Truths

There are truths
you always understand.

Love is good.
Pain hurts.

We know these from our first day
in this world.

And we keep relearning
these truths
in different lessons
over and over again
until we die.

I Lie Here Ignoring The Devil

Satan waits
in the corner of
my bedroom
every night,
3 to 4 AM.
Patient
but waiting all the same.

Waiting for me
to acknowledge him,
to cry,
to run,
to beg for mercy,
to fight.
Anything would do,
a reaction.
But I'm patient too.

I won't give him
the satisfaction.
I will not cry out to God or Christ.
I will not move a muscle.
It's likely that he knows this...
Perhaps not.

Perhaps I am better at this game
than he anticipated.

It is a game after all,
I can sense that.

Undressing

Unbuttoning
a dress.

Breasts full
and skin,
oh so white.

A pale sight,
almost an illusion.

If not for the
dark, cascading locks.

And that raspberry pout.

Blood Faucet

The faucet began to drip
blood.

Slow at first.
Then a gushing.

Horrified,
she began to cry.

In a panic,
wiping the thick, dark blood
on her legs,
on the expensive white towels.

The Greedy King

The castle is cold.

The king finds warmth
in the wet centers
of the girl servants.

He summons them
to his grand
royal bedroom.

The young girls
are mute except
for giggles.
Long hair
always braided.

The king steals
their innocence,
their warmth,
all for himself.

Portrait Of The Nephew With The Pigs

The young
freckled boy
stood smiling
among his
uncle's pigs.

Unaware that
the evening before,
they'd devoured
the entire
corpse
of a man.

A man
he'd known.

Red Wine Stains

Setting her wine glass
down too hard.
The glass sounded a thud.

Thick red nectar
sloshed over the sides,
spilling out onto the table.

A slow wave.

Briny and Alive

We sit in the sand and seaside grass
on a scratchy old blanket.

A calm day but the skies are grey,
gloomy in a comforting, familiar way.

Our century old beach house
is a beacon in the distance.
Warm with yellow light.

The Oregon coastline is empty.
We eat turkey sandwiches
with the dog wandering near.

We're alone and the salty air
clings to my lungs
as I breathe deeply.
Briny and alive.

I want to carry a fragment
of this ocean,
this beach,
this day
in me.

Along The Dark Road

The radio stations
preach
about Jesus
and sing
in foreign languages.

Warm and driving
in the
inky night.

We are two
lone travelers
in the
American West.

The Phantom Who Haunts Me

The phantom who haunts me
is a gentleman.

He disappears
when I undress.

He stops pacing and shuffling about
when I slip under the covers
to sleep.

I feel safe
as he stands guard
against any horrors
of the midnight hours.

The phantom who haunts me
is but a hazy photograph, of sorts.
A portrait of a man once alive.
But a gentleman till the end.

I suspect he has grown
quite fond of me.
Though I have no proof
but his seemingly courteous ways.

The phantom who haunts me
gets most excited at dusk,
when the watercolor sky blurs together
through my window and
his edges become much more defined,
if only for a moment.

I Could Swear It Was 1966...

Dark rum
and vibrant
green mint leaves.

Sucking down
a pretty cocktail
in my patterned dress.

You could confuse
the decades
on a night like this.