Bayou Dreams

proxy

I never cry anymore.
It’s been years.

It’s not something I set out to stop doing.
It just is.

Sometimes when I am showering,
I pretend the droplets that slide down my cheeks
are my tears
and I don’t move when they are falling,
out of respect for the pain that put them there
because I am too weak to shed them myself.

Maybe I have to do crazy things
to keep myself sane.

(Source: inkstained.net)

fringe love

I bit into nerves slippery and shot;
soft and pliable as wine-soaked skin,
every eye-flick torn, every trembling day
and I know where the world goes when it disappears

 
sleep there, I need echoes and dust to breathe now;
fresh lungs hurt more than life itself,
and your voice is a stinging circle,
razing through swollen bones, marrow-slick

 
I was trying to feel something this morning;
pain or happiness or frustration
but, I need this, my cupboard has been spilling
for weeks now in disarray

 
I fixed it, I fixed it all while you’re gone;
and the hours just sank into spaces
between light and multiplicity,
lost in whatever it is we call the past

 
and I am trying to decide if statues are gods;
if they sing or if they hum,
I don’t even know if I really hear them,
it could be the madness in my tongue

 
I was never meant to be alive
where thoughts are the residual sobbing
of eons spent in unimaginable solitude and silence,
where the quiet is such a bleeding


.

(Source: inkstained.net)

jade

ghost-man,
you think to speak with your eyes
what your tongue is afraid to say
will ring in my ears,
but, I hear nothing;
I am blind
to your
face.

I alone,
in moments swiftly strung together,
to linger,
am more of a star-wraith
than a woman
and, yet,
I find the moon in your eyes
pulling me high again.


in silence,
the absence of sworn love
and lilting soul promises,
there lies a cadence,
a jazz section in my mind,
though, ironically, I am blue
and black inside.

my tears
move inside me
never falling, ever dancing
and spinning,
in tune;
and a tribal mourning wail
strains and echoes through my bones,
my singing skeleton.

I am,
a measure without measure;
unruly existence shimmying
down the spectrum,
and the colours taste acidic,
they wreak havoc on snapping nerves;
my jellyfish spine,
battle-weary, heavy without armor,
is quivering.

(Source: inkstained.net)

the sun and the sea: love letter #4

My warrior,

Time has begun to prove an impatient mistress and it has been a year since the cosmos blew magic into the air for our lost souls to capture. Every kiss has been like the first and left me breathless and proud. I have found in you, every dream every human has dreamt and every prayer prayers pray. Existence is done from birth, but this love, this is living and I have not thought of my own death since. We have been fighting to keep this love and the path behind us is littered with so much grief and destruction. We are still here. Locked in each other’s eyes and arms and minds every moment. The world is still breaking around us, it will always be that way, but we have held on to everything that is right and we have become formidable opponents to the world now. Love is so much stronger than our enemies’ will.

You always insist that the secret to life is being what you want most and positivity begets positivity. I struggle with this daily, but I try. I try because I know this to be true, but the universe is not something I can ever truly understand and I don’t pretend to know the full scale of complexity it masters and harbors. I have discovered, though, that you are my balance, my returning good. For years and years I threw goodness into creation and tried, though not always succeeded, to project the peace and happiness I wanted to be. I never thought it was working. Nothing in my past has been peaceful or happy or good. Then one day I followed a dusty, long shot chance and you were where I ended up. And I think now that it took so long to get back what I have put in because you are not simply a happy moment or a peaceful minute. My warrior, you are EVERY happy moment, EVERY peaceful minute. You are every longing dream I have ever woken from since I knew what dreaming was. All the hoping and wishful thinking I have pitched forth into the world was drawn straight into you. It took so long because you are so good and the man that you are cannot be made in an instant. You are everything.

I have never known such care and consideration before you. I know that I could never survive again the life I had before you. I laugh and laugh and smile and you make me wonder how forlorn my lips must have felt when they only ever looked down. And with a year under our wings you still inspire such devotion and craving in me. Everything you do reveals where your heart lies in this. You are always so careful in your handling of me and I know that you are so because you want this to last. It is common sense that you take extra care of the things you value most.

