Being Afraid

Being afraid is scary
Even, you could say
Frightening
Alone in the night, yet
Surrounded by painted
Women, their other worldly
Vivid, watching eyes
Looking at me
From inside of me
The call is coming
From inside the house
They are in my veins, in my
Very cells, and it is
All I can sometimes do
To paint them out of me
Put them on paper
Yet once there, they haunt me
When people look at them
They say, Oh how pretty
Or, too much paint
But they don't see the
Blood, though it is
Right in front of them
They don't see the strings
Of heart muscle and
Tendons where they
Were ripped out of me
With a gore-covered
Paintbrush

Twenty Years

When we were children

Promising to be with someone

For a lifetime seemed easy

We had no idea how hard

Such a thing really is

Yet when we were children

Twenty years was long

Time beyond imagining

This kind of contradiction

Is the province of youth

Now we know twenty years

Will be gone in a blink

And these days, twenty years

Really is a lifetime, almost

Or at least the rest of a life

And it has become easy again

To promise the rest of a life

When it is twenty years or so

The only trouble is that now

Twenty years is not enough

All In

If you stand on the edge of a stream

With your back to the water and close

Your eyes, tipping your head to the sky

You feel as though you’re in the stream

Or falling toward it and you can’t help

But open your eyes to catch yourself

It is human nature, or maybe animals

Do this too, we can’t really ask them

And they don’t exactly cooperate in

Philosophical endeavors, which is

What separates us from them, I suppose

But we do this all the time in our

Everyday lives, we tip our heads back

And imagine we’re in the stream

Just to see how it would feel

Sometimes the stream is a new job

Or a potential new lover, sometimes

It’s the idea of having a child or even

Leaving a spouse behind, finally

But we usually open our eyes and

Catch ourselves, except sometimes

We just let ourselves fall in the river

We fall in and float down a little way

And if we’re lucky, the water takes us

To a new and happier place, a place

Full of love and sunshine and music

And food and art and a soft bed

To lay our heads at night and isn’t

It nice to think the world is a place

Where that kind of happiness can come

Just from tipping your head back

Closing your eyes, and letting go?

Vixen

While walking down a snowy road

On a lonely sojourn that took me

Some distance into the country

I encountered a vixen

Having given birth by the side

Of the dirt and gravel road after

Being struck by a passing vehicle.

Her gestation was at an end.

Her kits were gone, frozen

In the bright red snow, but

The vixen looked at me with

A glittering, aware golden eye.
She panted a cloud of steam
That froze instantly in the air.

I could do nothing for her

Except end her suffering, and

I was weak and failed her

In this one important task.

So I squatted and waited for

The cold to do its work.

She chuffed at me, and yawned

A startling and unexpected action

But I whispered, “You’re tired,

Girl, go to sleep now,” and

She seemed to hear me and

Closed her golden eye.

I heard a yip, and looked up to see

What was probably her mate

Turn and dash into the undergrowth.

When I looked back at the vixen

I saw that her breathing had stopped
And she, too, was gone.

Storyteller

Tell me a story into my ear

Ever so, very so, tenderly quietly

So that none of the passers beside us can hear

A tale of familial loss of propriety

Or maybe, this time, a tale about skin

Some with a glacial, pale, crystal whiteness

Some that is so dark that light can’t get in

It contrasts so sweetly right next to the brightness

Or perhaps you will tell of a pink butterfly

And a glittery serpent that seeks only to hide

Your stories, they play on my mind’s inner eye
And carry us both on a crazy joyride

So I wait for the next installment to come

Buoyed by the waves of my own appetite

For your fairytales, darkly and stickily spun

In feverish whispers under cover of night

The Butterfly and the Coachwhip

A little pink butterfly

Flaps its delicate wings

Riding the wind to find

A place it can safely rest.

It lights upon a reed

Moving softly back and forth

In the light morning breeze.

Beneath the reed, a coachwhip

Swims in the river current

Dusky rose, sleek and intent.

The butterfly slowly flaps

Still settled on the oscillating reed

And a little pink butterfly dust

Sifts through the air currents

Down

     Down

             Down

                     Down

                              Down

And the snake’s tongue darts

The particles out of the air.

“MMMMMmmmmmmm”

Breathes the coachwhip.

The butterfly is startled

And lifts off of the reed.

The shadow of a sparrow

Passes overhead, momentarily

Blotting out the sun.

This is how small and delicate

The butterfly is – a sparrow

Can shade its view of the sun.

The butterfly quickly lights again
Trembling in fear of the sparrow

And tries to look like a flower.

“You should move lower”

Whispers the serpent

“Reed blossoms are down here

Not up there.” This is a lie

But the butterfly isn’t sure.

She can see no blossoms anywhere

And she wasn’t alive last spring.

She moves down a few inches.

“A little bit mooooooore,”

Breathes the snake, tongue flicking.

Now the musky scent of the butterfly

Has become almost maddening.

The butterfly is afraid, but

The voice of the coachwhip

Is hypnotic, and she moves down

Before she knows what she’s doing.

The snake’s flicking tongue

Touches the edge of her pink wing

And she trembles again in fear
And with something else – what is it?

A kind of hunger and thirst
She’s never felt before, and

She suddenly feels bone tired.
She has flown alone for days.

Flying any further is impossible.

She actually sighs with relief

When she feels the snake’s

Breath envelop her, its jaws closing

And its tongue flicking, flicking.