War on Love

Dipping and diving,
This war on love is conniving.
Pushed up against the bark of a tree,
My gun holster pressing against my knee.

The world is not enough,
I can not stop,
To take this shot and eat you up.
Gargantuan lips pricked by thorns,
Puffy elixirs paired with little tricksters.
Knights, Spartans and GI Joes fall to the ground in great repose,
Lucky to be me, pushed up against the bark of a tree.

Bullets wiz by and one slices my eye,
Welled up tears come rolling free.
Harder to shoot when you see the real me?
Pushed up against the bark of a tree,
My gun holster pressing against my knee.

Night rolls in and the battles wanes,
The dead bodies lie and rot in vain.
Tucked in the meadow, in a hollowed nook.
I take from my satchel a favoured book,
Stoke the fire and brew some tea.
My back still pushed up against the bark of this tree.

My head slowly lingers on the precipice of sleep,
The dead bodies begin to dance and tweak,
The tea was stronger than it seemed to be.
Pink and purple flash through the sky,
Two lovers intertwined in the stars up high.
I watch them and wonder when can they be me?
My heart and soul start to take flight.
I can feel my breath getting light,
My eyes seem a little too bright.
If someone had of seen me on that subjugated evening,
They would have found my perception deceiving.
For I was lost in myself and making love to no one,
My back pressed up against the bark of some ole’ tree,
My gun holster hanging loosely around my knee.

Gas Leak

Let me press you,
My question is this…
Do you ever care to feel sand beneath your feet and smattered in between your toes?

I do not understand his preemptive question and I shake my head. I keep on driving, the European motor shudders as my leg stiffens and hits the accelerator.
There is gas in the cockpit of the car. I can smell it. I lift my nose and sample the air. I’m almost sure of it. Is the gas seeping from the engine through the air vents? I close them but still the thick smell hangs in the air, I can feel it all around me, thickening the air I’m breathing and striking the back of my throat as it passes through my nostrils. I turn to look at him, to see if there is any recognition on his face but his eyes are far off gazing into the muddy cornfields whizzing by. I don’t have to ask him, I know he can’t smell the gas. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking if he can smell the rancid scent wafting in the space between us. He’d smile, maybe even laugh up into the air, not a haughty hysteria but a quiet chuckle showcasing his cool aversion to my quixotic nerves. Apparently my neuroses are amusing. I think he’d enjoy watching me sweat and bite my lip the entire car trip then spend an evening surrounded by naked, gyrating females at the Cherry Patch Ranch II in the Nevada Desert. The smell is becoming stronger; it’s going to catch any minute now. One spark and we’re goners.

I want to feel you.

Excuse me?

He laughs upwards, throwing his mirth into the air like a ragdoll.

I want to feel your idea out. You know?
Let’s just talk. You can’t be silent the whole car trip.
We might as well deal with it now while we have all this empty time.
What’s your idea again?
That we remain professional, colleagues?
Is that what you meant in the email?
Because quite frankly if that’s what you want then I think I should start looking for a new job.

He glances at me furtively.
Don’t do it I’m thinking. Just drive. Don’t do it and then he makes the fatal mistake.

I know this job is important to you. You’ve worked hard, really hard but I can’t sit back and watch you do this.

“Do what?” I think but then I realize where the gas is coming from. It’s clearly emanating from his bowlers hat. I want to grab the felt brim and chuck his hat out the window but before I can snatch it he grabs my hand and laces his fingers through mine. As I feel his fingers touch my clammy palms I realize his fatal error and moments after the air bursts into flames. The heat is unbearable instantaneously and the windows shatter as the oxygen is sucked from my lungs.

I’m proud of you, I really am and don’t take this offer as me being presumptuous because I’m not but I just can’t sit back and not be honest.

He’s still talking? He should be screaming, this burns and the leather is curling off my seat and my fingers are welding to the steering wheel.

But I want you to work with me.
I know it’s far away and a new territory for you but you and I have the same eye; we’d make a great team.

My eyes are liquefying like mercury and they ran down my face and fall into my lap.
I can’t turn the steering wheel and I am coming up on a corner that I know I can’t take.
I’m going to have to take us through the corn fields.

I think you should pull over you don’t look well…

Fingers grip tighter as I brace myself for the lip on the road to end.

