Discarded Toys

I play with my rabbit

every day, sometimes twice.

Often, I wish it velveteen,

as real as the smack

of a riding crop

as I rock my mount,

ridden wet, and hard.

Not every toy was meant to be velveteen.

The streams never crossed,

left alone and solitary

in my toy box.

For you, I was only a plaything,

Never meant to be made real.

Bunnies can break.

Your mechanical heart needs winding.

You box me up,

your discarded toy,

that bored you,

displeased you.

My answers were always wrong.

I never learned to tell

the fairy tales quite

the way you wanted.

I'm just another locked toy box,

left out for whoever might want

a broken, discarded plaything,

a rag doll waiting for a new master.

Find it here.

Take My Wings

Butterfly fragile,

my wings new grown.

I flew. I dreamed,

and I flew

right into your net.

Coaxed by a breath of words

fluttered into my susceptible ears,

Entrapped by my own desire.

to believe

that the intensity in your eyes

was more than the clinical interest

of a magnifying glass.

Pin my wings,

taking out your heart

even as I strip bare.

Mount me.

I helped you weave the net

so much thicker, so much tighter,

with my own indiscretions.

Bind me, wrapping me fast

into my cocoon.

Turn me back

from newly metamorphed butterfly

to graceless worm.

I let you experiment,

your gaze scientist cold,

forgetting I once knew

how to fly.

Find it here.

Killed It

I killed you.

Handed you the gun.

Loaded the bullets

that night when I ended

everything and anything

that might have been.

You voiced everything

I refused to give form.

You struggled to find

your way out of the cave

while I embraced the blindness,

huddled in claustrophobia.

How many bullets,

how many reasons did you need?

How many nights did you

play that game, uncertain

if you really wanted victory?

I voided your depression.

The unraveling of your mind

exposed my unfinished edges,

my own potential for madness.

Could I have counted

out your pills for twenty years,

pulled you back from sanity

every time you danced to the edge?

I was never brave enough for you.

Uncertain how to rescue a damsel,

I left you to fight your dragons alone.

I think of you every time

I bring the whip down on my own back.

I learned to wallow,

but never knighted up.

Put the gun in your mouth.

How many bullets did I give you?

Pull the trigger. Once. Twice, and

silence everything about myself

I ever saw, reflected back from

your beautiful, dead eyes.

Self Portrait Series

My long term resolution for the New Year has been to 

confront my tendency toward harsh self criticism and to try 

to be more accepting of who I am and the skin I am in.

So far, I've done a series of photographic selfies, but my 

friend Shiloh, who always was and still is, smarter and more 

insightful than I am, suggested that maybe I should be 

looking at this as an art project, a la Frida Kahlo.

I contemplated that idea. It makes more sense than merely 

staring at mirror images of myself on a computer screen. I 

don't know that I will ever love photographs of myself. I 

don't know if I will ever be able to view myself without 

focusing on my flaws, but I can certainly confront and fight 

against that tendency in myself.

I picked out my first selfie of 2016 and tried to alter myself 

into art. If the standard of success is to obliterate most of 

myself from the piece, then I think I succeeded.

Still, it's a new slant on an only slightly older project. I am a 

work in progress. Long live vanity!

Descent to Temptation

Lead us not into tentaclation....

Loving Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar, leading your flock 
of raven hounds,
could you smell it on me: 
despair and weakness
with a whiff of amontillado?

Do you possess a sixth sense?
Am I the low hanging body 
on your corpse tree?

Would you love me, 
then leave me, bury me,
mourning me with a proper lament?

Brick me in with your own hands,
whisper sweet nevermore in my ear.

Could we role play in a sepulcher?
Let me call you cousin.

Rise and fall for me, Edgar.
Swing your pendulum round and round.

Feel the tell tale beat of my heart,
served just the way you like it:
cold and seasoned with despair.

Find it here.

Cupid Set Match

I gleam from my neat shiny box,
rowed and arranged,
categorized and numbered.
Scroll, stop, select.

Touch my fire hot skin.
I promise the burn 
doesn't last.

Your detached heart
only beats for the unknown.
New is always better.
Love refreshed daily.

Keep your edge, 
your streak unending,
my song unplayed.
I don't know your rules.

I invite you to peel
my onion layers.
Your eyes ghost me.
You never learned 
how to cry.

Find it here.

Give Me Back My Voice

Anecdotal evidence is everything.

One in six. One in forty. One in one.

Your statistics and methodology

mean nothing to me.

Percentages lie.

Left powerless and muted;

disassembled and left in pieces

by hands, mistrusted, distrusted hands.

My frog skin peeled,

insides laid open.

My organs on view.

To reveal his Illuminati secrets

means exposing my own guilt,

my culpability in every evil act

he ever committed, after me.

20 layers of guilt,

my own pain a lump

under it all.

No wonder I can't sleep.

I would be seen through a filter

of my own victimization.

Your lenses are red, not rosy.

I cease to be me.

I become the thing that was done to me.

Pitied, vilified, probably both at once.

