Lana Bella- Three Poems

MALIA

 

She plods into my waiting arms like 

an open petal hungers for the bees.
Gummy and soft. A concerted coos,
clucks, and bubbles. Eloquent fruit of 
my loins. Instrument of my instincts.
Lullabies for my hunger. Hair of black 
ink curls into the silver belly of my story 
telling. Sucking her tiny thumb like a 
blind girl divines life from the mingle of 
sweet saliva upon the finger's grooves. 
Rounded knees nudge deep where my 
fatness jostles. Fast to dream. She is a 
quiet tapestry cloaked in flesh.

I follow the river of her crooked form. My
finger poises above that button-nose where 
a sliver of crusted mucus thrusting out 
from the shadow, cradling threads of 
the afternoon sun. Sooty lashes curtain 
the amber lake, and upon its water lays 
the light of the world. Sailing still a finger 
to her primrose breaths that cling to the
nether bone, they are in rhythm with my
own. 

An infinite oblivion. So through the sieve of

hours, days, years and lifetimes unfolding 

beyond, debris will fall upon ruins. When

hollowness will purge all tenderness along

with memories. Yet I shall belt my body on

the back of sorrow then plunge beneath where

her parting sleeps. Into the living sea of our

waking dreams.

It is always I, and it is always her I am 

holding. Like a dearest breath, well-loved, 

in my motherly hands.

 

FINGERS ON THE PIANO KEYS

 

 

You still miss me from the time:

I drew upon your lips with my whiskey-

laced fingers;

the fingers that I'd danced across smooth

dual-toned piano keys,

to the tattooed flesh with engraved beast

on the strapping bicep.

Your breaths came through heavy and sweet

stirring gone the cigar smoke,

so close I could taste your frothy scent.

You leaned toward, both arms resting 

on the console grand,

where throbbing veins ached rhythms of 

the briny sea.

There, at the scarred shadow of your funny bone:

clear echo of painted ships

and pine-knot smokes,

a well-dressed suit of slate-flawed skin;

dusky light swept gold the blunt-cut fingertips,

slow whirl of the ceiling fan skimmed across 

your brown hair cool.

Into the whiskey-varnished air and against

the wisps of smoldering mist,

my fingers flirted with the familiar refuge of octaves'

crunched desire and toyed sleigh bells,

upon the ivory white and charcoal black

keys of the piano.

UNDER MY DARK

 

 Five long hours. Under my dark. I sprawl awake. 

Tumbling through the house. Sinking against the 

windowpane, watching rained acoustics patter on 

the terraced roof. Cries of raindrops. Mingle with 

a symphony of ghosts roaming about me. Then I 

pour myself a memory from a simmering cauldron, 

flavored of alphabet scars and flakes of consciousness. 

Hands on the pot. A sudden blink. How do I pour the 

liquid thoughts and lettered inks into a bottomless beaker 

without leaving my body in a pool of shadows? But now,

my lips thirst for drink. To warm over the cold where the 

bone is hollow. Until, I lean in, something exposed and 

glassy, echoing on the surface. It is my eyes staring back

at me. Gliding through the fluid with hooked arms. And 

its mouth slurping up the pale gullet, heaving off the 

squirting blood. The muddy mass of flesh throws up 

in the mirage. Then high above, a dullard of rain again 

breaks over the house. If I listen, my heart would once 

more weep and my eyelids would suspend in tears. So I 

stretch my skin where the stairs lay muted and heavy, 

under the particled air into which darkness goes.