Backwards Trajectory

 
I take to the air;
gravity can’t pull me down.
A mass of hydrogen,
light as a kaleidoscope of butterflies.
 
High fae of the woods,
but no ill mischief here.
Spirited woman-being: seen like in a dream,
the illusion in your thoughts.
 
Wanderer in mysterious realms.
Heart, a woodpecker’s knock on wood.
Voice, the soft, whispering wind.
 
Large fairy wings flutter
quickly, like a hummingbird’s.
Eyes shine like snow crystals
reflected in the sunlight.
 
I leave a dew-drop kiss on green leaves.
Young as new buds on the trees, I am
old, also, as the many rings inside them.
 
My touch light as a feather.
Illuminating energy flows from my soul;
moving through everything.
Space and time exist only as rumination.

I beg myself to forget how I became 16 again, first when I was 20, and then again at 37. I remind myself his Leo ways were shiny, charming. Glinty warm sands imperceptibly became tar coating my lungs. Drowning me. I beg myself not to let myself get too lonely. I am the Katy Perry song covered by Amythyst Kiah in the Tennessee hills. I tell myself, “Remember when you were expressive. Blinders helped him opt out of seeing you. Forget when love gushed from your blood and exited through your pores into the ether, into his face. He kept himself from being overwhelmed by your love. He only loved how you made him feel.” I beg myself, “Don’t get too lonely because even after years he still won’t know.” And 16 is no longer how I want to feel.

my car peeled out but not like it does in movies. more like a pear. a lightbulb waiting for gravity
to do the rest. skin wants to be flesh but has to feel the cold. infinite eyelashes in the slush,
wishes wishing to be run over by strangers. january blows corn snow into the tracks, & i’m
turning the heat up. dying is like dying, just with other people. that’s why.

Morning waves of air
hiss from my window. Eyes
barely open. Today launches
from its starting gun,
while I dawdle at the line.
Why am I given a pass
for another day, when others
fail to wake? I do nothing
for the privilege: overeat,
drink too much wine,
sit immobile, while others
rush: swim underwater,
crab limbs in slow motion.
Each stroke brings me closer to the edge.
I flip over, do it again.
Eyes filmed with vapor motes.
My powerful legs, toned
from years of gravity.
Each moment is currency.
Both hands extended:
grasping, then releasing.

enough with this world
of speaking. we’re all dreaming
in our dark cocoons
of your gaping mouth,
flooding so uselessly &
soft on the pillow
produced to prevent
wrinkles from forming. precious
things: these silent mouths,
these teeth worth more than
lapis. we’re dreaming our silk
lassoed around them,
slamming the door shut
on those roots. fresh from the soil,
we’ve orchestrated
a charitable
tearing. a joyful reaping.
mourning doves: rejoice!
these scattered seeds: yours!
see the threads floating up to
the surface of this
spring – so clear, so bright.
there’s not one decent person
to boil us down now.
none to tell us that,
when a thousand bodies fall
with the oldest trees,
without their witness
what we have left behind could
ever mean nothing.

A tree in itself breathes-
From the roots,
swallows rain from the sky.
Blooms flowers and fruit,
and in a billion crevices fosters life-
nests with birds, hives of hornets,
ants chewing-
thirty to a single leaf.
Within teepeed branches
from the tree of fruit and life-
the brightest flames ignite,
creating warmth in freezing cold,
roasting rawness into substance and taste,
sustaining will and body
through harsh winter days.
Gloom spreads when flames subside-
the deep forest dims.
Branches once in abundance
become hard to find.
Slowly-
glow surrenders to the embers
begging to create light,
and fizzle into a time
when insights are lost
from the outside.

Beautiful men inadequately loved
like to crawl inside vaginas
as if to seep back into the womb
to be what they were before being born
but no embrace with a woman or even
man can undo birth   You Are   I Am 
and even if we try we can’t be Human 
without Being   but I’ve never met
a beautiful man who thought this deep
about such things   I feel so alone
being Beautiful Smart and Devastated

Interior Design

I’m building a house
but that sounds really hard 
so I’m being built in a house.

Flighty
 
Others see a spirit spontaneous and free as I wield my suitcase incessantly, even to strolls in the
park, but they do not recognize this as a symptom of paranoia so I can be prepared in case a
plane ticket were to swoop down at me in Central Park like a bat free and hysterical from its cave
and claws set on my thin wrists to pull me down cracked sidewalks to the airport to join the flock
hovering as a dark electric cloud above a frantic quivering mass, a black balloon bound to my
wrist coiling me through the lines and puppeteering me through the scanners as my arms lift
limply above my head to reveal my concaving skeletal sides as unarmed and vulnerable to the
larger metal bird’s gaping mouth.

You think you’re all choked-throat hot in your black fishnets, lace-corseted cleavage,

misty aura bargain perfume: Siren to Depression.

Propped like a dime store goddess on your liquid pedestal commanding frailtyto its bloodied knees, your plastic lashes,shadowed eyes; greens, purples,the bluest blues only Billie Holiday could singinto lonely hearts, crushed libido, beat-up hope. 

Oh, impostor, in your body-fitting mini hiked to your crotch, you invite a handup your skirt; nothing’s there.

Bottom-shelf bargain, you are no match for me.

Really now, do you think Ares or Adonis would 

ever fall for your guile-goating abuse? 

Would Botticelli ever waste his precious oils?