I become a sample in a kit.

I become a statistic 

to be skewed on a chart.

You claimed all my layers.

Thighs and lips and breasts and hair.

Even my bones feel wrong.

If I could just speak,

If I could spoil every plot

you ever conceived,

If I could take it all back,

reclaim everything you ever took,

starting with my voice.

Find it here.

Ghosted

I offered you my heart,

plattered. You weren't hungry.

The silver was tarnished.

You bricked it in,

untasted, to your hollow chest,

bloodied and beating,

unconcerned that you

might be killing me.

I chose poorly.

Your vision was narrowed,

blindered and staring,

seeing only the inside

of your own skull.

I carved away my pound of flesh.

I could never slice off enough.

You taste nothing;

your appetite, ravenous.

Can I have my heart back now?

The buffet is closed.

Find it here.

Love of the Red Death

Bricked up.  Sealed in.
Your own Montresor.
Love and hate barricaded
in equal measure.

I slid in gently,
indifferent to the snap of bone.

You wore your gloom, unknowing.
Your beaked mask protruded,
limiting your vision

You stroked my inspection, 
heavy with ambergris and mint.
Your fingers were already blackened.

Gird your wall, Prospero.
Iron your gates.

I can feel the telling rash,
heated and heavy.
The infection is already within.

Find it here.

Peeled

My reflection is worn and weary.
I check every day.
She never alters for the better.

The mirror cracks.
Alice stranded on the wrong side.
Impossible Alice,
flushed from her victory
over the Red Queen,
fresh and full of hot tea and cakes,
smoked and delicious.

I peel her apple skin,
round and round and round,
from bottom to top.

I wear her well.
She hangs a little loose.
I can make adjustments.

I left her lying there,
flayed and quiet,
cored and tasteless.

Dig the hole deep.
Six feet.  Twelve feet.
A nail through her forehead,
heart staked.

She will not grope her way out
of her grave.
She will not rise, to walk,
a zombie at rest.

I prefer my pie 
with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Find it here.

Kintsugi Illusions

I practiced the art of kintsugi.
I wanted to believe in flawed beauty,
that I could repair my cracks,
upgrade my broken bits
with veins of gold.
The paint never dries.

I wrapped the butchery
with gauze and illusion.
Adhering my mask,
hoping for my pound of  pretense
like so many layers of mummified sludge.

Your fisted flesh inside me
scraped my resolve.
My bandages slipped,
exposing my deception.

You manufactured 
the distance between us,
calculating the cost of repairs
for my faulty engineering,
The right angles wronged.

The paint, blighted and bitter,
Pipes had been cut.

I forgot to read the manual.


Find it here.

Dance with Death

The ground is softest behind the pond.

Ankles lost in the mud.

The shovel grows weary.

Your neat package of tape and plastic

is fraying around the edges.

I reveled in the calm.

I never had to answer questions 

that were never asked.

The loneliness ghosted my nights

until you oozed your way 

into my every crevice.

I waited and waded through calls

and messages of self doubt and uncertainty.

Scheduling became my master.

I longed for the lost quiet 

even as I enjoyed the rush of being

pinioned and over powered;

the gravity and the thrust,

the taking of flight.

I forgot my way,

and crossed the streams.

The cost-benefit ratio weighed

against you.

I chose the silence.

The neighbor has a new dog.

I need to dig the hole a little deeper.

Find it here.

Demon Lover

I knew you, but briefly.
Your words a flutter on my lips.
You boarded your airship to anywhere,
leaving me, altered and alone.

I peeled your skin
to make my own suit.
Curled your mustache.
Flowered your beard.
Bow tie or cravat?
Both suited you.

We waltzed in dazzling splendor,
strolled in the depths of the catacombs,
Our conversation balloons
followed in slow triumph.

Your phantom weight strained
even as your incubi fingers
found all my secrets.

Until, fleshed, you returned,
breathing in my castle.
Your weight collapsed 
all my architecture,
ephemerally perfect.

My demon lover imploded,
Xanadu, revisited.
The goo will leave a stain.

Captain, board your ship.
My port has closed.

Find it here.

Frogged

I wanted the fairy tale

although I don't pretend to be a princess.

I long ago learned to rescue myself.

I passed over so many amphibious suitors,

looking for the one;

neither prince nor knight,

but someone to relish the sunset,

someone real.

I should have recognized the taste

of flies on your lips,

foul and forked.

I spelled eyes to see what wasn't there.

I forgot my feet as your tongue

oozed its sticky words.

Awakening, at last,

to your tongue thrust,

to your slime oozing off my chin.

There are no happy endings.

Find it here.

Your Monster

My self identity was so many pieces
stitched together on your slab,
an almost person, cold and dead.

You meant nothing to me;
my heart lifeless in your eager hands.

You flipped the switch.
Some monsters are better left dead.

The spark of life flickered.  You fled.
You couldn't face what you created.

Love beating within me was never your intention.

