Category: Season 7

Posted on

Episode 134 – Potential

Most of us
are one,
even if not
“the one.”

Women bound
for great things.

Maybe 

we should all 
don capes
so the special
is visible.
But then,

isn’t that such 
a man thing to do?
A cape
to announce
him hero,

while women battle 
uncaped and 
unheralded, yet 
no less heroic.

* * *

Everyone dies. Our one truth.

Walking through the graveyard,
stake in hand, we learn lessons
of vampires, of lovers,
hands that kill, hands that cool 
our skin when fevered.

Death is an enemy who sheds his skin
and lies with you, then leaves you 
on your own to raise his evil spawn.

Posted on

Episode 133 – Showtime

in the end
they’re dust
same as all those
we’ve slayed before

* * *

Reality in chains.

The girl, just a dream.
But she will come,
not leave him
to a life of torture.

(Finger to lip,
dream girl disagrees.)

Almost beaten,
he doesn’t recognize.
Love, lover, kindred,
come to rescue.
The torture was 
thinking she wouldn’t.

Shoulder, he leans.
Strong together.
Not just any girl.
Not just a dream.

This he knows
if nothing else.

Posted on

Episode 132 – Bring on the Night

Toying with him, 
like the dolls 
who used to play 
her children.
Lifting her skirt,
she tries to 
draw him inside.

Fingers like birds 
fly away, arms 
dance in the air.

She pouts. 

Feelings hurt 
when not believed,
she plays her 
torture game
until he’s bloody.

* * *

darkness and 
silence ‘til 
the monster appears 

spilling our secrets 
like your seed
on the ground

Posted on

Episode 131 – Never Leave Me

You don’t know me,
she yells.
You don’t even know yourself.

The light in your eyes 
is new.
Never there before, 
in the bloody days.

* * *

She wipes the pain
from the corners 
of his mouth,
remembers a time 
when they kissed.

She sees the new man,
the one who sacrificed.
She hated him once,
but now believes
he can be good.

He hurls his faults
at her like weapons,
begs her to end him.
But he’s not the enemy. 

He’s been losing time.
Waking up in strange places.
Hating the face staring back
from the mirror.

She doesn’t hate herself,
not anymore.
She may not love this man,
but she believes in him.
In what he’s fought for.
In how he’s changed.
In his ability to do good.

And that may be enough.

Posted on

Episode 130 – Sleeper

Though my heart no longer beats,
it still aches, the past sour 
like blood in my mouth.
I don’t want to remember,
but that song keeps taking me back.

Strolling the night, 
smoking cigarettes in bars,
I seek truth.
When truth remains elusive,
I take out my flask.

One girl follows to see if I’m good,
but I’m more than a little bad.
That gets me pretty far most nights.
She likes me better when I sin.
They all like me better.
But sin no longer satisfies.

Filled with sorrow, yet no way to repair,
I bare my chest and ask to die.
She refuses. In dying, she says,
the good disappears with the bad.
She knows both. In me, in the world,
and certainly in herself.

The truth bleeds and eats away at my heart,
making me remember so many lives taken.
That song makes me remember
the pain I struggle to forget.

* * *

Lies.
The ones who love us tell them.
Lies.
Lies to lay us down.
Lies to wake us up again.
Convincing us that we’re to blame.

But they’re not real.
The words, the lovers,
both mainly in our heads.

The pain?  That’s real.
The truth?  Lies.

Posted on

Episode 129 – Conversations With Dead People

Dancing
the bossa nova
in the kitchen,
studying
in the library,
she comes to me,
the one who died,
the poet.

Not my love,
but one who says
she knows my love
now that she’s 
left this world.
It is her voice 
I hear singing 
in my ear
late at night.

Darkness blows 
through the door,
knocks out lights.
Only black and 
white remains.

Are you here?
She knocks.
Are you okay?
She’s not.

