You're the spider, pretend lover,
Dye me pink when my blood runs dark.
Paint red my cheeks that slowly hollow;
Drink me, neglect me, tear me apart.
String my wrists up where your illusion
can make-believe his full control,
You're webbed so deep into delusion
you've made saints of what sinners brought.
Here you play house with ceilings burning,
cat-and-mouse to where it's found no more,
your sense of self and your sense of loving
have warped and wrapped and worn your core.
You and I had our last dance
Barefoot on the blueberry shrub.
On the green and blue, the black and violet,
Where cattle bells rang and turned mountains violent.
I wonder if you knew?
As we spun and smiled and stomped the yew.
I wonder if you felt, in your bones as cold night fell,
That the day was soon to come where I would leave you.
I alone had our last dance
as a lone dog tied on the terrace,
Sang unheard by any other, howling at the sun.
Barefoot on the grass, chewed the leash and ran back home.
June, July, August, September,
On November fifteenth,
Yes, I remembered.
Your kisses taste like hawthorn,
your words prickle just the same.
You could not promise not to strike me,
now I wonder why I stayed.
I chewed up holly berries
and licked my wounds until the day:
the day the wind took pity on me
and pulled me up and far away.
Far away across three borders,
across the seasons I would race
to where you could reach me no longer,
to where I’d never see your face.
Darling, I only think about you
when there’s poison in my veins.
Beneath your lips and your fetters
Every piece of my body festers.
It’s those mornings of coffee and tea,
Sweet and heavy from milk and honey.
What was it for, drinking such candy,
With the bitter spiel you spilled inside me?
I take bitter swigs of the morning now;
Masking the taste never made it better.
I am full of the things you left behind
But at least the see-through glass is honest.
The deference, romantic, of an artist to their muse.
She's the statue that grows from stone on her own accord,
unlinked to human ruse.
As I stray further away I feel the sun slip through my fingers.
The heat does not burn my hands, but somehow my heart still tingles.
The memory of my cheeks red-kissed, feverish,
malingers.
The honey burned like whiskey but it could not set me ablaze.
Yet this is the mellow warmth that melts sugar, skin, and candle wax.
Enough was the temptation for pen to lay itself on paper,
to willingly spill ink from the glass, on her dress.
Dilated pupils and open petals, giving way to a heaving chest.
Sticky kisses, heat-hazed roses, licked my lips and laid to rest.
The sun swims ever farther from our place along the shore,
And with bright strings it plays the tune of raindrops on a glass door.
Why do you keep me here?
What are you trying to prove
To yourself…so stiff and stubborn…yes.
Isn’t it?
That only men can clip the wings off of birds.
It’s not the truth but you insist
on imitation
of all the other keepers that revolved the door before you
in our prison.
And I remember an ugly vision,
wretched words and rough limbs on olive trees.
No longer am I crushed beneath you,
But I still sometimes succumb to
the pale reverence of that which is beautiful.
