diary-of-jane-doe

[diary-of-jane-doe]

lost and found

How can you hold something formless

without it seeping through your hands?

How can you sing to something hollow

without mistaking the echo as reply?

How can you call on something nameless-

with a howl or a sigh?

It’s is not your fault that you’re lost me-

there was nothing to be found.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

It Happened on Elm Street

Your smile dulled the Texas sun,

dulled the cacophony of coos and claps,

dulled the sickly sweet shade

of my Sunday best,

dulled the snakes in my stomach

that never knew rest.

A thousand witnesses,

and a hundred noir kingsmen

with eyes like mine:

eyes made for worshiping you.

It was sacred to straighten that crooked crown; all Queens are born for rue.

At your wave, the wind bowed

before your flush finger brushed mine;

a revelation, I had a name.

Your lips parted to christen me.

Flesh followed. You bloomed like a rose.

I bathed in your debris,

one of priceless petals, of diamond shards

blinding as those teeth.

The throng danced, the throng howled,

the kingsmen became vultures;

for their rock was sand. Futile were manners, fruitless was culture.

A porcelain doll fell into my lap, head spilling a scarlet bouquet.

How coincidental, dear, it shared your proud nose.

Just as Queens are born for rue;

so I was born to scavenge

the shards of you.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

Wake, rabbit, wake

His eyes burned twin black holes

in the ether of my slumber;

even when I gasped the first breath of morning

with the thrashing worship of a drowning child,

the scent of my singed stain pillowcase formed the lines of that face.

His fanged maw, his scraggly stubble,

his creeping claws,

his camoflaging hide of cotton and denim.

How strange it is,

to not have nightmares of falling,

nor failing,

nor disaster,

nor demon,

but of a stroll to the store

on a feverish summer day.

How strange it is,

that the greatest conceivable horror

woven by this consciousness

that has been unraveled

in one thousand threads

is of a species that shares my earth and the scarlet of my blood,

yet lusts for both.

While being baptized in the steam

of my steeping breakfast tea,

the window framed a pearlescent rabbit;

perhaps on a stroll to the store

this feverish summer day.

In those onyx beads of eyes,

my reflection docilely blinked

though my eyeglasses collected dust

upon the nightstand.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

April

She found herself coldest

under the April’s soft sun,

each ray incandescent

as the barrel of a gun.

Hear its bullet’s hymnal hum

conjuring songbirds to join the fray,

a thousand winged Lazaruses

unfettered by Winter’s grave.

Their wings cast revelations

of black angels upon her hands

while she digs like a dog,

pillaging the verdant lands

of the garden she erected,

ripe as Babylon’s impossibility.

Newborn lilies crane their necks

in mirth at her senility.

But their infant minds must grow

to grasp the ailment that withers

this woman in the blooming months

where old Ouroboros slithers.

For sun is not her sustenance,

no matter the fury it shows;

and rain is not enough

for man to live on alone.

So as nature drinks

from the spring of immortality

it makes more undeniable

that to breathe is brutality.

She lies like a giant

in her six foot canyon

desolate, for no soul can call

lilies their companions.

Hands stained with the first man’s matter

form a cross over her chest,

this symbol of resurrection

the cruelest of jests.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

I see a dog in the bathroom mirror,

a beastly thing barking back at me,

files circling like vultures, worthy to be held only by a cage.

I can rebelliously hope, groveling on all fours,

that someone will pick my roaming form off the highway

and have the bravery to call me theirs.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

I am not a martyr

I don’t hold holy healing.

Herculean little heart,

too ambitious,

too unyielding.

I am not Joan of Arc,

you won’t be my God

I won’t burn upon a fire that you swear you

didn’t cause.

I wish the wind behind your sails,

but I won’t be around to feel it-

knight me deserter or rider in white.

Under any title,

I hope the tide rocks you

with a mother’s gentle strength,

and never breaks against your bow

as I have.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

Beauty

When you rest your head upon Aphrodite's soft breast,

and feel nothing but your own rapid breath warming her frigid flesh,

and hear no water cry out at the wishing coin you threw down her hollow heart,

know that you cradle the holy land of maggots.

Dead gods are named so for a reason.

Look up, child, into the glass shattered like a spiderweb,

its grotesque delicacy birthing a thousand bitter eyes, an angelic herald.

You crumple into leaf on the wind in undertow of its many mouthed hymn;

"This creature

is not small enough to squeeze through the gates.

Pigs have always been unclean."

The truth will set you free.

Look up, child.

You may slip through the shackles

if only you have the fortitude

to raise that downturned mouth into a fortress under my command.

You have known me since you could pinch the pudgy flesh of your waist

with gentle fingers made for catching fireflies;

that thorn you discovered lodged in your side has bloomed into a spear.

My tongue paints a prophecy of cathedral beams

clawing up

from under the skin of your torso.

Small and holy,

two sides of the same coin.

The mourners will rest the toll of the ferryman upon your eyes;

they will greedily glint the essence of God.

Let it be your legacy:

small and holy.

Let me be your potter.

Look up, child.

My name is impossible to form, and I will eat you alive.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

Your face is my North Star as I enter every room.

I must be more than a sailor whose ship leaves a circular wake; so with skinned knees I beg for the decree that my name is a constellation and not a cluster of letters.

I am not a fool.

The compass in your chest spins like a haywire clock, idle in the magnetic field of your ceaseless boyhood.

I am not a fool, but if that is your toll, I will dance for my dinners.

Glinting in the peripheral; I hang by the neck to adorn your empty night. It is silent as a tomb, and I burn for you. I burn, I burn I burn.

Name me a star, and I will not care what the lofty astronomers nor the weavers of mythos call me so long as I am yours.

Name me nothing, and I will fall in a sparking swarm with the grace of a diving swan and the might of a swooping hawk.

But for now, I only gaze upon my reflection in your averted eyes.

Burning, burning, perhaps already burnt.

I am a fool, after all.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

Young adult what an oxymoron;

the dawn of freedom - or the death of adolescence?

A little cold hand clings to my finger with the desperate strength of a soldier.

Soul of my soul, flesh of my flesh; yet, virgin to the claws of archaic, ticking hands.

The one I miss, the one I mourn, my mother in sun bleached polaroids, the giggle -drunk girl next door.

Raindrops fall from the windows of your being.

I climb the trellis to peer inside.

Call the priest, for something haunts your house.

The refection peering back is not mine.

Is it you, whose little hand will not let go-

or is it I?

[diary-of-jane-doe]

Mary’s Sonnet

The silent night went limp, pierced by my howls.

On dust to which you'll soon return I writhed.

Wadling feet took on this world so fowl.

If I wept gold, perhaps you'd not be tithed.

When my love taught the language of the nail, when dark waterfalls painted the altar, could I have changed the ending to this tale?

Born a witness, bore a lamb to slaughter.

The fruit of my womb now sags from a tree.

I pray the wood sings lullabies of home, and splinters caress you till all are free.

Spear too my heart, so he be not alone.

Sweet bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, deliverer and babe ripped from my chest.

[diary-of-jane-doe]

I’m sorry if I’m starving you. These chipped shavings of my soul are all I can spare for your silver platter. Tell me which is the problem: your human hunger or my innate famine?

[diary-of-jane-doe]

You hold my heart like a pomegranate. It is easy to pluck. Yet, it is a labor to open, rotting inside, begging for its sweet, gory innards to be freed. I can only hope that you are my Jacob, that you are blinded enough to blur the lines of indentured servitude and adoration. If so, these aril seeds will be sand in your haggard hand, juice and blood indistinguishable.

I should have warned you that I am a labor to love.