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 ;)
Posted at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
You ask why I sigh,
as you sweep up the mice i hunted for you today,
this misunderstood pile of my heart,
that I arranged ever so gracefully,
reveling in pride,
at their twitching tails,
while my teeth ripped through their tiny ribs,
and I carried their listless grey bodies,
in my mouth
as they drew
their last breaths.
But you didn't even want them,
just swept them away,
annoyed at the mess I'd made..again...
so I sigh,
and I try,
again...and again...
Don't you see that these tasty sighs are "rabbits feet"?
They are the leftover treasures,
the forgotten remains from an awkward and desperate meal in the dark.
The soft and tragic tokens once meager in mud,
now tragic and exquisite,
in the whispered tale of their plummet to a black holed light of hope.
A hope that these sighs,
in their next life
would become cherished lucky charms,
adored in their symbolism,
like stuffed and mounted,
glaze-eyed trophies of death,
celebrating the loyal,
altruistic and sufferable collecting and slaughtering,
of one cat's dreams,
and mice---
eight lifetimes worth of an undying
and insatiable desire to be loved,
to be purred,
to be noticed...
...a mission as purposeful and as confused,
as collecting kindling to build a ship,
to sail on waves of sighs,
with mice for my crew,
doomed mice who read stars for navigation,
foolish mice with their own nightmares,
and sighs,
endless and silent,
like the leagues and the days they count,
that stand between our brave,
feeble and determined little ship of lies
and the hidden island of their demise.
Where I will finish my heroic journey,
a final attempt in my last of lives,
to seek your sirens who will finally sing to me,
where I will stand before my last and greatest sacrifice,
a fiery and glorious,
mice filled volcano,
the greatest of valentines for you...
In an attempt to awaken your soul,
to bring me ever closer to quieting the angels and demons who war in my feline soul,
by quieting their cries, with your sigh filled song,
praising my love,
shushing my sadness at last...
finally,
for real,
for keeps,
my lap.
But the fire has died...
and this island is still quiet.
The mice are just ashes,
and you are nowhere to be found on this lost island,
where my last mice sacrifice,
was wasted,
love unreturned.
There is no more hunting,
no more you,
no more lives.
As the tide gets closer, my heart grows cold and slow.
Alone on this island,
where I will spend the rest of my last life
scattering the sand with scribbled and skewed riddles,
trying to solve the mystery of the nine lives and loves I somehow lost,
or never found...
chasing mice for you.
There are no more purrs left in this soul,
I realize,
as I breathlessly release
my very last sigh...
an SOS that will never be heard.
(Summer 2011)
Posted at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
In this hour, they're almost pretty
these bruises,
like shadows of your lips,
hungry fingertips,
the marks of your hips
and grips,
branding my skin.
Like sapphire, emerald & amethyst hued badges of our carnal victories,
where I awoke an army of stowaway daydreams with wings,
like moon-born moths,
insatiably famished,
gnawing tiny holes with their fangs,
feeding like parasites on my heart.
But the shirt I stole from you,
seasoned with the spice of your skin--the musk of lies and lust,
smells like cedar to these moths.
An easy veil,
since I am a ghost here.
where my shrill sobs and sighs, hushed in the dark,
are mistaken for distant wimpers of a starved coyote pup,
separated from her pack.
And my pain is muffled by the whispered screeches of a thousand moth wings swarming away,
leaving my bone dried carcass soul for the vultures.
Their red blood stained cheshire smiles,
look like splintered garnets scattering this last silver sliver of moon light.
...And now my bruises are morphing, changing shape,
and betraying my eyes.
These goose-skinned, muddied parchment invasions,
these undercooked contusions,
are screaming behind the stretched white cotton,
gagging my knees.
And your essence is vanishing with each sun invaded sigh that passes my pale
parched lips...the feast is over
the moths, now just dust
at sunrise.
(Summer 2011)
Posted at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I mop my beige tile with the Kirby that those teenagers sold to 8 out of 10 houses on this street,
forgetting to remember,
there is a pile of dead flies,
I hunted,
and am collecting,
in the darkest corner of the kitchen.
I wanted to kill all of them before sweeping them up,
when I will stand above the chrome trash can,
morbid with the satisfaction that I led this mini holocaust,
their crinkled corpses, like little trophies,
with translucent wings, dried and crackled...
and it's sadly beautiful, this pile of death,
atop lastnight’s corn cob skeletons.
(Joy Lise, Summer 2011)
Posted at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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)
Posted at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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)
Posted at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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)
Posted at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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)
Posted at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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)
Posted at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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)
Posted at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
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)
Posted at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
