Grieving's Dirty Fingernails

I was soaking
in the hot-tub
of thinking
that dwelling
on palpable sadness
might take the threads
of spinning bobbins,
stitch down threads
of family squares.
Time sand is slipping
through gaping glass.
The retina of death
designed to capture
what's left of life.

Such luxury is not to be.
You just don't "go to funerals."
Smack. Pat. Slice. Putt.
Denial's hole-in-awful-one.
The game will be gone
before we learn
to use the instruments
we own. Donations
in the name of grief
are not the same
as being there.
Mourning's dirty fingernails
must wear the mud
to grow the flowers.
You turn your back
and wash your hands
until they bleed.
Bruises spackled
by bibulous night.
Stepping on petunia packs.

Turning Fruit

I organize my blessing lace--
straighten bra straps of a stanza
thinking of ways a breast will shift.
You're ensconced in all of them.
Even hollows of a struggle,
wishing to throw a plastic bed pan
through the wall.
Oil skirts of thick morphine drips
and baby steps without a walker,
one I'd sooner cast off cliffs
than use to climb a flight of stairs.

We've done it all the Siamese way,
two cat twins in petted fur.
Trials are a spelling lesson
tied to strength. When legs
are chopsticks after rice--
just won't pick up gravel spray--
willing bubbles inside pulse,
lifting hope to waiting tongue.

A painful sort of christening
these years have been
that led through swamps
toward renaissance.
We are each other's missing piece
in puzzles on a table's wood.
I shine us here, you wax a smile.
Two crossed necks of drifting swans
that balance coils of rattlesnakes.
Poems have little to do with zines
and paper wads, more to do
with swatting gnats from
rocking bowls of turning fruit.

Thinning Glass

Pain absorbs surrounding air.
Dresses will in leaden boots.
A grassy smile is rather
see-through camoflauge.
I must sit a tiny spell,
collect my strength,
pennies from a broken bank,
absorbing acquiescent shade.
Lean on ladders of amour
before I take another step.

Tomorrow, I think,
will yield more juice.
The snake of the haze
won't win that round.
Carnivals of health shut down,
pummeled by another storm.
I am between firm pressure points,
courting the masseuse of will.
I want my water from somewhere else
than ditches full of cattail thorns.
Grinding away in pilgrimage
away from sleazy routes of pills.

Their prostitutes can sabotage
such simple things as sentences.
Take the halo off a moon--
twist it 'til the light is gone.
Bones are just a squeaking hinge.
Buildings smoke with tearing gas.
Like bull skirts of a troubadour,
you lighten biting daily chores.
A shield in bytes of sacrifice
that wins me hours in motion's ring.
I live in loving's bubble wrap--
knowing time is thinning glass.