Looking out into the world we see many things,
Cities, cars, trees, buildings, you name it,
When we look at these we overlook the most beautiful of them all,
All of the rolling pastures,
Pastures filled with beautiful flowers and warm sunshine,
So next time you look out and see nothing but despair,
Think about these beautiful pastures,
And let yourself be surrounded with their radiant happiness
I have this curiosity about prison beds.
I think I might have a prison bed.
Or maybe my blankets are just made of chainsand my sheets of shackles.
I have too many pillows.
I say they’re for comfort but what’s comforting about the hissing tongues of cigarette smoke and cologne that you leave trapped in their cases like prison cells every time you leave me alone.
I pretend the stuffed unicorn on my bed is a security guard.
When I was younger, I would’ve said that she protects me from the monsters under my bed.
Now I look at her and realize that this false sense of security just comes from keeping the people out and keeping the monsters in.
My purple unicorn is no match to the thoughts like dragons with ridged teeth and flamethrower breath in my head
But my tongue is a phoenix.
My words are hot and dangerous.
It’s a defense mechanism if used correctly.
So what if I said my phoenix is only a baby?
Unaware of my own strength.
My words are destructive and controversial.
They start fires that burn up every relationship I’ve ever known and turn homes into ash.
As a kid, that scared me.
I was afraid of the fire and losing my home.
Well, what I thought was home anyways.
I’ve grown up since then.
I know now that the thing that my phoenix set ablaze was not a home but an empty dungeon disguised as a happy family.
It didn’t matter how many times my flame thrashed against those walls because you can’t destroy something that doesn’t exist.
Thankfully, I don’t remember everything about the dungeon.
I remember learning to differentiate between intoxication and sobriety in the late night footsteps of a troll.
I tried to understand the magic in his hands that would form weapons out of sunflower stems and toothbrushes and last night’s leftover chili.
I remember the screaming heard through hollow walls like nails on a chalkboard.
A reminder that no matter how welcoming he looked, the troll was a killer.
I remember my prison bed.
It held me the same as the one I have now only my wounds are no longer filled with alcohol and salt water but with rose petals and galaxies.
Your sober face doesn’t
fool me, having seen
your smirk, heard
your sass, you
and your suits, almost
dowdy but useful and with a twist
of chili red or lapis blue plus
ladylike scallops at the cuff. You don’t
fool me with your schoolmarm
guise. Slightly showy, you dance
like a Sufi when you peel
your stockings. When no
one’s looking you hammer air
guitar to Metallica. O Angela, quantum
chemist, so many male,
idols in my wake; they, like walnuts,
have fallen on a soggy
lawn, while you, my chancellor, rise
like steam from beer
soup. Will we dance
deliriously in the valley
of plain women? Wait
until midday when sunlight
salted with sparkling
dust brightens our ripened
skin? When it warms
our forearms & floods our bright
gray eyes, will we plunge our practical
hands into oversized
handbags? Grab our steel
framed shades and saunter straight
ahead, low-heels clicking?
“Hey, don’t get nasty” he says,
after telling me
I’m ‘surprisingly’ (to him) closed-minded
re: the private ownership of AR-15s
– on the
anniversary
of Pulse.
I hold: no one has a need to own these
weapons of war, killing machines. No one. Not
now, not ever.
“Everything
is a weapon” he insists, equating
rolls
of lifesavers, quarters, and brass knuckles, as if
that line of logic somehow will slip crowbar
inside brain,
pull loose a cobweb keeping closed the dusty chest
labeled ‘polite, demure, smiling acquiescence’
and not instead: spear a wasp’s paper-nest,
set it alight and humming.
Confident,
a word
I’ve never
used
when describing
myself.
I’ve only
ever
felt confident
in others,
never in
who I
am
or who
I will
be.
Doubt and
worry
eats at
my brain
like
a starved
man,
gnawing
at
soft tissue
until
it’s all
gone,
so
It still
shocks
me
when I
hear
someone call
me
confident,
and I
believe
I’ll always
feel
that surprise,
since
being unsure
is my
default
setting.
a strong tree so built
the sharp lightning strikes her then
she cannot long stand
i was born a pinch short of the recipe
eggs short of the mixture
collapsing when my mother said
never go on—
and there’s the end of my song
sung a dozen ways in the theatre, the oven,
cathedrals— i’m gone
darling, i’m gone. friends. i’m gone.
the sifter is broken, the lies have been told
not half the baker i led on to be
an egg short of the mixture, collapsed at the edges
my mother said
never ever go on.
it looks like i’m crying, remember me not, babe i’m
cups low on flour at that.
it’s quiet, the kitchen is closed, and its off to bed at last.
i was cupcakes and icing, when all your devising
entered my mind in a flash. i was sprinkles and pills,
brandishing sheets of bright tinfoil to keep all of the
old monsters back
back from the doors of my heart,
i shut them forever,
no, i’m not cutting you slack.
so i’m gone. my friends. i’m gone.
the sifter is broken, the lies have been told
not half the baker i led on to be
an egg short of the mixture, collapsed at the edges
my mother said
never ever go on.
it looks like i’m crying, remember me not, babe i’m
cups low on flour at that.
it’s quiet, the kitchen is closed, and its off to bed at last.
Trying to speak out the words to you
Molasses
I fall short within a thick line of resurrection near death
The pain in my eyes you would have seen
I can only imagine how it felt to realize I wasn’t so sweet afterall