I am slowly discovering that I never knew anything when it comes to love. I am learning so much now. I have realized that so many have missed the points of it all. You sent me a message just yesterday that said, ” I was going to buy you a case for your makeup but I was not sure of the functionality of the design.” And I giggled at that statement because I thought it was so funny how much importance you were placing on such an unimportant thing, yet at the same time I swelled so thick with love and gratitude for having you. Love is all about grand gestures but very few have figured out that the grandest gestures are the smallest considerations. Every tiny notion you make for me is swept into this great, limitless passion that enthralls and enchants and obsesses me with you. I am truly a queen, a goddess because you have made me so. I am trying to be delicate with this power, this control. I never want to abuse it. I never want to be without you.

Poets always complain that “I love you” is not enough. That those three small words cannot even come close to portraying what the mind and body feels for their true mate. I am a poet and I say these words are exactly perfect. The simplicity of the words and the complexity of the statement are the epitome of my feelings and emotions. There is no other way to express them.

I love you.
























P.S. Thank you for having a beard, it makes it so much easier to constantly adore you. ;)

I am the Salt Queen; I am the sea

I slaughtered the breeze to anger the wind
to bring the waves nearer;
and they brined me into the highest borne-
purest sorrow known,
my sighs smothered shoots and leaves; left Mother childless
and her frightened tears are power in my hands

 
but, I never cry, what use have I for shedding my own skin?
I would not give myself away that easily
or fall apart to nothing when I have just begun
to swallow the world so neatly

 
this is my birthright; to devour and smile
when the light bows in defeat
and not even darkness can rise in its wake;
I am swollen and empty with the weight of this sadness,
this misery I’ve taken into mine;

 
glass and shards and seashells slash my words
into slithering sacrifices and holy farewells;
and if you’re bitter for falling so deep
I will take that, too, and hold it for you
because I am the strongest of the weak
and all that gathers in me is breaking you down
into whispers and music and I hear you, baby,
I hear you…

 
but, if you kiss me and taste what I am
before you cave in,
I am sorry that you have lost your tongue,
I cannot be undone or unmade with sweetness;

 
for long nights and the softest of days
I have stumbled quietly,
turquoise train awash in threadbare royalty;
the bluest of blue-blooded trash, sea-sovereignty,
almost-silent fealty sworn to me
in gasping and heaving and choking;

 
oh, you poor, watery souls
trying so hard to twinkle in this absence,
pushing and flailing dryly in all your irony;
but, you cannot be,
I will not have it;

the sea never stops







and the Salt Queen never shivers.

The Rider

In the feverish halls, your smile never faded

And I remember the way you laid along the scratches

Like they were trophies and you were a champion,

Maybe it was triumph that rolled with your hips.

I felt won, and I felt coveted that night

And I liked it;

There was a day after when I denied

And you were mad for the part you played

In such a great and secret show,

But it wasn’t like you didn’t know what it would be

Before the last, you came to be with me,

Just to be near because we couldn’t be less than friends

And I would sometimes think of when we had been more

And that you were proud to have been

And it made me feel special without you saying it

I should have done better, sweetheart;

But, I’m not a good person

And neither were you,

Five years of finger-twining and side-long glances

And you always swore that you were right inside,

Now you’re just a wisp of a liar

And I didn’t even know that you were wrong

Because I let you fade into the heat lines

That fell behind the pavement on my travels

I didn’t think you’d leap the edge,

I had more faith in you than I realized, I guess.

seeds and salt

of blood-filled light, that glinted like glass
milk-white and keen
beneath my flesh-torn heels
stripped skin dragging,
soul-borne decline
stagger and limp, sway;

I walked anyway

and I couldn’t get anywhere

I had nowhere to go

the light was inside my feet
glowing when I stepped on the pavement
and people asked me if I needed help
but I don’t speak to the havens
or to the hands

when my heart was soft as felt
I roughed it on the brick
so I wouldn’t slip
and it never caught me unaware
 

I might have lied to myself
or made it the truth
because flowers shouldn’t die
without close-eyed admiration
and no one should touch petals

I thought the waves were gods
pulling me into the god-damned blue,
and that the cursing was merely a naming
for everything I am
 
I keep seeing the tears I can’t purge,
shining like rainbows in the deep;
shoving fingers between my ribs
and pissing in my veins,
all the heat lines wavering;
all the white noise gone grey
around the rims