Just pull over! Pull over god damn it.

Hands grab the steering wheel and pull sharply to the right. I can hear the gravel as it pelts the under carriage of the car and my foot instinctively slams on the brakes.
I jerk my head to the passenger seat and I notice he has taken his bowler hat off. Finally! Now if I can just get him to throw it out the window.
The air is cool, he is opening the windows.

You need to breathe, just breathe.

Love is a word, love is a doing verb.

What? You’re talking nonsense… we don’t have to talk about this just forget it for now. Let me drive and we can just get there. We can worry about it another time.

I watch him get out the passenger side and slowly makes his was around the hood, his bowler’s hat is back on his head. Shit!

My door opens and his hand is waiting for mine.

Come on, get out – get some fresh air. We’re ten miles for the next gas station – I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.

No, I’m driving; we don’t need to go to a gas station. I don’t want anymore gas.

What? Are you insane? You were screaming just a couple minutes ago, saying you were on fire! Do you remember that?

I’m driving! I’ll drive you all the way to the Cherry Patch Ranch II if I have to but I’m not taking your hand.

You’re daft! Get… out…. of the…. car.

He places his hands underneath my arms and lifts me out of the seat. The fabric of my whole being catches fire this time. My bones shatter, my femurs turn to dust, my heart valves constrict, my veins and arteries reverse flow.

I’m dying. I’m screaming, I’m dying – let me go.

The sky turns an eerie forest green and the clouds being to swirl and twirl above our heads. The landscape jostles as the wind whips at the tops of the corn. He holds me closer and a voice rings through my ears.

You’re just being born my dear.

A huge thunderclap booms from the sylvan clouds and a lightning bolt strikes the car. We are knocked off our feet.

Breathe, the voice says. Breathe baby, breathe.

America's Foster Child

Her shoes grip the pavement as they form a steady beat that reverberates off the concrete. She is walking home from school; her tote clings tightly to her back and cuts her chest in half. As she exhales her breath rises into the cold winter air quietly dissipating until it vanishes. At a crosswalk the girl stops and flings her long, mahogany hair off her face and nervously fingers her bead bracelet. She treads lightly on the soles of her sneakers vacillating indecisively as the busy cars shoot by. She can’t remember if its look left to right or right to left with the cars driving on the opposite side of the road. A window of fifteen seconds appears between the car that has just passed and the steadily approaching vehicle she can hear around the corner, she darts across the black and white lines while her bag awkwardly smacks the back of her thighs. As the black dodge truck rounds the corner her feet quickly meet the lip of the pavement and she readjusts her bag so that it rests on her hips. She spins around to catch the tail of the car speed away, driving at least twenty miles over the speed limit with raised tires and enlarged exhausts; she doesn’t understand the reasoning behind such alterations and shakes her head. As she turns on her heels and plods up the hill towards her destination she notices the gardens on either side of the street and wonders how many liters of water it takes to feed the grass, flowers and shrubs that neatly color in the outline of the properties. Veering off the path she crosses a lawn and comes to a wire mesh gate which she opens and enters. Being careful not to step in the newly formed mud from the rain that morning, she walks on the tips of her sneakers and holds her pant legs up before she takes one last giant leap onto the back porch of the house. Reaching behind a wall sconce she finds the back door key and slips out of her shoes leaving them at the back door. As she enters the house it is quiet and musty. Cardboard boxes are stacked on top of each other in the kitchen, with red writing that reads FRAGILE, THIS WAY UP and FAMILY KITCHEN on them. Prancing up to her is a black cat, which knows her well and mews and scratches her pant leg. She slowly kneels down and rubs her head against his. His deep purring and familiar dense smell fades out the memory of her lonely day at school. He rolls onto his back and stretches his quarters high into the air and she pats his stomach firmly; something few other cats would relatively enjoy but was surprisingly appreciated by this specific feline. With her hand on her knee she stands up and makes her way through the house to her bedroom. She pushes her hand on the door and it easily swings open. The doors in this house she has noticed are so thin. She drops her bag at the entrance of her room and cautiously enters. For the past month every time she has entered her room she has done so slowly and cautiously as if hoping maybe once she would open the door and enter into a parallel universe or a loop hole that would take her back. However like all the others this time there are still the unopened letters sitting on her desk. Her comforter has a familiar pattern on it however the bed underneath it is brand new and slightly bigger. All around her on every table, nightstand, dresser and wall are pictures. When her Mother had helped her decorate her new room four weeks ago she had good intentions when framing and hanging the pictures on her wall but what she didn’t know while she was hard at work in her new job was that her daughter would come home from school and take them off her wall. She would line them up on the bedroom floor, sit down cross legged with her favorite pillow and cry. Today like the others before the tears stream down her face as the memories of her family, friends and home fade in and out. Every time she opens her eyes she looks around her new house and gazes out the window at the foreign landscape and wishes she wasn’t there. As the clock rounds to 4:30 the girl slowly pulls herself together and replaces the pictures on the wall. She pulls off her jeans and throws them in her hamper. Slipping on her leggings and grabbing her running shoes from underneath her bed she goes to her front door and sits on the first step. The crisp evening air shocks her skin causing to contract and her ears and fingers prickle. She clumsily ties her laces and reaches to her toes stretching her tendons in the back of her legs. Hopping down the front steps and jogging onto the street she lets her feet pound the unfamiliar road, faster and faster. Running in the cold air, with her long brown hair tied up in a pony tail slapping against her shoulder blades and her heart racing she releases into the pain in her legs and the sting in her chest. Every stride she takes is a new step for her and it speeds up the process of leaving her life behind. She is running but not to anywhere she wants to go. As the evening starts to take shape and she hears no familiar birds in the trees and the sky turns a dusky pink instead of a fiery red she remembers she is no where closer to home then she was ten minutes ago. Instead of carrying on down the road she turns around and sprints down the street, her feet kicking up the tiny stones that have loosened from the asphalt and shoots them behind her in a steady assault of mini pellet bullets. Her breath is short and sharp and she pushes her calves into her feet edging closer and closer to the edge of oxygen exhaustion. She feels her throat become dry and her stomach start to tense. Stopping dead at the base of the driveway bent over heaving and trying to catch her breath she looks up and sees the lights on in her house and her mother busy in the kitchen. Her mother is in the kitchen but this is not her home.

