self 95
When did I stop trying to swallow my blue river,and start telling it pink like it is, I am?
I hear my voice now; dash and butter itself
across a sizzling pan, are you listening?
All of the snapping and pops
that's the sound of my bones reconnecting-
my spine straightening itself out.
My ankles no longer slosh through these fluid woes
No, I feel myself hydroplaning, slick.
Something is tugging me that way,
not so much your undertoe, but my own current
but never mind, I'll still coerce a smile out of you
the way you release a tight knot from your rope.
We part in agreement of who I am meant to be.
As I pulled away, I stared hard at the sign that said
Willow Ave, I never noticed it before-
I've spent too much time thinking about
Lilac Rd, or maybe it was that other road
the yellow brick one I forgot about all wrapped
around my mind.
self 82
you've been able to make a vocation of ignoring the true problem.that is why many of us no longer wonder how it is we are so blue.
one whose slight movements sound like birds chirping in breezy spring shadow.
his arms swift and gentle like wings and his eyes darkly pointed, crows feet.
embraced me with a pink muscle in his back, the back of his neck red, stiffening.
"hello, Amy, how are you," words deliberately cast out upon discarding a sniffle.
I have seen too many men in my life laid flat on their backs to ever believe.
that they now will forever have too much and too little power over me.
the lines in my pink face deepen, my pink teenage heart twists and breaks for a man once a boy,
whose throat emissions always sound like regrets even after marrying another beautiful woman.
and you had just spent an hour on stage, as if to say, "This is proof that sinners get all the glory,"
and you never make eye contact with me, in the audience, as if to remind me I am spectating only.
i wouldn't be so angry with you, if you didn't always wear the same black dress
and if you didn't always paint your eyes in blue, flushed pink in a sad, deceitful way
if your smiles and laughter still had more pink and less blue tones: more truth
and you didn't always abandon those closest to you with a single stabbing grin.
self 81
A blue clump of words hang from my hair, I cannot pull these strands apartand remember it has true color. What happened to me? I guess it all started
when I began trying to change myself to change you.
No, scratch that, that can't be right, I couldn't be changed much
if at all. I mean, have we spoken lately? I have that same old
pink pain. Scratches that won't scab.
Just lines, not stretch-marks not wrinkles-my body? I think so.
But where is my new skin, the one I was promised,
that lilac skin strategically painted, pink&blue?
self 94
It's 2001, yesterday the sky turned yellowand lately the skin of my fingers match.
I don't feel the blue snow anymore.
another endless weekend of whites-
a pink pen for each finger;I doodle on everything
lost in the mindspace of Lou Reed.
I can tell she is sickened by my face
the thick smell of hatred is rancid.
I broke his heart swiftly,
switching over from call-waiting,
"just a quick-screw, a date to the prom
for some free booze and cigarettes."
my voice unrecognizable and brash
really I was tired of the gun shows
and shopping at the Army/Navy store
and his difficult family frightened me.
my walls and clothes are now sticky with lilac paint,
I sit and dream, my red face on a blue window,
of a blue boy and a red boy
or one all mixed up.
