Cornered And Devoured

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,

--   from 'Letter in November' by Sylvia Plath




I bloom. No!
Rather...
I ripen and become a deep golden red;
Heavy and sweet.
Testing the branches that have held me for so long.
By a mercy will I fall
And be granted lenitive freedom
Will this imagined, glass-clear curse be lifted
For how long;
Until when;
And
Why now?
Boiled in my skin, near splitting.
Yielding to the sharp edge,
Wilting on the hot oil
Then
Seasoned with promise —
The vines of yesterday no longer around my
Arms and neck.
Now;
Compliant.
Now;
Wild.
Now;
Depraved.

I am
The wanton meal upon your table
Spread me thin,
Poach me.
Or slice me open and
Set me afire.

Whitewash

Matthew 7:20
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.




Tempered heartbeat
Wrong side of the road
Upon a narrow ledge
Favonius has since claimed me

All my bills on black
I don’t care if I lose
Russian roulette; run amok
No longer afraid

Will I last?
Hold me under and see
A play; con; hook.
A Kansas City Shuffle.

Mockery mask
I am the fool no more.
Lessons not easily learned
This is how I still breathe

Tonight.

The Tower

The cunning and the forceful will win me both equally
It is the cocksure, the arrogant, and the false certainty of this that I cannot stand
It burns now, The Tower.
Perhaps we built it knowing we could never really live there.
I am changing, I am willing. I am Proteus.
But you have no surety of who you are at all
I didn’t create you or push you out, in this place
Nor did I posses any trace of leverage to assume you a changed state
And yet you hung it all on me as if I were there, only to take it
A prisoner in our Tower.
Nevermind
There is another now, and — like the pomegranate; broken —
I can finally see all the stars