S
he has a head for anger;
--its what she understands:
--how to be red like madness,
--gray like foaming clouds
--absorbing and hiding
--whatever might glisten above her,
--keeping in shade whatever is below.
Cool is her favorite flavor,
--a taste she developed early
--like some frostbitten baby
--wrapped in a blue shawl
--sustaining its life on hunger, thirst, rage,
--forever unsuckled and waning pale
--into blandness like swirls in glassy marble
--and brown water stains on tile ceilings.
Her songs are always sober, addicted
--to raging against complacency;
--the trick is to find something ordinary
--and imperfect to highlight and scratch purple,
--maybe someone with more in life
--who forgot to give it back.
She admitted in fitful sleep once:
--what she’d really like to do is tear down
--every building, suck dry and white
--every outlet of energy just to see
--how long we could stand like skeletons,
--bare of everything not absolutely necessary.
She goes on these rampages
--almost daily now, getting worse,
--but, its easy not to ask why
--when, almost certainly, the answer is
--“why not.”
Andrea Barton
http://members.tripod.com/~AndyLes/index-1.html AndyLes@aol
