out of my addictive string
Of Pyrrhic victories.
Someone do these things-
Please-
For me.
Because I'm weak,
And I need leading,
And I don't know how to do them myself.

At three in the afternoon in mid
Autumn the light is nostalgic,
It is honey that pours into my jar to
Preserve me.
Malformed as I am, I will be
A perfect specimen of my peculiar and
Time-specific condition.
The setting sun opens up old wounds
Like scurvy,
And sets you firmly in a rocking chair
To reminisce.
You grow old with the day,
And the two of you mumble
Back and forth
About the bed time stories
The moon read you only yesterday evening.
Weary sister of the sky,
I put one foot in front of the other and
Dwell on the futility of positive thinking.