Poetry through the Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I am blinded by your memory.
The waters sailed now make me seasick.
Do you think I like you in my heart,
gnawing holes until it hangs in lacy strings?
Love is strangling me, like a madman in the night.
Like an arrow in my back, love attacks me.
You slam love in my face like a door
and I choose to believe it means you care.
I see you in blue, all soft around the edges.
In the end, we’re all soft around the edges.
I can be good if you need good.
I can drown in good if you can swim.
A spark
they still call hatred,
but the scent of sweetness
hides underneath,
the perfect match of wit
and struggle.
He shoves.
She slaps.
He welcomes pain.
It feels like love.
Stinking, crazy,
hurtful love.
dawn is morning’s response
to evening’s darkness
* * *
I am an only child,
little sister I have not.
But the kid
appeared one day,
writing journals,
making a nuisance,
altering my life.
What is a life
if not what’s remembered?
Or is what’s remembered
the whole of a life?
Can missing pieces
form a sister,
like God in those first days
molding a planet from the void?
Can a sister form
from shared memories –
skinned knees,
birthday cakes,
the forbidden borrowing
of a favorite sweater?
If memories fail,
does the sister evaporate
like water on a summer sidewalk?
Or do lies fracture,
leaving a prism
of colorful stories behind?
1.
Ancient strokes
brushed
on naked skin,
entangled,
a poem without,
my love within.
In costume,
the play begins
without me.
False friends follow,
dragging me back
to the shell of a life.
O girl in blue,
won’t you tell me
what to do?
Paint me, naked,
hair behind one ear,
my Aphrodite.
2.
The journey leads me
back again,
swinging,
trying to get in.
Too many people
watching,
my father’s sin.
Ladies,
lovely like ice cream,
speak to me
in foreign tongues,
send me off to war.
I can’t take it
anymore.
Pulled apart by petals
and stems,
too many corridors,
I can’t get in.
No place to lose my heart.
I’m broken, torn apart.
3.
Time
is a carnival,
masking your face
with laughter,
cotton candy.
Find me
in a melody,
follow the lines.
No time
to remember
before,
on hands and knees.
You alone,
time lost.
And I
not born yet,
even as I die.
4.
The earth
is a dreamer,
hiding behind walls,
hands plunged deep
in dark desert mud,
its name
unknown to anyone.
Memories are
isolated,
all twisted in family.
Speech, so ancient
there are no words.
Strength lies
in friendship,
in purpose.
The way
looms clear.
Then dawn
arrives
and changes
everything.