Bitter Pill

In words I am an heiress

yet sweet, so sweetly I come undone again

knees dirty before God

I took the blue pill tumbled smoothe in chrom(r)

grope handed bent kneed fading in the mirror

but can’t see the Wonderland with the aubergine sky  -

how long until it takes hold

o’ me? I’m a refugee splendid little thing,

and this wall, sentimental elephantine/

my belly pregnant with regret and every little seed

      turned away bloody.

How many sins need be remembered?

dangerous gaze lover drink me in

my oubliette

a crystal cave surrounds me interred in waking l,ife

my coffin

made of lips and eyes a naked sun swallows

in endless heaven I’ve got the shakes

sepulchral in reason my skin flakes tendons

poised/ right at

my fingertips

holding on prevent me from wandering in tongues flickering –

meant to be contained

but cobble shy/stack it up a suicidal staircase

even further on the way down

till we’re glancing epiphanies straight up in Harlem.

This day has all the grandeur of a rain cloud in Maine

and I could excuse every bitter reflection

were it not

for

the murmuring.

.28.9.12.