Older Verse and Prose
Most of this was written during a creative writing course in the spring of 2003, when I had a teacher who preferred poetry to prose, or even earlier than that. I, sadly, am not a poet -- or, rather, my standards for good poetry are so high that I will never achieve them. Of course I hate everything on this page except for the prose poem, but I've posted most of my older work, and I didn't even cheat by editing anything.
Well, maybe just a little.
Old Poison
He stares as if
I had just handed him a small brown flask
with a sepia skull etched on the label.
No way to tell him the truth -- that
ages ago I wormed into him,
slipped through his veins like arsenic,
fingers slick with blood and pleasure;
poison control has no cure
for what I shot him up with.
It brightened his eyes
sweetened his dreams
but I am no new drug
to lie so dormant,
to be so painless.
It's time I became myself.
I stretch my limbs within him
seize hold and the spasms begin
he tries to vomit --
I will not be purged.
He drank me
in,
and now I eat him
alive.
Desert Rose (with apologies to Sting)
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
In the darkened hotel room,
he plays "Desert Rose" for me
and I dance for him
between the bed and closet,
liquid silver in my
homecoming dress.
I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire
Raising my arms
within the fragile shell of beauty
I wear in his eyes, I feel some new fire inside
me. I come to him and he touches me
with sweaty hands,
and I cannot look him in the eye.
This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
There is nothing underneath the dress
but I am more silver
without it. He stops breathing.
When he breathes again
I feel it on my skin. The part of me
under his hands is the only part
that feels real.
And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems
He is much older, but
awkward; there is
pain. His body crushes me. There is
nothing lovely about this except that
someone wants me enough to participate
in this indignity. I have waited years
to be so degraded.
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes, this rare perfume
Is the sweet intoxication of her love
After, he says he loves
me; in the darkness I am blind
to fear. This first time,
innocent of the old poison
inside me, I still believe
we have a chance.
Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower, this rare perfume
Is the sweet intoxication of the fall
(A friend wrote the first fifteen or so words of the first piece as a prompt. These are the results.)
Cat and Queen
Holding my father's earrings and the crown of the late Queen, cat vomits glittery filth upon the emerald marble floor, silver reminders of the nights when cat licked body sparkles from the tequila bellies of drunken girls. Earrings of mistletoe and crown of belladonna, calling back the time when cat was great and shadowy among the burlap columns of oak trees, when his eyes flamed emerald beyond the stones on the hilltop. From the forests cat came down, the hand of glory lighting his way. The kindled finger writes and does not move on; cat ends in filth and shame, in the marble halls of the blind. Lambent, feral, the shadowed Queen reclaims her poison crown; cat, lying in the tawdry ashes of a thousand dragging nights, opens his eyes. Earrings pendant, he leaves the stone circle for the world; from the belly of time the flame always kindles again, and cat moves on.
Cat
Cat sits, with gleaming silver crown,
proud and silent, silhouetted lean;
behind his back, the sun is going down.
Haunting alleyways, up and down the town
cat spoke the lives of men, precious or unclean.
The power of it makes a heavy crown.
A thousand dreary nights of ill-renown
bring ashen dreams of everything he's seen
behind closed doors, when the sun is down.
Through sacrifice, a thousand children drowned
in blood and ashes, razors gleaming keen,
cat in secret learned to bear his crown.
In woods of oak, past columns burlap-brown,
cat drifts huge and shadowed, eyes gleaming green
behind the standing stones, the sun gone down.
In halls of stone he lives with silent frown,
a thousand secrets fill him, grand and mean;
cat sits, head heavy with his crown.
Behind his eyes, the sun is going down.
Queen
Resplendent,
repulsive,
crowned in honeysuckle
and in belladonna, dark Queen rides
the shade of night,
shadowed over with sparks aflame in the leaves
of her crown, sparks in her hair,
in shade of night all Queens are grey
as ash from the leaves of the burning oaks.
Queen of air and darkness, all wreathed in smoke
and in honeysuckle, hair aflame in the darkness;
phoenix Queen burning, repulsive, dying
in the ash
and in the belladonna.