© 2003  Brandi Watts

Just One

Just one year later already.

The grass yellow again.

The sky not so blue

as it was last month,

but the same blue

it was then, when

red ants climbed her legs,

black ants climbed her arms.

The ceremony commenced at her middle

just outside her guts.

Scrapping for a battle of bread.

They all died.

She smeared her hand in newspaper circles

around her belly while she patted her

wet itching head.

If she can do two things at once,

why can't everyone.  

Full Sky

The hoary the firmament was the full

dripping onto the mountaintops

over the back to the other side

letting us know it was coming

like smoke blowing backwards.

Rearing to go rare

through the crisp timbers.

Rolling the thick fog en bloc

finger stuck puff clouds

linked like paper dolls

holding hands toe-to-toe

marching over dormancy

to demand our latent attention.

Balancing the Boat

She doesn't want to be a grown-up today, anymore.

She wants to be a flower-fed tiger,

pouncing through a field of tiger lilies,

cannibalizing on her floral counterparts.

She doesn't want to say it's over, anymore.

She wants to be a rainbow trout, today,

floundering through rainbow reflections,

painting new stripes across her ribs.

She doesn't want authority, ever.

She wants to be a mosquito

drawing blood and leaving poison,

but only for one summer.

She tries to shrink

and slip through the window screen,

but only her eyes make it through,

so she watches the clouds pass,

she does her part.

Disintegration

Hold something wild together.

Like a rose in October,

when it's that time of year that you realize

next time there's a solid blue sky,

you better look up and say goodbye

to summer.

She said what she thought from the glowing platform,

a waxing gibbous with a bobcat growl,

and my eyes filled with light while I went with the crowd.

She was in my head and I was in her head

and she called...

Keep it together like a train on the tracks

buried in pine needles with our grandfathers' bones,

below the new buried bones in New York,

above the bone tribes that used to live where we dance.

He's not her president, and he's not mine.

Two birds in the bush beat the brain in his head.

And I think to myself as I wish it wouldn't end,

I could take this show on the road with her and them.

How can all this truth feel so right.

when the truth felt so wrong until now.

I knew they'd been lying to me and to you.

They've been lying to themselves, like a united choir.

But she said it so it stuck like feet in cement.

Hold it together, so the cracks don't show,

so nobody knows it's all going wrong,

until one day it finally falls down smoking

a redwhite&blue retributive flop,

flaccid from years of evangelic rape,

broken.

Tada

Catch

a sneeze

flumped from the audience

snappy and smacky

in my white chuckle glove,

or a grin in my magenta frizz.

Smile though

painted on at least.

Big feet calloused

by cannonball pranks.

Oh to be. To be

a clown.

To make everyone

laughandlaugh

with everything sad

wrapped in rainbow silk

and painted to match

happy memories

so when I tug on my sleeve,

only I'm close enough to see

the flowers are dead.

Freeze

I went to the site

www dot

something bipolar

something dot com

because the tv told me to.

It said, you might think

you're depressed.

Your doctor might think

you're depressed.

But the pills

that make the sky blue

blue skies

only tell half the story.

You need another drug

because sometimes

when you're happy

everything feels right

in a world for a day

and a night, but

you better be ready

because it can't last.

You'll get cut short

caught mid-sentence

half-assed smile

stolen by something real

maybe just a rainstorm.

No sense of surprise.

Keep to the middle.

Beware the happy.

Kill the sad.

Stick to the medium

so you don't get worms.

Crazy Moon

crazy moon

been full five days

no jive

talkin through windows

i say to the glass

how many full moons

in a row

before it crack in half

before this whole world

explode

suddenly tense

disappear from me

parallel lines intersect

past perfect past

doesn't seem important

when even the moon

can't rest

anymore.

All poems are copyrighted property of Brandi Watts.

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