18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
You are the bad thing inside of me
which hurts me when I breathe.
You are the chain around my heart
that will not let me leave.
You are the catch in my breath
that chokes as it holds tight
You are where I let death in—
You are the line crossed between desire
and sin.
18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
Often I dream of cutting flesh and stripping bone,
of harvesting myself a home, a place of power
in the marrow, to cut the wings from the sparrow.
Often I see in the night a fire inside blazing bright
a hateful effigy of my fright; the walls fall in, the walls fall in.
What is its name, this hateful sin?
Nevermind nevermind its name, cover it up this ancient shame
this jealousy this age-old cry, this urge to see my brother die
he with evil eye who pry, pry pry, and paste upon my face a lie;
I will not let him see me.
18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
Witty little wee little scarecrow girl
Stitches and stuffing neat as toddler’s curls
Witty little wee little scarecrow girl
Shedding straw riding ‘round the twirly whirl
Someone stitch her up, can’t you see the straw
dangling
Littering streets, can’t you see her
mangling
Clutching it close and clinging tight
Ripped to ruins in the middle of the night.
Ratty little ragged little scarecrow girl
Can’t hold together on the twirly whirl
Ratty little ragged little scarecrow girl
Someone sew her up before night unfurls
Oh dear, dally here, don’t you see her dread
chanting
Twisting wickedly in her wild
incanting
Leaping left and springing right
Raising red ruin in the middle of night.
Sing a little ditty dear scarecrow girl
Glassy eyes gleaming with the gloss of pearl
Sing a little ditty dear scarecrow girl
Skirts rising up in a scandalous swirl
Welcome in to watch the main attraction
A woman well worth your satisfaction
Balancing bravely as she walks the wire
The scarecrow-made-seamstress frolics in fire!
Balancing bravely and walking the wire
The scarecrow-made-seamstress frolics in fire.
18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
In Mom’s room,
in Dad’s old cabinet,
in the second to bottom drawer,
in a little silver box
in a bunch of little trinkets and seashells and shining black stones,
and everything else children keep around
(because it’s pretty)
on a bent steel keychain
on a little white shrinky dink,
oh, you know the kind,
it reads:
“Happy Father’s Day, Dad!”
I took the box and put it
on my dresser
in a cardboard shoebox
in a bunch of papers and paintings and notebooks
and everything else I keep around
(because it hurts me.)
18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Beware that woman who comes in the calm,
whose venomous peace would be your balm:
her footsteps soft as spider’s kisses,
her voice like whispers of lost wishes.
Beware the mirror of her grey eyes,
that suck the soul away sigh by sigh;
beware the softness of her grey cloak,
when wrapped within no traveler woke.
Beware that invisible spider,
who wraps her web still ever wider;
who steals your joy along with your pain,
who leaves you living ‘though already slain.
18 Thursday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
who can smell
her body’s own perfume?
termites gnaw ventricles
into afghani caves
labyrinths bleeding with would-be freedom fighters and
misguided martyrs
listen now to the strange cadences,
to the screams that reverberate through you,
standing waves in your heart strings.
bitterer than iocaine, this
wormwood.
and like worms in wood
it makes you, invisible
creator.
but fear bleeds too.
bite a coin–any coin. (all coins
are fool’s gold.)
no copper in the penny but the
shimmer in your eye.
L. H. Cole 