There are no endings – nothing lasts;
it’s a delicate balance
I walk, like a jester
(or a boy I knew in college)
with too many heavy balls to carry…
laughing through awkward pauses.
Do I really make any difference
in a single day? Of course not.
I’m the mistress of Harvey the rabbit,
a virtual pet,
a mother of teenagers,
between gigs and looking…
but there is no harbor,
just a boat in dry dock
and it’ll be awhile until it rains.

Making it in silence
like Theda Bara
with a moon over her shoulder
and a man at her neck,
nuzzled and twisted
– no time for rest while
being speared senseless from behind
(who says she needed an apple crate?).
She liked her neck bent too far…

Men like Boris and Buster
sneezed magic into small frames
but the beast used the whole
damn landscape to woo her
into submission, a relatively common
mid-century bracket
explained by talking animals
and hifalutin dance moves (in capes).

Moaning is meaningless
unless someone’s there to catch it.
Her release sounded like shuffling
and looked like a Ferris wheel
from beneath, all spun glitter,
tales of derring-do spilling from cars
into a thick night.

Another prayer
piled atop mud and bread
Not of Lautrec or Coughlin,
he hummed the song of the sea dog
and queued alongside the rabble

Fed and cleansed
-full service
like at a 1950’s gas station.

Being born with a tornado
on my forehead
is a secret I’ve carried
for too long,
but it’s hard to explain to those
only seeing a faint mark
what it feels like
to hold back storms in the face of
sunsets and soda commercials
dripping with the sincerity
that lord knows is missing
from my deep conversations
with the cashiers and bag boys
who care enough to stack the bread
on top of the bananas.

There is no true digital sepia
as good as the childhood memories
of days in the meadow before it all blew away,
but I may be imagining the whole thing.