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.

Ink

I peeled off the ribbons of cursive ink,
Words, they're called, apparently.
But all I see in the pages free
of ink is blankness
that the ribbons briefly hid.

It's a book, Someone whispers and I laugh.
What's a book? Pages filled with ink.
It's NOT a book, I whisper back.
It's magic trapped in liquid black.

Magic? Someone scoffs.
What is magic? It's not real.
But what is real? I then ask.
It's blank pages
dipped in solid thoughts
and painted in vapor dreams.

But what is MAGIC? I hear Someone hiss,
It's NOT a book.
It's not a book, I agree,
and I've pissed Someone off immeasurably.

It's the words, I tell them.
It's the words. The magic's not the ink or book.
The magic's in the eyes that read,
and in the curves of the cursive ink.

Winter Red

I stepped on a shard of broken glass in the winter,
and my foot-skin tore and cried gore
into the snow
and there was no pain because it was so cold
but the red was still bright
despite the white.

I would've, if I could've and I should've--I know--
but I didn't. I didn't seal the cut,
or clean the mess
I just...

I let it run. Run and be done
because it was fun.
It was as fun as a ton of iron blasts from a gun
when you're caught and distraught
for having fought
and stolen a life.

So when the red turned blue in my toe
and the blood crystalized
to crimson ice,
I shook like a leaf
and shrieked with grief
And closed the cut
but,
in my gut I knew,
that the moment was gone,
I am dead to the world the way my blood
is sealed inside my skin,
And the one chance at freedom
died when my blood crystalized.

The heart

She came home with a snow-white rose,
Its petals bleached of color and power and all that
there was left was flower, no scent, no memory,
just pallor.

She stole the thorns, whittled them down,
and placed them with a frown in a Valentine crown over her heart because,
because...she wanted someone to touch the rose,
the rose, and not her heart.

Then he arrived, and all he had were baskets of needles,
acupuncture needles, knitting needles, chopsticks sharpened
to killing needles,
And she was a ball of wool, a love-sick fool, and she let him,
No. She begged him to be a tool to knit
a tapestry, a travesty, a tragedy,
out of her,
and when he did,
she became
what he made.

They wore their creation, her and him.
They sat on in at their picnics and wrote on it in their dreams
and made love on it and wiped their mouths on it
after dinner,and sometimes used it when she shivered
and everytime she touched the cloth she lost a part
of herself that she'd sworn she'd protect
with the rose-thorns over her heart.

Over the years, the tapestry tore,
and their love wore out to a pout of a
rose bud when all its petals fell out and
she did not cry, did not cry
when the tapestry unraveled and
he drifted. He drifted, she stayed and replayed
the years of togetherness and oneness and wholeness and ownness
and when it all crumbled like the ashes of a burnt rose,
she smiled because she was safe,
she was safe.
He'd loved the tapestry, not her, she was still safe,
with the rose-thorn crown on her heart,
all he'd gotten was a part,
of her that she'd let him use,
the outer wool,
the shell,
but not her heart.

Timothy runs

Timothy runs, he's ignorant, that child.
He's crisp white ice on a stained glass aisle,
He's the aimless banter of a thoughtless brain,
And he's lost in the canter of a mind untrained.

Timothy runs forward and the world runs back,
He's fast on the heels of faster facts,
They're colorless, tasteless, depth-less words,
But still, Timothy chases them for all they're worth.

Timothy runs through a gold-gray field,
A field of corn, a field of steel,
It's a man-made marvel, an acre of gold,
It's a yellow-gray field of heat and cold.

Timothy runs, and his shoulders scrape,
The gray-gold grass with the corn-steel blades,
His words have died in the oddball field,
And Timothy's sad--he's ignorant still.

"Where's my knowledge?" Timothy demands.
There's a dent in the earth where his still feet stand.
"It's that way," a source-less voice then says,
And Timothy runs in adamant chase.

Timothy's feet begin again to thunder,
And the once-dead words die again asunder.
But words don't matter, Timothy decrees,
He sees the shadow of running feet.

The shadow runs back to the field of steel,
And Timothy's as sore as his poor feet feel,
"There's your knowledge," says the gray-gold land,
And now there's one more dent where Timothy stands.

A lifetime later, Timothy's gray,
His gold has faded, and his feet have frayed,
But Timothy still runs and the field still stands,
And there's fifty thousand dents where his still feet stand.

And then one fine day Timothy sways,
And falls into the grave that his still feet made,
"You've found your knowledge," says the field to none,
But Timothy's happy, he no longer runs.