Joy Lise

un-done

 

To lives un-altered

By freeways un-traveled

Texts un-sent

                        Un-read

In days not spent

In parking lots Un-tainted

By friends un-jaded

And lives un-invaded

                                By poison

                                                un-ingested

 

To marriage un-affected

                                                Un-changed

By vows that were never made

Decisions un-changed

Promises un-chained

Tangles un-laced

Tears un-faced

 

To pain un-felt

And gambles not dealt

And feelings un-spilled

In spaces un-betrayed

 

To fingers un-burned

From thoughts gone un-heard

Words un-written- un-spurned

Songs heard

                        And un-heard

 

And To you the un-loved

Un-thought of

                        Un-embraced

Un-kissed

                    And un-enlaced

Un-inspired

                    Un-chased

 

To me

            Un-pretending

Done pretending

                                Un-erased

From this life...

 

                    ...Un-learned

 

                                                -Joy Lise (2010)

 

Red

I’m captured,

Imprisoned

Into this lustful rouge

Cheeks warmed,

Lips wet

Seeping with burning guilt

From esophagus to my pink definition

Touching sins and

Peeling away

This Avoidance of the past

revealing

A waterfall of taciturn inspiration,

Graped pleasure

Like a defiant communion

 choking my soul

- Joy Lise (2010)

 

Embarcadero

In the May air

What was not to be

Turned quiet for one night

While inverse stars of a San Francisco sky

Looked away from our indiscretions

And the steps we stole together

Past piers

Each echoed into the bay’s dark waters

Answering questions

Salty froth faced waves

Asked about truth

That struggled for breath

Frozen and captured

By the cold midnight of distrust

Strangled in seaweed betrayal

floating imagined whispers

of stillborn hope pretended 

                                            - Joy Lise (2010)

 

my words

He covets their gravity

                        collects at his feet

these betrayed children of my tongue

                        peeled from sinewy disdain

like nomadic pleas for rain

                                                    - Joy Lise (2010)

Little Death

Hazel eyes watch familiar hands touch stranger skin

with night mask on

I slip your underwear to the darkness

with fingered guilt

the morsel of her marital claim

once washed and folded with a love

less straining than our tarnished lust

You touch me with the blue of midnight

regarding my gown of moonlight

as a sculpture to be praised

 

and your ring is cold along my back

 

The ring from her

from a black velvet box

Like a little coffin

                            - Joy Lise (2002)

August in Huntington Beach

Widow of the ocean

                of a lover buried in uniform

                                who fought for thirty years for that   

21 gun salute

 

On the beach

            where whales stop in mid air to see

the sad widow standing on the ledge of the pier

                                                (she is a widow ---

                                                                of the ocean too)

They were once one

            body surfing and making

                                            ocean love in June.

 

A widow

            of the ocean

 

She holds on to the moment as the last shot is fired

        remembering the smell of Huntington Beach in August

the freshest scent, she thinks

                                            like the smell of his skin

                                                        before donning the blue of the ocean

Where his body floated

                    and danced with waves

                                                like sea kelp.

                                                                    - Joy Lise (2002)

A New Wednesday

I would've been the wife of you

because of the way we spent Wednesday afternoons.

Enveloped in dusk,

bleeding through blinds.

On sheets I made into a sandwich for us.

Because you could find

for me a keepmeclose serenity

in thigh induced tingles.

Until the lust reminded me

of the blue or white communion

that was necessary

to abort the thought of children.

but, I felt their fingers claw my heart anyway

Like extensions of my un-grasped desires,

 

like weeds,

you

plucked.

 

And eighty four Wednesdays have

                                                                    crept

                                                                             away . . .

I looked for them in the ocean yesterday,

where the clouds had captured the sun,

I looked between folded sand,

but only found crabs

embracing crusts and crumbs.

 

Greyish blue water in a prayer to forget

 

lifted

 

in a cross

from third eye to chest

once kissed,

                                                trickled

down to thighs, 

where semen salt

found its way inside crestfallen creases.

 

And as I ventured further through 

this strange Wednesday

I said,

"I will be the wife of ocean"

and I felt beauties forming in the void

you used to hold,

children I could not forsake.

                                                        - Joy Lise (2001)

a decade of joy

These are my poems, as sacred and raw as they are. Written over a decade, these poems reflect confused ramblings of a 19 year old in love, sad realizations of a military wife and young mother, and bittersweet longings of a woman on a path to self discovery... among other things. Open minds or those who like poetry even if it doens't rhyme, are welcome into this secret garden of mine ...

-joy lise ;)

In a Male Sky

I wonder if the embryo of the moon was carved by pain,

inside out like the fetus of my experience

where I carved my own language into my skin,

and secretly discovered the relief in the release of droplets, emerging like

life sprouting on a desolate land.

 

And like all of my pain,

he tried to claim it for his own

 

Walked on female art's surface

with two gentle male fingers

on unexplored territory,

planted his flag, disguised as nurture

filling cracks with store bought creme,

wrapped me in gauze,

like nebulae pillows.

 

On which I gave birth to this fetus

through broken water

blisters, in the middle of midnight

and he drove me to the hospital

where still-born agony would forever lay

darker than all that surrounds it,

reflected by the moon.

                            - Joy Lise (2001)

 

for my father

        In my memory

he's tobacco nights and

coffee mornings

        mornings far away at sunrise

in a dusty trailer

he calls me "desert baby"

        "desert baby," he tells me, "life flashes by"

like the vibrant orange of every sunset that passed

when i longed to be his girl    

        his girl and not a phone call

but where would the pain go, that he did not fight away?

and that sadness that rolled through my veins--while he rolled dice on a table in vegas

        in vegas, at sunrise he kisses me good bye

it's always time to go

before i even know

who he even is

except for the aftershave that lingers from his kiss, where tears fall

        where tears fall, in my memory

he's beer mornings

and noisy nights

        On noisy nights when the phone rings

I call him "desert daddy"

        "desert daddy," I tell him, "you're so old"

He's already fifty five

        fifty five and far away

we are together

in my memory

he's a short visit

he is sleeping nights

and gambling mornings at the casino

        at the casino until

we say good bye

and he walks to the shade to smoke a pack

and I drive away

        I drive away, and he's so old

life just flashed by

                            -Joy Lise (2002)