Dreaming poet winks

 At you as your eyes flutter

 Deeper brighter hues

© Poetessa Leixyl Kaye Emmerson

I am a poorly groomed,
twelve year-old disaster.
Evading every hairbrush,
I stand in awe of the girls who flat iron with ease,
Seventh grade hair care prodigies.
Mats hide between air-dried curls,
bind together,
Concealing floppy ears
And adolescent vulnerability;
I do not dare cut a single strand.
“Boys will like you more with long hair”
they tell my impressionable,
Floppy ears.
Boys like luscious locks,
Sleek cascades in crevices between shoulder blades.
Not tangles weaved by wind from bicycle races
Or chlorine curls from swimming pool cannonballs
Or sweaty tresses from full-court pickup games.
But none of it matters today.
Today, I am not my hair,
But my lack of it.
Shears above my neck
form a pile at my feet.
I liken it to a shih tzu
And walk away unscathed.

rush of nudging wind
a tumble of grey;
plastic bag

Success seems so sudden
when you aren’t a part
of the process. Writers seem to
burst onto the scene
from nowhere and shoot
to great heights but they don’t.

They edge their way
in with this piece and that, testing
the water, slowly
building
a reputation, showing
they can nail
a brief and hit a deadline.

(found poetry: https://mslexia.co.uk/rosies-last-post/­)

The male
wolf spider
purrs for sex.
Isn’t that
wonderful?

Apparently
he rubs his
mouth against
dead leaves;

amplified,
it could be
mistaken for
the rev of
an engine.

But it’s not
about sending
out a song;

he knows
the vibration
is what draws
the female in and
sets her eight legs
on the path
toward him,

and then
they mate
among the
leaves’ decay,
mocking death
in the darkness.

First, she tried eating chili
and some cornbread
and washed it down with red wine.

Then, she tried a funnel cake,
kettle corn, and too-sweet 
lemonade at the county fair.

Then an almost too-ripe plum
she had to climb and climb
and climb to reach.

Then she ordered
her steak rare.

Then, she stripped spinach
and kale leaves straight
from the neighbor’s garden
and nibbled them raw
alongside two rabbits.

Like a bear, she clawed
through the river
for a paw-full of salmon
as one came flashing by.

On a seventy-degree
periwinkle day,
she held her mouth open
and longed for sweet rain.

Then she stayed up all night
with the moths and June bugs
and hoped to catch Jupiter
and Venus dozing
so she could scoop them out
of the sky with the Little Dipper
and onto her plate.

Sometimes, she ran her tongue
along the paisley wallpaper
and dreamt of spun maple taffy.

Constantly, she gnawed on
sycamore limbs
and vanilla-scented candle wax.

Her jaws worked around
screws and acorns and thread.

Then she washed it all down
with water from a hot springs.

She barely even noticed
when her molars fell out.
Then her incisors.

When she did, she didn’t
especially mind
that her gums
had become a scraped
and bloody mess.

She got very close one day
when she accidentally licked
the sweat from the hairs
on her forearm.

So she poured sesame oil
and drifted peonies and lavender
salt into her bathtub—turned
the water into a nebula
and waited for herself to grow
tender enough to taste.

Poem 28, June 28

             Old Words

Old words hide on the page,

in books, in computer documents, in a journal,

in anthologies, unwritten but stored in the mind

of poets like memories of lovers, friends, family.

Hot summer days stifle my poetry,

new words swim naked, having left me behind.   

They splash, dive, float in an eternal

search to be truth, or simply escape their cage

of silence. My silences in old words contain

no mention of our embrace nor the softness

of it nor the times I touched your hand

& you did not jerk it away.

I sit alone at my computer as day

is chased by a cool night wind. I understand

the new words I seek in two languages. I promise

myself to speak them should ever we meet again.   

This evening
I watched the smoke
hang loose
over the top
of the mountain.
I thought
of a voice
singing,
its breath
a little raspy
and weary.
And the sound
of strings
came back to me,
digging in
with hands
so large they
could choke
the neck
of a guitar
completely.
You don’t
have to write
a song
to sing it,
long after
the dying breath,
it passes
down to another
set of lungs
still breathing.

Foolish Festivals and misleading masquerades,
Abbeys and alleys full of creatures that parade.

Rotting corpses hoisted o’er their drunken heads,
Decorated with dangling intestine necklace;
Innocent blood painting immoral faces.

It is a day of celebration,
Jubilation, marking the grand death;
The infamous death of normalcy.

“We are divine!”
Roars the masqued mob
“We are gods!” 

Embracing their Quasi-modalistic desires,
Rejecting even the thought or perfection of hope.
(The refinement too harsh, too unyielding.)

Staggering and hunched, they stumble about
being drunk, on the wine of their own acceptance.
Gorging on the moldy bread of Notoriety and Damnation,
They consume the Eucharist of unholiness.
In cathedrals constructed of bells and belfries alone,
They pay homage to a visage marred only by birth,
Mimicry and disdain, are the remaining redemption.

“Look at me” a drunken jester pleads,
“Just as I am…
Look upon my gorgeous grotesqueness,
The displeasing of my deformities,
And the sheer hideousness of my strength!”
(Adjurations and applause rise from the indignant throng.)

Uncomfortable comfort uncovered in irreverent deviance
…Finally profanity belongs.

Is carefree gaiety fuel, for the incessant laughter that ensues?
Or is it nervousness, stoked by the existential embers of fear?
What can convention or perversion not stripped away?
(Supplant-ous smiles and facetious nods cannot masque truth.)

Each exhausted guest dances and writhes unconscionably
through the courtyards and gardens,
Toward the fountain in the town square

Where the good King is seated, just and fair
His un-tame face draws stern as the ghastly masses infiltrate,
like hot oil being poured in a pristine spring.
He raises the sceptre for all to see
silencing the riotousness scene.

“Who are you all?” demands the Resolute Ruler,
“Reveal yourselves truly and without guile.”

The decree falls hard, disseminating the delusion.
The recompense for reality is due.
Trembling, they dismantle each disguise.

They are shamefully left standing in,
Nothing, save their original skin.

Swirling thoughts fall from our lips
Ricochet
Thick, hard skulls resist

Gravity yanks, weightier ones tumble
Prostrate on the fallow earth
Like unnecessary seeds

Loftier words drift
Lost in the horizon
Destination is another’s problem

Mosquitoes buzz un-annoyingly
Sufficeth the itch, just the right pitch

What did you expect
Perched on your laurels
Beside the stagnate river