Cold Cover Up

Nestling into my steaming cup with remnants of oriental jasmine tea leaves drifting on the bottom, my eyes cloud over as the snow begins to fall on the ocean horizon, it's time to mull me over before the tide grows cold. My bay window kicks out from this apartment complex and makes it seem as though I'm already flying westwards. Running my fingers round the chipped lipped rim of my mug, the steam licks the edges of my thumb and condensates on my fingerprint wrinkles so that the vapor drops hang onto the vestibules made by the dips and raises my skin cells have made by laying one on top of the other. I remember when skin cells made me happy. The energy transferring and bouncing back onto each other which in turn let me feel the bumps and lumps that weren't a part of me and were a part of you. Now it seems as though a physical contact, whether it be a nudge, a push, a pull, a trace of a finger sends each and every nerve cell receptor just below my adipose tissue shimmying and shaking. My nervous system is at a point of veritable quandary. The only touch I can withstand is the nose of my hound against the skin of my taut cheek. The wetness about as intrusive as spit bugs in flat crown trees, it's a necessary discomfort to discover the joyous fact that spit bugs do indeed exist and live in flat crown trees, same as where my dog actually does love me no matter what I do or how I may think I look or how wet his nose might be.


The custom of tea drinking has become a ritual, choosing the type of tea, whether it is green or herbal or black depends on whether I want free radical protection, calmness or a nice good morning kick in the pants. I seek the warmness as well. I'm always cold; with socks on my feet and blankets wrapped around me like Pocahontas I'm never warm enough. Lately aromas of jasmine and sandalwood have been most appropriate or let it be foreign like murr or antiseptic like camphor. Camphor probably being one of the most calming scents, unlike the traditional tea imbibers who choose lavender or chamomile to ease their nerves, camphor for me calms me because of its antiseptic and menthol properties. Antiseptic because lately I can never be clean enough and my choice of menthol because it helps me breathe, like Vicks vapor-rub did when I was younger and sick and my chest would close up and Mummy would rub the Vicks on my belly and chest then I could sleep better. The camphor cleanses me and helps me breathe on those days when my breathing is labored and contrite. My lungs on a constant stick up robbery of oxygen, somewhere in there are vagabond air stealers stuffing my O into burlap sacks and smuggling it over the Oregon border to California, mostly L.A, so they can breathe better but meanwhile I am wasting away. It makes sense, to steal my air – they must have been watching me for a while these air stealer smugglers, seeing my frequent deep sighs and intakes of ten second inhalations and not exhaling as often as I should they figured I've got some air to spare but air is not like roll over minutes. Not for me at least. The air will begin to grow colder as this storm continues to roll in. Seeing snow on the ocean is like watching Swan Lake on a football field. They won't be around for much longer, the air smugglers, they'll grow tired and feeble from the cold and realize the intake has started to decrease so slightly every minute. I'll sit in this bay window, and drink my full cup of jasmine tea until the leaves back up against my teeth. Which reminds me to brush them after I've drank this cup, tea stains teeth. I can never be clean enough. I should shower too, a hot shower before I drift off with the driftwood. The lumber being pushed back out to sea with the undertow and I'll be pushed back out to face my dreams. I'll sleep for eight hours maximum; these are my rules so that I'll wake when the sun is rising. There'll be no one to roll over and touch me in the morning but I can always wake up, make a pot of tea in my cast iron tea pot, let the leaves brew as