You took me out to a sweet Midsummer’s dream,

To tell me all about the sleepy Shadow’s play,

And the two hands it takes to move the darkness

The Lady who gives, and the one that takes away. 

Feeding those pretty vampires at the petting zoo,

I gave them a little of me, you gave a little you,

Seven nights for seven days, now the shadows breathe,

Pinning us down in a game of make believe,

Escape with me into the laughing light of day,

To the tofurky roasting in my easy Sunday soul.

.

The clattering of cutlery and the memory of blood,

From that master’s dungeon comes the torturer’s art,

Songs of violence echoing in everyday things,

A blade, a dress, a Chevrolet, yet another bloody day.

The pigs in your hotel you know will never pay. 

I think of Eleanor and Pollyanna’s honey smile,

A shining light that brings her through my door, 

Remembering all the ways I’ve been on my knees,

Moving between the swoop and the prayer,

Dancing for daffodils that were never really there.

.

Doubts picking me clean like old Mother Hubbard –

Taking me back to my pomegranate Spring,

Where I ate stale crackers and I bought some keys, 

So I could hear the Queen of my Underworld sing. 

I watched her like a raptor above, circling the sky,

Listening to the sweetness and doting on my ears,

 In loving her I want too much to live, too much to die.

It is in those trembling moments that I remember,

What it means when a man named Sunday,

Starts talking down to a girl called September.

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You pushed me for the truth from the hole in the world,

So I laid it out for you in my chloroformed dreams,

And you said you could have eaten a talking horse,

Bright eyed nightmares thinking about their stomachs,

The pale mare’s lips opened and whispering just a little

In one deep breath, the lost name of wisdom, and death.

Those fine young cannibals are made of the rite stuff,

But when you talk straight to me, I don’t think you see,

The love the little sister gives and reckons I ought to be, 

Alone by her jigsaw pieces, next to my wishing tree.

.

Frozen by time like peas, cherry ice cream, and pizza, 

Trying to warm myself by the star of heaven,

It’s so far out of my hands and I’m growing fat,

Upon this bloodied and stoned Earth we sold,

To the lowest bidder an easy quitter ready to run.

A good girl is just another well behaved sinner, 

Who honours the cooling life of yesterday’s crimes –  

Mab’s best girl busy getting under this fucking world,

But the past is changing the now and it is reborn in me, 

While the future we want keeps galloping away faster.   

.

In this moment mine to bear, I push and am pushed,

Toward the monster of mice and so many men,

Strangers carving their names in my tree trunk,

Brooding harvesters in my fields of sweet corn, 

Fructose, comatose, poisoned sweet things looking, 

Turned up their noses up at my life still cooking,

Go on then my horrors – have yourself that sniff,

If I am sacrificed to your contempt – then I swear,

It’s only because your ears were never there,

Another sailor lost at sea thinking he got the better of me.  

.

Hold me then like Africa because I am coming for you,

Out of the broken wishbone of history’s banquet,

Out of my lilac forests and dogwood fascinations,

To face these burning fires you started in me,

These ways in which you have driven me here, 

Into this moment, my famine becoming your feast,

Underworld machines keep pushing me into you,

When we meet and I rise like SHE must rise,

When the bread alone is in my oven baking,

Will you even feel the broken world still shaking? 

.

Must I now make my peace and serve myself up?

My willingness, my deep thoughts, ecstasy and bliss,

To a butcher, a baker, the candlestick maker,

Laying down beside my reading, weeping, spread,

Seeing, and being seen, loving and being loved,

Or will you close your eyes and dream of lies instead?.

Drink these cranberry hours and taste the blueberry minutes,

Race the beating seconds and attend my silver call –

Look upon my blessed table and this Summer Sunday dress,

Soon it will be Monday, and Brenda knows the rest.

“I don’t like Mondays, tell me why, I don’t like Monday’s..”