Mess? I? Ah.

Nothing about this hangs together yet, I'm still stretching for it instead of writing from within it. Damn you, WordsWorth, for making me think about process!! *shakes fist*


It will come.


****
I was a free woman when I walked in this place,
Worshipping only my independent will,
A woman of means, never mind how I got it,
Serving my own sweet whims, subject
To no man’s demands.

I entered as he was telling some tale,
Bullshit about water turning to whiskey, and
How women followed him, seeking his touch
To heal their ailing hearts. Libidos, I snorted,
Sailing past, still thinking I belonged to
Myself.

At the table, a friend introduced us.
I am not sure whether it started
When he first touched my hand or
When I looked up and got lost in his eyes, but
Suddenly broadsided by tenderness and
Unable to swallow for wanting to touch
His lips, I was lost.

The stories he tells, son of a god
Are they real? Is that his magic? I don’t
Know if he can raise the dead, except when
His amp is too loud, but he can perform miracles.
Why else do I find myself washing his feet
With my hair?

harmonize

He is disappointed that I won't
Harmonize, he
Waits at the backup vocals for
Me to chime in
But
I won't.

I won't harmonize until I
Float into his dark pupils and
Know that no sea monster awaits,
Know that I can show my
Heart and the beating
Will not cause a squall.

I rest mute.
I will not harmonize
Till I hear clearly
A voice with no lies,
Till I see
No harm
In his eyes.

The Merman

She fell in love with a merman,
It was foolish, she knows that now.
She was at first just captivated by his long green hair,
His noble brow.

He had every appearance of a man,
A fine man, above the water.
Below, his cold-blooded churning tail, his
Mystery was what caught her.

Day after day, to the shore she'd go,
And he would swim in to meet her.
They'd race, each in his element, and
Because the water made him fleeter
He'd often beat her,
And then feel bad, and
Treat her sweeter.

She listened, enthralled to all his tales
Of life as a prince of the ocean,
And if, when she spoke of life on land,
He seemed to recede farther from the sand,
She didn't catch the motion,
And she moved from infatuation to love,
And he accepted her promotion.

Of course, warm-blooded mammal she was,
She dreamt of lying in his arms,
And though her friend raised alarms,
Certain this would to lead harm,
All their warnings she did not heed
Blinded by her passion's need.

One day, they met at the usual rock,
And she, overwrought with longing,
As she had already drowned in his green eyes,
Dove in the deep water with a sense of belonging.

He shrugged and pulled her near to him,
And here, we must not judge, it seems to me.
He knew only that it was his birthright to swim
And his father was a cold-blooded creature of the sea.

He dove, with his love pulled tight to his chest, his
Powerful fin kicking behind,
And she, breathless in love and blind
Already, barely noticed the thickening gloom,
The pressure building in her lungs,
His bed would be her tomb, and yet
She inhaled the salt with no regret.

He was saddened, in his man-heart, but
Felt not a thing in his fishier parts.

Such a story needs a moral, and yet
I don't know what to say,
She knew what she was doing when she dove that day.
Perhaps the lesson is simply this,
Know he's a merman before you kiss.

Scripted

These are my words
and in the spaces
are the pieces of me that
broke off a long time ago
the scars
the scabs
the stories I can't
tell you
Although I wish I had
the words.

Around the punctuation
You'll see the curved places
Of my wanting
The echoes of my
Open arms.

And in the dots on the i's
And in the bowls of the o's
the exotic lures of wild
Orchid species, designed
Only to bring you to
Me.

heights

The most trite image:
"Hanging off a precipice,
Afraid to fall."

Honestly, ten thousand pop songs and
A million would-be minstrels have
Paved this path.

But then you took my hand,
And I was suddenly
Hanging in a strong breeze,
Gripping one slim bar beside
An airplane attached to
Nothing
Looking down 14,000 ft at
A squirming mass of snakes, spiders
and rejection.

How much faith do I need to let go?
How much courage?
Or should I just wait till I'm too tired
to hang on to these fears?

thinking too much

every time my
eyes close
one more scene flashes up
like projected vacation slides
you

Laughing
Dancing
Talking
Drinking

your eyes deep, dark, impenetrable
and my phone keeps
not ringing

For the word stringer with the greatest cache of beautiful beads

And so the sun stared down
Our backs, and we, hunched, focussed,
Counted out our beads, piled in glassy hives of
Beautiful colours,
Puce,
Amber,
Viridian,
Teal.

And so we strung a pattern, a story, with our
small glass beads.

But as always, he
Sat apart, slightly turned, and
Only when he revealed the final
Scintillating, labyrinthine pattern,
Only when his smile
Resonated in a thousand facets of light from
The resplendent rosary he held aloft,
Adorned with a myriad of stones,
Large, small, beautiful, all--

Only then
Did we acknowledge ourselves mere dilettantes.