my dreams slowly dissipate with the morning fog and with the sun barely in the sky I'll savor a large cup of early grey. A slightly sweeter black tea choice then English breakfast but still a rigid royal wake up as only the Brits know how. The snow will have reached the beach by morning, covering up the sand, a cold cover up. I'm always cold. Camphor tea baths are not enough to restore the sensation of fluidity to cessation that a person experiences when they are touching another. I am always cold. A cold cover up is to be defrosted when the seasons change and not by a hand held dryer. The nerves are frozen into remission. ....

There's a frog in some forest somewhere that freezes to the point of near death, it's literally dead, and it will stay that way until the ground starts to unthaw around it and slowly it raises from the icy depths of it's underground soma state and becomes alive again, heart beating, neuron receptors firing and muscles flexing to face another spring, summer and fall. It's called hibernation. Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernation conserves energy, especially during winter. There are many research projects currently investigating how to achieve "induced hibernation" in humans. The ability for humans to hibernate would be useful for a number of reasons, such as saving the lives of seriously ill or injured people by temporarily putting them in a state of hibernation until treatment can be given (compare induced coma). Nasa is also interested in possibly putting astronauts in hibernation when going on very long space journeys, making it possible one day to visit far away stars.....

In October 2006, a Japenese man, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, was believed to have been in a "denning"-like state for three weeks. He had fallen asleep on a snowy mountain and claimed he had only woken up after being discovered 23 days later; doctors who treated him believed his internal body temperature had fallen to 22°C (71°F) during that period.....

You can mull over many things when drinking a cup of tea. From the beginning when the water is steaming and the aromas are just opening up to the middle when the temperature is most comfortable and the sweetness has reached it's peak and then by the end when the taste has grown overly pungent and the lukewarm liquid isn't so much savored as it is just needing to be quickly swigged down. You can mull many things over. However, no matter how much tea I drink, even if it is camphor I am always cold and there is never enough air to go around between the two of us. The two of us being my hound and I encased in my Pocahontas blanket to keep the cold at bay. The snow will thaw on the beach; when I do not know but the cold cover up right now is a bewildering sight to behold and yet so familiar. A drastic difference in states kept together by environmental adaptations. The beachy vegetation will withdraw in horror from the cold; the plants will grow mushy and sink into the ground turning brown. The sand will be covered up with cold, white, sterile snow. No mars will be made to its surface because who wants to go walking on a cold beach. The beach will be left alone, untouched to endure its icy reservation. My tea is running out. Very soon I will make another cup. Just one last cup before I go to bed. Maybe Mexican Chili this time, I can with stand the hottest and spiciest teas. No matter I will still be cold. A cold reservation, a cold cover up. No air, between me and you anymore. Not enough tea to bring me back to life. Locked up at this bay window, staring out into the ocean I'm beginning to see the truth. No air, so cold, my constant cold. I'm starting to understand the bitterness I feel. I never got the truth at the time when I was growing up when it could have been put to good use. When it could have helped me most instead I covered it coldly up and kept myself company with lots of tea cups. If this storm settles in for good I'll have nothing left to share and I'll never be understood.....

