Louise

Draped across a sofa
her hands were knitting,
she lay in errant exile
the madam of gold-bricked streets


Parisian eyes,
a bleeding chamber,
precision in pretense;
she did a lot of LSD

Strange,
white-gloved,
estranged from morning
a ray of light bursting backward from her prism

The canvas folded
and fluttered to
the ground,
torn


She was not a pimp,
she was a jester

What has she become?
A stranger to herself as
the lyric of the dawn
shrinks against her
ego!

What has she become?
A temptress whose throat is
as raw as when she
fed on my
remains

What has she become?
A godless goddess with
a broken temple in
the Garden of
Babylon

What has she become?
A dissident who paints herself
with blush, blue mascara on
her blank face, forever the
patriot

What has she become?
What she always was.
Nothing.

cry

You made love upon the stair
You built an altar from your flesh
Playing his madness
Like a harp

You took a throne from innocence
You steal the power of the night
Warring with sorrow
Like a knife

you only want
What you can't have

j'accuse

Diamonds are your answer
For a century of pain?
Lost,
Lost,
Are we lost?

Kicking pebbles along the creek; gravel aches

Punch the dial
swing, sing sweetly
touch me with your
brilliant light

Put me on your pedestal
drag me through your riverbed

Rhythm answers
questions raised
because of our
disharmony

Demeter paws at wicker flesh

She rattles chains
she cannot burst;
she cannot unfasten
her love.

She straddles him
into the night;
he cannot unfasten
her mind.

The saffron burns
and drifts about;
it clings to her bosom
and curls.

Their passion burns
and melts in waves;
like magic or mayhem
or myrrh.

The called me a radical hung me by a noose upside in the city garden

Feels like the space age
feels like a mirror.
Screaming like a razor blade
singing with her fingers.

Pour,
pour,
pour,
pour
your
eyes for
Marianne.