Furtive verses and phrases

hidden between black journals

are my fragments from December

frozen forevermore in snow.

So I say farewell to snow

to the downtempo metronome

beating behind the throes,

the slow cadence and echoes.

I cannot recall all which echoes

the past blurs and blizzards

shards which dissipate to fog

to which memory fades alone.

No soul persists only alone

despite what so whispers so.

Mirrors are mirrors are enough

casting pieces back in blood.

I bled without blood,

wrote without words

and spoke only silence

to your downtempo beating

metronome synonymous

with hushed flurries of snow.

Enclosed in your chest's echoes

did I find your essence alone

drawing blood as my blood,

a solitary presence and home.

I wear red lipstick and it looks swell on me

Sometimes I kiss the mirror and go

And sometimes I wait until at least fifteen friends tell me I'm beautiful

From the other side of the screen

I like it better when I wake up with eyeliner on from last night

And my lips are tinted like I've eaten a cherry Tootsie Pop

Not overdone, but more vibrant than a regular person waking up on a typical morning

Reach over, read one Dickinson poem

Then take a white shirt off of a hanger

Arms first and then my head poking out like a turtle

And don't you DARE get leftover makeup on this shirt

Because it'll show like a billboard

My New Years Resolution dictates I should wear a skirt and pumps to look classy or that I've tried

But I haven't, so jeans it is

And sneakers with an inch lift carefully sewn in

Because I'm short and otherwise I can't reach the Pepsi at 7-Eleven.

On any given last night I was at a concert and fell asleep checking my online profiles

Nothing happens and I always go home alone

Dolled up and my face killing all the spoken-for bags of meat with foot-stomping partners

Today though, I was pumping gas and a crooked old man twisted with age told me I looked beautiful and I should keep my chin up because things would get better.

I wondered how he knew

That was the day I started noticing the sky and buying books in bookstores with broken spines

I don't look at my feet as much

And I write twice as often

I want more

Give me more

Just a little bit

Please

     Lord Vanderbilt was at it in the mirror again, adjusting his hat, and fussing over his cape and tie.  His hair was an eyesore, and his teeth protruded disturbingly.  He fancied himself as an offbeat chanteuse, and all week he had been planning to foist himself on his loyal subjects at the Weekend Talent Tournament which was swiftly approaching.  Buzzing around in his house aimlessly, ordering the deaths of two traitors of state, and keeping his two favorite white lilies carefully watered and pampered did little to distract him from his preoccupation.  He yelled cross accusations by the hour at his house boy Sinjin, blaming him for making him late, though that was not the case.  These reprimands would continually devolve into heated bouts of rough, and awkward sex.  Sinjin had grown use to the Lord's fickle moods, and would now almost foster the sexual tide, wanting the whole charade to not last any longer then it had the tendency to, when not cleverly outlined.  It was after the third time of their savage coitus that a loud knocking on the front door drew the Lord, in his indecent state, to the tall stranger that stood before him in the courtyard of the Lord's manor.  Henry, Vanderbilt's gardener, had no doubt let this indistinct scoundrel in through the Lord's gate.  The very nerve of this action almost troubled the Lord more than the negligent way this uninvited oaf was trying to disguise himself behind the tree limbs to perhaps conceal his shady identity for a few more spare seconds.  

     "Reveal yourself at once!", exclaimed the Lord, who then ordered Sinjin to seize the saucy guest, and put him in chains immediately.  

He was to be restrained and tortured until the Lord had returned from his regulated Weekend Talent Tournament.  The close-mouthed guest said nothing during all these proceedings, he only made a gesture with his right hand covering his right eye.  It was all too cryptic for the Lord to understand, but after examination it was deduced that the guest had brought a sort of present for Lord Vanderbilt, and after he was raked over the coals quite a few times by the Lord's crackerjack staff of thugs, the Lord had him tossed to the piranha infested waters behind his manor. The Lord sat on the steps between two pillars, as he waited for the dying stranger to scream in agony.  Unsettling as it were, there was no screaming, but a bit of thrashing, which calmed the Lord's spirits a little.  Lazily, he unwrapped the visitors gift, and was dumbstruck by what resembled a velvet bathrobe with an artfully done eyeball decoration on it's back.  Lord Vanderbilt felt the tiniest shade of guilt for having the philanthropist so hastily murdered.  Perhaps there was a story behind this robe.  There was no way of knowing the truth now.