Kitty Kat

Walking down the street one day,

A little cat did walk my way,

With puffy tail held in the air,

And eyes that did permeate and stare,

To the deepest depths of my existence,

Inching closer, losing distance.


A common woman I am not,

My secrets come without a box,

And so this little kitty did wander,

Walking with me as a friendly incumbent,

With no regard to the rules that are given,

We wandered together and regaled in submission,

A bewitching spell was cast on us two,

A rickety spell with very little view.


Twas me who engaged in a feline subjugation,

And now I’m left carrying the moral gestation,

The petit chat changed into quite the abjuration,

There’s not much else to utter,

When it comes to the matter,

Kitty gone and left me out in the gutter.

My Pundit and I

The pundit escorts me home on a wintry grey February day,
A long traverse across the shapeless hours and my billowing dress is decorated with bobble heads.
He is not cornered to deliver a certain verdict; his lapel has a pin attached that is glued with down feathers and a pine cone.
We tarry too long, on the corner by the parking lot – my clove hanging out my mouth and grit between my teeth.
The learned pass by on a school bus; the information crammed in their brains resembles regurgitated gut.
The pundit and I whoop and holler but nothing can be heard by the cloned scholars.

We faintly whisper to each other, between the cusps of our molars – that there is a coffee shop across the street with girls inside that drive Range Rovers.
We scurry across the street, interlinking our feet and gaily rejoicing by kicking the pebbles from the degenerative tar.
Peering through the window, we can’t see much, just prostates, and idealism and closed thinking fascism.
I grab the pundits woolen hand and intertwine my arms with in his sleeve… it’s cold outside and our knees may freeze but together we’ll walk, against the breeze, if that means we stand for what we believe.

The Dog Box

It was a Wednesday afternoon and the father had come home seemingly angry.

He had told the Mother to keep the kids quiet because he had a “ripping headache.”

I sat at his feet and watched him drink that golden liquid in his small, short bowl.

The aroma reminiscent of the bottles that live under the kitchen sink and oranges.

I had wagged my tail and nudged his hand with my nose but it didn’t work.

His shoulders tensed and his eyes widened, his mouth stiffly spat words at me.

He grabbed me by my scruff and roughly escorted me to the back door and promptly shoved me outside.

The rain quickly wet my fur and with drew my animal scents into the tepid air around me.

I could hear banging and shouting inside the white sided house.

A light went on in a room and I heard a muffled cry and then the pattering of feet.

The little girl came out side.

Her pink coat dress tattered at the bottom and her eyes filled with wet, her snout running and her chin wobbling.

She wrapped her little arms around me, and buried her face into my wet fur. Her cries muffled by the damp.

We stayed like that, outside together, by the dog box, in the back square, on the tree deck, in the wet rain.

Just Passing Through

It’s the passing through that’s hard to swallow,
The resistance against the harder grain,
When you left I felt completely insane… your soul left a mark on every cell and membrane,
I think about you every day, your memory lives in my passionate ways.
It’s the you turn that was made on a starry December night,
You left me out in the cold without a blanket, without a light,
My trust in you lead me to the darkest fight,
But I know you live on and my memory never crosses your mind.
I’m left to walk and feel the heat against my back as I try to flee from the surge of that night,
The disturbances are mine and mine alone,
It’s my surrender that lets you linger and live,
If only I was stronger to do you in, to end this fling, to condemn the then,
But my skin holds the feelings and regret, the imprints of your fingers are still visible on my legs,
At least to me, in tidal waves, you come crashing into my head,
It’s like I’m destined to relive this heavy strife,
If only I could let you out into the night,
Like the one when you left me, when I couldn’t put up a fight.
It’s the passing through that’s hard to swallow,
When my field has been left ravaged and fallow.
It’s certain your guilt doesn’t match my shame,
I should be wiser and let the cycle change,
Pick up a new book with fresh chapters and a full page,
Dedicated to growth, strength and my fame,
Dedicated to a being without a whittled center and a hallowed name,
Of a woman who walks tall and lives without pain,
Of a girl who doesn’t bring on the rain,
Of a soul who doesn’t feel your shame.