Inflections of Doubt

Push yourself keep on keeping onPersistence pays off, hard work will be Rewarded, everything is worth it, honest They lie through sepia-toned teeth

Mine are alabaster, linear and sturdy I brush three times per day and I never Ever floss. I can't stand spitting out Plasma and platelets, red warning signs

Of whats to come. The soul is not Made of sweat nor earth but possibly Sunshine, magical brilliance ripening Fruit, growing greens and euphoria

Nuzzling the center of every nucleus Where questions become answers Simply by losing the question mark And the customary inflection of doubt.

Infinite Loop

I sleep not, rest notEat not, taste not Kiss not, love not Unless I'm with You

Take my fingers I know they're cold, let's Travel to panoramic views Where mountains float like Birds

I'll wait while you collect Souvenirs of this entanglement My wings flapping in rhythm With the cycles of the Moon

Once she's carried me home Turn your face towards heaven I'll return as a raindrop I'll caress your face with Water

There is no end to us As there was no beginning We exist as points upon the circle Repeating this infinite Loop.

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Run

Run. Run far away andPlease do come back, not like A boomerang, like you. I want you rosaceous red Steeped in clouds and sweat, Brown like earth so deep it is Impossible to dig up. Tall like The volcano in the distance Reminding us of our inadequacy. Murderous like the abominable Snowman, not a monster nor a Storybook creation but a man Who kills foxes with his bare Hands and wrestles snarling bears When they've eaten his dog's Heart, leaving the rest to rot. I want the tears of people You've never touched to flow Leaving a trail of crumbs Blue dots in white snow indicating The road you've traveled, like Plastic bottles hanging off of Tree branches. I will always find you You will always find me. Once you've Felt their pain in your kidneys In every compartment of your spine You can return to me. Leave the Remains buried atop the volcano Where there's a view, where his Spirit will want to visit, where we Will want to visit, too. For we are Never far from the paradise we built It lives inside our beating hearts Like a ship in a bottle, filed away under "Secrets" until our brains turn off and we Exist in the context of bright light rather than Love and fear, God's yellow face, the dots Piercing the night sky: stars or airplanes Or alien dimensions.

Somebody Got Shot

I told them to go: Daddy,Take her to her favorite place The library. Pick up the Thai food And come home, be safe.

They come home and I kiss them We eat together, then we watch Fantasia while I stretch and Daddy works. A normal evening.

Except for the police racing about Daddy wondered why, I said: Guns The last time I saw them speeding Without sirens, somebody got shot.

The neighborhood blog flashed a notice: A shooting at the corner, near the library At 6:45. My reasons for living crossed paths With a gunman, and I sent them.

I get on my knees, blessing my Angels, my worst fears curling and Charred, touched by the fires of hell While I pray for their mothers.

Throw

Aim, throw, hit
Sharp
Pierces my chest
I shout but I sound like nothing
The walls are sound-proof, eye-proof
And escape-proof
Trapped forever within
Life's longing for itself.

Rolling across blades of grass
I pretend they are tippy tops of trees
And I am God's yellow face
The moon is my best friend
So I ask for the clouds to part
For the answers to crawl out of
Darkness, into somewhere bright
For interpretation.

My arms shield my eyes instead of
My chest which takes the blow
All bone and fragile tissue,
But not even sound-proof glass
Can stop me from seeing
Outside. Where nothing makes sense
Except for our stories and
The sun, but only when it shines.

Addiction

It tugs on your lapels like aNeedy child needing you and only You, traveling through brain mass Finding new spaces to fill, breaking Your life into two neat pieces. One for the addiction, another for Everything else, everything that matters. You hold the pieces together with your knees, Careful not to move your hips, gambling on The outcome, the hit, the blow, the shot. You reel, you breathe differently, you feel The new space where the cracks have widened And the vapor rushes in like epoxy or Super glue, which always does a better job sewing Your fingers together than the fractures.

