Poetry is not a language of peaceableness ( Read more... )

I have never been this happy ( Read more... )

I tried to frighten you away
   with my catalog of flaws and failures
   my frightful shames and hypocricies
It had always worked before

You gathered each one up, looked at it, and said
  I am not perfect and neither are you
  s'agapoI tried to box you away ( Read more... )

Love ( Read more... )

"I don't want him dead. I just want him behind me. Miles and years.
I think about him every day, and I don't want to. Dead would be even worse, for that."
                     -- Fawn Bluefield, Beguilement, Lois McMaster Bujold ( Read more... )

In the first year
             I believed everything

In the second year
             you began to reveal yourself
             baiting me with deliberate gaps
                           disparaging me when I bit
             all interaction under your rules alone
                           sans compromise, sans negotiation
              ( Read more... )

The folder shuffled around my desk
for over a year
opened up and read whenever
I thought I needed bleeding
and old pains savoured
rolled about in my heart’s mouth
like merlot.

I’d suspected you wouldn’t come
for all your declarations
I’d suspected your bravado would desert you
rather than attempt siege in my home
at the fortress of my face.

The ( Read more... )

When you arrived in town
          you left your doors wide open
          hoping we would all wander in and out
          see the place
          and love it

Gradually ( Read more... )

I am tired
     weary, battered, walloped and wrecked

I am tired
     like a Midwest town
          in the trail of a twister
     looking for all the bits of me
          how did my boot end up in the chimney
          my heart spattered across the walls

I am tired
     of you
     dragging through my life
          uprooting all my trees
          unroofing ( Read more... )

With my list of "don'ts"
     and my scattered fragility
I am just too... too
     most find the gifts I offer
     insufficient compensation
For them
     there will only be relief
     when I am buried and gone

I bear few surprises to myself
     frustrations, rebellions, contempts, O yes
     but few surprises
Usually I know 
     why
I leap right or leap ( Read more... )