Life is embryonic

growing as you dance.

Inhale deeply

breaths of life.

Follow your course

where it takes you.

Throw away

imprisoning rules,

feel feathers

against skin.

Ride that horse

that life creates,

drink deep the night.

Embrace the light,

straighten bent lilies,

explore prisms of sun

filtering into your life.

Wipe your teardrops

off the time awaiting,

stretch your hands

to touch the clouds.

Paint your life

with your footprints,

hear the sounds

of yesterday.

Catch fleeting

whisper of life

before it’s gone.

There was a woman I knew, Eliza. She did everything she could to avoid leaving her DNA behind. I had to travel with her for work a few times. She was a real nice lady in her 50s. She grew up in a normal home with a normal family in a normal town. For some reason she had this crippling fear that she would leave pieces of herself behind. She brought her own towels and sheets and pillow cases whenever she spent the night away from home. When she cleaned her hairbrush she took every last strand and would set them on fire. That is until the time the smoke alarm went off at the Day’s Inn Schenectady. She stopped lighting crap on fire and started to flush the hair down the toilet. Only then she worried that not all of it would flush away and she'd spent an hour in the can flushing the toilet over and over again, pouring in 2 cups of bleach before every push of the lever.

I was surprised when she met a man. He was one of those guys who was neither hideous nor good looking which suited her just fine. I don’t know where they met but I came to find out that he had this thing where he refused to leave his trash outside the building like everyone else. He would get on the train and go 2 or 3 stops away and toss it in public waste bins. He thought his neighbors might go through his trash and know his business. Not that there was any business to know. He spent most of his time figuring out where to toss his trash and dealing with Eliza’s DNA hysteria. I got used to it after a while and we became close friends before they disappeared back in 2004. I miss them a lot. They were good people.

I went on a few dates with this sexy little man with a mustache and great dance moves. His name was Edgar. I liked him well enough. He was a serious guy but when we danced it was like magic. He just knew how to boogie. On the 3rd or 4th date I got all gussied up because we were going to a supper club to rumba. When he picked me up he slapped me across the face because I was wearing lipstick. After he recovered from my pushing him down the stairs he told me that covering my lips with vulgar paint hides the true color of the lips. The lips on a woman’s face is a mirror image of her downstairs parts (he used the word “pussy,” but I am a lady and don’t use such language). He told me painting my lips meant I was ashamed of my pink palace and he could not be with someone who was that uptight. Well, I was happy to part ways with him. And for the record, my hooha does not look the same as my face lips; it’s way prettier and I am glad he never had the chance to see it.

Strange folks have come and gone over the years. I guess we are all a little strange in our own ways. That’s what makes us interesting. Me? I’m pretty normal. I eat raw ground beef from time to time. And instead of saying “um” I do a scale of “la la la la la la la.” That puts people off sometimes but I've learned to control that compulsion for the most part unless I am really nervous. I also never wear matching socks. I figure one of the pair will inevitably be lost so I am just being proactive. Other than that, I am pretty ordinary.

The day I met Nate was a day I will never forget. All friends start out as strangers. My 3rd grade teacher said that to me when I was shy and didn’t want to talk to anyone. It stuck with me all these years. I was sitting in Union Square Park, minding my business eating rice cakes with almond butter and watching the people when this enormous creature plopped down next to me. He was at least 6 foot 7 and about 600 lbs. A big bloop of a guy, as my dad would have said. He had a kind, round, hairless face. He started talking to me right off the bat. I remember giving him the side-eye at first but was soon drawn into a lively conversation about the color blue and the various shades and how blue can also be an emotion and we just sat there for hours talking about the color blue. Later that night I walked home and I thought about Nate. I thought about him a lot and how he would never slap me for wearing lipstick. I know, I set my standards high but that was the bar I had to measure against.

We met the next day and talked about kitchen utensils. All the different kinds and what they are used for and debated whether wooden spoons were better than a metal ladle or a silicone spatula. I was fascinated with his knowledge of different kitchen tools and his enthusiasm was contagious. He was very orderly with the topics he chose to talk about and he rarely deviated from the theme, but when we did, he would hold up one finger and say “hold just one minute” and switch gears. When he was ready to go back to the original topic he’d say “resume.” It was easy to follow his transitions and he had a laugh like a bird in a gully.

