Dry

you want to cry

but you have been dry for so long

that despair has cut a dirt rock river

through the canyons of 

your lungs

Unraveling

With an anxious sigh, Polly Wiggle-Waggle scanned her family’s account books, looking for good news that simply was not there.  Poor Polly was running out of ideas.  Try as she might to persuade them otherwise, her parents refused to admit that the family was in a financial crisis.  “The Wiggle-Waggles,” her father had intoned, after Polly waved the account books under his nose, “do not have financial crises!” 

If only that were true.  Yes, Lord and Lady Wiggle-Waggle, Polly’s parents, still lived in the great manor that had been the family seat for the last 37 generations.  And yes, they still gave the most glamorous garden parties in the county.  But with the family’s income drying up, and her parents’ complete inability to grasp reality, Polly was at her wits’ end for ways to raise funds for the summer fete her mother insisted on hosting.

In desperation Polly looked around the living room, searching for an old vase or painting her parents wouldn’t miss if she pawned it off a London antiques shop.  It was, she knew, a hopeless cause.  Thanks to such raids in the past Polly’s parents were beginning to notice that the manor seemed a bit emptier than usual, even though it was still crammed full of family heirlooms.  

And of course Polly could forget about suggesting to her father that he get a job.  Lord Wiggle-Waggle’s face had gone beet red the last time she’d dared to raise the subject. “The Wiggle-Waggles,” he’d boomed, “do not have jobs!”  Nor had Lady Wiggle-Waggle been of much help when Polly had approached her after dinner yesterday.  “Darling,” she’d sniffed to Polly, “how many times do I have to tell you?  It’s vulgar for a lady to discuss matters of finance!”

Polly just did not know what to do.  With her brother Alfred even more clueless than her parents—he was incapable of any conversation not concerning lawn tennis or his London gentleman’s club—Polly felt utterly alone.  If only she could think of a way to make some money…

Happily Ever After

Time to sharpen the needle of this thorn

to watch the destruction of

what I never knew to be true

The volcano erupted underneath the trees

I felt it 

I felt it as I expanded and shrank and dissolved

into the nothing I pretended

was you.

Atomic pain

you found my horses runnning bare

shivering in the wind with

frozen hair

it broke to the touch 

as you whispered goodbye goodbye

goodbye...

The Light in the Dark

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They all instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found themselves their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out on the concrete ground he very deliberately started placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid no one else any attention.

Over time the straws began to form an intricate pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  Was it a formula, they asked?  The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps?  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 

No one, that is, but them.

Hidden

But the peace which comes my love
there is no lock on the door
And now you can shut out nothing
let alone the memory of
        the war
Some kind of peace now
one hell of a peace now
All bruised and tattered and sore
as long as it hurts less than the no-peace
you were forever crashing through
before
Because this is your peace now
This is your peace now
and in the end what you will find
is the quiet absence of any power you
once believed built a castle in the sky
hidden in his golden palace in the sky
cringing on the cloud throne
playing blindman's buff with time
his hands reaching for you
his hands reaching for you
but even the unbroken must learn 
how to cry
alone

The war against hope

“You were my friend,” I said sadly. 

For an answer Marietta just turned away, her eyes downcast. 

“Enough of that,” the witch told us.  “Now come along.  I have plans for the both of you.”