Claire Fisher -- a Peach of a Girl

Claire Fisher —

a peach of a girl.

 

Dreamy-eyed Pisces,

flame-haired

Spitfire.

 

Psychedelic

Marijuana-saturated

Bohemian Artiste;

 

her pink satin bedding

almost as smooth

as she.

 

Porcelain skin

tough as nails.

 

Dead Daddy’s Little Girl;

Mother’s living nightmare.

 

Locomotive

emotion.

 

Heartbroken

Heartbreaker.

 

Looking for love

in all the wrong places.

 

Shutterbug eye

(her Superpower).

 

Mistakes aplenty;

no regrets.

 

Always up for the challenge;

Carpe Diem.

 

“Promise me you’ll be who you want to be”

(Ruth Fisher to Claire).

 

She did,

and she was.

I Am the Open Source

I am the Open Source;

 

I don’t have to go anywhere,

or do anything.

 

I don’t have to cleanse my space with incense,

or sleep with a sigil under my pillow.

 

I don’t have to doll myself up

with false eyelashes and perfume.

 

I don’t have to get down on my knees

and pray for a sign.

 

“You’re so uppity!”

“Have some humility!”

 

I don’t have time for that;

none of us do.

 

I want to be flooded

with the blue-greens,

 

and burned

by the red-hots,

 

carried away with gusts

of swirling windstorms,

 

pinned to the Earth by the gravitational pull — all

available to me,

 

at my beck

and call.

 

Inside of me

(not outside);

 

all the rituals

simply flourishes

 

like icing roses

on a cake.

 

I am the cake;

I am the open source.

Not a Cake-Walk

“It’s not a cake-walk,” she said,

“getting to the root of the problem.”

 

Digging bare-hands in the ground,

breaking open the hardened layer of dirt

 

similar to cement,

containing petrified things

 

and creepy-crawlers

 

all squiggling around

for attention

or escape.

 

It’s been so long;

some have starved to death,

 

some have transformed into

other things, other beings,

 

some long-forgotten

and forsaken,

 

some random treasures uncovered,

rediscovered.

 

Two observing doves mindlessly coo,

emotionally uninvolved.

 

Each person’s non-cake-walk

so personal, so precious,

so potent.

 

The hardened dirt swallows

it all

 

in the end.

Meat Box

One of your sponsors

sells boxes of meat.

 

You tell your audience:

“You can customize your box any way you want.”

 

Images flood my mind –

no escape.

 

Custom boxes

of meat.

 

Purchased dead flesh

delivered by postal express.

 

You choose the parts;

“humanely” butchered.

 

Drawling in your Southern accent:

“Mouth-wateringly delicious!”

 

This is normal;

little meat coffins.

 

Distanced from the knife,

easily-accessible.

 

Life-to-death,

flash-frozen, pre-packaged;

 

endless boxes

of meat.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

If only

I could get up early

my entire life would change,

the self-help Gurus tell me.

 

Night-Owl

to Early-Bird

when all the worms are squirming,

dying to be caught.

 

Overthrow

my natural rhythms

to conquer the world;

the dark of night is fantastical,

smoke and mirrors.

 

Daylight hours

ruled by the Sun,

getting-things-done,

the Go-Getters,

High-Achievers.

 

Late-night hours

ruled by the Moon,

Intuitives,

Day-Dreamers,

lounging around in kimonos

spending time ill-advisedly.

 

“All you need to do

is rise by 5:00 AM

to turn the world upside-down

and make all your dreams

a reality” they say.

 

I listen to my motivational audiobooks

late into the night,

studying them in the wee hours,

falling asleep from exhaustion

just before Sunrise,

and dream

about the first day of the rest of my life.

Moon Images

I post Moon images

every two weeks...

it’s the least

and the most

I could do

for the last year-and-four-and-a-half-months

that you’ve been gone.

 

No songwriting,

no jewelry-making,

no poems or short stories,

no novels or piano,

no schemes or grand ideas...

just Moon images.

 

They were enough,

and almost too much.

 

Marking the time in two-week intervals.

 

Cloistered away

from Covid-19

in my newly inherited house;

the perfect retreat for my grief

to settle in, make itself at home.

 

The Moon has always been reliable;

it waxes and wanes

and doesn’t ask any questions

or make any demands

or seek reasons why...

it just is.

 

The familiar owl

hoots outside my window

at 4:30 AM,

ushering the full Moon’s rise

again.

 

You died on a full Moon;

I sat next to you under its spotlight,

alone.

 

I feel the Moon ties us together,

but that could just be

the mute poet in me, searching for meaning

in the natural

ebbs-and-flows.

 

Regardless,

the Moon rises

gracefully,

effortlessly,

purposefully,

without explanation.

 

Ensconced in a black cloak,

fully supported.

 

Finally,

naturally,

I break my self-imposed silence.

Omicron Cyber Monday!

Omicron Cyber Monday!

 

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sucks the life right out of you!

 

Don’t delay; time is running out!

 

It’s later than you think...much, much later.

 

Buy now, while deals last, and you’re still alive!

 

Don’t get left behind like Travel-banned countries!

 

Act now, before Omicron comes for you! 

Witching Hour

The night is shattered into pieces

by Mocking Birds

and sirens,

daemons past and future.

 

My tinnitus rings in the same key as the crickets

warbled song.

 

3:00 AM: so many sounds competing for my attention

behind closed eyes.

 

The Witching Hour.

 

It’s both too late and too early.

 

The dead of night is bustling,

like the inside of my head.

 

Dancing rapid-fire

in black petticoats;

Whiling Dervishes.

 

Noises and thoughts bleed into one another

while slowly dying down,

painstakingly

transforming into a weighted blanket

flattening and blacking everything out.