Brother and Sister

When he comes homeHe brings her a ring Tangerine butterfly trapped In plastic like a song. She touches the wings Trying it on each finger Turning it round and round Like the moon circling earth. He runs, she follows He chases, she runs They fall together Like two crumbling towers. Laughter feeding wild flowers Animals foraging treasures Plants hiding minerals, Making wishes on dandelions And dirt cakes with buried spoons. Romping amongst twilight Awash in pink delight Brother the leader Sister the keeper, No parents allowed Please go back inside.

Lost Love

LoveSits in the corner, holding hands Sleeps in a pile, legs intertwined Comes home each day at the same time Until it doesn't. I'll be back, says Love. So you wait at the same time every night Prostrate in cold empty sheets, tears pooling Inside your ears, swallowing and digesting Fear like sugar. Until it becomes stubborn Flesh clinging to bone. Still waiting for Love. You gaze at images to conjure it home But the feeling collapses lungs, steals Oxygen, transforms blood into salt water And hope into desperate, crashing chance. Hungry yet starving, the only food being Love. You sleep under white sliver of moon, wake up to Infinite black sky, nothing out there but Space, spinning planets, exploding stars Tossing wishes like skipping rocks, waiting for One to land and last. No guarantees, but for Love.

Disarray

Black coffee sweatArmpits moldy Whisky shit Eyes varicose gray

Wrinkled knee caps Nits clinging Scabby lips Nose drips red

Bones protrude white Cavities hungry Purple nails Crescent-shaped spine

Nappy curled sweater Underwear cut Soulless shoes Shit-stained pants

Stomach scraping whining Fingers fumbling Cracked toes Fissures pulsing pain

Mind body numb Spirit fighting Choked heart Hands stretched searching.

One Kiss

One kiss.Give it away never take it back One kiss can change a life Suck you up like a tornado A force spiraling out of control Spit you out with desiccated lips Lick you up with soft wet tongue Turn you into putty, into something To be molded and mended and Broken. We exist for kisses We cry for them We kill for them. Seeking foreign mouths Though we can kiss Ourselves, hands toes arms legs Every part but the most important. Not everything comes from the inside Not everyone comes from the outside Why don't we write love letters To our own hearts? Kiss our own wounds Lap up our own blood? We would be safer No longer risking our flimsy lips To the abyss of another's.

My Heart Pumps

My heart pumps Sticky red, thick red, thin red And other things Fear becoming pain and longing Love becoming joy and hope. I know no end only eternity I cannot replace all fear with all love I sit with what is Flowing like a river or a highway Endlessly until the curtain falls and I am Dead. But I am not only Dead I am only somewhere else Unseen, unknown Far away and every where. My heart No longer animated by spirit Rots or burns, no longer bleeds Unfeeling but all knowing. I am invisible, like oxygen In the clouds, the rain The grass, the flowers, the trees, the light Melting expanding deepening widening Changing transforming evolving Like ice becoming water Like water becoming steam Like pain becoming joy Like longing becoming hope Like fear becoming love. My heart Pumps, for now.

Fog

Fog.

A bride's white veil

Gray as marriage

Blinding like love.

Smoke from a fire

A fire in heaven

While our eyes were closed.

Kissing trees

Obscuring illusion

Keeping us from one another.

On the other side

A storm brews

Cut with time.

Earth becomes a dream

Water turns ethereal

I stay home.

Hints of heaven.

"Hints of Heaven" by Lucy Miller Robinson

The sun breaks over the horizon Lighting up the billows The candy-colored sky, A strip of pale sunshine in water Quivers and reflects and glows Boundless like me. We are gradients of ice into light Blue becoming red, While the clouds grant us hints of heaven Always leaving Always coming.

letting go

Written for Trifecta. She looks between her legs, white paper stained crimson. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

Her body, round as Mother Earth, heaves, like the ship against the waves. She tries holding her breath, drowning herself in the murky density of the mind.

