like silver paved streets flooded with gutterwater

Heavy-hearted and empty-handed
Night after night you leave me stranded
Moon's light soaking the railroad ties
And I can't hide the starglare in my eyes
From someone that is made of it
My love's drowningdoomeddisaster's writ-
But how could a Gatekeeper like me help but sink
Into the very pools from which she'd vie to drink
Beryl oceans that don't seem to be misplaced
Just cause they're set in the bezels of your shadowed face
The ocular cavities of which so ethereally fit
A passion like mine- that mirrors it.

july 6, 2007

six simple days of serenity, and in a flash

perfect visions of days that could lay ahead

of more elevator joy rides than either of us could stand/enjoy

hot nights in busy cities, tossing and turning

(forgetting the heat and the sounds in the streets).



but who needs electric, LED-Lighted, luminary, numinous

visions psychadelic in their beautifully innocent splendour?

progressive paradigms shifting like the pavement in front of the hotel

after hours of sweating, spinning, butterflywingswhirlingwildly inside



new feelings in an old body dismissed/disused

now, after these six simply serendipidous days

i am left hungry without any desire to eat



the butterflies slowly fading away



their flashing light wings crumbling into week-old,

forgotten confetti.

but now i wish to see and share some light- i believe the end, my love, is fin'ly nigh.

you led, then left, me down a darkened path
by which i'm finding difficulty coming back.
you were always the better writer,
and certainly between us more the fighter-
and the more blind i was to the ways of your wrath
your grasp on me only grew tighter.

i defended you defiantly
cared for you maniacally
yet in the end, you did your best
to ruin a chance I had at happiness.

you sucked me in with pitiful pedantic pleas for pardon
every time you fucked up -
so now that rusted hinge has hardened so
that I must simply leave this CellarDoor shut.

i've tired of the mindgames, helping you up
because you don't want to tie your shoes.
and don't you think, too, now, that it's high time
i've taken up a different muse?

Could it ever have occurred to you
that perhaps i'm done with seeing blue?
that i'm looking forward to another hue, void of you,
after all the bullshit that you've spewed?
What was i thinking? Feeling responsible for your worry
for your pain, the detriment i caused you, the guilt you never paused to hurry?
Now it's so plain to me-
your thoroughly ruminated ruse
to give me the sweetest gift: a key-
whose power over me you'd just abuse.
Well, your crooked arrow's aim was true,
you locked me down in Hell with you.
I'm ashamed it's taken me so long to see
that you don't WANT to be set free-
you would never come back up with me,
and your cherished memory is but an apostrophe
of something and someone i truly hope i used to be.

i think i can say now, safely, that enough is enough-
and before you can spill anymore,
i've got to try to start cleaning up
all the blood that you've left on my floor.

the soothsaying summer slights the slack

On again, off again, jiggedy-jig-
Apart, then together to slaughter the pig.
The thrill of the kill is the sun's own these days
And has singed what to nothing, I wonder,
Since we've wandered opposite ways?
I can't say I've ever beheld you in summer's light-
My snowflakeladyvertex of twinklingstarryfrostbite

You and I will never be.
Even when I offered myself willingly
You said a Wolf you thought better,
Thus this Keeper's tether was frayed and severed.
And, you know, when e'er you flit away from me
I am set free from Satan's key.
Or perhaps I've learned, since we last adjourned,
That Tragedy does not need its key
For its floodGates can open Endlessly
Through the tiniest wound that can be found in me
Whenever it sees fit rather easily.

I do hope to find that that Cavalier will be for me
That fork who'll not maroon me to mere foam upon the sea-
That someday I'll sing on legs that stand
And not just of that old mutation of my hand,
That rope that once tied me to you.
I swear, someday I'll bid you adieu.

Someday one another's Spades' jack
Won't shovel out the heart of the other's jill.
Someday if the wolf-in-your-mind climbs onto your back
You won't want my oilblood to spill.

But what do I know?
Perhaps I shan't remember
That I'm only kicking up some reaper's dust
That will cloud our vision come September.
So continues the countdown,
Here's the two of the three,

Before the next swirling fall sinks its teeth into me.

ducklings.

