Free Verse
Windup Doll
Victoria felt a
string tug on her eyelids
time to get up
another day.
Then a string pulled her to work
where she sat in a cubicle
and dreamed a dream
so deep and wild she
could never tell another
button eyed soul.
It was the same every day
yet different each night
the longer she dreamed the dream
and felt its reality take over
her mind
a mind purged as it was
of all hope and faith.
In the dream
a death in the family brought her
to the place where angels stare
atop tombs and crypts
and the grass conceals
a world just below where
crystal balls could never see.
Here is where the dream overlapped itself
bent the silver laws of dream physics
bringing a gentle rain over the burial in
a dark foreboding and lovely slate sky
but the final nail in the coffin was
the bell tolling thirteen
just as a young man said, "excuse me,
have we met before
in some other life?"
She looked up to see
for the first time the man
who had followed her through time.
She knew he was there for her
she knew he was a hierophant
filled with the shadows
she had been missing all these years.
He dripped spells from his fingers
and alchemy poured from his eyes
blue as the night sky when the moon
is quivering in shame at being so naked
and alone.
Victoria could not look away
never saw the dozen roses flung
onto the coffin before the dirt
was tossed onto the finely carven lid
a final resting place a perfect place
to fall in love when least expecting it
the last stop before memories died
hard against the wall of eternal night
but she did not care—she
had seen
his eyes she had seen his face his hands
his satyr's glance as he had swept her
up and down and set her on fire.
They rubbed shoulders as the minister
droned on into the rain
and later rubbed shoulders again
on her four poster bed draped in sinister
black lace and evil red tapestries
that reflected the universe back
onto the bed where eternity fought
a pitched battle against the force
of the moment we are constantly in
and this time the moment won.
But soon the strings were pulling him away
he was not strong enough to resist
and there was nothing she could do
to stop it from happening.
What was this cruel trick
this sick joke of the universe
that made her a puppet with a mask
jerking along a predetermined path
laid out by some unknown force
so even though she rebelled she accepted
her fate her state the rancid food on her plate.
Somewhere high above and clean
out of sight lurked the lord of decadence
the one who pulled Victoria's strings and made
her dance and twirl to some nameless
soundless tune playing on a radio
with a broken plug and no wall socket nearby.
Was this all a dream or was this real
could this love she felt be rolled like a wheel
spun out on the curves and smoking
turning ever turning the way the moon
raced around the earth every 28 days
in that strange Nostradamus like precision.
Wandering her castle mourned and melancholy
squandering her angels now horned and
oh so ready and eager to remind her that
she was the little mechanical dolly
so given to emotions and female folly
and to think that perhaps the key in her back
might one day stop turning leaving her quiet
and still and wishing she had not been so hasty
to dismiss a life drab and dull and pale since he left
because even that was a life after all.
It was strange indeed how beauty never dies
but then neither does pain or love or any
of the other gifts of the gods given to us mortals
way down on all fours crawling with the animals
on the bruised and battered earth
bumping into each other now and then
ships in the night blown off course
and winding up shipwrecked and shattered
on the rocks soon to be washed up on the
midnight sand a pebble in the eye of the gods
a leaf in a storm at fates uneven mercy
or even a plaything of heaven batted about
by the angels at play who have no idea that
the soul they are tossing around like a ball
is so much more so very much more
than merely a flawed and fragile nameless little
windup doll.
Satyr's Dance
Hailing from a time
before
she was a windup doll
back when the sun rose and set
more predictable than a clock
when the wheat was harvested
and bundled in the fields
long before winter arrived
in silvery white gloves of steel.
She bore the ancient mark of sorrow
on a tiny frayed piece of her soul
that she had not even seen in years
let alone thought about because you see
she had no time for tears.
She recalled the dragons lifting off
from a high cliff over her town
the leathery wings beating back
oceans of warm air as they came
bringing the hot flame that seared
her arm forevermore with a jagged
angry welt that wept in the night
when she could not.
When they departed nothing remained
nothing moved or breathed except
the little girl who would some day
become a windup doll in a shop window
waiting for a kiss to bring her to life
and perhaps the future life she had
always dreamed of in
mannequin like movements across
a stained sky streaked and moist with
the inky fog of love when
its gone never to return.
The dragon's mark burned when
a change was coming and she knew
pain when she felt it lord
have mercy this one hurt like hellfire.
She had been sent to a convent as a young girl
taught to fear the devil and love god
and no one else no matter how much
a saint they really were it must be an illusion
a trick of el diablo and his forked tongue
silver and schooled in all the ways a woman
likes to be caressed after midnight.
She was pious and prudent
an apt and honest student
of god and his ways but surely
there was something else some other
way some memory now forgotten that
would help her remember who
she was eventually going to be.
Her breasts grew full and her hips
were wide and longed to move to
some drum some thumping beating
hum of the hidden places
the underworld where naked things
leapt and shook in primal ecstasy
much more immediate than any
prayer to heaven ever could be.
She felt the seasons equinox come and go
she saw the leaves fall and the pumpkins grow
she heard the lord of the forest call to her
each night the bonfires lit the groves
beyond the high convent walls and strange
scents filled the air below her turret room
far above any beast that crawled and snarled.
Soon she had a leafy altar
built from little forays into the verdant forest
hidden behind her golden chalice
candle and cross all resting on a bible worn
and well used but never quite believed
it did not satisfy it never relieved
the yearning in her little soul for something
other than immaculately conceived.
One night as the nuns all slept and dreamed
of jesus kissing toes and ankles and knees
and oh would you please fill me
with your holy ghost it's all right
it's just a dream come fill me up
to the brim tonight o disciple of god
the missionary position is yours
to discover o brave and gallant knight.
So she crept out of the gate and disappeared
into the trees a dark wraith a shell, a shadow
moving with purpose opposite to the sermon
that had echoed off the consecrated walls
mere hours earlier for evensong.
Gothic gnarled trees greeted her
with open branches and thick trunks
eager to serve her darkest desires, her
most outlandish whim, her girlish ways
torn free of the crown of thorns
shorn of frowns and the downward glance.
In a deep clearing she saw a figure, arresting
and regal, standing before a raging fire
of blue flames and white smoke,
eyes of fire that undressed her and made
her kneel and offer up her forked tongue kiss—
no chastity or sacrifice could ever match this,
no hellfire or damnation could keep her
chained to a false prophet, a puppet messiah
nailed to a cross of straw and pecked at by crows.
She had gazed up at the red skin
looked longingly into slit eyes glittering
in the smoky haze and crossed over to the other side,
the underworld of sense and solace,
the domain of love and pain,
the place where she knew she would remain.
A slow tear oozed out of her eye
as she recalled the way he had lifted her up
carried her away in arms of steel,
soothed her primal fears and made her drowsy
with crickets and pebbles in a tiny stream,
gentle rain in the distance and the whisper
of a lover more beautiful than she could bear.
The drums woke her in the early morn,
fading away among the trees as if to say
you are one of us now—you
wear the mark
of the gilded one, the horned prince,
the only one who could get you to
take a chance on loves endless expanse
especially now that you accepted his hand,
stood and then twirled and spun with him
across the drifting leaves
with a happiness that never grieves lost
in a satyr's dance.
