I Died Once

I died once,
Just to see what it was like.
(It doesn’t matter how,
So I won’t bother saying)
My curiosity had bested me,
And so I did what I had to
In order to see.

Like Thomas,
My dying eyes were flooded
By white mice and roses,
All in constant motion as my
Eyelids finally shut.
Although the darkness had
Embraced me absolutely,
A kind of clairvoyance
Unknown to me picked me
Up and swept me away.
Still blind, I found my footing
And I waited.
And waited.

Silently, a light broke above me,
Falling thickly onto my shoulders
Like condensed milk.
And then, from somewhere
A voice spoke, tragic and booming:

“YOU’RE EARLY.”

I winced at the reverberations
Echoing into nothingness.
I couldn’t muster any reply
Beyond a half-trembling shrug.

There was a quick snap,
And the peculiar feeling of standing
On a trapdoor that’s about to drop…
And, at last, I was back;
Returned to my mortal coil,
Gulping breaths of air
Cold and deep and new.

MSBQ

The Painted Lady

It must have taken courage
To fight the way she had;
The problem with fighting yourself
Is that you’ll always end up losing
Broken glass littered the floor
Of the hotel balcony
Crunching underfoot and
Leaving specks of blood
On the railing where she leapt

And she did leap, that was certain
There was no one else around
And that was the issue
There wasn’t a note to be found
The front door left open a crack
So that a curious soul might
Put two and two together and
Realize that the body which had
Plummeted eleven stories
Was the one that belonged to
This room of things
Her story eternally tied to
A ratty armchair and a kitchen
Full of unsolved problems

Upon closer inspection,
The only thing out of place
In the whole situation was
Her face, covered in paint
Not the kind you’d redo
Your living room in but
Rather the Apache kind
Designed to strike fear
Into the enemy in war
Broad white and red bars
Emblazoned across her
Cheeks and forehead
A simple reminder of
Her ferocity in life

MSBQ

High Stakes

The sound of church bells
A man and a woman inside
Longing eyes look into each other
Tears flow and nerves are chewed
And two become one- a union forms
Moonbeams smile down across
White sands and palms swaying
In gentle unison with the wind
Consummation by more than
Just wedding bands
Two lives intertwined into
A towering thicket of mistrust
With no way to bridge the gap
Years fall away like petals
On a week old rose
Soon that old spark leaves
What you once knew as
Nigh impenetrable is now
Shattered, like ancient ruins of
Kings and men long since dead
My creeping shadow leans in
With just a touch he is mine
To leave you silent in the room
Where your husband died
The one necessary casualty
To amend a lifetime of guilt
A fly buzzes past but
Nobody noticed it

MSBQ