poetry from "Shards" collection: Ballerina Music Box

I wanted to be that glass ballerina there,
In the music box, with real human hair.
She spins the moment you open up
and the notes sing us to sleep.
I could stand watch while you dream,
I remain on point  in case you should scream.
Awake at midnight when the shadows
flit across your room.

If I could be that toy
I could be your lullaby.
If I could be that dancer
You could never tell me goodbye.
I shall never judge
I shall never say a thing
And I have faith you will never
break me.

I wanted to be something with tiny gears
That you could turn on for your ears
Around bedtime when lullabies are crucial
For you to find your sleep.
I could stand watch while you dream,
I remain on point  in case you should scream.
Awake at midnight when the shadows
flit across your room.

If I could be yours
I could be your lullaby.
If I could be that dancer
Yours until you would find
Something new to love
Something new to keep
I always had faith  you would
break me.

Am I so easily discarded?
Am I so easily discarded?

poem: Shadow of a Muse (from "Shards" poetry collection)

I created her
I can do as I like with her
spray her with water, sparkles and chill
leave her in the snow to winterkill.
Or I could marinate her
in a cauldron of bronze and gold
I could add spices to the brew
Until she's boiled anew.

You know I am Victor Frankenstein
I am her Dracula
I am God Himself to her
I will do as I please and send her on the battle line
Where a company of soldiers will have their taste of her soft flesh
I shall lock her in a tower where she will never know man's scent.
I made her
and I can break her.

I will whisper sweetly to her
But only when I am sweet.
Other times I will yell and lash her
And with tears and hair, she'll wash my feet.
If she ever tried to stand her ground
With small trembling shoulders
I would stare and laugh.
"My darling, do not go there."

You know that I am the sculptor
and she the shadow of my muse
She is only worth what I say
Or worth the ways she can be used
If you suggest that she exists in a world beyond my lab
I will promise you, mister, that you are mad.
I made her
and I can break her.

I know that she has stood
Over my bed as I sleep,
Her breath in shallow waves,
A sculptor's scalpel in hand.
But I shiver not in the shade of her form
I know her capabilities
What she can and cannot do to me
"My darling, go back to ---"

poem from "Shards": Maudie Cobwebs

"Your children too good to play with my boy?
Best believe I'll remember this slight!"
Said Maudie to her stuffy neighbor one day
And she forced a laugh when that woman's son died.
"He got a fever and it serves her right
I won't be bakin' no sympathy pies for her type."

"The world done me wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse!"
So when Maudie inherited a Funeral Home,
she lived there and she drove her own hearse.
She was a poor pregnant waif 'til a family will gave her wealth
But she kept her curtains drawn and her new gowns to herself.
Poor Maudie Cobwebs.
She never goes out.

"The world don't want my little son,
He came out of wedlock, you see.
So he's gonna stay right by my side and safe."
'til one day in the mirror, only half-shocked
the boy saw he'd grown horns, tail and a furry frock.

Maudie sang:
"The world done us wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse.
I'm gonna make a house of this funeral home
and I'm drive around in a hearse.
I don't want no smilin' visitors.
They'd just scream when they see my son
I don't want no charity to give or receive ,
because when I was poor there was none."
Poor Maudie Cobwebs
She had not a friend.

Hardship, they say, hardens most shells,
but it can widen the hearts and minds of the toughest lot.
But for Maudie, they say, it softened her skin,
hardened the heart and it made her brain rot.

Poor Maudie, livin' like a corpse.
Poor Maudie. What could be worse.

"The world done me so wrong, so bad and long.
I'm gonna do it one worse,
Don't need no love, don't want no friends
I've already got son, home, and a hearse."
Her boy done changed to a demon
Her house a southern tourist joke.
If you see her phantom, don't make a meeting.
Maudie is an unpleasant ghost.
But that's just Maudie Cobwebs' way.
She was a bitch, long before she decayed.

poetry: from "Shards"- Serpent's Milk

I call the spirits
To burn my sins, to penetrate.
But all the sweating
and dancing does not sway Fate.

"Please possess me,
Make me pay
in cruelest turns and blackest pain.
For all I hurt,"
I cry and say.
But their answers hiss all the same.

"The serpent's milk.
The serpent's milk.
Only the hurt can serve you it."

When I crossed her,
four shades darker
fell upon my chains.
A shadow slithers--
won't come hither--
as I lie prostrate.

They whisper to me
"You cannot, through rattling
Snakes and your holy beads,
Earn from the crossed, pity."

"Then please help me earn
Please, spirits burn
Even if I must cremate whole,
For parched, charred clemency."

The serpent's milk.
The serpent's milk.
Only the wronged can offer it.

Take my heart and
bravest parts to
feed the fire high!
Grind my bones
to chalk your homes with
apotropaic lines.

"When lunacy stirs you,
Turn 'way from the Moon,
go to your harmed kin in the nude.

"Drink from their cup.
Drink from their cup.
You may heal.
You may die.
But only your victim's cup will suffice."

Only your cup will suffice.

(c) 2013 Luz Briar.