48/365: demon - Prius

commuting in by myself this morning,
I was startled to look into the opposing lane
and see my demon
driving the other way
in a shiny new Prius

her round face
and knuckle mouth fixed
on the road ahead.

I couldn't help but rubberneck
as she moved slowly along, eyes focused
on some other target.

what is this

to be filled with longing
for recognition
from a thing which sucks life from you,
like lips on your cracked femur,
tongue lapping
and slurping.

my cell phone rings as I turn into the parking lot -
"Did you see me?  Wasn't I good?" she slickers.
"I was totally like 'I don't see you?'
and you were totally like
'I hate you - I think - no wait...'
LOL!"

The Prius was red.

47/365: demon - deserts

"I hope you get what you deserve", I told my demon this morning.

We were carpooling together.

"Only people who deserve something terrible say things like that," she replied, sipping coffee from her skull-travel mug.

The mug looked at me, one lidless flesh eye still in place.

"Oh, drop me here," she added suddenly, when we passed a cop who had some tatted out, fat, truck-driving skinhead pulled over.  "I have work to do."

45/365: driving to work (published in Vine Leaves)

on the street where the grass grows tall

next to the wooden fences that have drank
the sun's whiskey heat too many days

I see an old man walking

as scarecrows walk in dreams:
his body rail tall and rail thin,
he leans on a drug store cane -
an adjustable aluminum tube with a grey handle
like a dusty Christmas decoration.

this is a sound bite of a life
out of context.

just as I pass him, he pauses in the path
using the stopper foot of the cane
to sweep up and aside
a curled page of newspaper.
it does not belong on the path
of the sidewalk-less shoulder.
this is a statement he wishes to make.

42/365: I used to sing

I used to sing
I tell them -

twice.

once
when I was young
for quartets, and concerts
with parts
and cryptic figures on a page

once
when not so much older
for long marches
feeling the rhythm in my feet and hands -
sweat in heat or
hand clapping for cold.

now there are songs

(this is my song
I find myself saying)
I sing myself,
but I have fewer illusions
that
what I assume you shall assume.

41/365: to not know

so this
is what it is to be old

really -

to know you are telling stories
to your children
but not to know if they think
"quaint"

when the wind from their lips makes a sound like
"that's so cool".

40/365: is anyone else's demon a joyce fan

my demon woke me last night
to talk about The Dubliners.

her voice is Marylin Monroe breathy -
except for the occasional squeak -
but this sound is the accumulation
of all the midwives smothering infants
for the crime of being born girls
     at that moment.

"so," she says
"I'm just all ambivalent about this epiphany thing"

and she has perfect teeth inside a kewpie-doll mouth.
this is a mouth that does not stretch like a snake.
she takes small bites, a knuckle or toe at a time.
cracking now a child's femur
and up-ending it like a pixie stick
to suck the marrow
she waits for my reply.

she has hair which is the color of fire and blood
and is also blood
and is also fire.
she is covered in black feathers -
a woman-bird,
though sometimes the dark edges blur
and she wears a preacher's robes.

her tail is a stub, like a docked boxer
or an above the elbow amputation.
she has spoken of the unfairness of life -
all the popular demons have long, spiked tails -
some even have poison stingers.
this so I don't become too self-pitying and self-righteous.

"The exquisite moment
when self-deception is ripped away
and the soul's arrogance laid naked -
you just can't have too few of those.
But all this implied change afterwards -
that's so disappointing.
What's a girl to do?"

39/365: evening gods (published in Vine Leaves)

there are evenings
     when I look out across the stockade fences
     dissecting my subdivision's backyards and
the moon meets the street lamps
     and the ambient glow of the city
     not so far away
that I can almost transform
      contractor grade siding
      into white stucco walls

and you will have to forgive me, my friend
     for saying that I am in Greece
     and not some tract housing
     no one will want to remember in 50 years,
     let alone a millennium or two.

pass me the ouzo,
the gods are about tonight -
     do you not see Hermes slouching there
     by the mailboxes?
     (he's the one with the skate board).
     the one with the Mad Dog 20/20 -
     that's Dionysus, of course.

if you can't see them just yet,
sit and wait awhile -
    they aren't going anywhere

unlike us.

36/365: ice does not bend

ice does not bend.
it is hard,
until it is not.

this is a way of being.
hard,
and then flowing.

you cannot bend,
you who are made of ice.

and then you are gone,
soaked up
in the sand -
not more than a smudge.