Saturday, June 10, 2023

halved alive

 She sprints

to last spring,
dust bursts 
spray from asphalt
left - right lightning smashes.

Unripe endurance
four minutes 
knees scream
body chills spread. 

Halt.

Regression descends,
dissolving presence,
perpetuating
pixelated 
expired
dyadic communion.

Force field 
systemic 
smack-thud
divorce 
spliced coexistence 
hollowed stone. 

Seize • grip 
rock shards,
scathing emotion
sacrifice:
white-knuckled bloodbath. 

Haze lifts. 
Lucid saucers,
bloodshot,
glaze-lock onto
unfurling palms. 

Expectant
cortisol-drenched 
ice blaze 
nerve fray...

Tiny gasp
disillusionment disintegrates 
revel • entrance • digest
translucent opalescence 
lavender - plum - violet - amaranth - aubergine
mountain range
in miniature. 

Saltwater droplets 
sparkle upon impact,
starbursts
Sundance.

Phoenix stretches,
awakening.

Hands open,
palms skyward…
each cradling 
one 
half 
of 
past-whole. 

Blur; blink; focus. 
With transpicuous clarity,
five senses in hyperdrive,
metamorphism
to thriving.

Sacred nature
proffers 
crystalline assuagement
amethyst geode.*

Naked soles
grounded,
vermillion poppies
kiss calves.

She is
embracing
embraced
aLiVe.

©smc, 2023 July

Thursday, April 4, 2019

unequivocal unrest

Mortar and brick
sand
Ice water 
autobahn veins
Lightning 
chest 
150 mph 
fingertips 

Lead glass double windows 
burn
flood

blurred
grains
crash

inaudible 
                        
fists white-knuckled
voided

salt and sea life  
disintegrated stone 

nanoscale dunes

gritty toes 
sparkle

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Enigmatic Ellipsis

Cinderella-starved
ruby cobwebs
splintered synapses shriek
gauzy misfirings
fuel someone else
dart gasp gulp dig clasp.

Crucifixion cracks bone marrow grins
as bloodless knuckles 
clench in synch 
with pitted teeth,
exposing snow-capped
cavernous amber coffer, 
this sacred land mine.

Massacred mentality
single-handed 
sun-scorched some day
horizon materializing 
dimmed rays, dampened doom
fairy godmother 
pharmaceutical screenplay.

Threadbare throat
tick-swallow-tock
stroke of somnolent surge
exhale at last as slippered glass
grants breath, 
three hours at best.

Plastic smack of lips
suckle-sputter
handmade quicksand

© smc, 2019 June 

Saturday, February 3, 2018

January

Love is a concept I cannot grasp;
Like an algorithm, it is perplexing,
Just over my head 
and out of reach.
Straight-A Student without a clue.
I can tell you what love is...
I can illuminate a field with the starlight in my eyes 
as I explain it to you.
I've seen it. Felt it. Breathed it in...
But Time was not on my side,
And I became accustomed to getting hurt,
     hunkering down,
     and waiting for
T h e    D  a  r  k. n  e s s
to Transform into the temporary Relief of Sunrise.
For the light is always brightest in the morning,
And waking gives birth to Hope.
January
Was Finally an infinite exhale...unrealized at first.
An Endless Promise of SunLight.
Nighttime meant nothing more, nothing less
Than Endless Illumination.
She was finally Holding onto Hope 
miraculously. gently. gradually, yet quickly
It Grew
From a tiny spark into a glorious flame,
And it burned quietly, peacefully, effortlessly...
So unfamiliar to finally Exhale, Relax,
Breathe in Life that Cultivated an unexpected, innocent Love.
He Did what he Said.
He Respected her and he Honored her.
He followed through
in January.
And they were a match.
He made her a heart out of river rocks
And held her hand as she carefully stepped from stone to stone,
Until she made it across the babbling water
Safe in his arms.
Their hands seamlessly fit together.
She didn't notice, wasn't watching for 
the first sunset in January.
The darkness stealthily crept into the space between them,
Like ice forming inside tiny cracks of rock, slowly expanding.
January was suddenly cold,
And she still can't seem to shake the chill that haunts her, 
deep within her bones.
A horrifying shock of burning rubber and shattered glass...
Squinting and choking from the airbag dust, 
she turns her head to the left 
And reaches for him,
but there is no driver.
Out of reach...Without a clue.
He does not exist.
All the colors fade...into February.
-smc-

