Between the Stingers

Trust, like a pitiless whore-master, grins

as between the sheets and at my breasts, he suckles.

Though Cupid lauds’ the joy, I feel only stings.

The manic moon shivers to shriek-like violins

as trusting seed is split and son-less my knees buckle–

mother-less street urchin blanched, impatient, sin.

In sympathy the sun pales night’s mood swings

seeking to caress and hold with a fractured chuckle–

love’s exhausted, and misspent, ripening lingers;

the dying day and I, cry of might-have-beens.

My ivory hands are icy white, my bleeding knuckles

trust like a pitiless whore-master grins

though Cupid lauds’ the joy, I feel only stings.

The Sowing

 

Upon the wind-sheltered hillside;

the sharp tang of metal and the sting of salt air lay

over a field of blood-red poppies—no Flanders Field.

 

At year’s fall, fields of rape roll like waves,

in the harshness of winter-sleet, stray boulders bow

like the backs of mothers, and daughters sowing.

Their nails torn, ragged, and bleeding.

They bleed by the moon, and son, upon the fields.

No white crosses mark their passing.

 

For hundreds of years, and crops of rape, barley and wheat,

small hands, soft hands, and soft thighs bleed.

They bleed daughters, and sons.

They birth the fields by consent or rape and in the

fields unadorned by silver stars or purple hearts—they writhe.

 

Today, as May’s sun wakes the blood-blasted pasture

each precious drop blooms, a heroine’s soul—

 

acknowledged by the poppies yield.

Sweet Meats

 

Life from a fish bowl—

 

encapsulated—above and behind the

gilded dado’s of peachy-pink

and flannel-gray of San Francisco’s

Victorian Ladies

 

Life wrapped with the ledges,

 

draped with hangovers and portcullis

frail, precious, half-formed, half-crazed

often newly-born each Lilliputian presence

a sweet meat inside their saccharin selves

 

Life dawns, as a colorful array of

 

hard candy-colored covers

shaken forth from raspberry doors—

coffee toffee

liquorice bits

vanilla suckers

 

all with their surprisingly soft centers

sweeten the San Francisco’s scene