Murder

 

Your tulip died.

 

But it went out gloriously

Down in a color crimson

That would shame blood.

 

Sweeter now,

In death

Than in full bloom,

On a summer morning.

 

It had been staring at me viscously,

From its’ prominent throne

On the kitchen table.

Leaning pompously toward the sun

Like a proud dancer.

 

For

One

Single

Moment

A

Perfect

Life

Stood

Still.

 

Then suddenly, my hands sprang

 

And I ripped every petal of life

From it’s frail, shuddering body,

Choked, and strangled it’s stem

Then tossed it’s corpse to the linoleum.

 

 

Thinking About It

 

I fold my death neatly

And slip the small, smooth, white notepaper

Into my front jeans pocket.

I like all my options to be close

Near my warm skin and underclothes

So only I know its there

So no man can steal my secret.

 

I love the fall

The season of my life

But it’s like bad fruit

Summer’s sloppy seconds

Sees everything rot

Blood blossoms bleeding

Into a starved earth

Sucking in sustenance

For winters starvation

 

I imagine my dead body

As a town for worms

Brightly lit and crawling alive

Under my best black suit

As the green grass glees above.

 

The Curse

 

I would take the jumbled jaws of night

Over the expounding day

Could I banish winters bane,

And marry the bedeviled light.

 

Could I, Would I,

If this solid, suffocating armor

Armor of knight would rise

Off this chubby cherubs life?

 

Darkness, darkness, darkness

It’s always darkness

And rubies

Like Lucifer’s porch light

 

I want to pull from me

The naked, coiled, burning torch

So I can see

So I can walk

 

Again. On this ship

Two ships on the lips

Of loves lost legions

Never to port, but to sink into

This night’s demons.

 

 
 

Mystic

 

You told me I had beautiful pale skin, said that I must be young, in my twenties. Nope, only eighteen and I heard myself complain how that wasn’t old enough for anything, but then I looked up and saw your dying face, the little traces of ice that had begun to form in those large coal black eyes and I had to look away in shame.

 

I met a mystic today, in pink sweatpants and beat up sneakers, broken, muddy and worn out. You were dark eyed and bald with drawn on eyebrows, small and thin with a tweed coat and a painter’s cap. You said your magic came from Hungarian blood, but I think it was something else.

 

You said that you were old enough to be my mom, which was eerie, but you had one of those unguessable age faces.

 

It was an unusually beautiful, still fall day. But then you told me that you knew when everybody in your family was going to die. You said that you got feelings from people, that you just knew about them. You asked me if I ever did, I just nodded.

 

You said that your name was Madeline, and then you guessed my sign and glared at me with ram eyebrows. Your little, foreign mother was trying desperately to get you to eat a slice of Wonder bread and drink water from an old jelly jar as the appliance salesman went on about the benefits of an installed ice-cube maker, but you refused. I wanted you to live so badly then.

 

You told me to never wish my life away and that I was young and strong and that I should be thankful. Then you told me that she could tell I wore a lot of green. I just kept nodding fearing disagreement might have some cosmic consequences.

 

I could tell that you were once very beautiful. I looked up and the afternoon sun was behind you shining through the storefront windows and all I saw for a moment was the dark outline of you, and I wondered if maybe that’s all you were.

 

You said goodbye but wouldn’t shake my hand. I realized later as I started my car after my shift ended how you  had told me that everyone you touch is cursed and ill-fated.