Time

I don't need Time.
I don't need comforting words.
I need an Autobahn
To take me back
to January.
When he existed 
And we were Alive
Together.
For a month, he kept me warm.
Now the moments stumble and skip
Like a broken record.
A seedling, struggling to survive,
in the Dead of Winter.
Snow blankets the hard, frigid ground.
I look down and realize that I am
Naked.
in a parking lot
Full of Empty cars
Because everyone else has someplace warm to go
And to Belong.
I am standing still,
feet covered in snowflakes,
and the wind has ceased.
The Silence is deafening.
It is February
And I am CoLd
all the Time.

-smc-

Friday, February 2, 2018

The Story of K

She never felt like she fit here, on this planet. A kindred alien finally understood; she nervously faltered as he gently guided her underneath a double rainbow. And she fought it, as long as she could, until the water was too heavy to tread, sinking finally, peacefully, into a place where she could let go of breath. Home. A million and a half years swirled around her neck as she closed her eyes. Dreaming, she watched him point to the sky, disbelief spreading across his face, to stars as they aligned. She closed her eyes and let the deep melody of his voice weave a blanket around her.

"Just before sunset on the ocean, there's a thing that happens called a green flash, just as the sun goes down over the ocean. As it disappears, light refracts off the water causing a flash of green in the sky. I've only seen it a couple of times. The ocean is a magical color of blue green. Your eyes are beautiful; the color reminds me of the ocean. They are really breathtaking."

The sun set, against her will. Rough, dry sand slipped through her fingers as she drew in an unwelcome breath, The Blue Uninvited.

Green flash fading, his roots held fast to his own poisoned soil. Her own roots, cultivated in similar ground, had drawn her to him; attraction had been irresistible and unrelenting. Mutual darkness had sought light in unison, as wicked an illusion as a moth drawn to an open flame. Her heartbeat had, for a moment, synchronized with his. Their bodies aligned as perfectly as the stars.

The sunlight is always brightest in the morning, when vivid, illusive dreams fight to stay alive and heartbeats, for a moment, still synchronize.


"There's a lot of truth in a bottle of whiskey and a lot of lies in an empty one."

With the painstaking strokes of ink he touched to her skin, he carefully swept trust and kindness away, capsule by capsule, as slowly as the time that passes in the space between the burn of rubber and the shock of airbag dust. Love is foreign and feign to him, generic in formulary. His senses feel what his heart cannot validate.

He presented to her the illusion of the ocean and the stars; she accepted sand. Her own callouses served as subconscious protection against the sand, dry and rough, as it fell, quietly warning and slowly slipping through her fingers, as stealthily as a thief in the night. Had she felt it, she would have seen the pieces: broken glass and sharp rock, weathered and worn by time.

He sees his reflection in the small, still pond and looks away, uncanny in his timing, before the touch of a fish distorts its surface. It was there, though...wasn't it? Yes, of course, of course it was; he saw it, after all.  

No one told her; she didn't ask: yes, you can catch a fish here--a big one, even, but you can't keep it. They are not suitable for eating.

He knew, by heart, every fish, and when and how often each surfaced.  He knew the ripples this surfacing produced. He had memorized this, faltering backward, away from the inevitable, rippled distortions.

Eventually, relieved, he didn't feel his feet move backward; they effortlessly removed his eyes from the deep truth of the water to the safety of the sandy shore. He perched there, numbly, sinking into the soft give of the sand: an illusion. Time had weathered the jagged, sharp glass and lethal shards of rock.

She didn't know the fish there; she did not calculate their patterns.

