Don't Look Back

Deconstruct the moment when alarm blares you awake

His hands move past the hour, bedside tables quake

Wheels are churning steady as the neighbors try to sleep

Red flag signals danger--it’s getting hard to breathe

Longing, forgetting, deny yourself the peace of mind, to escape his kind

As the end approaches and it’s time to make your move, follow truth

Don’t look back

When his tantrums shake the air, you quiver in the wake

Of flimsy accusations that seek to dominate

Shattered mugs of coffee, a gear shift in your back

Your bruises feel his eyes on you, he cannot take them back

Longing, forgetting, deny yourself the peace of mind, to escape his kind

As the end approaches and it’s time to make your move, follow truth

Don’t look back

Landlord’s getting worried, ma’am is everything okay

Your words diffuse the circumstance as humor comes to play

Broken lamps and brooms are trashed, the blood is scrubbed away

Your walls beholding secrets through holes his fists have made

Longing, forgetting, deny yourself the peace of mind, to escape his kind

As the end approaches and it’s time to make your move, follow truth

Don’t look back

In dreams you stand empowered behind the kitchen chair

Fronting for the baby’s sake, you secretly prepare

Ghost wounds will remind you of your mortality

They say the highest danger is the moment that you leave

Longing, forgetting, deny yourself the peace of mind, to escape his kind

As the end approaches and it’s time to make your move, follow truth

Don’t look back

Substitute Cafe

The wind brings in the autumn leaves, to fill the entryway

Girl behind the apron, trying to keep the ghosts at bay

Sweeping in the much-too-early sunshine

Her perfumed hair is sparkling like after-dinner wine

Cafe’s telltale art is all angles, nothing real

Hung with ample pride, dramatic to conceal

Wilted lashes from the party night before

Where apron girl looked again for something more

Than this substitute cafe

Where they all try to score, with the substitution girl

Like a temporary break

From the flavor of their mate, the doldrums of their fate

And she gives herself away

At the substitute cafe

Buried in a strong latte, touched by cardamom

Stifled in a baked souffle, comparable to none

She serves up all the finest, to anyone who asks

Smiling over bags of beans, she’s focused on the task

Silver-haired philosophers and their beatnik gals

Cross their legs and beckon with strings of tiny bells

This cafe used to have some charm, but now it signals debt

Innuendos lead to dates the girl would rather get

Than this substitute cafe

Where they all try to score, with the substitution girl

Like a temporary break

From the flavor of their mate, the doldrums of their fate

And she gives herself away

At the substitute cafe

Your Toxicity

Underneath the water, feel the burn again. Trapped against the tension, slowly giving in.

Stern of the ship, hollowed by time. Melting in loss.

Whisper finned conclusions, weaving undertow. 

Just above the sea floor, leagues beneath the flow

Oil of dismay, island of waste. Your toxicity.

Magnetic surface, transparent now. Polluted mindscape tainting your name.

Whatever came of all the dirt you said you had washed from your shores?

Nourishing my pores with pressurized refrain. Catch the story’s rising, surfacing again.

Arms open wide, hands greet the face of horizon’s dignity.

Feet are pointed elsewhere, mind is swiveling. Starfish adoration, wise anemone.

Skimming unseen, once more astride vaporal gravity.

Magnetic surface, transparent now. Polluted mindscape tainting your name.

Whatever came of all the dirt you said you had washed from your shores?