An Ekphrastic Visit, Enlightening

“I paint myself because I am so often alone” –Frida Kahlo

Dissipated, they walked to bars, and I stayed outside

amongst the Gorilla Women—a daunting pilgrim, I

stepped delicately up the marble steps—

echoing 17th century oil-covered names

of the past. And when I reached you, you were hung

like a damned witch of 1692—framed in Satan's glory.

I stepped back, alone, bewildered, enthralled—

and closed my eyes to imagine your frail limbed

brush strokes emerging from your casted body,

caged to a bed. I heard your voice speaking

to Trotsky like Joseph Stalin screaming amongst

the bourgeois—lost and alone within the crowd—

Marx's socialist nightmare. I inched slowly toward you,

examining your monotone face, brow. I became your

pain for a brief instant—mind entangled with brush

strokes and brain cells merging with oil-painted thoughts

sliding down each stroke like black plagued bodies in pits—

families committing suicide and plunging into the pit.

My thoughts groaned amongst them, Goddess of Affliction.

As I turned from you, the other paintings cowered like

living people hung in Hogwarts—framed in Rowling’s glory,

but you remained monotone, mono-browed,

and alive with life even after your own death.

“I hope the exit is joyful—I hope to never return.” –Frida Kahlo

being published in Bewildering Stories

A Memory Within a Memory

I carry the wooden dollhouse with both hands

and place it on the white, dulled vanity—

reminds me of my own vanity.

Crinkled paper like lost time surrounds

each tiny wooden piece of furniture.

I unwrap my lost time—

and place each piece in its Victorian-styled

room—a house within a house within a planet—

the irony of it all.

You bought me this house within a house

when I was eight—like economic debt, we

accumulated small furniture weekly.

You took me and smiled all along.

We were both Plato's children swimming

downstream in his Republic—

both believers.

When Plato took you, I begged for your smile—

selfish child. You were my father, my own Plato.

Maybe you still live in this dollhouse within

my house, this small world we created—

the irony of it all.

Maybe Plato had a Plato—infinite madness.

I sit on the floor cross-legged in front

of the dominant house within a house,

and I force my Babushka mind to stop.

I miss the dead, and I weep, Bukowski, I weep.

being published in Bewildering Stories

The Trinity Triangle

Patiently, I sit writing, giving myself a reason to be—

A Picasso, I am a replica of the surrealist mind—

always lost in cubism.

I peer through hexagons and pentagons in the world—

consumed by consumer goods.

The people I see are trapped in a cube of hypocrisy—

no escape,

hands on all sides—

New articles are posted on each wall, ceiling, floor—

stock quotes scroll along

the walls like a floral border.

The people and I are both trapped—all structured

geometric patterns—

patterns staring at patterns.

Bad Techno Music on a Sunday

“‘She wants,’ said Jay Cee wittily, ‘to be everything.’

I said I want to be a poet.” –The Bell Jar

Langston said not to let them dry up like

raisins in the sun—

deferred objectives.

I light the campfire of words and watch

them burn like martyrs

swallowed up between

stanzas—

a chutes and ladders maze.

I so often find my way out of that puzzle,

that mirror maze of words.

Secretly, I wish to pitch a tent and stay for

that rave they call eternity.