~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Dark Chrysalis

She is tough as nails,
and wants you to know it.
Perfecting that dead eye stare,
an illusion of control
alongside casual vitriol.
She wants to hurt you hard,
bite the hand that greets her.
Inside, fury builds
to forced resistance.
She threatens to sign up
for active duty overseas,
until concerned mother
forces her to desist and cease.
Still, she’s gymnastically ripped
and friend to darkest shadows:
a rowdy band of petty rebels.
But who can resist her wiles?
The gift of rarely shared smile,
hesitation that reveals softer side,
replete with flaws and imperfections.
A hidden vulnerability is
her moody disability,
rocky family history
no one must ever discover.
A harder unpolished diamond
run through madhouse mirror
of perceived victimization
whose facets glimmer oddly
as both protector and bully,
depending on mood, on day,
on individual. And on she goes.
She has the friends,
she has the skills, but still
there is far to go before
emerging from cocoon
of misplaced anger, the violence
within rough edges surrounding
her movement’s absolute grace.

Nom de Guerre

Hours were ours then.
Young love was pretense,
alibi for unaccountable destiny,
guilt-free recklessness.
Blindness is a gift of youth:
a lack of some senses,
a heightening of others.
Our impenetrable tower
was a basement couch,
and we fed each other
the kind of lies we believed.
Experimenting together.
Hot and hazy love gets lazy.
Greatness was heading our way,
a force unstoppable,
inevitable, rapid river
churning like raw emotion,
bringing sudden and
unexpected change.
Anger, misunderstandings,
absence, making hearts
growl harder as perfection
reared its blemished face
and clueless truth emerged.
Fierce battles ensued.
Nothing could save us.
Objects in the rearview mirror
grew smaller over time.
Winds blew in all directions.
The paint flaked into chips
and peeled away, like memories.
Something old and ugly,
in need of repair,
a fresh coat,
something borrowed
that once was me and you,
now scarred and marred and faded
and turned forever blue.

Looking to Old Books for Comfort

When the dominion of accidents
extends a million miles or more,
there is no graceful escape,
no sacred text that offers
sufficient solace. Instead
a rush of anxiety seeps
into the gaps and poisons
the foundational logic of
your optimistic bulwark.
Now they publish and perish.
Don’t stop dreaming
makes little sense
when every night unveils
another restless nightmare,
swimming hard upstream
for frenetic survival.
Becoming your own priority
is one way you’ve arrived
at this juncture where
selfish ignorance meets
the inevitable. You dance
to drown the damning headlines
and your beauty disappears
within a somnolent world
of required isolation,
of mirrors without reflection,
of Kafkaesque change.
You read the same paragraph
over and over again, stuck,
then go back and open
yet another Chapter One