These did NOT want to come out in one piece.

Some days poetry falls out of my head and onto the page easily.  It pops right out with a boink and bounces around, easy, bright, compact.  Other days it's like picking at a splinter deep under my skin.  I can see it, I know what it is made of, but I just can't seem to get a grip on the end.  I can't get under it as it moves away from me, dodges me to the left and right, breaks up into pieces.  Eventually after tearing up the area with a needle or another handy sharp object, it is free and I can really marvel at it.  I am amazed something so small can come from such a torn up mess.  

Here is today's installment, a few smallish poetry splinters from the shredded skin of my brain.


(snake oil)
your whispered words are an eel or snake,
coiled around my arm for show,
sliding up slow and smooth
up my neck, satin ribbon
pouring into my ear
and there they disappear.

2/2/2013 sea

Piñata

Another doctor, another form.  Same health history.

Different nurse, same baffled look as she reads the quickly written answers to such questions as

List all accidents

List all surgeries

List any history of the following: (a,b,c,d on down the alphabet of tangible poisons and questionable decisions, helpful aids in the alleviation of unwanted Tuesdays or entire years or the memory of CENSORED)

list - previous addresses?  marital status?  number of pregnancies?  religion?

family history of heart disease?

Logic indicates, usually, most solid objects hit often and/or hard enough with

 enough force will break.

A Piñata, for tedious further illustration, is brightly colored and attracts attention.

Rounded shapes and exaggerated features, comical, too fake to take seriously, to easy to hang 

up in front of all of your friends and hit with a stick.

If you hit a (girl) enough times from enough angles, do you then collect the colorful candy and prizes inside?

I laugh as I fill out the form, knowing that look, that weird look when I tell them that one is only really dead if they stay dead, that look when I check too many boxes for a live person who can still hold a pen.

9/27/12 sea