You are the next step,
the fragile move between no and yes,
the place where hope twirls in white petticoats,
revealing perfect legs and absolute balance.
Author: donnadakota
COGNAC AND ROSES
Poe sleeps in a shroud nightshirt,
head heavy against the prose.
laudunum seeps malevolence i
into sheets of blackened hell.
To dream is to suffer.
To awakenk, to die.
Moans weave despondent dirges
around his sleeping tongue,
Lachrymose echoes of
Lacerated thought.
The acrid taste of “nevermore”
drips lamentation down his throat.
To suffer is to dream.
To die, to awaken.
As vapors of nightmare
stain outline around his form,
night claims Poe’s body;
moonlight thieves his soul.
The Age of Victoria,
tatted in trepidation
elevates Poe’s abandonment
unravels bone into marrow..
A carriage of darkened dream
cradles Poe deep inside
to the edge of a cemetery
Iron-fenced in heavy metaphors.
Tombstones of canonized poets
toppled by amateur vandals
provoke the spectacle
into sacrilege and chaos.
Wrapped in self-loathing,
Poe dismounts from the dream,
kicking feckless bits of imagery,
rolling meter out the grave.
He is here to scavenge sonnets
rob sepulchres of rhyme
gut essence out of verse
loot catacombs of allegory
Poe embeds a shard of simile
inside his barren womb of work
gives birth to a stillborn concept
resuscitated by his words.
Copyright 2010
FORETHOUGHT
I am Prometheus, bound to my words, while you, my crow, devour my heart.
I am Prometheus, chained to contrition, while you, my accomplice, accept stolen fire.
I am Prometheus, lashed to a legend, while you, my raconteur, transpose paladin and pariah.
I am Prometheus, standing before you, hair singed with sacrifice, fingers charred with circumstance, the mortal smell of potter’s clay caked upon my soul.
I am Prometheus: creator, thief, and penitent.
Can you promise to be Hercules and free me from myself?
Copyright 2010
ME, THE SAINT, AND THAT OTHER GUY
“It’s not in here.”
“Are you sure? Could you check again?”
The anxiety in my voice acts like scissors, cutting the edge off my consonants.
The robed saint sighs and pretends to look in the massive book…again… dragging his index finger down the pages.
He smells of alleluia and cucumbers.
He sounds like destiny right after a beer.
I know the answer before it is given.
“Maybe you should see that other guy.”
He’s careful not to make eye contact.
“And he would be…?”
“Down there.”
He points with a sadness that hurts my bones.
I wish he would look at me, at least acknowledge I am here.
I bet his eyes are the color of atonement.
But I will never know because I am off to see if I should be with that “other guy,” the one parents warn against, the one who shreds salvation and weaves it into a lanyard for the key to condemnation.
Just thinking about all this makes my conscience sweaty.
How did it come to this?
That other guy has a book, too, but this one is held together with rubberbands and lies.
I give him my name and feel all dizzy while he hums to himself, flipping the pages.
I think he is singing “Steam Heat” in the back of his head.
I chuckle a bit and his eyes lock onto mine like a sniper.
He smells of refried cabbage and feels like Monday.
There is no doubt that his eyes are probably the colorless hue of deep desperation.
I hold my breath.
I so don’t want to go with him.
“You’re not in here.”
The book snaps shut to the sound of a hurricane.
But it is just the exhalation of breath I have finally let loose.
“Are you sure? Am I even dead?”
The other guy, the ultimate sinner, reaches inside and pulls out my soul by the tail.
It wiggles with life.
“Satisfied?”
So now I am at the bus stop, waiting endlessly in some limbo.
I guess I should be happy to be alive and relieved that this was all some kind of dream.
But all I can think about is why I’m not good enough or bad enough to make it into any book.
Copyright 2010
…AND SO I JUMP
You are my diary, keeper of secrets;
My pint of tequila, obliterator of past.
You are my center, sacred space of focus;
My birthday, my deathday, my moments between.
In a world of uncertainty, you are reality.
In a world of delusion, you are but dream.
You are the second I take before jumping, the sharp intake of breath before I free fall.
Copyright 2010
THIRSTY
Thoughts of you drip from my fingers and everything I touch becomes saturated.
I don’t remember you as anything more than arid and barren so how did this happen?
When did drought manifest into deluge?
And yet here I stand, holding cupped hands, while memories of you flood between my palms, drenching my fingers and soaking through my life.
My shoes are soggy now and everywhere I go I leave wet footprints of you behind.
New lovers make me wipe my feet before entering their lives…but I still leave a puddle of mess.
This would strike me as ironically amusing if I wasn’t so dehydrated since you left.
GPS
He had no sense of direction and couldn’t read maps.
Perhaps that’s why I found our relationship constantly returning to the same spot, our lives circling the drain of devastation without being sucked away.
It was all I ever knew and, of course, I never knew much.
Then you sailed in, with your Magellan eyes and Marco Polo ways.
You with your perpetual passport, natural navigation, and global goodbye:
– smelling like Babylon
– tasting like extinction
– looking like danger set loose from a trap
How could I resist what I never really knew?
So I let you take me by the hand and lead me to Bohemia.
I left without baggage, not even my conscience.
Sometimes I wonder if he notices I left him.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever received my postcard.
Probably not.
I never bought a stamp.
Copyright 2010
RELIGIOUS RITE
Hand me your love and I will make it my novena.
Give me your grace and I will let you save my soul.
One touch from you and I am healed.
One trinity of words and I am redeemed.
Bless me with the sacrament of your salvation and release me from my sin.
There can be no amen to this miracle of prayer.
MY NATURAL DISASTER
My daytime is spent assessing damage control from the mayhem, force, and devastation of you.
You are my natural disaster and I can get no aid or relief.
How can I?
You are the frenetic funnel cloud that relentlessly appears out of nowhere on a serene summer day, the vortex that upends any resistance in its path.
And I am the isolated lover, somehow still left standing, locked in a constant struggle with the power of your nature.
The best I can hope for is to stem my erosion.
But then night comes and the whirling, swirling energy that surrounds you suddenly stops.
Just like that, it ceases.
You are such a different phenomenon when you sleep – peaceful, ethereal – a body of motion finally at rest.
And the glow of electrically-charged particles eases off your skin and enters the evening, a sacred nightlight meant only for me.
And the echo of creation haunts your breath, thickening the sound into metered respiration, a whisper of trust meant only for me.
You are my natural disaster and the eye of your whirlwind is worth any damage.
Copyright 2010
CELESTIAL LEFTOVERS
I swallowed a comet last night, fiery tail and all.
I hadn’t planned on doing it.
It just sort of happened, randomly, like most accidents do.
No one ever consciously says: let me lose a ten dollar bill, let me get hit by lightning, let me fall desperately in love with the worst possible person.
And, most definitely, no one ever says: give me a comet, over easy and combustible. I have a craving for something sweet and celestial.
Donna Dakota in Word 