I love the way plucking

Out unwanted hairs

From the otherwise glamorous

Parts of my flesh

Reveals

That the root of all problems

Lies a good centimetre

Below the surface

Four times as long

As the protruding matter

And much darker

Blacker.

With a tiny white bulb

That marks the root.

Where Is My Purple Jumper?

I carry a knapsack
On my back
For those moments
When thought and memory shadows
Step across my vision of light.
Where once I let the shadows
Encase me in concrete
Now I'm learning to bend down,
Pick up my shadows of memory
And fold them up inside
The knapsack on my back.
I'm standing on the bank
Of a great misty lake
My toes caressed by gass
And naked, but for this bag
I carry eveywhere.
It's here that I have to let them free.
So I open my knapsack
And pour forth from it's depths
My own
Into the place from whence they have come.
Free and cleansed; my empty bag
Disappears
But I have come to meet my maker
So I dive
Down and
Down and
Down
Where the moonlight of my mind
No longer shimmers on the severed
Hearts and hands floating round me.
Thunder bursts in my ears
As I descend to a place
Where I stop breathing
And seeing
Where logic ceases to exist.
And I fall into her grotto.
She's there, black and cold
Impenetrable with talons
And spiky tale.
Her yellow eyes, nonchalant
Ask
“What took you so long?”
I realize that I'm supposed to have
Some sort of weapon
Like an enchanted sword
Or some pepper spray
And I have nothing
Standing before her
Naked and scared
And having forgotten why I came.
“I guess you came
To check out the loot?”
She makes to show me
Around her cave -
Our cave -
And just what she guards
There for me.
The horrors of my ego.
First we checked out the state of my pride.
Then we moved onto the arrogance,
The envy, jealousy, the possessiveness
And when we hit the state of my vanity
I broke down and cried.
“There, there,” she said.
“I've seen worse. At least you came by
To check out the state of things.
And look!”
She points to a shrivelled up heart
In a glass box
“Your fear's got a bit more colour in it.
It's a lonely life in here
But your dodgy bits provide the drama.”
“Can't I free you from here?”
I ask. She bravely replies,
“This is my duty. I must feed
Off your fear, selfishness,
Your guilt and malice.
The less you leave me,
The weaker I become.
We gazed at each other
Both with mixed feelings.
Where I should have come
To slay her, I felt nothing
But compassion.
I thanked her, wanting her
To transform and come with me.
A final question, instead:
“Where is my life going?”
“Don't mistake me for
Being enlightened, Honey.
I'm your darkness
Not your light.
It's what's here in this cave
That holds you back
Don't ask your ego -
You'll just have to live it out.
Follow. Your. Bliss.”
I promised to come back
And visit her
To balance out the lack of food
I'd be providing her with.
We'd share the past
And I'd go off to the future
Floating back up to
Where the moon shines
Through my memories
And I'd search the drifting debris
For clues as to where
I left my purple jumper.

Dream

My arm around your

Shoulders

My nose against your

Neck -

Breathing,

Wanting your smell to be

In my last aching inhalations.

But softly,

So softly, so I don't frighten,

Push you away.

You take my lips in yours

Gently, so gently,

Afraid to share too much.

I'm dying in your kiss,

Yearning to live

To see the day that this

Kiss

Might be real.

I wake

Alone

Broken

Hearted

But

Thankful that your smell

Remains

Bottled

Deep in my memory

To comfort and pleasure

My empty armed sleep.

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

I've been hurumphing around the city streets all afternoon.
The burden of being as non-committal as an old leaflet
Advertising a cheap factory-seconds booksale,
And yet feeling like a redundent member of a
Functioning society,
Failing to reach
Some true potential,
Spoiled the overcast and dank grey laneways.
I stared in the bathroom cabinet mirror,
with a head nigh split in two, and staring making it worse,
And took to pruning unruly eyebrow hairs.
I thought of that night that I performed with you
Bonnie and I dipped our long wigs in coloured paint
to splatter about the room.
I blinked,
And on opening my eyes there was a splash of
Pink paint on my eyelid in the mirror.
Remember, I made the costumes, too?
But you can't live with me anymore
Because I bore you and you can't change me.
I can't live with you either,
but I'm the sort who puts up and shuts up.
So, I have to kiss my blue door goodbye
Because somebody has to be the one to leave.
Now you're interrupting me writing this
Because I haven't performed 'cleaning'
Enough before your eyes;
I guess someone must have pissed you off,
So you're taking it out on me.
Nobody can live with anyone really,
We're not too good at sharing;
And if you're good at giving,
You end up with nothing.
And what are you alone?
My right eyebrow is half reddy blonde
So it looks shorter than the other one.
But, it is in fact shorter than the other.
Hate the eyebrows – remind me of my grandfather's.
I see them in forty or fifty years time,
Silver and white wire coiled so tightly
And grown so thick
That the world before my eyes will be ensnowed
And invisible
I'll be able to live only in my memories
I won't be dreaming of the future
And what great use I'd be to society
Because there won't be much of a future,
Except for visions of the afterlife,
Or what the hospital ward looks like.
And I'll be known as the woman
Who could plait her eyebrow hairs
Together with her ear hairs.

Onions

I've used up every tissue I can find scrunched up

On my bedroom floor; the ones under my bed,

From the fathoms of my coat pockets,

The ones from the depths of my handbag -

Smeared with lipstick.

Yet through my blocked and ever-running nose

I can still smell onion on my hands.

Backwards, it says, "Snow, I know",

Or, more pertinently, "It's 'no', I know".

Forwards,

My excuse for tears.