Peel
back
your skin.

There’s a
mask
underneath – don’t you
feel it?

Doesn’t it
itch?
It’s made of bone
and not yours. Haven’t
you felt
your body
fight it?

Peel back
your skin for me
and maybe
we can paint
your features back,
again.

You may need
a new name, by then,
of course. Don’t
worry. Just
peel back your
skin, for me, and I’ll
set them, those who know
these things, I’ll set them to work
re-naming you.

We’ll be in touch.
There are people.
They’ll know what to do.… Continue reading

I want words my own.
I want them mine,
olive-tinted pearls
of lime and plum.

I want to pierce through
the mucus drops
with an bone awl
salvaged from
my splintered thumb.

I will treasure them
when strung on a strand
of my hair, conscientiously
plucked from a strange pillow
and I will wear these
words around my neck,
where they can be clutched
in times of muffled confusion.

I want words
my own but more.
I want you to sink your teeth
into the shoulder of
what I have written
and I want to speak flesh
that will bite with dull teeth
or punch with knuckles
blistered.

I want to come upon
a wall graffiti-ed with my
hand-writing, come… Continue reading

Tell me a
story, they
say (ask plead)
and I am stuck
(trapped stilled
muted) because my
jar (box urn) is filled
to the brim and should I
open my mouth to sing (cry
laugh lecture babble) I do not know
what else would escape. It is not hope
that I have locked away and my name is not
Penelope nor have I a husband, but my loom (ink
keyboard) unravels itself faster than I weave, faster
(slower) than I think, and I am buying time for conjunctions
or, failing that, waiting for a blade sharp enough to find the edges
I cannot see. I have ripped the thread in my teeth pulled a rip and I have
mended in the dark, hands blurred and I have tied… Continue reading

Hades doesn’t know, but you can buy motivation in Hell.
The gate-keeper has this little start up business going;
he gathers motivation, drop by drop,
from the shuffling line of the newly forsaken.
From some, he takes it easily: “I’ll make you numb, friend,
a little colder.”  His voice slips up their nasal cavity.
“You’ll hurt less, when it’s gone,” he promises and
these resigned, sometimes they even thank him.
Others – most of the new arrivals – need a little push.
“We can do this the easy way,” he’ll say, well-practiced,
with a twisted smirk. as he skewers through their ears,
“and trust me, this is it.” A beat. A ragged breath.
“Don’t you think I’d know, by now?”

The gatekeeper knows how to pull the… Continue reading

Syllables
have drifted lose from
words – which lacked the
weight to hold them
in, having themselves secceeded
from the hierarchy
of syntax (forsaking
the patriarchy of phrases).

They float
to my ears and my brain
reassembles them
to my Mother Tongue – nearly, for
it is a dialect of hers I find
incomprehensible.

“Wallah wallah,”
said the men of Babel and
the first generation, they
nodded sagely (with blank eyes
and empty smiles)
still thinkking they understood –
it was the second that went insane
(trying trying trying)
but the third that figured
it out, stuffing wax in their ears.

The Sirens
didn’t sing of sex,
no come on, no allure – they
simply sang their own sad songs,
and told… Continue reading

I’ve heard God’s in the sock drawer.
Not that I was looking for him,
Not that I found him myself,
Of course –

– I’m not sure I have any matching socks,
Much less a drawer to keep them in.
And now that I think about it,
That might explain a lot.… Continue reading