Wall

The pavement's cold and it's raining
It's a storm.
There's paint peeling off the walls and the ceiling
Layers of acrylic, yielding
Conceding after concealing, year after year
All the stains and the smears,
The badly done veneer
The lines of graffiti that keep repeating
The cracks in the concrete that keep receding
every summer but come grinning back in the winter months
Taunting and leering,
asking for that one coat of paint that would
eliminate the taint
of a poor man's inability
to fix his living space.
There's a lady in the house, and a baby.
The baby's catatonic and the lady
alcoholic
and
The poor man works through the nights and the mornings
just to eat.
"I'm home, honey," he says, full well knowing
That his wife's passed out by the couch.
No one greets him when he calls, no one answers but the walls.
Look! There's the spot that the coffee stained when the saucer went flying
And the crack where the clay mug shattered
And oh! That was where the month's money went,
Into the dents in the doors and cement
And there's the scar at the heart
of the art
that he bought for his dear
at the start of their marriage career
But
All she'd wanted was a beer.
So wouldn't it be queer
To erase
all the memories that his place
Had collected through the days
Like pieces meant to grace
the empty space that became
a collage of his fate?
After all, the only answer that he got when he called
Was from the peeling paint on the wall.

The book.

So yesterday I finished writing our book

and I wanted so desperately to

finish

and so achingly to not.

It was raining yesterday while I was writing,

and there were tears on the window pane.

I couldn't tell if I was hurting, or if the hurt

was alive and its own

maybe I was the parasite

and the feeling was the being

maybe I was feeding off the feeling--

--maybe I was leeching--

just to feel alive.

There was no way to un-write our story.
I was almost at the ending.

It wasn't even sad, wasn't wrenching...

The skies had cried for nothing

--their tears unquenching--

The rain was wasted on the window pane

--there were never any tears to hide.

It was so exciting, wasn't it,

the writing?

I wanted so desperately to finish it

that I never stopped to read.

And then, suddenly, it was over.
There were no more pages to turn,

no more letters. I searched frantically for an empty page

--a space.

There's still ink in my pen, I mumbled, blubbering.

There's still more story to write.

But all the pages were gone. I'd filled them all.

I sighed heavily and set down my pen.

I let the ink dry while my eyes got wet

I let my muse die with the dreams I laid dead.

I finished our book--filled it so tight with words

that the pages ran black.

I'd packed in our story with smiles as a filler

and now that it's done I guess

I'll read it

again and again

and forget

that it had to end.

Letters

For a while I didn't know how to read

our book

and the letters on the pages were just

scratches of ink

but even then, I think, the markings linked

in even patterns, given patterns

and today, I know the letters are more

than just letters

they're letters from the grave

and the brave

and the scarred and

the scared.

Snow globe

I want to keep you in a glass-globe prison

and wrap up our memories in foil

and stick them in an oven.

I want them to cook and bake and boil

inside the tin sheets till the juices and the oils

evaporate

like rum in a plum cake

and all that's left is over-baked

memories dry

and desolate.

But you. You I want in a snow globe.

I want to shake up your world

every time I miss you

and smile whenever the fake snowflakes

kiss you

I want...I want to be in there with you,

frozen forever in porcelain perfection

hanging on by my fingertips

and I want...

I want to be the fake snowflakes on your lips.

Yesterday

If you'd asked me, even yesterday, I would've told you.
I would've splashed ice-cold water over my eyelids
to camouflage the tears
and chugged a mug of scalding hot chocolate
to force down my fear--
to burn away the chill,
the ice-cube in my throat,
and I would've spilled.

Yesterday, I was so bloated with emotion,
so stuffed with nostalgia that I began
to float.
I drifted to the glass ceiling of the master
bedroom, reeling
from the intensity of the feeling that
had briefly seized my throat.

I was choking on the words that had lodged
like hot fudge in my gullet.
But still. If you had asked me yesterday,
I would've spilled.

I wanted you to know--yesterday--
Yesterday, I knew exactly what I would say...
if you had asked.
If there had been a ring involved,
if there had been song,
if there had been nothing but the words
and the sentiment of the thought...
I still

would've spilled.

But of course you didn't ask.
You waited. Hesitated.
I debated, mind you,
I weighed it...
and I decided, finally,
that when you ask me
if we'll ever be
what we were once before,
I'll just say,
"We might've been--yesterday."

Me

I am quite the ordinary person. Ordinary being, by definition, nothing spectacular. I am, as one would say, unremarkable.

I am a shadow with no gender and no form. I am a voice that makes no sound.

I am vertigo.

I am a stone that bleeds when cut, a priceless gem of useless dust.

I am Mother Teresa's gnarled fingers.

I am the Pope's abandoned robes.

I am the raging half-life of a teenage girl.

I am the smothering pillow in a would-be widow's hands.

I am, by virtue of my skin,

glass

made from the wind.

I am an iced ivory face

in an Iron Maiden's embrace.

I am a ghost that knew no life.

I am life that knows no ghost.

I am a mirror at my best,

and a reflection at my worst.

Glassman

Yesterday I met a man sitting by an ice-glass lake.

I didn't see his snowy beard

and I completely ignored his face.

All my attention attached itself to his fingers

And all my thoughts--my vapor thoughts--condensed and settled

as tears

before my eyes and there they froze

most stubborn

stillborn

Till they became glass, ice-glass, organic lenses to focus

my sight--

--my insight and foresight and hindsight and true sight,

on the glass man's fingers.

They were mangled, the fingers, and gnarled

like charred stubs

of a paper tree--

--paper that had once held words

and memories

but is now

scoured

and chewed out.

And I watched through my marble-tear lenses

as he held up a pipe,

a solid affair of iron wood--mahogany--ordinary

and blew through it a ball of molten fire,

and, as I watched, the fire hardened,

into light and a heavy orb

of cranberry-orange ice.

But then I blinked,

and the vision shattered,

and my tears broke and the ice-shards clattered

as they hit my face.

A moment later they melted and the world dissolved

into marmalade skies and apple liqueur,

Because the glassblower had

fashioned, from ice, from sugar-dusted air,

and fingers broken and unrepaired,

the Sun.