Cyntax

Gloria Patri

Is there somewhere we can talk?
About life and the universe
the big stuff I mean
hand over your heart
red, white and blue
and all that—
walk over my grave
spit in his eye sort of
chit-chat. 

Dandelions

Silver spoons
tarnish an already
smart mouth
but Simon says
smarmy is your
color.

Shut the Damn Door

You’ll let them in, that’s what—
the despair and agony
of a thousand splendid sun-ups.

The one thing they don’t tell you
all through childhood
is how they’ll break you down, 
and plane you out, and 
plank you up like plywood. 

Many Hands

I want to leave
and be left
and start fires
and bring rainstorms
that flood the rooftops 
of your merry days
and wet my wistful nights 
on dusty porch steps.

No more pretend,
let’s build this tragedy
upwards.

A Still Life Play in Four Short Acts

A consequence of time:
tap dancing on a linoleum floor
and using hot sauce as a weapon.

A consequence of trust:
wearing a gypsy man’s jacket,
throwing over the keys to the car.

A consequence of courage:
crying into scrambled eggs,
raging at a red light.

A consequence of love:
two deaths, long after
one song in the mountains,
one dance in the city. 

Play with the scenery

I’ve been praying, says Eliza
as she rises from the sun-drenched steps,
smoothing all those wrinkles from her skirt
with unlined hands,
both white and trembling.

Then you’re a fool, says Jonathan
coming up the walkway, stepping
loudly from one cobblestone to another,
always in a hurry,
ignoring the morning bloom of
red and violet summer flowers
framing the lawn like the the gilded edges
of any Victorian portrait.

Did you have something to say?

Listen, there’s nothing to it
and let’s not get into this again
having been down one road too many
and too many roads too short
in temper, I mean, like a fuse
on dynamite that’s set and ready
or chutes and ladders laid down
         u n  st e   a dy 
against the fire-painted siding
of a burning house. 

Damp and Heavy

Many hands on deck,
scrubbing the snow
white flanks of a long
buried battalion in
the prickly ash, knelt with
one knee bent on moss
dew-soaked straight through.

Book of Judith

This is no book of happy endings.  All
unresolved cliffhangers and bitter diatribes.
Jonathan Swift has nothing on me and as
one generation passes, one generation rises.
Always unsteady, they run headlong to death and
everything after.

Here I stand, daughter of the king of the world,
speechless, head in my hands.
His head in my hands. 

There are only so many mountain songs,
only so many honeyed words.  We’ve used them up,
the air is stale with milk curdling humidity,
yellow-white algae down deep in our lungs 
and we choke on every swallow.

The ocean recedes, the sun (the holy ghost)
conspires against us.  I can only play
pretend
for so long and then
forgetting myself, stumble on a word or two and
incite a rage that burns us up like wildfire. 

Asunder

Rest assured in your resting
green leaves be your blessing
met a man in the forest
clad black and poor dressing
gather sins in a basket
lined with milkweed and thistles
purple aster has bloomed thin
in overgrown hedges
too high to climb over, too
low in your spirits, drank wine
without dinner and spit at the master
now running from lawmen
the highway is calling
his gnarled hands twisted
with friends that have fallen.