Upon the ending of the novel, I sat and contemplated.  I wondered, am I too serious of a person by feeling disturbed?  Why couldn’t I simply laugh along at the wild adventures of friends?  And why was it that I felt a sympathetic camaraderie with the villain of the story?  Milady killed and deceived, seduced and destroyed.  Yet, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, what other choice did she have?  Just like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Milady takes matters in

The demon clutches in the belly like a claw that screws as well as grabs. It hurts better that way in the deepest way. The darkest way. Wa

Because I thought I saw Jesus within the pulsating wall A prophetic drawl Pathetic bawling Incessantly crawling back beneath the...

A planet left out for you and me To blow like dust a cerulean sea And feathered blue light Such an elegant sight To unsettle the dust

In frost covered fields With garnets congealed A pomegranate drips Scattered seeds amongst the star-lit field A twilight blooms

To scrape beneath the surface brings with it its own mortality. To bleed and feel a fire made flesh. Ruby colored pulp trickles...

I stood at the edge of the reflecting pool With water cascading, lush and cool I jumped into that pool of sun And sank simply down with...

You’re like a force field that contains the blaze in me because you learned to grip fire with your hands You’re a phosphoric, Promethean...

I want to be the needle in your thigh plowing endlessly the field of your discomfort like a splintery thing. Extract the venom to your...

The key is to detach and then to reduce it down to the roots, strong solemn things that grip the body, and smooth out the mind in copse...

I wish that you’d listened to the call of leaves and the purring in trees, but you got distracted, turned away (as they do), and left me...

Does the Queen of Night shrink from sunlight And dream between sight A desert denouement? To open Close And withhold

I have a love for beautiful views that began when I was a child. I’d sit on top of the monkey bars or sit in my favorite hemlock tree...

She was squished up in the tire of their pickup truck when I heard her meowing. I crawled under and found a little grey fluff of kitten, not much larger than my hand. She had grey eyes like me. I named her “Storm,” and snuck her into our basement until my parents found her and then she disappeared. I never did find out what became of her, but even as an adult I think of her sometimes.

I go away Are just three words I use sometimes To break the silence of a fragile state I go away, I say, when the moonlight breaks Through tufts of cloud wisps Blue light spilled out at the windowpane I sift through moods and claim An imagined room that’s furnished With a small wish To go away

I’ve been casting you in lineaments, you vaporous thing. You’re a distorted mirror that bends ‘round my mood. A cold surface of marble...

Fireworks burst like Dandelion heads I blow at the sky Wishes bloom in red

I quiver like the white moth I found perched on my bedroom wall. Bad news flutters in, in traces it seems. First an omen, then an ache,...

And gold drips through fingertips —coagulated sunlight— soft globs of me spilling out everywhere.