Three Poems

The poem that you wrote for me
on my skin--

the thin parchment

the arch and fall of my spine--

every line was your voice

made of shivers, 

made of pauses 

punctuated with breathless syllables...

that mean nothing.

More than love,
more than money
I want to be understood, so first

I listen.

There are 100, 000

words.  I am,

reduced (to my vocabulary)

I am the recluse, 

the girl kept
in the basement, with bloody hands

My voice turns to gravel
and then
to sand.
If I stand

on my head, molten lead pours

out my ears.  I am

I am a man made of gold...

the colossus.  And you...

You are a cruel artist

who creates me with a pen 

and topples me with gossip
and the tip of your finger

lingering like a feather

on the letter Q.

While words are wing-ed things that carry messages and influenza.