I'd convinced myself I'd never want to show this wretched world to one more soul who'd have to hang his head so low to know such simple joys and tragic pains one must see to believe... Yet the Love in it is what makes up the core of me-

In my young-old age I've tired of these petty wars I wage, and I've learned from the mistakes I've been much too wise to make. Wouldn't I rather be a thing I always wished I'd seen? Devote my life to building that which was always denied to me? Breed some brooding ducklings? Teach them how to fly away and love freely?

In time I want a backyard barbecue where everyone I now know has paid their dues, and my husband's singing with our kids while I play catch-up with my friends. What are the means to that end?

I think at the finish line I'd prefer an empty nest than finish my life knowing it was full of emptiness...











You can hear this here: http://lexland.tumblr.com

tin can song.

i don't want to be what i am
i've got oil for blood
and there's oil on my hands.
my knees will defeat my stance.
but if you'll be my crutch
you can keep all my land...

i don't want to be what i am.
i'd rather be a song machine
you can crank by hand.
i'll reach out to strike whatever i can,
but when you turn me around
i won't know where you're bound to land...

oh, but wouldn't i rather be
some ashen torn-down factory
you'd wrecked deliberately
with a cannonball and your own hands -
just to melt me down
sculpt me into some hol(e-)y tin can
that would only play the tune you wanted to hear,
and you'd never hear anything else from me, dear,
again?

when you first approached, your eyes glowed.
and i can't quite recall recognizing the hue
like silver-paved streets flooded with gutterwater
or polished steel reflecting a sky of blue.
the fire in them alone would leave me the scoriae
from making that music box machine, simple and true,
but i don't think that you've ever noticed
when your face turns my way they see straight through
me.

you were layin in the bed of a pickup truck late one night.
a friend of ours was drivin' and when we stopped at a light,
i nearly jumped out of my skin when you reached through my window
and squeezed my shoulder so quick and so tight.
and i thought on how the impression would never leave
my body
nor my mind.

in my youth, i resented my father
for asking me to be a pull-the-ring-on-a-string toy,
to say and do as he pleased when he wanted, and that's all.
now i wonder if i wouldn't be prettier as nothing more
than a porcelain doll.

Won't you please play for me?

The ditties I write are but eulogies
Of things I once loved now long gone
Engraved by hardened men's hands
Upon cold jagged granite,
Runes strewn across perfect green manicured lawns.

Marigold daisies
like your eyes pushed to sight
As corpses of dreams regenerate the soil
In their tectonic right.

I suppose this to be the thing
You always understood,
So as Orpheus I'll trek
Through fire- and ice-wood,
Valleys of shadow-sea-
To bring you back with me
Where the light beings frolic
In the wide-spectrum-band -
For mustn't Death and Tragedy
Walk always hand-in-hand?

I heard a story you might like,
It goes as such:

My fiddle player fell [to his death] into a well.
To retrieve him I sought to speak with Lucifer,
And thus traversed again the rings of hell -

The Goblins bade me turn away, laughed in my face
At my plight and did my fate foretell-
And Jareth, so cocky and keen once he was seen,
Gave me a task when pledged I my soul to sell;
He spake, "Travel the depths to the Hall of Mirrors,
And bring back only the perfect shard."
And I suppose his jealousy now arose,
Thusly towards me his heart grew quite hard.
Then, when he saw all I'd done to retrieve the glass,
He scoffed at my completed task, and asked,
"Haven't you figured out yet, dear,
What you've truly chosen to sell?
See the True Love that you seek in that mirror-piece."
And, of course, all I could see was myself.
"Little time," quoth he, "on that green earth have you now,
So if you'd like to hear the fiddle played,
You'd better soon learn how."

He then gave me my heart's violin and bow,
And I returned to the light burdened to know
That never would I behold again
My handsome holy grail of men.

My lovely Mademoiselle de Mort,
You know I love you dearly,
But must you kill all mortal men I love,
To help me see myself more clearly?