Hole.

Holy water valentine, whose lips are cherry red,
strolls into the pastor’s shrine, thoughts filled with dread.

Temptations consume her, she is burning in her sin.

She clutches her rosary so tightly it makes her singe.

“Father, father, help me.  Forgive my evil deeds,”
she calls out for mercy, or a cure for her disease.

Her fishnet stockings tell a different story,
one many believe is inspired by greed.

 But with the Lord as her witness,
she only worked the streets so she could eat.

Jezebel of virtue, once she was so pure.

Devoid of any wrongdoing, that was her allure.

The other congregants turn up their noses when she walks.

They return to their stone houses, before pelting her with rocks.

wrigley field

he bought my innocent time
with promises of candy and wine
but when i opened my eyes,
i learned that those were just lies
for him to feel my underaged insides.

fourteen years old, in chicago,
when i ran out into the february frost.
i collapsed, then decorated the street
with this agony i refused to accept.
and this, the trauma that i could not eat.

there, beneath the famous lights of wrigley field,
i cried until my tattoo tears
erased the sparkle from my eyes,
unable to survive after learning
that the world could also be like this.

the vicious, windy city won this wicked war,
burying me alive that night, without a fight.
it threw the ashes of my adolescence
in the air, like criminal confetti.
it stripped away my security,
to soak me in my own sorrow.

i crawled into the cocoon inside my head.
remaining here in this self-induced coma
until i'd shed the sympathy-stained skin
of being a victim.
i REFUSE to be anything but resilient.
still, no butterfly should ever have to
suffer through abuse in order for its own
metamorphosis to occur.

Cameo.

Your love was a cameo;
a supporting character to my storyline.
Transient, in every role
just like an inexpensive wine.
No plot twists or cannonballs,
a mere filler to buy extra time.
Yet somehow I'm missing you,
but I know that's not a crime.
Lights, camera, action
Act one: and you were already mine.
Your charm caused chain reactions,
audiences clung onto your every line.
Around the intermission,
we snuck away to unwind.
But like most of my romances,
ours was the tragic kind.
So, I take a bow and watch
as the curtains fall, this is our final act,
and, at least we had a ball,
silence as we fade to black.

Spice Rack

When repressed emotions reach the surface, they crash through my floodgates, like raging bulls in thin, red curtains.
They seep into my bloodstream with poison worse than gunpowder bullets.
No words remain to ease the suffering, that stains my soul with spice & sorrow.
Saffron shames me like a scarlet letter, so I submit to its turmeric terror.
I'm not a slave until it beats me into bonded labour; it's on those days I wish that I were braver.
Like all things else, it fades away; time has always been my sweetest saviour.