Then there was One

I grind my teeth in my sleep
& halfheartedly say it must be stress
I don’t know that yet… maybe I’m
too tightly “wired” & something
flipped the Switch
I am a blackened bulb st(r)uck on

I am the ghost that reappears unaged
from the day you last saw me alive
My eyes coast over; misty goldgray glass
held up to a warm icy blue
& it’s like I never saw you
How much I like to play “pretend”!

Where
the fuck
have all of my “friends”
[gone] to?

–LM

 

 

(Author’s Note: Peering through a hindsight glass can make old faces appear in color like a kaleidoscope.)

The Chariot

A mortal shell in cinders
& wicked compulsion
simpering love lost in the ashes
charred silken seduction
giving in to the void on a whim?
Enter a swarthy no man’s land

& the space between us
seems so small
the furious conflict
& desperate need
For the dangerous infatuation
between gods and men
–LM

Releasing

It’s always helplessness
driving me back into your open hands
& the dark truth is I
only seem to pray when I’m desperate
& I think God knows it
doesn’t judge me but keeps it instead like
an open
question

Anxiety is the phantom that follows
The hound from hell I mind in vain
but refuse to love
Everyday it bares its fangs at me!
Stealing more of my sanity!
I’m not crazy___

Under my breath I plead
Seething [Weeping]
-LM

Ribs and Hips

I returned revived hearing my name
repeated again and again,
my heart strained// racing to the end
You have to eat, she chided, do you know
What damage you do to yourself if you
STARVE?

YOU’LL DIE
Somehow at the time that was fine
This budding sickness of mine
& [I had no idea what was next. . .]
It sneaks up over a cruel comment
Sometimes “family” isn’t family at all

I know you don’t meet your maker
In a pageant line
People don’t gaze at bones
And smile
Except you, perhaps
who matter so little
who’s involved so little
who perhaps wants
Sadistically, the end of me
–LM

 

(Authors Note: xxx)

Gratitude

Give me a second
to catch my breath
I just want to thank you all
For subscribing to The Lexicon

102 is a number I’m humbled by
And you all have my greatest and
Most sincere appreciation
For giving my work a little space
Out of your hard day

–LM

Fever Dream

A woman sits across from me
dealing cash for tarot dreams
her shawl laced with owl wings &
bronze ankles swaying/dangling
flickering gold & crystalline beads

by candlelight she’s peering up underneath
two black satin fans of lashes
Then she centers her gaze on You
You’re here too?
The magic woman gnashes her teeth
She says: don’t you know
what’s always next?

High Priestess, I guess but you don’t
believe in these things I know it—-
Death, dealing the skull with a smile to show it
Funny way to say Change you spit
Laying the Devil card flat with a hit

–LM

Forget Me Not

The elegant woman on my forearm
A tattoo I will never regret

The empress of permanence
& mystery_____silhouette
A grayscale smile that’ll never fade
even if I grew up never

seeing her face/(or knowing her name)

yet there’s something entrancing
about an ancestor’s connection
how to: fathom what cannot be broken?

I bonded myself to a ghost unspoken
Thieving her eye color from the ocean

-LM

 

Authors Note: In 1944 my great grandmother was hospitalized with tuberculosis, and died. My grandfather was too young to remember the color of her eyes, only her long jet black hair.

Don’t Say That

Bark your orders &
Drink your liquor
I know what’s not welcome

You’re so concerned about
What’s gonna come out of my mouth

And maybe it’s a bit sensitive of me
To feel this way but/
Fuck you for trying to silence me

As if I’m a piece of property

But this is your celebration right?
Well congratulations,

Your paranoia was well founded
You did hurt someone last night

[The wrong one]

–LM

A Combustible Riddle

Tell me what you see;
I am dying to know.

There’s an eye in the stars
[waiting to be noticed]
And in these moments
I imagine— God or whatever name
You wish you call it is
Hammering on your conscience
(It is not pareidolia)

See it once & you never not
Like illusions on the back of a cereal box
That’s what I truly wish to say
I know these pieces don’t add up to much
It’s always been there
Since the beginning &
It will be there until the end

Staking my life on revolution

–LM

Vampire

The purr of A/C conceals a spatter
of rain, though the heavy gait
plodding/trotting/galloping
E c h o i n g/cRaCkliNg
from the ceiling upstairs
substitutes thunder all on its own

Taptaptap (I still haven’t figured out
What the fuck that sound is)
but I won’t lift the blanket
past the window to see for myself
Lest it be a pale ghastly face
mouth wide dark & hollow like the hall
& eyes purely cavernous  [ aniridia ]

Don’t let the morning light in
–LM