I smash the radio,
but it keeps playing.
I smash the microwave,
but it explodes.
I cut my feet on the glass
and she speaks to me.

Her voice is clear,
then nothing.
My heart 
an ancient hole
she cries into.

I feel her again,
the pain larger
than a limb lost.
Not phantom pain,
but real,
penetrating pain.

All sounds return.
Her voice,
the bossa nova.
She stands before me
in white,
a goddess
to my troubled life
after all the storms,
the hurricanes 
that destroyed me.

But it was not
my love,
the poet,
my mother.
The dead are dead.

And I am on my own.

Posted on

Episode 128 – Him

There was a guy.
I saw him once 
and fell in love.

I was young,
but not so young
I didn’t know.

I pushed a guy
down the stairs for him.
He could’ve died,

but he didn’t,
and the other guy
asked me out,

cuz he thought 
it was cool 
that I took up for him.

I danced with him,
swaying hips, bare belly.
He said I was beautiful.

My sister
called me a slut
and I ran away.

His former girlfriend
called me a slut
and I grabbed her 

by the hair.
We rolled around 
on the ground.

My sister started 
to tell the guy off,
but caught his scent

and started sniffing him too.
There was something
about the guy,

a smell, a spell
something that made
all the girls go limp.

My sister told lies
to keep me away
while she swooped in

and taught him math.
You know, one plus one
and all that.

I saw them
in a geometric position
and ran away.

Our friends say 
it’s not love,
but magic.

We only know
we’d give our lives
for this boy,

or take someone’s
if they thought to 
wrong him.

My sister took 
a rocket launcher
to high school

to put a hole 
in the principal
in his name.

I lay down
on the railroad tracks
to express my devotion.

My sister saved me 
from the train 
because she still loved me too.

And two friends 
nabbed the jacket 
that gave the boy his power, 

as love fell away
just like it never was.
I felt a fool, but

my sister reminded me
that one day I’ll be 
a fool for real love.

Posted on

Episode 127 – Selfless

Stab me in the chest
and I’ll survive
because that’s what I do.

Don’t try to save me.
I’m through with anger,
ready to sacrifice. 

Sometimes there’s no cure
for the harm between us.
She turns to vengeance.
He turns to hope.

Still in love.
Still devastated by love.

There’s no cure.
Maybe nothing
left to cure.

For the first time
she knows she 
must be alone.

Walk away,
bleeding.
Don’t follow.

Finally, he turns.
She moves on.
The only way it can go.

Posted on

Episode 126 – Help

On Friday, I’ll die.
Before prom.
Before my poems are published 
or even read.
Don’t know how or why,
but I do know when.
On Friday, I’ll die.

I don’t want to leave life.
I want to graduate,
hike across the country,
become an aunt.
I want to dance to something
loud and drummy.
I want my best friend 
to be more.
Much more.

But it won’t happen,
because on Friday, I’ll die.
Don’t know how.
Don’t know why.
No one believes me, but I know.

In my bed, I write.
In my bed, I say goodbye.
In my bed, I feel safe.

But come Friday, 
I’ll die.

* * *

Seeing her for the first time
in the ground,
name etched in stone above,
makes me feel small.

Tracing the letters of her name
with my fingers
spells out the emptiness
of my life without her.

Posted on

Episode 125 – Same Time, Same Place

the middle of a couch 
seems miles from each end
when only one body
depresses its softness 

*   *   *

Remember how you left her
on the floor, 
dead,
blood on your face,
already seeking revenge?

No one come to greet 
the killer in me.
What would they say, 
Hi, thanks for not being evil?

My sin is deep
and no one wants me,
despite attempts
to reconcile.

Give me to the enemy
to satisfy my debts.
Let him draw the map 
of death upon my belly.

Melodramatic much?
Get over yourself.
You’re hurt, not alone.

Friends have forgiving hearts.
Friends don’t leave.
They’re here, just behind the curtain.

If healing is possible, you’ll do it together.