From The Sill

My potted plant sits 

On the faded oak sill 

And gazes intently 

From three stories up

With far more

Than three stories 

To tell

Cobbled stone leaks

Of brothers and sisters 

Alike, under lavish decor

Of swirled gangrene,

It watches, intent

And with awe,

The blur

 

And when one says

"Come" and another

"I shall", Echo locks

Arms with the pane

And holds against her

Chest, a lost form

Of mirth

And it looks on

As still worlds cross

And look to me,

A beacon, a dance

Of flooding pastel.

I sit, a potted plant,

And watch.

Opal In Bay

She carries opal wrapped in bay leaf,

A pleading pulse for plenitude

Sharply cuts her high cheek bones

Until they swell a hellish halocaust, 

Tarring severed jewels

Resting on her face

A hand? Primordial cries from the basin of existence,

Souls of sunken sirens of hell assimilate into her eyes,

Dark now, cold as Styx, requiring more than coins to pass through.

Poison limbs splinter, screaming, cinders, shouting (silently)

You again?

Cracking, 

Shooting up hope with an equally potent drug, 

Hope.

Her feet tread light, 

As to not stir the shadows

Of her past steps. 

Her hair martyrs for wind, 

Tinted temples of crossed vines and leeching ivies

Reaching, stinging, throbbing, clawing, sharply up the curving terrace, 

Neck tensing as they lap up against her,

Darkening in shorebreak,

Nipping on innocence.

The dove before her is smoldering, 

but she gathers the feathers for flight,

Because soon, she knows,

The canons of her life,

Will become memory,

And the opal, burning a hole 

Through a right hand 

That was never entirely there, 

Will dilute into clarity,

You again? She screams.

Silently.