Every day we met up and talked for hours about various things. Squares, how they can be so many things to so many people and that people used to call nerds squares. We talked about olives and the varieties from the ones stuffed with almonds to tapenades and oils and beauty products made with olive oil, but also that olive was used to describe skin tones. On Wednesdays we talked about specific body parts.

Nate was the kindest, funniest man I ever met. We fell in love. Ain’t that something? And while it’s true that every friend starts off a stranger, it is also true you can never really know anyone. You only know what they let you know. I found out on our wedding night that he cried after sex. Not just tears of release but weeping and wailing cries. This really worried me the first few times but then I got used to it. It still made me uncomfortable, just like it made him uneasy when I ate raw meat, but we learned to live with it.

A year after we were married I caught him in the park talking to a pretty little thing. I hid in the bushes behind them and listened as they spoke about the color blue. She was just as captivated as I had been not so long ago. Reality was a blur. Was it really happening or was I seeing a memory from outside of myself? How could my gentle giant run the same scam on another woman? Why was I not enough? My heart thumped inside my chest with irregular hammering beats against my ribs; my face flushed hot and my eyes filled with water.

When Nate got home that night I told him what I’d seen and he didn’t deny it. The girl he was talking to, a blond of all things, was named Rose. And she understood him. And he wanted to be with her. So I left.

You find out someone is a stranger but they are really just like everyone else. Clichéd assholes. I did some sleuthing on Rose. Turns out she had webbed feet and an elongated coccyx bone which looked like a little tail. She was a frog-rabbit. She did freaky webcam sex stuff. There's a market out there for everything, I suppose. A tail and webbed feet? I could never compete with that. And I’m not sure I want to.

It's fine. Now I just stick to myself. Life is complicated enough with the people you know, or think you know. My sister likes to watch those YouTube videos of women whispering nonsense and scratching their scalp. Strange, but she’s no stranger. After Nate, there were no more strangers for me. I’m happy this way. I can't help but think about Eliza's obsession with leaving some of herself behind. She took it to a literal level with the DNA part, but the truth is, as we gather more of ourselves we inevitably lose bits too.

I'm an apathetic empathetic 

Pathological liar 

on fire 

And I'm cold

So I scoff as I take the jacket off 

I have found myself true

when I am deceitfully lost

But there's a cost to pay

When you let the fibers frost and fray 

A dance 

an interplay 

between now and yesterday

I'm stuffed but I'm starving

Carving cuts on weak wrist

Covering cuts It's a cheap trick

Confusing a sane man with a lunatic

But I call them pricks to a diabetic

Come up with a conviction

For the condition 

I don't require permission 

The flame is not to blame

For the ignition

picture perfect

clean and tidy

little life

a man talks with a large bite of

a bagel with lox

in his mouth

"please stop"

i say

"huh what?"

he asks chomp chomp

food rocketing

from his mouth

whoosh! slish! twist!

the silver utensil dances

in his flesh

the relief of

spewing red

on the white floor

picture perfect

clean and tidy

little life

I have a friend...

And he's... Scared

He wanted to come up to speak

But he knows that the crowd is packing heat

Aiming sights at his head

Ready to shoot blanks

Tearing away his self esteem

Because the heat is people staring

Eyes aiming sights at his head

Ready to shoot blank

Staring away his self esteem

Or what's left of it

How can you trust something you've never had

Young metro don't trust it

And he already has bullets flying at heads

I'm sorry.

He's nervous.

The kind of nervous that makes your heart drop like hot beats

He's so nervous he can't speak.

Words backed up in his word factory

choking on no's 

That haven't been used in years

From questions that couldve saved him from silent prisons he put himself in

I had a friend...

And his name was an anxiety disorder

He died in that prison a long time ago

They set him free but he always thought one second too late to react to release himself

Most people drown their sorrows in a bar at the mercy of a bartender. But here I am in the corner of a Starbucks, silently watching young girls laugh and aspiring writers type away in their own worlds. This is my fourth black coffee, the bitter taste barely registering on my burnt tongue. I'm not sad. I'm not angry. I don't feel much at all. The colors in this shop are turning gray in my eyes. I imagine him here with me, drinking an iced coffee and whispering silly stories about the people in the shop. But I only see him in my dreams, and now I don't even have that. Because it isn't sleeping that I fear; it's waking up with nothing to look forward to.

I'm afraid of the nothingness I've become.