Lady Macabre

there are so many objects to beautify
one’s spirit, lips, locks, and laughter
wrapped in opulence,
a shroud of poisonous remembrance
a walking cage, raging to free the mind

Lady macabre, whose fingers pry strings of rising sorrow
Who carves spirits into walls with a flicker
Long gone restraint cascades fiery black orbs of lightning
Her eyes whispering a sullen sweet lullaby
a tale of despair winding about her curls
and interludes of joy wrapping around her flowing hips
Lingering over a soul’s last breath, if only to remind us
of the pendulums prosperity,
ever ticking
creeping ever

She enters the room in a draft
Her bejeweled circlet of thorns glistening
as she steps through shattered glass
Blessing the children and dangling chilled nails
down the backs of numb and sedated minds

Oh, ever-blooming Night Queen
Moon lioness whose ardent cosmic aura invokes
the instinct to heal,
the infants surge towards the mother’s breast,
the final release of equilibrium
Flowing majestically from the great Queen’s arms
Bitter cold, unbearable wonder
Dreaming divine within swelling softness
and Darkness as the waves keep crashing

Strife on Vintage Heels

Chili peppered eyes wind over callous fingertips
fresh from under the creaking floorboards
What would you hide?
how would you nail it shut?


Perhaps a slapping memory,
carved and sweet
a father across a mother
through a holly trimmed door
as you flip channels and web pages
coffin catalogues, and life-support switches
“merry Christmas, darling!”


billowing black lace over distressed vintage leather
raw-stringed women sinking with electric guitars
our stitched up souls are bleeding and steaming,
rising from a confetti of ash

snowflakes of glitter captivate jutting lily shoulders
carved and sweet
vanilla sugared lips, an insinuating iris brewing coal
trunks of oaks embower peach skin embracing
silk sweeping,
past the slamming doors. screams held tightly within
a door knob like a child’s giggle
pulsating limp calling of a carcass lined with morning dew
lying in bed like a schizophrenic doctor
a tap of golden heeled shoe (see how it sparkles!)
brushing along a tea stained roaring twenties wedding dress
achromatic as a dead moon

wear your heart like a lioness
crowned with flaming roses
strife sliding slick,
Carved and sweet

Silver dust spun through her hair and lifted her tattered lace skirt as they were strangled with twisting vines. She sat beneath her favorite sunken oak tree, with roots like ominous shadows opening deep into another realm. For now she was on the cusp of reality – and she relished losing her body within nature’s cool fingers. She gazed lucidly up to the darkening sky – tinged with swirling pink clouds that ached with swollen desire. The clouds began to split open, pulsating toward her in great heaps. She felt a feathery chill blow across her bare neck; the clouds were pleading to engulf her. Before she could blink, she was opening a miniature door in the oak tree she never knew existed - in fact, she could remembering anything ever existing.

We lift our heads from our beds. Insomniacs, sleeping pill addicts, drunks, maniac-depressives, light sleepers who wake up sensing the taps of white dawning butterflies upon the window sills.

We obey our given rules for how to behave – we may possibly have all the freedom in the world, perhaps. But what good is all that if we don’t have at least one soul to retreat within, when the over-bearing existence of the Self weighs so painfully. One moment within a locked door, two human beings crying ecstatically in each other’s shivering arms.

Maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about. In that case, I don’t care about you. But what of the dreamer? She who is constantly balancing a perfectly rational hysteria, atop a looping, passionate flurry of iodized cadaver-spiked Hope that soon goes crashing into a miserable pile of infantile moans for a single present human glance to restore some sense of balance.

So let’s put it this way- I want to take those moments where I am reduced to slowly sinking dust, where every wall speaks in angry foreign tongues, and the house is completely dark, and the only words my mother spoke to me were “Can’t you be more self-sufficient?” and rip them open so the skin is bleeding and sore and the great Sacred Heart of Mary is flaming with exhilarating peace above it all.
A single drop of blood excites me so much I want to sob.

a writing exercise responding to a random characters name and an object

Wanda SlippenCotton had hair like dreadfully long, spindly spaghetti. She chased her dreams with a arrow through her chest and a glowing aqua pulse in her gut. She only wore silk, because it was so way to slip off her body when she stumbled out of a dark alleyway into a beat up red van composed of leering, yanking men. She called her silk undies "slippen cottons" since she was five years old - only they were never silk, merely a poly-rayon mix

which etched her body with whispers of crystallized sugar cones, and little bones of spinal chords which danced upon pudgy belly as she lay awake in the balmy night on a thin creaky mattress, Wanda's Chariot of

"Someday, Maybe..."

and "I remember when the moon seemed to be twinkling upon her enchanted eyes through those old off-white curtains sullied with specks of blood- how did those get there, anyway?" shush Wanda, there's a knock on the door...

Mother, why did you name me Wanda?
is it because I am a wish-maker?
Yes my darling, your body is a vessel
of star dust, and yes you can, yes you can

as Wanda reminisced, Mother was cold and blue-skinned
and so deep underground ---

When suddenly, Wanda perceived silently advancing voice. She opened the door to find a wig on the "Welcome Home" mat. Long, spindly, and squirming like living spaghetti.

"Why hello there!" Wander exclaimed with a tone of glee, placing the wild wig upon her own unruly locks. Her mouth flung open before she could blink and her arms grasped desperately through the dusty chilled air...

"I am Stardust!" she screamed
"I am growth upon growth!"

a violent hand slapped across her face, and a naked enigma was sweating above her in the darkness.

"Where did the moon go?"

She clutched her head in panic and cried out;

Where is my wig?
Where is my faux-gold locket?
the one I found in the gutter when I sold myself at thirteen
Where is my slippen cotton?

I am bare and and I cannot see the light.

hush darling, into the sky
as the sparrows fade
indignant spots of ink
invite your eyes
between
my trembling thighs
revise, porous electricity
washing the thorny roses from your brow
the stars linger as they diminish
and I bite my lip, your kiss
repaid between the spindly branches
strangling cobwebs
in the violet storm, spewing scorn
the Crone dethroned
bleached from our memories
we hear only the cars honking in traffic
street lights blinking
a sinking of strenuous thinking
my shivering bones aching
at the bat of your luminous lash
your skirts in pulsing silk
reminiscing on that break of time
when sorrow plunged, outermost damage
“it’s a pity she was so pretty..”
darling, listen
(my frantic lips move silently, an exclamation of surprise)
a nightingale removed every grain of history
as the entrance of morning’s gate laughs in hate
we are home, no time
only lilies ensconced in dewdrops
and sweet grasses humming within a little April shower

Bounded Spirits

floorboards creaking fogged absinthe bottles jingle
skeleton keys pulsing corseted waist hooked wafting
cedar branch, a raven on an antiquated shelf
stacked blinking clockwork
quivering bounded spirits
chesire grinning pages of flitting puffing wings
billowing shadows of tattered lace
bare silk thigh berry lips sigh of the green faerie
subdue. laps of ocean whispers eye veiled
mourning wind spinning
mind’s eye in a windowed leap
hollow tree trunk reaching your pupil Through
rolling eyelashes swirling shades of grey
fading into breaking vapors of dusty light
breast bone crevice of scented sleeping
pine needle milky laced confection
(memory) an autumn leaf descends
doorway in a tree trunk as her finger circles lip
glove slip skirts rush upon a gray horizon
leaping sigh whipping curling lips threading a rose
a petaled waking dusted tender lash, brushing
ticking staircase ascends winding shadows
fingers envelope, unlaced
breath of Silence