Sometimes when you talk to me, I go to Paris in my head.
Your hands become the Arc de Triumphe, fingertips touching slightly, pointed to the sky, and your unkempt hair mirages into an unsettled beret.
If I squint my eyes and lose focus as you turn away, I can almost smell the Seine.
Too bad that your south side accent hurries me home.
Ah well.
We’ll always have Paris in my mind.
Copyright 2010
I touch the soft velvet of your heart and wish there was a place for me inside.
But I already know that I am too bedouin and raw to ever be comfortable there.
Maybe, though, I could linger for a night to feel what it would be like to be safe and anchored.
So lease me your heart, if only for the moment, and I promise not to claim any part of it for myself.
And when I must go, I will leave your love exactly as I found it, for I have no desire to take anything except a sweet memory.
To rent the tenderness of unspeakable emotions is enough to hold me briefly before I say goodbye.
Copyright 2010
She has postcards from false prophets lining a shoebox under her bed and awakens every morning with lips slicked in slogans.
The scent of insurgency surrounds her like a skin, attracting bees and tender revolutionaries not yet ready to shave.
Will they really follow her blindly into the awaiting crosshairs of history’s firing squad?
Will she brazenly skewer their hearts on the bayonette of rhetoric until her coup is complete?
Ghosts of guerilla grafitti appear in the dust of her windowsills, the drapery rods hung with silken kimonos to hide her guilt from the confessional of the sun.
How did such a dedicated Catholic girl slip so easily into the holster of an outlaw?
How did the world implode so quickly on the detonation of mere words?
Copyright 2010
Late at night, when all others are asleep, he wanders the neglected hallways of his psyche, stepping over trash, peeling wallpaper off his soul, squinting up at shadows under the bare bulb of what might have been.
There is no cure for spiritual insomnia.
He can only wear each tragic emotion like a penitent’s hairshirt, sensing each scratch, each irritation, allowing the pain to act as an escort throughout the night.
And in the morning, the glorious morning, when life holds out the promise of yet another chance, he will round up all the demons of the dark and weld them into a structure of iconic anguish.
People happily pay what he asks for each tortured sculpture, never understanding the intangible price.
Copyrigh 2010
Make me a necklace of all the time I have wasted.
Forge each bead of lost moment into an exquisite bit of glass, a delicate dazzle of nothingness that fools the eye and teases the senses.
Surround my neck with a glistening noose of empty efforts and squandered opportunities.
Then, and only then, will I turn my back to you, allow you to fasten the clasp, and whisper in my ear that I am beautiful.
Copyrigh 2010
I don’t know what made me do it.
Maybe it was the wine, or it could have been the challenge of the dare, maybe even the strange pull of a voodoo moon led me here.
In any event, it is two o’clock in the morning and I am in the grungy backroom of some insignificant dive bar playing cards with Death.
I should never have agreed to drink with him.
Only bad karma will come of this.
But the deck is shuffled, the cards are dealt, and a game of Man Or Mouse is on.
Death plays for the prize of a kiss while I play for the life of a friend.
And so here we sit, in a silent stalemate, each of us aware of what destiny has dealt the other, wondering silently which one of us fate loves better.
Death has the deuce of spades held up against his skull, the blackened shamrock alarmingly dark on his calcified forehead.
He appears even more unsettling now that I am just feet away from him in a room full of stagnant air and bad music.
My heart beats in anxious anticipation. What are the odds that I, too, have a deuce up against my forehead?
The laws of percentages are screaming at me to man up and ante my friend into the pot.
My friend. He is dying of leukemia and I know Death is really at the bar looking for something to do until he has to clock in and snuff someone, maybe even my friend.
I close my eyes and concentrate.
The stakes are incredibly high, for the both of us.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, I can feel the Queen of Hearts brush her matronly fingertips across my brow.
Women have always liked me and this time it is paying off because I have trumped Death in a wickedly evil game of chance, an endeavor I should never have agreed to in the first place.
But instead of gloating triumphantly, I sit horrified by the knowledge that I have just beaten Death in a game of his own choice.
If I ante my friend into the pot, I can call Death’s bluff and waltz my friend back home to his grateful wife and fortunate sons.
It is such a tantalizing temptation. How can I resist the chance to wear the hero’s cape and extend the most amazing gift of all?
As I push his life into the pot, I realize what is really at stake here in this bizarre and accidental game.
There is no room for fleeting hesitation, unspeakable regrets, or horrid guilt.
But I know if I looked into a mirror right now there would be no reflection based on what I am about to do.
Death raps his bony fingers against the table. He is impatient for me to man up or mouse down.
His agenda can be so annoying, but he is right. The time has come for the winner to take all.
My breath is hung up, refusing to move in or out, as I fold my Queen of Hearts upside down over the pot and concede the hand, the game, and the life.
Death would grin if he had the lips, but instead he leans eeriely over the table and claims his kiss.
Five years of breath escape from my mouth as the frozen touch of this passionless gesture rivets the scene forever in my soul…or what is left of it.
Death picks up his scythe to saunter victoriously out into what’s left of the night.
I know immediately where he is headed.
A renegade tear drops onto the unturned Queen of Hearts and burns a hole through her compassion.
There was never a way to win this hand.
Copyright 2010
You are the elusive radio station I can’t quite tune in, the musky scent of shadow in the sweet cologne of thunderstorms.
Your name shudders like a passing ghost on the rim of every beer, a phantom memory tenuous on my fingertips.
And like some patient sniper in camouflage, you wait at the end of each new labyrinth – the only means of escape would make me your victim.
But I have never cared much for your music, and fragrances irritate my skin.
And while at times I may be homicidal, I have never considered suicide (at least not for myself).
So remember that I didn’t quite ask you for your secret, didn’t shake a magic eight ball to come up with the question.
I was just some starving artist headed out for coffee and cigarettes when you made me a sandwich of promises and moonlight.
And now your memory has entered my soul and it is too late for me to forget you.
Copyright 2010
Van Gogh’s severed ear plops onto the plank floor of his studio.
It generates the same sound as a newborn pierogi hitting the pan.
Too bad Vincent’s ability to hear this extraordinary simile has now been rendered useless.
Copyright 2009
The 24-karat word stares aloofly back at me as I press my blue-collar nose up against the glass.
It is a majestic jewel of verbage, one I lust over obsessively.
But I am not even allowed into its presence.
I can only peer through the pane and imagine what it would be like to possess such magic.
When I return to my home, full of ordinary conversation and simplistic ritual, I will empty my pens of generous ink.
The commonplace words will bleed into the sheets and I will contemplate dreams concocted of cotton.
Someday soon I will empty the mustard jar and count all the coins, even though I already know the possibilities of purchase are never enough.
It is painful to pretend, but the act gives me meaning.
Scooping up quarters, I will buy a lottery ticket, a feeble attempt to become someone I am not.
But I want you to know, if fate ever visits, I would buy up that word and use it on you.
Copyright 2009
Very early this morning, long before you finished your dream, I wrote you a poem.
There was no alliteration or meaningful symbolism.
Just two simple words: Look up.
So I am sitting here at the airport, drinking coffee with strangers, wondering when you will finally notice.
It isn’t easy forming the letter “k” with a skywriter.
Donna Dakota in Word 