More tea?

I invited the world

To a private tea party

Pouring my raspberry strength 

Into its chipped cup and

Smiling as it 

spilled over the edge 

Like a child revealing secrets;

scorching my legs

With white hot kisses 

Yet to be collected 

while I dropped three

serendipitous

sugar cubes

and a few teeth 

on a teetering plate

made from bone

and colored white

by my absent eyes  

which ran away 

the night that

darkened dreams

turned to day

before I realized 

I’d forgotten

to say 

“pinkies up”

Night Watcher

Naked, I saw 

the sky dull

as the faint 

throbbing of my

blackened heart 

Weakened by the

dead night 

of a trillion stars 

held captive by 

worthier children’s 

wishes,

their light

silent kisses 

across my bruised

eyeballs all

to retell

the wreckage

we’ve wrought 

till all I had 

left to give

was 

applause.

Washing Machine

I come with skin caked in life;

Scars like tree bark

encircle my stickman legs

in shades of cedar red and forest black

and I tell stories through splinters

that uncork to spill a black brew of blood,

finest of its kind,

sickly sweet from sipping on baby bottles of poison

and infusions of freshly plucked nightshade

Dirt marks me like a luggage tag

underneath my fingernails and calloused toes

from the miles I walked as a camel with

the weight of adversity and expectation grating my

shoulders

until I laid to rest

in the dusty desert,

chilled by the sunlight

A band could even substitute the crack of my skull for a

drum,

pluck my greasy hair like a banjo,

and play till they forget about the dark circles under my

eyes

and the bulge of my pupils when I remember where I’ve

been

and still have to go

I can be a chaotic symphony of broken bones

and whistle through my missing front teeth

so I am still of some use

Above my right ear lies a wound

tender as a lion’s fresh kill

which travels like spiderwebs down

and along my spine

so that if you trace it,

the goosebumps on my skin rise

faster than the morning sun to a sleepy child

and it’s like coloring outside the lines;

messy and unnatural,

because color-by-numbers isn’t an option

to those of us who live

Warm, soapy waters can do nothing

to wash away the marks that brand me as human

and submerging me in the ocean would only teach me

that I must fight to stay afloat

until the current comes to lift me

and slams my back against sea corals

like a pincushion,

needle upon needle,

until suddenly,

I tumble onto shore;

bloodied but alive

You see, I am nothing more than a canvas

for mother nature’s brushes

She will paint me with rocks and tar

From her greatest destructions

And present me to the Gods

Who will applaud this horrific masterpiece

As they did not know that pain can be beautiful

And every time that the strength

is sucked from my soul like snake venom,

I curl my frail body into a round shell

and leap into a void of spinning, whirling confusion

because maybe I can’t be cleaned,

but I can certainly be revived

by a good rinse cycle

Redemption

In the crevices of

our finite minds 

we dream of

a universe not yet

tainted 

by our insatiable lust;

A blank landscape

for humans to unlearn 

hate and emerge from

the human tsunami

of bloody gluttony 

that is caked under
our fingernails

before we have a chance 

to know better 

than trivial wants 

and unmet needs 

we created

to contaminate our 

bloodstreams’

with mother nature’s 

most disastrous creation

till we have no choice 

but to love the unknown more

than our children, 

already sentenced to

try to fix a world

of faulty beings

until their only option 

is to look upward too

because 

the Earth has been painted 

blood red 

We dream of 

peculiar creatures 

offering us sanctuary 

But forget to ask ourselves

if they’ll even let us past 

their borders

Masterpiece

They built me a candy puller;

stretching my stubby arms 

until bone after

bone

shattered to cocoa powder

and my broken wrists 

learned to spin

like hands on a clock set 

ten minutes fast 

My cheekbones became jagged

and deadly 

to distract from smog-colored eyes 

and legs 

tugged to spaghetti strings 

and gelatin.

skin dissolving like sugar 

on the tongues of happy children

who weren’t yet imperfect 

Nails cut by bloodstained-glass 

too short 

but long enough 

to claw burnt hair 

from my blistering head 

as I swallowed spiders and everything

but air

until they were done with me

and my hollowed body 

They carried me 

Like an overgrown fetus 

To a bath of hot honey-

Hoping I would sink 

And when I lifted 

my mangled head

They said, 

“We tried everything we could”

And

“Not what we wanted”

And I was nothing 

and 

that was really

beautiful