C'est Vendredi, Tout Le Monde!

Don't you dare click that "Next Blog" button.

Mistress Grizelda, Lodemai of the Crows, orders you to read this week's poem. Read it! Read it--I said. How dare you defy me. You know what happens when you disobey Mistress Grizelda...don't make me hit you. Why, why do you insist on rousing all this cruelty in me? You like it...Yes! YOU LIKE IT! You sick, sick little doggies. That's what you are. You want Mistress to rub your bad, wet little noses in it, don't you?
The world is a big and random place. But your punishment is always certain. And that's why you come back to the Mistress, isn't it? There is comfort in the correction. Now sit. Stay. Read. Suffer.

Abusively,

Mistress Grizelda




The Worry Noise

Digging for stillness
half mad from the itching;
if the noise would just stop
I could breathe and think clearly.

Reminders of failure sound
off in their turn. Choruses
of doubt drown prayer
after prayer.

There’s not enough money
you’re putting on weight
you’re invisible, yet conspicuous
in a world much too big for you.

It’s quiet
except for a paranoid drone
of incessant worry; a chronic
alarm, coating my mouth

with a nickel tang, it
scours my ears from
thought to thought.

Second-guessing myself
to sleep, I dream a life—
a soundless world, before
morning clamors with jarring
light, drumming me back
to this thick place.

I cover my ears and
bury my face, but fail
to still the dissonant
song that drives this dance—
the greed for life and impossible
protocol of cool perfection.