The Mouths of Nothingness.

She puts words together, one by one,
In sentences brown as bone.
She goes walking, down one street, and up another-
She limps.
Her eyes are like pools of nothingness. She bends and breaks.
She opens her mouth and calls out to the morning,
In the ancient winds of time.
Burdened by the years of hard labor, she cries out to her dead lover,
The skull Hamlet left behind.
It was not hers. It was not his. They were gentle in his wake.
Death was not something to take, to bring back.
The spirits were left behind in closed doors. Someone thought she was
Wrong, that she couldn’t stay away from the broken doors.
Someone thought she was jealous, and refused to give her any bread.
The bread comes from the oven.
It is the soothing sound of her father’s voice that wakes her up, every morning,
In time for school.
She acts like she wants the world. She acts like she owns it. She knows nothing,
And pieces words together on a string-one drop after another, a pebble falls
In the water, and sounds are dripping everywhere.
It is the rain, the color of the rain, and the mood that is everywhere. She doesn’t talk
About open wounds, only the rape, that was cold, hard, bitter, and filling in her
Mouth. She doesn’t keep her promises. She is the echo of lies in the hearts of everyone,
In nothing, everywhere.
Her mother is dead, and living, breathing-
Her father gasps on a table. She is dead, and nobody moves. The lies sing like the lions.
Sometimes, things knock on the doors, like skulls, and hatred is ripped from flesh.
She hates the people who move her, and the sorrows are like tears gone dry.
She is dry as a diaper. The lion weeps from far away. A star falls from the sky.
She thinks most people are morons.

LIKE THE WIND.

All your heart belongs to me like the wind
That moves in the sea.
Your eyes look at me like glass,
The sorrows fade and do not pass.
I like to see what I can see, in love’s enchanted beauty,
All these sorrows we do not grasp,
The words are felt and do not turn.
Like the sorrow, we will yearn,
And are trapped forever in a wheelbarrow.
The sky is yellow. The harp is yellow. A bird hangs
From a brush in the sky.
A tear drops from your eye, and you sob and cry,
And you cry.
I know you’re stuck in a rut and can’t get out of it.
Your life is in ruin and nothing can be done about it.
No one wants me here, the life is what I fear,
And the tables are stacked up together like the birds of a feather.
I can’t hold onto life anymore. I’m stuck in a dimension,
Another door. It’s just another day, another word on
The floor. Like a carpet stuck full of pine needles.
We don’t speak without discussing it first.
We don’t have a memory of anything outside of us.
The first day begins and the next one ends and it resumes
In the middle, and life is not felt, and the sorrow is
Gone with it.

Little Sea.

Little sea, you are red and full of light-
Little sea, you glow from Beijing, China,
Your hand is atop your head. Fixated on the
Chandelier in the living room, you glare at me instead.
Little sea, you rest on walls in pictures. You are here;
You are gone. Oh ancient heart, o still mind,
We walk here and come to Chinatown. In Illinois,
We are shy of movie posters; we are fond of people
Saying things. Back and forth, we grumble; we howl
Gruesome words atop our lungs. An author admires
A lowly writer. I walk down the street, swinging grocery
Bags, hum to myself. A famous actor dies in the streets of
Chicago; a wounded warrior bears the tattoo of a bartender
On his chest, not knowing why he has it-knowing he has
No direct age. The thoughts are of the flesh. The thoughts
Are rotten still. Stiller than a photograph, he breathes life
Into it-
Sadness permeates him, he is not aware.

Renaissance Man.

Renaissance Man

In the course of our history,
Nothing has ever been as remarkable as the
Feat of
Self-recognition. Self-reliance. At the foot,
At the top of it all,
The temptation of burdening clouds
Shines down upon the world.
Light is self-resilience.
The secret is life’s
Temptation,
The bitter feud,
The encumbrance of it.
The sore spot on the groin.
She went to the bottle house late one night.
Her eyes are fiercely burning.
They spin midnight oils in dark
Spaces;
They spin darkness in rags.

I cry solidly in stones.
I break myself.
I am broken. My heart is
Turned to stone.
We fear nothing.
Old as time.
Old as time in continuum.
Old as rivers that beat,
Supportive,
The heart and dusk of. Night.

We speak-
Turn dials on old clocks.
We jump docks. We steal clocks.
The music whispers from sad spinning tales,
Mood has turned sour.

The cheese.
Is.
Forever
Into it.

It Won't Work, Melissa.

There was the time Melissa tried to get me into a singing career; there was that agent at the Billowing Pig, who knew someone in Hollywood who knew some casting director at American Idol and was looking for new faces. I don't care about Hollywood. I care about reading books. So, Melissa, if you are reading this, no, I am not going to be an actress or a singer in Hollywood, no matter how well I sing. I'd rather learn how to make birds out of loose leaf paper. I'd rather learn how to make paper cranes.

Published here: http://tuesdayshorts.blogspot.com/2009/04/it-wont-work-melissa.html