Firm, tender shoots poke insistently
Thrusting upward, urgent in search of
strength of sun, permeating dank earth
Resolved to burst forth, irrespective
of imminent risk to future blooms.
Hell-bent on beauty, heedless of cost.
In daffodils’ steadfast heavenward
ascent, a reminder bobs and nods:
In warming rays, hope springs eternal.
Every sob leaking
Past fingered-hole dam
Of daughter’s heartbreak
Spilled out
Snotty and incoherent
Midnight and beyond
Reverberates
Percussing the fault-lines
Of her own
Hastily duct-taped
Fractured core
Conjures twin demons
Indestructible power imbued
Grief interminable
Pounding ceaselessly
Through every cell
The good twin
To doppelganger
Guilt’s
Perpetual accusatory whisper
Her Epic fail
Authors misery unending
Soul in stirrups
Grotesquely splayed
Vulnerable inner core
Cruelly displayed
Private parts agape
Poked and prodded
By chance to ascertain
Her soundness.
Is her nucleus infected?
Rotten?
Diseased beyond repair?
Armchair experts diagnose
Cold steel speculum
Invasion
Comforting teddy bear cuddle
In stark comparison
Lips pierced silent
By the razor wire that contained her.
That threatens,
Ohio February gray perpetual
To once again contain her
By dint of infraction
Real or twisted-patriarchy imagined
Voice
Booming resonance of her lived truth
The power to blow back
Encroaching fog of incipient annihilation
Types urgent as impotent
Wind-spitting upon
Beloved house afire
Testifies
In anonymous verse
Man gloried in her body’s pleasures
Basked in warmth, softness gently given
Cavorted freely day and night
Sought wise counsel, patient and balanced
Received expected constant support
Ear and shoulder shared life’s toil and strife
Undying devotion never fits
Impossible standards she falls short
Neither angel nor devil enough
In each glancing mirror blow
Censure’s censorship ricochets
Scarring
In permanent pursed lip tattoo
Her perpetual visual
Memento
Underlining the price
Of oft- bitten tongue
Curled ferociously into herself
Protecting vulnerable center
Scuffed whorls hide inner shimmering light
Battered by the buffeting onslaught
Demeaning ebbs and degrading flows
She fights against the swallowing tides
Inswept upon a ravaging wind
Hollowed carcass held gently to heart
Compassion breathed into spiraled soul
Deafened
In silent moments
By thunderous
Melancholic strains
Orchestrated upon
Broken heart strings
She wonders
In resting stanzas
If similar
Discordant refrains
Resound, hollow echoes
Mercilessly clanging
In parallel chambers
Arisen from the Conflagraton 