The Final Goodbye

In the cold, gray days,
you walked away
with no goodbye,
to carry through
the cold, gray days.

Broken Glass

The pieces of broken glass
lie scattered,
their shades and tones
of sparkling color
crushed
under an unseeing weight.

Days and nights,
fog and rain and snow
follow,
one after the other,
over and over and over

Before someone picks up the
scattered pieces,
bringing them together
to make
something new
and beautiful.

I wake up
from a decades-dream
to discover
I wasn't sleeping.

Regrets swirl around in my head
like lyrics to an overused song.

A water color glass
where paint is added
bit by bit
until
it is all
muddy
          black. 

On a Bridge with Munch

Faceless
and voiceless,
I stand on the bridge
between yesterday
and tomorrow,
a cartoon figure,
fat
and flat.
I open my mouth,
but out comes
no sound.
I open my eyes,
but see nothing there.
The world is a Gaussian blur
of painterly impressionism.
I have
no
face. 

The promise
in an old photograph
is in the smoke-filled room,
rising seductively
from the cigarettes
perched precariously
on the side
of the coffee tables,
it makes me squint.
My vision distorted,
I see
what is not there.

Hypocrisy after Emily Dickinson

The red and angry, swollen spot
cannot be ignored.
The reaching out
becomes a hiss--
instead of kindness,
sword.

What should be gentle
hides its shell
and prays for camouflage. 
The love, the helping,
doesn't bloom.
The grace, in sabotage. 

Nothing

There are a lot of blank spaces

as I look back

but

         blanks

                      are what I'm used to--

blanks

               are what we got a lot of

                                                     back then.

The story

                 has been filled in,

                                            drawn on,

                                                              made up

                                                                                as I went along

because fiction

             is better than

                                                     nothing.

In a parallel universe,
children don't go hungry
and their parents don't run away
into themselves
into the bottom
of a glass
that shatters all around them
leaving them bleeding
and
alone.

Shadows

Still lurking in the shadows after all these years
like a faded old film
making barely discernible projections
in a darkened corner.

I remained unenlightened.

Vintage Vision

We reach for the retro
for a time--did it exist?--
that we hunger to be a part of.

We want to better understand ourselves.
Are we so fundamentally different from each other?
Would we have been friends?

We want to understand *you*,
the unmet enigma
staring at something
off in the unseeable distance
from out of an old photograph.

After decades of walking through life’s gardens,

discovering the intoxicating textures and colors

together

driving leisurely on roads newly-discovered,

sharing our lives,

I never want to lose the taste of it--

of intense new flavors,

like being served exotic food

by someone who can’t help but

love you

on a warm, spring day.

The quiet one
who can't
have fun,
she sits
in the corner
like Little Jack Horner--
like the three little kittens--
there is no pie

His eyes sparkle

like new snow on a moon-lit night,

fiery jewels in a now-weathered face.

His warm complex smile draws me in,

well-mixed as it is with a sadness

indistinguishable from the laughter

as much as sweet cream is indistinguishable

from the bitter coffee it flavors.

The Silent Women

The silent women,

go in and out of our lives

secretly suffering--

seeing their doctors

or not

taking the endless series of variously effective prescription medicines

or not

being hospitalized

or not

Remembered by their families for generations?

More likely their lives are covered up and silenced

because they do not fit the family myth

of easy functionality and unbridled superiority.

After all, they did not fit in--did not socialize--

or if they did,

they were too irritated

and out of control

of their own tumultuous emotions

to be able to restrain their anger

at a world

where fate

dealt them the short straw

of mental illness.

I am blown back and forth
like a child's plastic swing
in a hurricane,
it's flimsy chains
becoming hopelessly tangled.

I'm trying not to
throw up.

Easter Grief

The Lord is risen. 
We are in the garden, 
surrounded by palms
and the heady scent 
of Easter lilies 
and spring flowers.

We are sweating 
blood. 

Olympic boxing. 


One guy in red. 


One guy in blue. 


Rock 'em, sock 'em robots

Karma and the Colorful Purse

Today I bought
the colorful purse
that will either match or clash
with everything I wear,
and a red wallet
with room enough
for discount cards
from every store I've ever
walked into.
They were on sale
and I got an extra 20% off
just for being
over 50.

You are here,
again.
No, not "again".--
Only in the ether
of an old woman's mind,
whose subconscious cannot see
the grey hairs
on her head.