"I want to die!" she shouts when the pain subsides. But her voice comes out of the wrong end. It travels inward rather than out. She doesn't have much time until the next attack. Thought falls into the shadow of suffering. The core of her cramps.

"You're going to survive," a man says. The tightening squeezes the life out of her. She climbs into his words.

You... Will... Survive...

She lives inside of the words. Intellect dissolves and their essence cradles her in an Elysian cocoon. She knows she is dying.

"Let me go," she says. "Throw me to the sea." But the interlude doesn't last. Force demands freedom. The big boom, the beginning of the universe, travels through her body, splitting open her pelvis. She bares down, until she realizes she is about to break in two like a seashell.

"Push your hardest, then let it go. Push, let go. Push, let go."

Push... Let go...

The first time she opens up, she does not break, she widens. Heaven passes through the hole in her body.

Faceless arms hand her a tiny child, naked and disoriented. Blankets, a hat descends, gloved fingers point her nipple between miniature lips. She holds his squirming body against her own. She looks at the suckling chin, a chin she already knows well. She thinks of nothing, not of love or of pain, but of what she has learned about mothering.

The hardest part is letting go.

Champagne bath.

Written for Trifecta. She soaked in a bath tub topped off with a bottle of champagne too flat to drink. She held a book in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. She burned candles, their flames balanced on all four corners like controlled suicide threats.

Still holding the accoutrements, she submerged her head, allowing alcoholic bath water into her nose, ears and mouth; while locking her eyes shut like windows. She decided to count the seconds.

At the same moment she hit ten, the ten-second countdown began. Her drunken neighbors shouted from the apartment below, echoing through the walls, through the water, invading the perverted hideaway of her thoughts.

Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!

She broke the surface, squeezing air into the very bottom of her lungs, and it was not unlike being born. She heard, though she wished she didn't, bells and explosions and the silence of a far-away kiss. Exhaling every last drop, she completed her first breath of the year.

On her second breath, she dragged on the cigarette and resumed the novel where she'd left off. She was free of anticipation as she lived in the shadow of expectation. Everything that mattered was behind her, or so she believed.

The absence of light.

Written for Trifecta. I tell him before the curtains open. He doesn't flinch.

During intermission, he turns his head as if this limited range of motion requires infinite strength. He looks at me through tinted eyeglasses, and he says, “so you’re rich. You’ve been rich for two years, and you thought it best not to tell me. You let me waste away my life driving that truck until I went near-blind. Is that correct?”

I return his gaze, black glass reflecting black iris. Resentment pressed against aversion like lovers meeting in a kiss, or a blow.

“I’m telling you now.”

He rises, knocking his glass onto the floor with a rogue piece of fleshy hip, my relief as intense as a choir of angels. The lights dim, and I grasp my own wine glass, hollow yet whole, transfixed by the performance and the unfettered existence unfolding at my feet.

Relief relaxes into a giddy, heady, blurry evening. I crush the shards of Leroy’s wine glass with the heel of my boot, and then I introduce myself to the piano player. He lives alone in an apartment downtown, in the top half of a high rise. Before he succumbs to sleep, we share a cigarette and he says I should make myself at home.

I sit, pressed against the cold window, gray plumes curling from my mouth and memories sailing through my head, everything dissolving into the invisible wind that blows on the other side of the thick glass. I memorize the panoramic view, balls of lights piercing the absence of light; I suppose this is all our universe is.

When the sun rises, I do not mourn the end of night, the pastel glow melting the rooftops into one continuous dream. I am ready to start again.

(Adapted from my current manuscript in process.)

Marshmallow pebbles and pixie dust.

Written for Trifecta.  When he walked out that door, he closed it behind him like he was sneaking away f0r another midnight tryst with one of the girls, not realizing I awoke every time he cleared his throat.

I wished he would slam it with the same force he used when we were fighting and the fighting turned to fucking, eyes wild and wrists bound. I wanted to run after him and shout the insults I'd written in my head in as much detail as a sonnet. But he didn't disturb the neighbors with their sleeping babes, so I didn't, either. That's always how it was. I didn't do anything without his permission.