Had she looked a moment longer, she would have seen it: the distorted reflection of him only the fish could produce, a timed touch to the water's surface.  She, too, looked away. She had followed his gaze.

Evening creeps in and spreads like a poisonous fog, quickly morphing into a hurricane that rips apart her insides.  Her hands sweat; her heart pounds. Foreign fingers and toes curl in a failed effort to soften the blow as the acrid cloud settles and rips apart the cracks the daylight had bandaged. Darkness falls; cracks deepen and spread as the hurricane’s winds turn the water to ice. She is sliced in half, in fourths, eighths, doubled over in pain, and he is laughing as she bleeds. Only phantom pain exists now.  

This vortex shreds her insides, pulling her down, devouring her soul. She can see him, hear him, feel him hold her; memories flood and drown her.

She closes her eyes, surrendering to the cinema that her emotions conjure:

She is back at the barn, in his house, entranced by the allure of his voice in the giddy phone conversations during their budding romance. Her heart flutters and swells at the sound of his greeting as she sees him walking towards her with a bouquet of wildflowers. She feels his arms around her, breathes him in. They walk, hand in hand, to the barn, fingers intertwined as seamlessly as the interlocking threads of a well-made woolen coat: a security blanket. She inhales deeply, welcoming the sweet, earthy scent of the barn and the horses.

Nighttime shrouds them now, in sweet privacy. Slowly, he draws in a meaningful breath, absorbing every note of her. His arms surround her, holding her tightly, safely: synchronous in gentleness and passion. She lets go and melts into him; lines blur, no beginning and without end. Time stops. She nestles into the dip where his neck and collarbone meet, her favorite place. Here she finally found a Home, safe and warm: the one place where, had the whole world been swept away, she wouldn't have known or cared.

Suddenly, she finds herself fighting to breathe. The cruel sledgehammer of reality knocks her back into present time. Her eyes, opening, reveal the dreadful, familiar, empty surroundings of her car, windows down, cigarette burning slowly in the darkness of the parking deck at her office. She remembers…I miss what is dead.

It is gone and she will never be in those places, in those conversations, in his arms, again. She would sacrifice a limb to shift her focus to something physical, something tangible that can be explained and reasoned.

This is why she smokes. It's pain that can be qualified, explained.  She can hold it in her hand and control it. She smokes to escape, to forget, to remember, and to punish. It's an illusion of comfort that she can feel between her fingers. It's adding to the pain and it's making her sicker. But somehow she needs it; she deserves it. If she doesn't smoke, she has nothing onto which she can hold.

She hates herself for it. She is afraid to look at her teeth in the mirror. It physically hurts to breathe sometimes. But the more she hates it, the more she does it.
Why does she avoid rest? She fights sleep like it's an enemy she is determined to defeat. Nighttime is her time for escape. When she awakes, she is forced to face reality.


How do you fake the way you hold someone, breathing in every note with a gentle yet insatiable, unmistakable need?
Lust dressed up, perfumed, synthesized: a false, empty shell--hollow semblance of love.

A brushfire, swelling and spreading, ceaselessly igniting, brilliantly illuminating the flecks of fool's gold, abruptly smothers. Twisted, charred limbs, unrecognizable now, disintegrate with a breath. As illusive and intangible as a dream, it is gone. She awakens to a faint, distant stench of burning flesh. Her eyes sting; blinking only brings tears. Rivulets of liquid agony streak her charred cheeks. Did it even exist?

How do you feign love so convincingly? How do you stop feeling as if it were never there, cut it off as easily as breaking a feeble branch, as effortlessly and emotionlessly as discarding trash?

He haunts her dreams, taunting her with his gold-plated words, a ravenous wolf donning stolen wool, soft to the touch, burning her skin.
He took them; of course he took them. She keeps fighting it, unwilling to believe that he stole from her. She longs to hear him, see him, hold him, but what good would it do? Pandora's box. Sirens. Luring flecks of pyrite, warning to yield, to stay away, taunt her. "Heart's content is your strength. You bring softness to the jaded heart. Contempt and distrust fade."