I don’t know how

and I can’t anyway

when I should

the magic of bricks and roses

I sent my love to the Coldrum,
where stones make a mighty leap
and the fingers of Druids
stir water into air and air into light
and the turquoise hum is deafening;
 

I should know better than to doubt the power
when I’ve lived and breathed the illusion for so long-
I have nothing else to believe in
 

and the sap-drenched smiles that pour
like sweet, red wine on dry, musty napkins,
dripping like a Cheshire grin from icepick teeth
in an upside-down outside in-
 

yeah, I sent my love to Georgia
to guide the lost souls into granite
to make originals out of replicas and weakness,
sun solstice thieves and equinox robbers
plotting the next alignment like a paradoxical awakening


he came back an indefinable mayhem,
silver-stained loam and clay
pounded into strawberry leaves and mint,
and I smoked him in a sea glass pipe
blew his aura into the waves and cried
 

I swear I meant it every time,
you wouldn’t know unless you were there,
you could lie and say you were

the sun and the sea: love letter #3

Dear Warrior,

These racing moments have us trudging through stardust and quicksand and dirt six feet deep, but the clawing and digging is our rite. We have laboured whole-heartedly, though wearily, because a warrior never loses stride and you have made me into Amazon steel with an accepting and forgiving edge. I had a broken heart when I met you and I didn’t think I needed to be fixed. You had a lonely, cynical heart when I met you and it seemed you didn’t really mind that.

I sit and wonder at the chances that fell into line so that we would meet and I find it impossible to comprehend the powers that be, the essence of existence that isn’t just there, but must beat like a second heart within every being ever created. Those hearts all speak to each other, that soul-speak that none of us ever hear or understand or even know is happening. They speak about their owners and what they need, but I think that with so many anima-ted voices rising, it’s hard to distinguish who is saying what. So when that spirit-soul-heart hears another that tears the breath from their non-existent lungs and stuffs their absent brains with a glimpse of everything it asked for…they just start running in circles to find that voice again. Nothing and no-one is perfect so they mistake identities along the way. And they lose hope, just as we do, sometimes. Perhaps others already found try to help by guiding or sleuthing for that one in billions, but there are no guarantees in anything, especially love and life.

So, when our chance fell into place and we realized that we already knew each other, in that soul-searing, aura-slathered way that only lovers do…I panic’d, because none of that is real. But, every bit of us was insistent, hell, downright pushy, that we see everything in each other that belongs. I gave in. So did you. We ran from battle straight into war and warriors always fight their hardest, so that is how we fight…hard and fast and free. We do not lose. We never lose now.

You lay next to me at night and your heat feeds me and I am never full, but I am always burning, eating flame for power and you have made me into this strong, sure woman with no fear . I look at your face because I can’t see you enough. I touch your shoulders and neck just to feel the bed I have made on them. I wrap myself around you, without worry of you leaving, because I know that your body rests easy when I am beating with you.

And you dream alongside me every night and I smile at the growling you make even in slumber. My Warrior, you are a beast inside and you cannot be but what you are and you are the beast of a man that I cherish and I cannot live without. I think sometimes that we are just snarling animals mated and imprinted to one another, prowling through the swamp fighting to settle in.

I try to tell you in plain words all these things, but Warrior-beasts don’t speak in only words and I hope that you have seen it in everything that I do.

My gorgeous, sexy, dark-skinned man…I will always war with you to keep what we have and to make what we need. The Beatles said it once, all you need is love. But, they didn’t tell you how to get it and they were wrong about war. They didn’t say that you have to fight for it. They didn’t say that you have to fight to keep it.They didn’t say that you have to fight to make it last. They didn’t say that love is nothing more than a fight, a war. Good thing I found myself such a Warrior in you.

My dark-skinned man, you are the reason I fight. You are the reason I love. You are the reason I feel. Warrior, you are the reason.

I love you.

My bra is being a douchebag today.

belly

when the clouds thaw
and the worms roll over;
fat and waiting to be hooked,
I hope a snake swallows me
whole

tier-strained cuttings

where the fingers on my tongue slid away,

so did the light and mystery;

I lost the taste of stardust

to the hiss of January hands

and I can barely see

the succulents

now.