JANET I. BUCK

I'd

Siamese fur
will have to fill 
the stretch of void.
Its lousy drape of decadence
with foreign curves
and nonchalance.
How can he eat, breathe, sleep,
sand himself so noiselessly
while I am teething 
on, on, on the stone.

I'd sail my fist through a van Gogh,
burn the black bible lounging
on mahogany, if only you would
come back, rise up, do us --
but a candle in my den
vibrates its heat, tells
me I was blind in one eye;
the other I shut.
You are with her.
Petting a turtle before
you break the soft neck.

copyright 2003 JANET I. BUCK; previously published in Facets 02.01

JANET I. Buck

Likenesses

It is the season of onyx heart
and glitter's panther
and party fuzz. Alcohol
looks prettier this time of year.
I space how lethal sauce can be. 
Leaving flesh like wrinkled fruit
surrounded by that nausea
in piles of rancid sauerkraut.
Once upon a stupid time,
it picked at icebergs,
loosened grips of sinking ships.
Messing up my curly hair enough to 
fool snakish tresses with its sweat.
Perhaps my "bottom" lingering 
just wasn't far enough to fall.
I didn't have to choose between
the ethered state and milk or bread,
or pillows for a throbbing temple,
bursting seams with boiled lies.

I watch you roll your
worldly goods down sidewalks
of these city streets.
Everything you own
is tied to a dolly with
stretching ropes that could
have been my broken arms.
I look around and see myself,
wires poking through a mattress
made of flimsy winter clouds.
If not for money's cold blank verse,
we could have been
the same damned poem.
Torn diplomas of my vows
should tell me just how close I was.
But pain in time-- 
alchemizes, Frenchifizes-- 
wool to cashmere memory.

copyright 2003 JANET I. Buck