He packed his suitcase, which I'd given to him last Christmas, like he was preparing for another trip to New York City, counting socks and matching outfits. Black and black. Blue and brown. The same colors as the bruises on my arm. His dark eyebrows cinched together, calculating his most prized possessions, like a mother gathering family photos and ancient heirlooms before the fire swallows them whole. Except for he had a lot more time. He had everything in the world, including time. Including me.

Though he took with him only what fit in that single thrift store suitcase, once he'd left, the apartment was hollow. Like my mother's eyes after she'd died. Like the two year old baby down the hall who didn't walk or talk. Like the clouds that hovered but never washed our dirty alleys.

I clawed open the medicine cabinet to find it empty; the pills like marshmallow pebbles and the powders like pixie dust were as gone as my husband. I searched in every crack, every shadow, every pocket for redemption. For secret money, for a water-marked love note, for a sign that my life wasn't over.

The more I look, the more I see.

For this I am grateful.

For the skies Though they cry

We are protected from their blows.

For the earth

Though she ails

Our food still grows from her.

For the trees

Though we cut them

They breathe out what we breathe in.

For the dandelions

Though we pull them

They multiply for the sake of our nourishment.

For the roses

Though we possess them

They infuse our homes with beauty.

For the water

Though we poison it

It flows to quench our thirst.

For the bumble bees

Though we fear them

They spread sweetness where it's needed.

For the spiders

Though we kill them

They catch flies because we cannot.

For the animals

Though we abuse them

They play with us, feed us, love us.

For the small farms

Though the government has failed them

They haven't failed the earth.

For the cities

Though war ravages them

They rise up, striving for change.

For the global economy

Though greed afflicts it

It will soon die and be reborn.

For technology

Though we lean heavily upon it

It has brought us together.

For old friends

Though we've drifted

They will always be a part of who we are.

For best friends

Though we never have enough time

The time we do have spreads across lifetimes.

For family

Though we leave so much unsaid

The hugs we share say everything.

For children

Though we tarnish you with expectation

You are the most perfect, fallible creatures.

For true loves

Though we take you for granted

You make us better.

For the dreamers

Though you see darkness

You look towards the light.

For love

Though you rip hearts

You fill them and mend them.

For Thanksgiving

Though we eat too much

We unbutton our pants and eat more.

My Thanksgiving table, though I did not host Thanksgiving at my home.

Ramona the Witch

Written for Trifecta.  "When you die, you will come back as a snake," said the strange new girl with strawberry hair and oriental eyes, as if she were casting a spell on my brother while we waited under crispy red trees for the school bus. Ramona had moved in with her grandmother in July and she wore only black, even on the stickiest summer days while the rest of us were up to our chins in the community swimming pool.

My brother, Chase, vexed Ramona by claiming that Mrs. Augustine was not her real grandma. Ramona spent the whole bus ride staring at Chase, giving him an eye so evil my mother would have covered his buzzed blonde head with a blanket. She was superstitious about things like that.

Ramona didn't have one friend. She stalked my brother at recess, watching him like a cat waiting to pounce. Sometimes I didn't notice it was my turn on the monkey bars because I was busy watching her watching him.

One morning, when my breath cut the fog, Chase asked Ramona to stop staring at him. She whispered, "never," and goosebumps prickled the back of my neck. I wanted to confess our troubles to mother, but Chase forbade me. He believed in courage over weakness, silence over scandal.

On Halloween, Chase dressed up as death and I turned into a black cat, whiskers and all. We begged mother to let us go trick-or-treating on our own. She walked and we needed to run. We wanted more candy than houses in our neighborhood. We wanted to hedge our childhood with sugar. Even then, we sensed it would be over soon.

The first thing the driver saw was a black cat in the road. Not me, but a real black cat. She swerved to avoid it, like pulling your hand out of boiling water. The last thing she saw was a skeleton flying through her windshield. A little boy, wearing all black and white bones.