Wish to Dance

The mermaid has swallowed
the ocean. No ordinary child,
her thighs are deep in the sea,
juicy fish meat, scaled with salt.

Songs sob from her lips
in wordless croons
over the slip of tides.

She has sold her tongue
to the sea witch
for ten pearl toes.

tomatohead

my tomato brain
spits seeds green

with envy green
as my eyes

undeveloped
by sun

supported by
stakes

concealed amongst
strangled vines

red
will expose them

irradiated
into ripeness

culled by bird
pecks

grub
gobblers

my green seeds
seek

escape
from red

sleep

sleep
with your day head dreaming

dream
of bronze sovreign gleam

wrapped
in a glass casket

wish
for the prince to kiss

or
dispense with the lips of princes

iron
axe will shatter

need
in seven seamless layers

wake
upon the crescent star of morning

know
you have not reached air today

but yet
may dream again

found an old poem

while looking through my files:

Without Ravensong


Raven's used to nest here once,
beaks full of lucky coins and sunshine.

They'd play for hours, dip and twirl,
then curl against my breast and rest.
Tell stories to the pearl moon
of daytime colours which night light
turns to grey.

Tales of children crouched beneath flailing fists,
of beds pressed against virgin doors
while angels hail, suspended beyond the window,

they wove a rainbow corona around the lunar orb
but now my ravens have flown away into the solar burn.
The moon is torn asunder and bleeds silent rivers
over my skin
scored with ravensong.

Support

I reach for what I want,
stretch far beyond my fingertips,

lean way out
over the precipice,

knowing I cannot fall
from the circle of your arms.

Rose Gold

It's hard to say
whether the wedding band
on her finger wore down,
or the flesh
softened and faded
from beneath it,

but the circlet has thinned
to a wisp of rose gold
that swings and slides,
threatens at any moment
to slip away.

Jenny Craig

Jenny Craig lady
has displaced her weight
to her
fat
white
S.U.V
overflowing
the parking space
next to us

Blackberry

Breeze musses red-petalled poppies,
scatters clouds, insubstantial as smoke.
And see the crow, crouched over my bed
as though it has a right to be there.

Oil seeps from its feathers, greasing
the visage of a holy man across the sheets,
coveting the essence that drives me.

January blackberries have dried
to gritty clusters on branches
in the fall to winter.

They crust the bushes
like eyes of sugary crows,
sweetness and decay the essence,
fluidity absorbed into flakes
of petal skeletons that rise,
'as the crow flies,'
on the skip of breeze.

Correspondence

She lies in her envelope of blankets-
letter of skin, signature
of bone.

He reads her like sign language,
stamps his kiss upon her -
a seal of wishes
in blackness and privacy.

He'll fill her belly full of light
and send her safe
through the cavern of dark.

How They Fall

Angels fall like plungers in syringes,
like mercury, like the fists of a man
as he beats his wife.

They land hard and with precision,
so the bruises won't show,
so no one will see what they create.

Friends of my children fall in the street
at the plunge of a syringe. They fall
into the arms of angels,
they have created nothing-
they leave no mark.