Prophecy

All of the followers had gone, sucked up in the girl’s funnel cloud.  Everything lay on the ground, broken.  The restaurant would not be serving again.

I was wondering with a pang of regret where Marietta had gone when a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped over to me.  We just stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”

“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared, rather against her will, I thought, into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound

Through the looking glass

This one last time                    come along with me                you run so slow I lost you centuries ago                     now is not where you said you would be               leaving me alone and out of breath                    this breakdown in the making                        where are you love      where are you sleeping            I am awake I am all aware      that I am here and you are there                         you do not belong to me         you do not belong to me

Whose truth will be accepted             as war rages against my memories                  I cannot say for certain what I expected          or even what I thought I believed      but I am jumping off the cliff into this pillow of air              while you are a voice warning me from the canyon floor                   because this is where you disappear               and where I wish for something more

for you to send a message please        to shoot me so far and so wide           how do I survive now love     how do I feel alive          when you call to me from an exploding star               when you sing to me from the briny deep                  how am I supposed to hold onto you when I have nothing here I am allowed to keep                    

Because he was a vision in snow       

the carrier of my fears             he infected you with my reality          he melted you with my tears               he held out his hand as I looked for you             he was the last of my projections                       this hologram I could not see through the carrier of your rejection    

So I left you near the valley stream                I left you on the greenest hill              I left you in the hardest rain               I left you standing warm and still                   I left you there in front of me             thinking I had been too kind                 the guardian of all my dreams                        a slow motion horror to unwind         now this torn frame is the only clue  of what I can never find                     what does forgiveness have to do with me    when I am the one you left behind                      

Yes you were a picture in a book                    nestled between a cranny and a nook             where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors        and I am prostrate on the floor                       you do not belong to me               you do not belong to me

Normalcy

It was cold even though the rain had ended and the sun now peeked out from behind the clouds.  In Wisconsin the coldest days were always the sunniest.

 His father came up from behind him.  “Farmer’s Almanac says it’s going to be a wet winter.”

Jonah nodded, lost in an abstraction.  

“Have something to tell you," Dale said.

Jonah looked over at his father.

“I’m moving to Florida.”                   

“You are?" Jonah exclaimed.  "When?”

“Tomorrow.  No point in staying here.  The realtor says I’ll make a mint on the house, and I have a condo down there.  Bought it with your mother right before she got sick.”  Dale cleared his throat.  “Be nice if you could visit.  The condo has a guestroom.  You’re welcome to use it." 

“Right," Jonah said slowly.  "Thanks."

His father nodded.  “Okay, then.  Tell Jackie I said goodbye.”

“You’re not going to tell him yourself?”

“He’s busy tonight.  Something about a poker game, and I didn’t get a chance to tell him before that.  The movers are coming Saturday.  You mind checking in, to make sure they’re doing things right?”

“…Okay."

“Maybe you can come in April.  April’s real nice there—not too humid.  We could go to Disneyworld, or Universal Studios.  Always wanted to take you boys there when you were young, but...”  Dale cleared his throat again.  “Okay, then.  Be good.”

Memory's drawing

December 19, 2008

There is a dragon in the elevator

He will not tell me his name but

I know it

I’ve heard it in my sleep

He says, stay asleep, little girl

I will not harm you

but I only pretend

I am here and I am alive

If a dog howls, is it sad?

or is it just talking

saying how it feels?

I dare not howl I am not that brave

I am tiny a little speck

January's Relapse

Most remained here with me

I gave some to the wind                       the wind that separated my toes

but something stayed crept poked inside

mocking me with icicle whispers to

never mind the frost outside

inside is just as cold

whatever stole into my pillowcase

left me silenced

crystallized the dripping ceiling

buckled the paneled walls

I could never begin to wonder how

it came to happen

how I whimpered for it to go away     

yet still forgetting to scrape off the scent

that yesterday is a dangerous thing

this something has left my cheekbones bruised

this something has cut into my knuckles

why God has given me these fingernails                      I do not know

but maybe forgiveness hides in the mattress

maybe in the frozen droplets trapped

on the branch’s edge...

Most remains here with me

The Illusion of Safety

    

            “How charming,” Alturis said, laughing.  “But now you must come out from under there.”

            Peering up at him, Megan returned, “Why should I?”

            “For a lot of reasons, most of them mine.  And for some of your own as well.  Aren’t you a little bit like a fish in a barrel right now?”

            “You’re just going to kill me anyway.”

            “But you won’t have a chance to escape unless you come out.”

            Megan frowned.  That was a good point.

            “Besides,” Alturis added, “you are much too old to be hiding underneath the bed.”

I want to learn to cry once

more

I wonder if I even could before

I reach for your sky...

The Ballad of Love & Death

Let me tell you what I know about

my broken heart

this is the rhythm of it falling apart

toss the stones in the river because

we are

we are coming up for air again

What did I even know about

guilt and sin

all of the dreams that

I was dying in

it was a curse it was a blessing it

was utter nothingness

until it skidded and came crashing

home

No telling how the earth will

record this disaster

whistling dixie in the wind

as if I had the answer

            ballet with fractured form

tripped up by vengeful rapture

the hammer flung against

the wall

Dismantled piece by piece into

a million parts

buried back with Santa at

the Christmas tree farm

what is dead is what is real to

the falling apart

we heard the siren but not the

alarm

I wonder how I will know when

the sky becomes my master

when dreams of yesterday stop

mocking me with laughter

tomorrow is today tornadoes

circling my trailer

I was wrong over

and over again

Now I whisper to the wind about

my broken heart

falling in slow motion

not a subtle art

toss the stones in the river because

I am

I am here alone at the end