Eileen Malone
LOST LOT OF US
All of us, those who betrayed us
and those we betrayed
we long for a pale fleshed-in form
iced and pre-dawn, a unicorn
jewel-eyed and prancing quietly
on mother-of-pearl hooves
but we get a gray swayback nag
stamping under priest, oracle, opiate
snorting snot bubbles, whinnying
we present eyes and throats
to oncoming chipped, yellowed horns
offer parting lips, do it, we plead
delirious, we beg, do it
our inability to forgive, to love
that which does not love us back
sucks us up into hot winded cyclones
blows us into an iodine smeared netherland
of an anesthetized more of us
the whole marshmallowy
lost lot of us
we fight to rise above each other’s heat
fevered, yearning, madly sniffing snow
aching for that which we are damned
to suffer and consecrated to honor
the cold silvered touch
of the crystal, alkaloid beast
--the shock.
NEWLY DIVORCED
Sometimes there is a man
untypecast, sleeping curled beside her
before he leaves, she will learn him
the humiliated waiter, the swamper
the fired bowling alley bartender
find herself still wanting
wonder if she doesn’t hate him yet
how soon will she
however strangely she exists
fantasies breeding and rebreeding
she carries on, playing the woman
sadly, too young to be seasoned
too divorced to be equal.
COCKROACHES
In the sudden kitchen light
they rear and squirm into a bank
of click-clacking maggots
under my god-powered stretched arm
the projection of my human shadow
they divide muddily as a red sea
of squashed plum flesh
it is not the roaches
honestly being what they are
makes me smash them
into clotted pools
it is how they hang together
continuing to evolve
in disgustingly small, slow changes
no matter how they bite and kick
they hang together
becoming civilized, perhaps more than we
even, it may be said, domesticated
my opinion sickens my soul
reams it out until it creaks as a crust
as they scurry, scatter and escape
to feed and breed
it is my fear of their babies taking over
gets me in a killing frenzy
of gas and chemical biological warfare
they are too many, everywhere, everywhere
for too long, I know no other way to see them
God help me, help us all, I know no other way.
Eileen Malone reads and/or writes poetry every day in a coastal, foggy, necropolis where San Francisco buries its dead . She loves cemeteries and what local weather forecasters refer to as incoming marine layers. She's widely published and the list of where is here: www.EileenMalone.us.
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