the watch...

listen to me...
the ears i touch are stone.
i cannot speak plainly...
they told me i must not, or...
i will steal your agony
like a petty thief in the night...
it means nothing to me now,
your fears are a microcosm of me,
instead i will take your goodness;
you have so little––it will not be missed...
mine is bereft upon the train
eating the track ahead, behind...

i have turned away from mystic steeples,
they consumed my disbelief...
i have refused the sexless, searing my soul
with impotent eyes
stunned by my ancient sterility...
the animal in me was drowned
in a flour sack on a back burner...
my voiceless birth shrouded
by a woman who refused to let me go...
my nightmares return to the womb
devouring my soul in solitary darkness
awaiting the soft, cushioned recess of the ceaseless dawn...

determined to crush me with scorn...
but, i have stolen what i need and refused all i can,
now, i must feed you, from this cell
where babies cry from hunger,
gnawing accusations with unclipped nails of birth...
i have felt need; i tried to imprison the kindness i stole...
but the bigoted anxiety surrounding me refuses to be stilled...
you must take it from me, on this eve...
or she will crucify me with nails rusty from tears...
i have lain waiting, hoping, for release...
the black sun is so anticlimactic.

you would close the curtain
like the shroud of a corpse, a stranger
you once made love to without the pain of loving...
closer, ever closer, upon your knees to listen to the whispers...
which at long last conquer my soul...

doing without...

when i was born, it was missing..
i doubled my search,
looking, looking for it...
but the sojourn proved fruitless...
as one after another declared me barren...
sending me to end of line...
i tried importing it, borrowing it from
souls who stimulated my ego...

i began to imagine a copy, willing it to life...
it evolved into a wretched abomination - you...
as we smother each other...
for you will not understand,
you with eyes,
you see and hear without question...without forgiveness...
i have no filter from your demands,
no blinder for the alley
of your raw, infected visage of doubt.
you hasten my mad rush into exile...
for my house with three walls
allows no escaping vulnerability...

in my yard is a tree,
gnarled and twisted with age,
it remains hollow; but continues to sport green,
while the ancient tentacles beneath the ground
continue to twist around themselves,
moving ever closer to the foundation...
i view it through the planks facing west into the sun...
i cannot refuse the light although my eyes
grow weary from the constant glare...
until the black circle moves to the center...

the unending wind scatters the past
while the tree manages to stand...
even though an enviable branch falls,
spewing its rotten wood across the lawn...
surely the ancient tree will crumble beneath the weight of winter snow and ice...
only then can the search cease
and i can return emptied of contempt....

Hitching Post...

the click of my heels reverberate

along the marbled corridor,
crisp, deliberate movement along a well-envisioned path
where the ultimate prize promises passion and fulfillment...
the echoes rebound from stone walls
and chiseled arches...
i face myself in room after room
with mirrors in corners
angled to perfection, standing like shadows,
wide mouths askew, inflecting doubt...
the dubious doors all look the same
until one opens wide offering
entrance into a wide arena
tinged with the odor of regret
filled with dead dreams and impotency...
i feel at home here...
where you learn to create life with nothing,
to bend the will against the stereotypical wall
and bounce hope against a broken beam,
here is where you find Man holding the key
to acceptance and normalcy, unyielding inevitability...
you can control all eventualities
except him and his sensual grasp of reality...
when finally he turns away, toward something he feels is real, earnest
never understanding that reality ebbs and flows...
changing with the tide of tomorrow,
never to be rejoined in the next feeble attempt to find happiness...
i am undone, again...
returning to long endless list of chances left to be explored,
caves of indifference upon the brow...

jaallen

mirror mirror on the wall...

her reflection is unforgiven
in reverse
reconstituted with course ground glass...
fixed by ancient eyes
backward glances
at regret
blurred images refracted
in multifaceted mutilations;
staring back blankly
for the last time
before the light is switched off...

jaa
prism gates

Swing on inside....

inside, out––up, down––over and across, swinging like mad, trying
to touch my toe on the inevitable crossbar, feeling the wind scoot past me,
my skirts billowing around me as i laugh, going higher and higher
buoyed by exuberance, hoisted by dreams of glory and escape,
while the trees move ever closer and the ground explodes past,
climbing to the summit where birds fly and clouds rest waiting....

life in the half-light...

in throes of early morning slumber, curled in a dream where
sunrise remains frozen under dyslexic clouds...
he hovers momentarily, indistinctly outlined
where earth and eternity swell in anxious anticipation...
she remains tensed, swallowing hard––waiting for his eyes to descend,
acknowledging her existence...to beckon her forward...
frightened this day she hastens toward him without sanction, soon realizing
he retreats as she advances––never to reach that elusive ombre silhoutte...

defeated, the sun erupts, blistering her flesh
absorbing all the moisture from her dream...
like fragile glass inside a sonic boom he shatters abruptly, scattering to the wind...
in the end she never touches him...
holding onto shards of longing and regret, her eyes open on another
cardboard day where images live and die
on flickering celluloid frames of timid imagination, peeking at the real world
behind blinds and curtains...

god punished this rapacious girl who trailed her men in free verse,
serving words of longing upon a liquid platter...
inside a room where flesh dissolves but rampant desire multipies
to be scaled and parsed into tiny cells chaining her to the east wind...
forever denying the moment he backed away;
understanding the meaning behind her inverted reality...
she remains transfixed sending missives to a lover who ceased to exist once she
invited him into her room without a view...

life in the half-light
by ja allen
prism gates

after life...

i seek sanctuary under poison oak leaves beneath an august moon
as errant whistles and cat-calls rebound
over tremulous planks reminding me i do not belong here
where young women strut self-assured, robust,
stuffed with domestic grain, wild oats and cherry blossoms,
fragrant in the wind, poised on the bow,
anticipating the lure of bigger things...

i tremble thrust in the depths of dreams,
in the cotton tail dust of life whipped and beaten down
by winds assaulting the safe shore...
where i once walked naked and unafraid
in the early morning before loons
finished the last encore of their melancholy melody,
when life was free of lines and shadows...

abandoned by perfectionists, rejected by sensual men,
repelled by those hawking immortality,
i fled instead to cold, deep waters where the bottom remained hidden
as secrets of past truth seekers adhered
like barnacles to the underside of an ever-receding point...
i sucked fear like air through a straw straight into my heart
praying that deadly air bubbles not burst my remaining reason...

numb, in time, i crawled onto sands of shifting succor
within rigidly defined pockets where i sifted the tiny bones
of my unfulfilled promise...
sirens of longing shrieked in the distance begging me to
settle down with old dreams and lost lovers...
reeking of mildewed letters and rancid verse;
i re-licked memories of dried kisses and caked longing...

as i rejected the slow descent into mossy memory, i exchanged vortex
for vital shores, subsisting yet in shadows,
in shallows, recycling life through a pipeline, unseen and untouched...
voices that stimulated wonder brokered breathless anticipation,
but unable to comprehend queries, to sense the edge of spiny worlds,
where lust overpowers love, where ego stifles egression,
i overrode rules of engagement, suffering derision by masters...

flipped onto my back to see if i could right myself...
i wrestled to avoid the manic pull of mainstream recalling its burdensome, untenable posture of surrender...now eternally estranged
i whisper words to madmen, strangers in the dead of night,
listening closely for the next clue to my retooled reality...
massaging the text, the fabric of duplicity that allows my
existence inside a world that passed me by...

after life...
by ja allen
prism gates