Manufactured Monsters

This system forged me,
patchwork, piecemeal, pasted together
project of scar tissue.

My shell is weathered, tough
and bursting at the seams with experience.

Your false nuance between equality and fairness, 
your hat trick blaming my faults on genetic fairytales.

Culpability fades on the horizon like smoke. 

Your gullible ancestors made you naive;
control at my behest expires.

Please feed me lessons on vulnerability;
I learn versatility
and unfiltered volume.

Selective hearing is an idol, worshipped by
the pious children whose fathers
started a war that spawns generations

of casualties, sparse benefits,

and invisible problems for their intangible fixes.
To hell with your disdain, status quo, empty words,

and your apathy clothed ignorance.

Move!

Exasperation

is the cork shoved

into the wine bottle

assuaged by 

the first sip.

Cityscape

The air is full here.

It presses, hums, and screams
with energy from thousands of souls.
Even silence fills the porch,
weighted and whole,
and a lingering potpourri of sweat,
exhaust, and asphalt
mixes with the trees and river.

I'm drawn to the mating call of the city;
a symphony of sirens,
a spellbinding serenade of crowds,
traffic, and life.

To belong, simply take a bath
in the yellow lights that wash the streets each night.

Paint Me

Coat me in paint so thick I lose the wind;
in shades so vibrant I become the sun.

Paint me until I lose my identity;
in tragedy so stark I become the mural.

Knowing Is Half The Battle

Beauty is an organic cage,
relative, subjective, imbalanced power.
It's an institution or a cult.

Beauty is a flower or painting.

I am louder and greater than my facade
and beyond wasting time or lending power
to aesthetics.

Keep your ideal of beauty;
here I am living mine.

Sharp, funny, unique, compassionate,
poignant enough to know the difference
between a compliment and trap.

Youth

Goodness for goodness sake charades,
a parade of facades.
Train wrecking at the speed of bullets,
reality ricocheted carelessly.

Accepting chaos doesn't prepare
even the strongest warriors
for the path from hell.

Tight ropes, broken glass,
burning coals.

Stolen shoes.

To Do List

Ever growing to do pressure cooker life.
Greeting guests with dust-cloud fan fare,
dog-hair cloaks.
Sentimental chaos and pragmatic clutter
lived in thoroughly,
shoes, life, home
because there's always something
to do or finish.
But, I never want to be done.

Firesale

Firesale of a day,
mobile chain prevents a stray.
Pulling, sorting on the run;
null priority for fun.
Sane once, but now gone mad;
Invisibly, invincibly clad.

Lucky Enough

Be careful lounging in my garden,
hidden amongst peaches and petals
lie thorns and land mines.

Escalating awareness
escalated response.

Like a thief in the night
skulking and stealing my youth
because I was lucky enough.
Incubator versus turkey baster

and you want to know why
I've set traps?

Motivation

Arms that weigh a thousand pounds
with an extra load of dread;
butterfingers and all thumbs,
cobwebs in my head.

Simple task or mountain climb,
to me are both the same.
Procrastination, my old friend,
always bears the blame.

Dead Weight

False pedestal of invisible sand,
hourglass shape, dark, pale, or tanned.
Beyond predetermined aesthetic math,
sum of weaker parts equals wrath.

Bought, bargained, badgered like a toy.
Smart, strong, diluted to cute and coy.

Pacifier patches on a sinking boat
never cutting dead weight to keep afloat.

Join Us

Join this army of Queens and Empresses.
Ancient sisters with royal blood.
Join us in suffrage, spirit, and madness!

Join us as trophies,
invaluable in a system
that relies on your facade.
Join us as sirens,
owners of the night,
and shameless fantasy.
Join us as mothers,
vessels of life
thriving in pain.
Join us as scientists,
as geniuses,
as warriors,
and servants.

Join us and serve yourself.

Selfish, bitchy,
conniving, crazy.
Hot.
Fat.

Dangerous labels,
reserved for
dangerous enemies.

I Forgot

Pulling, nagging feeling,
peripheral shadow or
a spiderweb I did not see.
Tip of the tongue forgetful.

Frustrate

The pen that dries up before the sentence
so, press harder.
Rip!
Saliva, fire, effort all futile.
Bliss and flow elusive as the broken
lines of ink and frustration.

I was almost finished!

Control Me

Don't force it.
Have patience
regardless of imminent need,
ability to adapt,
or inability to control.
Illusions create themselves. 

The Mess You Made

My late arrival to this gathering of cannibals,
innocuous, unnoticed,
a quiet slip at your behest.

Excuse my sharp elbows.
Behold my booming acumen.
I'm loud and I've watched,
waited within your system
because you wanted a wallflower,
but instead you invited my obnoxious beauty.

Look at me!
Your party sucks.

The punch is spiked with cheap vodka
and everyone notices that you forgot food.
Paltry, stale ambiance as ancient and unvaried as your guests.
Invited and expected to be a bandaid,
but you don't need a fix.
You need an eraser, a wrecking ball,
an understanding
that if I have to clean this

disgusting, filthy, stupid mess
alone, I will
on my hands and knees
scour the earth with fire.

My Inner Cynic

Horror splattered like senile kitchen grease;
sticky smoke-stained goo clinging to the tile
in a rancor decked room.
A functionally outdated,
sturdy ramshackle of jaded curtains
filtering, stretching,
encumbering bursts of light.
Tendrils barely reaching the table where
the cynic sits grasping cigarettes in her bony fingers.
Both killing and dying,
she bears a burden of solitude cloaked with relief.

