Ceiling wax Isobelle,
of cabbages and kingdoms I lament,
if you would pin me to a ribbon on your frail wrisat
I would wither with woe and weather
and dreams of being the pendant
on your neck....
the candle that melted your solemn face
into a puddle of
sea salt, chandeliers in boxes, a peculiar quilt
of bones and gypsy tears.
Lolita, all ball-joints and ankle socks and pink flesh,
and I, with my magic rabbit who wishes
for an
existence without seams
would place brass buttons in the holes where eyes should live,
use your skull as a teapot --
an honest mouth as the spout.
I am more plain Dickens than armored Hamlet
or the eyes of Macbeth,
and with a perilous pea beneath my stairwell
of mattresses,
I will barely blink.
Paper doll Marie,
those white wigs surely spare room
for a nest.
I will hide lost sailor and monster and maiden limbs I found in the
belly of a whale with my two front teeth
in a last attempt to locate Eden
and Atlantis,
storybook land and the visionary's circus
stilts.
I'll attach each squid tentacle and seafolk digit
to your dimpled knees
while your ampersand lashes are infectiously flirting
with a gentleman across the room.
Be my one-legged starfish,
my pregnant elm,
a chocolate ballerina too precious to nibble,
and I will be a wedding dress ....
calling your name.
I only ask you wear me once.
You could be my arachnid Cleopatra,
a kiss of miraged marriage,
the mechanism of my love and creation
and the method to my madness,
my mistress of melancholia kept safe inside my wardrobe
with our dress-up clothes and
God's opera glasses, attic flowers I never named,
prophetic clouds I never listen to,
and the lullabies of a stillborn little prince singing me to sleep.
The smoke on my cigarette is my other piece of mind
In the very back of my
wardrobe, where the wild things
once were, there are no
lions or witches,
only memory dust -- a collection of scraps
of would-be poetry
and enough Love to live this life in Smiles.
And I really just want a dishrag baby like you
to make me feel like
I'm wanted.
"Put my record on,
Persephone. I'm
on fire"
rather like a wispy trident of
figmented beanstalks and pumpkin carriage harps,
broken antennae and seraph
swings that refuse to take flight
unless Rapunzel's unicorn
mane of tangled kite and fate
strings makes pretty with a wandering breeze
and forms a treehouse ladder.
In shambles,
Delilah, sing me something mute,
a fantasia of quivering mouths
as mountain tongues unmoving after
an avalanche of deaf notes.
I'll drink your quiet as dew
slumbering in pink pouting petals
of the primrose
in my secret garden and make pretend I'm a child with
my ankle buried in bramble,
ringlets of fire ants, muses of thorn,
thatches, and a trail of gingerbread man
crumbs left
by Gretel.
My tonsils will toll for you, my tinsel Esmeralda,
and my spleen will rupture with unnecessity.
My spine will not howl nor bluster or bend
as it ought
and I will make myself wallpaper wings,
a crown of a lampshade,
and a castle from blankets.
A flashlight torch will
light our fortress walls as we dine on
string cheese and juice boxes,
converting the heart shape of our pretzels into
something less fatal
and fighting shadow puppet enemies
with merely our hands.
We will be anything we want
because neither of us exist
except in some untold story of the beauty in the collision,
the melody of the fall,
and we will always remain as the "and"
after every sentence that trails
off into unventured lands in the imagination, rather
than the end.
I will shelter you once our cocoon has collapsed.
My broken barbie doll,
I will be guide you though the labyrinth and carry you
Wherever there is love and life....