Out here, velvet needles tattoo
the plains in three shades of green
and one frizzled beige
left behind to grieve its youth
like scion orchids
slouched in umbrellaed petals,
their violet tinge flaking
like so many shards of paint
feathered from a wilted wall,
filming salty billows -- a tear filled
moat encircling gaunt stems
as the sun adheres to its betrayal.
Here, the trees cling to their own;
gelatin souls weeping in the impervious
crusting of rugged bark
desensitized by the invasive prance
of insects, the termite's razor lips,
and the piercing wail of a chain saw
all glimpsed in the deluding sky
where shapeshifting clouds
trade cotton secrets of plight
for an awing eye -- a rounded mouth
and a frazzled heart.
Here, nature bears the curse
of seasonal rape -- unwanted pregnancies
sprouting like a pestilence
bastard scions who know no better
but to cling to their siblings
when the sun bears his second face
and his whetted needles are launched.
A revolving cycle of futility hardly worth
the anguish of such innocent children.
Her sedation was a channel;
an impervious medium veiled
in drooping eyelids --
twin shudders nodding in and out
of culmination
like the chameleon and its shadow play
observing life's concocted surge
from the ruffles of transparency.
Her isolation was a set up
she veiled her naked frame
in the flaps of a nocturnal robe
peeking through eye holes
at her rankled populace,
willing to accept their ignorance
for a sense of security.
Her existence was subjective
deprived yet peaceful
as she lay slumbering in her alcove,
contorted as an undeveloped fetus
still as a marble statue
a canvas for spiders' woven masterpieces
as she dreams of liquid gold
sifted through the flawless fingertips
of Venus.
I've shuddered 'neath icy lips;
good-bye kisses planted abruptly
like a curse confirmed
another silver pucker singed into
gaunt cheeks
as the contour of yet another wise lover
decreases with each departing step
as if smoke meandering from my mouth.
They spoke of lanky ghosts
shape-shifting through the windows
of my eyes -- of skeletal suits
web woven and chipped,
hanging in the far end of my closet.
The crucifix beset on my walls
how it wailed in crosschecked anguish,
squirmed like an eel in tight skin --
I am guilty, so very guilty.
These sequential ruffles of deja vu
implant no heed -- no instinctive pulse
playing to the trill of my gray-filmed
heart -- my deluding heart singed
with the vestige of lost lovers who fled
at my revealment -- fled from the raised
curtain of crushed velvet -- fled down
the road of yellow bricks they traipsed
so long ago.
I am a splintered shell
fossilized by the outmoded
marks of vestige;
charred black by flame-thrower
tongues that lash out
with molten wrath
I am the foolish exemplar;
rigid on a marble pedestal of trust
my backside carved in
patterned slits and gouges,
the combined M-O's
of a thousand assailants.
I naively embraced the wicked,
allowed slithery tongues
the gusto of my personal space,
wrenched the back of their heads
as they licked and sucked
the rivulets of distrust.
All mouths bear fangs,
and the tongue is a whet
I am the bearer of gashes;
flesh carved in red lines,
leaving me savorous
to swarms of blood-thirsty flies.