Nothing brings comfort; no embrace can soothe, no words can soften the blow of falling, clumsily, repeatedly thrust against the sharp, jagged edges of this abyss. She is a rag doll.
Screaming, searing pain is silenced: sand in an hourglass, slipping through, collecting finally, resting, only to be overturned to fall, endlessly, again, and again.

4:02 am:
Adrenaline and nicotine poison her exhaustion. She is restless and empty. She cannot calm down to sleep.

She is lost, trapped—unable to sit still but too paralyzed to run. Her insides are scratching and screaming, begging to crawl out of her skin. She desperately tries to run away but she can't leave her body. She wants to scrape out her insides, hollow herself like a jack-o-lantern. Maybe a lobotomy would bring relief, numbness, peace. She wouldn't need to feel pain because there would be no memories. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But then how would she learn from her mistakes if she has no memory of them?

She didn't realize how many pieces of herself she had whittled away to fit with him.

She sees him differently now. Light seeps through dusty, cracked stained glass, bringing a brilliant lucidity that is mixed with the darkness of emptiness and agony. She is beginning to let go of the illusion of who she thought he was.

His “home,” a pool house, is rented, the property not his own. It is simply an appendage of the owner’s home and farm. He lives a borrowed life; lies can only live so long. The refrigerator is bare; the pantry is stripped down to the grits and plastic Ziploc bags she had bought him.

He bought her favorite ice cream. She returned to find the empty pint taunting her, strategically placed atop the trash. He hides, cowering, as she gathers armloads of belongings in multiple trips to her car.

Foolishly, she went back to him. Walking in with the dinner and liquor that he had requested, she is greeted with a, “Fuck you! Get your shit and get out!” He flings her boots at her, and she watches in slow motion as they land, spraying dust and dirt from the barn. She had, earlier that week, worn those boots as she sang to the horses to calm her mind on a sleepless night. Promises shattered, she scrambles to pick up her boots, losing him and the horses, her only place of solace. Hope is gone. Her ears ring with his words, a broken record, only days earlier: “Come on home, honey.”

She had unearthed a fossil...

A slight bump, pearly white, attracts her eye. As she slowly brushes the dirt off the surface, she sees the bones: the hollow, dull eye sockets, disturbing jut of a dislocated jaw, gaping mouth. She notices how deep it is buried--the tip of an iceberg. Then, just as she puts her brush down to look closer, the wind, a whispered warning, stirs a cloud of dirt that settles over the remains, filling the holes and smoothing the jagged edges. In an instant, she forgets, consciously choosing to disregard those feelings of disturbance. She picks up her brush and hesitates, torn between logic and temptation. Compelled, entranced, she gingerly touches the bristles to the dirt. Maybe it won't be ugly this time; perhaps it wasn't as disturbing as she thought. She could have made it up--just her mind playing tricks on her. If she trusts her hesitation, though, she foregoes the excitement of discovery. But she has already seen what lies beneath. A glimpse should have been enough.

She cannot look away. Hesitation is devoured by anxiety; compulsion grows stronger, takes control. And she lets it.  She sweeps the bristles slowly at first then picks up speed, furiously sweeping away the earth. She should have trusted that tug of hesitation, should have left the brush and walked away. She didn't want to see it; she looked anyway. The image, horrifying, discolors her own skin to match the gray of the bones. Frozen, petrified, she watches worms slither through cracks in the skull. The head is twisted and detached, unnaturally askew. The ribs are shattered, by knife or gunshot, where the heart once was.

She punishes herself. Self-loathing swells and festers as she resentfully reflects on her choice to dispel her better judgment. She avoids mirrors, afraid to see skin that remains gray. The horrifying truth of what she chose to uncover disturbs her dreams.


I awake, coughing, disoriented, clothes adhered to skin by cold sweat. Anxious, hollowed, robotic, I reach for a cigarette.

halved alive

  She sprints to last spring, dust bursts  spray from asphalt left - right lightning smashes. Unripe endurance four minutes  knees scream bo...