If we were living in a horror movie
the good girl would win in the end.
I wouldn’t want to survive a horror movie
because nothing would be the same again
and surviving isn’t the same as living.

cobalt skies
wind that captures
dusk for the sunrise

                                                                                                                
(After seeing Matisse’s Stations of the Cross,
La Chappelle du Rosaire de Vence)  

The Stations are mounted on the back wall of a side chapel,
a matrix of white tiles on which harsh charcoal lines
slash their way upward in continuous motion,
bottom left to upper right,
winding, turning, telling as they go a stark
seamless story as featureless shapes
wend their thorny way from the tribunal
to the tomb,

except
at Station 6–

Just off center, not quite midway along the journey,
a small cloth interrupts the story’s inevitable procession;
it bears a face—the only face with features—
nose, mouth, saddened eyes—
an image
pressed onto the fabric
that had been Veronica’s veil.

I wonder sometimes what genius,
what spirit, perhaps,
guided the artist’s aging hands.  After all,  
he could have put the Face of the Divine anywhere,
could have portrayed Veronica’s quiet act of compassion
as some unremarkable element in the plot.
    Instead, the image compels us to stop,
compels us to think of such simple
moments of presence,
to consider that piece of cloth,
to feel it burning itself
into heart and mind and memory,
compels us
to consider its questions.

Yesterday’s storm turned into today’s light rain;
it’s as if you are right here with me 
shouldering the waves of ache.

Emptiness fills the places you once occupied;
the bare reminders spark memories that become
my source of knowing laughter and sudden cries.

I miss you as much as I did yesterday,
so I’ll turn to the rain,
let each drop fall 
sweep my hand to brush the ones that land upon me
with love and care,
fulfilling a wish that they are parts of you that I see everywhere.

tw: violent imagery

I have a very odd relationship with you

Odd because it does not exist outside my mind

Not anymore

We haven’t spoken or seen each other in years

And yet you linger

Like the feeling of hopelessness

Like the taste of blood in your mouth

Like the smell of burning flesh

Like smoke in the air after a bomb

I have flashing moments when I feel like I need to know what’s happening in your life even though I don’t care about you anymore

It’s like torture

I’m blindfolded, never knowing when the next punch is coming

Gagged to stifle my screams of agony

Hands bound tightly to ensure that I can’t defend myself from the impulse to see you again

It’s funny, I still can’t pinpoint why it all happens

I know it’s not that I miss you

I know it’s not because I want to see how you are

It’s almost like how people watch a car crash

I just can’t look away from my own demise

A twisted urge that rises within me

Every time it emerges I go dizzy from the feeling

Knowing you’re still out there makes me sick

You shouldn’t be happy

You shouldn’t be allowed to carry on like nothing happened

You shouldn’t get to act like you don’t care after what you did to me

Slamming the cell door in my face

Smiling while twisting a knife into my stomach

Dunking my head in water and then pulling me up for air over and over

Breaking me in the most masochistic, haunting way and leaving me to bleed

Acting like you loved me and then leaving

-you cut me wide open without even thinking about the scar you would leave and now I have to deal with the clean up 

you pretended to love me
for one night
i pretended not to notice
i knew you didn’t
we were silent on the subject
but we knew what this was
and it was easier to accept it
if we kept our mouths shut
and just let other body parts do their thing
as we ignored the minor annoyances we discovered 
in each other
magnified by the lack
of satisfaction or release
or meaning
what did we think we would find
how would the black hole at the
center of my Milky Way
provide anything other
than crushing weight
to all that crosses her
event horizon

A long ride home from sunny
shores to the Bluegrass
Haze saturating dusk air
creating chronic stupor in Kentucky summer
A lightning bug splat on the windshield
its butt fading from yellow to nothing at all
Eyes closing here
opening there in bug heaven
My own eyes close here
open there in childhood paradise
seeing myself catch flashes
of light for a jar of safekeeping 
A new stupor of my own making
in the wake of fresh beach memories 

                                                            a found poem mashup

ever
since you
kissed  

my eye . . .
I find
my-  

self
alive . . .    
I’m  

float-
ing . . .  
light  

and
shadow
change  

the walls . . .
a dog
and  

bird
are
far away . . .      

haley’s
comet’s
come  

and gone . . .
I’m
floating . . .  

and
floating . . .
please stay

oh, and i’ve been eating bad, all the dying
streetlights, the gasoline spills, the late
sunsets, the green eyes in my memory. how they’ve made me
sick in the liver, sick in the lungs, hands scrabbling
for something to quench this guilt and humiliation.

This is so 1950s of me
but I’ve long known if
you came home every
night & walked right
into the kitchen, kissed
me on the neck tight
above the dress line,
where the pearls trace
the nape & the ear
begins its crescendo,
I’d put down my knife
& make you whatever
dinner you wanted.