Living the Dream

Trees do not bear easily, when exposed
roots roiling just beneath surface
of sifting dry spell of days or decades

heart is quick to startle and collapse or curl
when offered to air or pain that infests it

there is no nursing for this but clumps of caring:
patches of time and layers of loving stitching
sod and skin to mend the rend of relinquished hold

knotty and gnarled, this gritty grasp, on very life itself
for what love gives it can simply grab away
with an insignificant infraction or detraction
perceived or purposely led astray

ask me, if you would know, needs needing nurture
if you would husband this unhealthy heart
for if you fail to guess, or grab insight, evidenced
by sharp shoulder and reluctance to rise
I shall not give you shelter nor surpass
my simple presence, surface-soiled

Tags: Poems, Skin Talk by Shewolf
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A grounded butterfly, a wing hung useless,
fluttering one way, like a broken child
seized by a multitude of mad muscles
or a man, stumbling to the left
out of weakness of an artery.

A tree, with less limbs on one side,
a puckered scar like half a mastectomy
spiraling back in on itself, nippleless
and unable to regenerate another.
Beauty in a bipolar stance, letting light
bake and bubble skin of it, is this wound.

Sad-eyed dogs, waiting for saving
or a sudden syringe, panting
on the bars of a world grown small.
No wild fields to run.  No pack
of wolves to gain entrance to.
A lone canine, curving against rusted grill.

I’d save you if I could, but I am spiraling
through broken branches, waiting an innocent
redemption of my own.

Tags: Poems, Skin Talk by Shewolf
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In this life
time
where we do not speak
of leaving,
longing,
or anything stronger
than intellectualized  instructions,
there was a Once
upon whispered breath
that was two, three times
a lady’s longing
to be inhaled
as romance
but became
much less.
Pull of a string
became the dirge
of a fiddle
depending on the night
sky that danced,
speechlessly,
while life got in the way.
My weeping.
Your way.

Tags: Poems, Skin Talk by Shewolf
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My sun round brown face
Begging bones to be good
Yet they click against the heat waves
and sand shifts in between the knuckles.

I am too old to tan

And yet

I am a foolish fitful woman
Who prays with my palms cupped
With sunshine and my hair ballets
In the wind of your answer.

Tags: Poems, Skin Talk by Shewolf
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If you choose, child, your voice can come
directly from the whitened birch
standing guard against the infringement
on familiar territory,

for example, you take little room
with your talking leaves,
humming prayers high above the shadows
of the rattling cones.

If you choose, child, you can be shushing grass
brave men fall upon to cast a statement
in your caress, to hold a hammered heart
until the time for dust to dust

for example, you can be the mark of peace
on the battlefields as you turn inside out
to push red flowers from tendered earth.

If you choose, child, you can be rain,
striking the dry tongue of  minions
waiting, open-mouthed to catch a drop
of your wisdom to hold them for a dry spell

for example, you can wrestle words from writings
and go out onto the earth to scatter
bits of torn testaments to take hold
in hardened hearts so them can be softened.

If you choose, child, you can be the wind
sighing through the branches
and measuring the bluff, carving care
in furrowed browed of stone

for example, it is not the monuments
but the matter of all you touch
and in the manner in which you reach them
that turns them into prophets.

If you choose, child, your discourse
like lamp to light post, what halos
are there reflect the skylights
and something further and higher in the Universe

for example, the shadow speaks to the abyss
green speaks to the white bark
your voice, ringing through the cacophony
is small enough to whisper in any ear.

Tags: Poems, Skin Talk by Shewolf
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