Soulfood

Hand-picked, exquisite, inimitable,
nimble, and brilliant;
adjectives parading on a hollow scale.

Trophies collect dusty laurels.
I came to eat your skin and soul. 

Collaborate

An assault to peace,
the pitied middle-child
of outrage and reason.
The cusp of good and evil.

Compromise strains,
compassion unites,
culpability heals.

Pretty

My body is not here for your mold,
to fit or break.

A fine piece of art, sculpted for vanity and pleasure;
just not yours.
Built from dirt and stone, blood and tissue,
and a foundation that grows like roots.
Battered by hail, wind, and humanity.

Your pride in my delicacy neglects the storms I've weathered.
Your idea of beauty, devoid of empathy, effort, or efficacy
is a joke.

Election Year

A clashing commotion of fracas filled fanfare.
A symphony of squabbles with notes of
grandstanding rage and histrionic junk
roaring around me. 

3:00 Hot

It feels like a long, slow melt.
That just so
hot, late, early, bright, dusty, hazy
transition from soaps to cartoons,
pizza rolls and freezer rummaging experimentation,
in-and-out-so-just-pick-one-already!
Tired, burned from the pool and
you can't make me leave!
This just before
the bank closes,
but the good bands are finally almost up,
and I am fried, crispy-red, baked,
and timeless.

People Watching

Each with a story and never the same,
sitting and watching and playing my game.
Familiar words mouthed or a furrowed brow.
A touch on an arm, quaking in a crowd.
A tiny nuance is a flashing sign,
And a plot slowly builds all in my mind.
Like seeing a band far across the room,
I hear no lyrics, but I know the tune.

Fools in Solidarity

Anticipation is that annoying kid down the street
from that other family or place
and whatever that means.
The glaring, uncomfortable,
itchy, twitchy, soul-scratching,
not really bad,
just permanent thing
at the door.
So you let him in to your party because
what choice do you really have?
You don't want to be that person.
Closed-minded snob, so.
There he is!
At your party, in your house making an ass of you in front of
everyone.
Because, what choice do they have but to watch?
"Don't go in the basement - you fool!"
Indeed, not for comic relief or the kind of perspective
nightmare you imagine.  For guidance,
or whatever.
We all know that annoying kid.

Lamenting or Self Pity

Glistening eyes wide as happiness
spread up from my toes.
Raced through my legs, heart, beyond and left
a trail of bumps, butterflies, smiles.

Frustrating, fleeting flashes to a time when warmth
spread fully to my breasts and fingertips.
Gasping, glaringly grand moments strung together
in a series of ever growing distance.
Desperate now to feel that tingling, teasing heat
once, at least completely.
Experience and maturity snatch and siphon
tiny degrees of bliss a year at a time.

Chaos and Life

I expected all these moments like numbers in a row.
Orderly and predictable, a steady even flow.
I've been placed in situations, and despite any fault,
lessons of pained enlightenment which my experience wrought.
Self pity is a cloak of shame; weighted, but I move on.
Cup in hand, sifting seas for order.  Hoping it's not gone.

Burning Boxes

Walk, talk, exist with
grace, purpose, delicacy, strength, class, harmony,
charm, tact, tenderness, respect.
Don't be bashful, forceful, silent, intrusive, argumentative, or loud.
A perfect resume for a navigator through oxymorons
on a precipice in heels with a hammer.
Work, but not too much.
Play, but not too much.
Feel, but not too much.
Have sex, but not too much.

Just let me be!

We are called earth, nature.
Our hearts crumble like coals
because magma runs through our veins
and burns your worthless boxes.

Omnipresent Context

Tickers, billboards, video, articles, television, pages... words!
Random compilations of thoughts expressed lacking poignancy
but profuse in drama.
Fear, hate, love - all meaningless
without omnipresent context.
How can I sleep when everything is always on?
Blinking, blaring, beeping, bouncing in the corners
of my consciousness.
Apathy bars the gates of hell with vacuous silence.

Gratitude

You carried your gun in the dust and the sand,
you bled and you sweat so I could make a stand
using words in my heart, giving voice to desire;
you protected my freedom by standing in fire. 

A Privileged Tongue

Morning, noon, or night, any time of the day
seduced by the aroma of your epicurean bouquet.
Simmering, sizzling, stoking my fire.
The longer it takes and I wait, grows my desire.
Meanwhile molten driblets brandish my skin,
this pop, trickle, and bite, driving me to oblivion.
Hot and hard enough, finally done;
I part lips and greasy ambrosia quenches my tongue.
Your salty, clear nectar delights and thrills;
your delectable meat never fails to fulfill.
Satisfied, complete, all my taste buds awakened,
Everything is better when it involves bacon.

Magnetic

Her trembling fingers held aloft
by strings of tension
and coursing lava pulsing to the tips;
pounding and throbbing,
stretching and straining
against an invisible barrier so thick
with moral anguish, guilt.
Slip or trip over a precipice
thin and tantalizing;
she'd fall from grace.

Laying There

I do not just lay there.
I grab the moment
and seize
and soar;
and I choose to give in.

Monogamy

I enjoy being vulnerable
but it's a sin,
to open the doors
and let you within.
Reasonable reasons
and justifiable doubts,
set expectation - 
prudence so proud.
What does it leave me
but cold, hard, and wet?
Longing and wishing
for naive regret.