The only way to protect my resurrection of feeling
was to hide its beat behind corpse eyes;
I worked to control the killing urge 
of my fingers, which itched to betray me
and summon their master, their maker,
even  knowing that you would only flee
faster and farther from our grasp.

No matter the distance,
I can feel the waves of horror and hatred
at what you gave life to.  The needle shakes in your hand.
The electric current, a lightning flash, burnt us both.

Undo the stitches.  Throw the pieces back into the grave
you dug them from.  Take back the life you inflicted on me.

Your revulsion only feeds the continued beating of my heart.

Find it here.

Never Trust Pandora with the Keys

"I have a very important task for you," said Schrodinger to Pandora, handing her a ring of keys.  "Make yourself at home in my laboratory.  Help yourself to any snacks from the fridge."

Pandora looked from the keys in her hand to the strangely intimidating and, yet, alluring door.  

"What's in there?" she queried.  

"Just a cat," he replied quickly, shrugging in to his coat and hurrying to the door before she could ask any more questions.  He scurried out into the darkness, knowing full well what mischief Pandora would get up to in his absence, knowing that the cat should never be freed.

Schrodinger created that cat: a beast which is not alive, nor is it truly dead.  What it is, this cat, is a diseased, rotting, undead thing.  Schrodinger made it.  He rolled in the filth with it.  He cuddled it to himself, reveling in the disease, breathing in its rot, but, at long last, even Schrodinger began to feel uneasy.

He had been trapped in the darkness with this thing, with this terrible knowledge of what he had done; this dark, twisted secret.  It rustles in the darkness, stealing his peace of mind.  It taunts him from the shadows, a secret which can never be told; a secret which can never be shared.

In his growing guilt and madness, Schrodinger begins to believe that he can free himself from it.  If he can just send it from him; if he can just drive it from the darkness and send it into the light, surely, it will be destroyed.  His mind will be cleansed.  All will be made fresh and new.  It will be as if he never crafted that disease ridden beast.

So, he leaves.  He entrusts the keys to Pandora, knowing full well what she will do.  

She will unlock the door.  She will release his terrible secret.  She will let the filthy, rotting beast out into the world.  She cannot help herself.

And, Schrodinger, you will not be cleansed.  You cannot cure yourself of infection by spreading disease.  All you  have done is shared your horror with the world.  

We didn't need to know, Schrodinger.  We didn't want to know.  

No one needed to see your undead cat, Schrodinger.  Keep your theories and your horrible secrets to yourself.

Find it here.

One in 7 billion

A few days ago, I was at an exhibition with a friend.  

I don't remember the conversation that led up to it, but as we paused for a moment in front of a depiction of voodoo ritual, he commented, "Did you know that there are over 7 billion people on the earth today?"

I waited for him to continue, expecting some further reflection on overpopulation, dwindling global resources, maybe even something about the effects of climate destabilization.

Instead, he said, "You would think that in a world of 7 billion people that there would be even one person that would just get me."

In that moment, I thought I had never heard anything quite so heartbreaking, and so very, very true.

Yes, yes, oh yes, I realized, that is exactly what I want; all that I have ever really wanted.

Why, in a world of 7 billion people, isn't there anyone who understands me?

I'm tired of facing the endless crowds and the lengthening days, always alone; a mask of competent resilience carefully in place.

Find me, please, I'm right here; waiting, just waiting for you.

Find this piece here.

What is an Artist?

What is an artist?  Is it some sort of special, divine, inborn talent that makes an artist?  Is it accolades and awards from people with a pile of degrees and a long resume?

I have begun to think that perhaps you become an artist when you declare yourself an artist; when you have something important to say with your art and you say it.  

You don't need the approval of an expert from an ivory tower to declare you an artist.  You don't need a special parchment with an even more special seal.  You don't even need for your nearest and dearest to approve of you and what you create.  (Sure, it would be nice, but it isn't essential).

Remember Van Gogh?  Remember Monet and his scrappy bands of Impressionist rejects with their Salon Des Refuses?  Think of Duchamp and his two million dollar urinal.  It was art because he said it was art.

Pick up a brush, a stylus, a handful of clay, and say what needs to be said.

You are an artist.

Put away Childish Things

My malfunctioning tabula rasa, 

ready to be filled with editorial notes.

Some children are born to disappoint,

but a daily meal of criticism

filled even my thick skull 

until self hatred spilled out my blue orbs.

No more would fit.

My playmates and classmates were showered

with love for simply being.

I mirrored them, echoing,

but every action, backward, distorted

and wrong.  Or, so you told me.

Ten is too old for playthings.

My untouched dolls, eyes glassy with judgement,

lined dusty shelves.  Playtime was over.

My only escape from you, closed to me.

You locked the gate, sealing out the light.

Hoarding your miserly draconic love.

My inner drummer marched me cliff ward.

I learned to always choose the men

who loved by dismantling.

They knew all the songs

you ever sang to me.

I followed the piper. I danced, 

always getting the steps wrong.

I can never quiet your voice,

the siren in my ear,

the storm of your indifference

forever eroding the sand foundation

of my mirage of self.