Gypsy Girl

And she doesn’t want to press charges
My yellow cousin
Ghost of a gypsy
Drunk off the wine of pressed grapes
Repressed screams
Of sun shriveled raisins
And their dreams
Interrupted
By a manhood deferred

Will she ever sober?
Or will they keep handing her glasses overflowing
With the burden of knowing

I never knew

Never knew it could haunt me

The ghost of a little girl in the desolate mansion
Of my manhood
I’m a man now

And then

I remember that I have been charged
One million volts of change

Will the ghost of that little girl ever meet my little girl

She’s one now
She must have been three then
Maybe four

She’s eighteen now
I’m twenty-five now
I must have been twelve then
My mother said he was in his forties
And she’s not pressing charges
Although she’s been indicted
And I can’t blame her

I can’t calm her

I want to calm her

I want to call him names
But only mine seem to fit

“Come on, let’s see if it fits”
Two little boys with a magic marker marked her

“They put it in me”

“No we didn’t, what are you talking about?”

“It’s not permanent, It’ll come out when you wash it”

Damn, maybe it was permanent
I can’t forget
And I hope she doesn’t remember

Maybe Magic marked her
Lord, I hope he don’t pull no dead rabbit out of that hat
What ya gonna do then?

And what was Mary’s story?

The story of a little girl with a brother and a couch
She’s got a brother
A couch
A sister locked in her bedroom
And a mother on vacation

Lord, don’t let her fall asleep
Her brother’s got keys to her dreams
He keeps them on a chain
That now cuffs his wrists together

Mommy doesn’t believe he did it
But he’s left footprints on the insides of his sister’s eyelids
And they’ve learned to walk without him and haunt her daily prayers

And if you rub your fingers
Ever so softly on her inner thigh
She’ll stop you
Having branded your fingertips
With the footprints of her brother
The disbelief of her mother
And a sister who called her a slut for sleeping

Lord, I’ve known sleeping women
Women who have slept for lives at a time
On sunny afternoons and purple evenings
Women who sleep sound
And live silently
Some dreams never to be heard of again

I’ve known sleeping women
They’ve taught me to sleep having swallowed the moon
Sleep till mid afternoon
And yearn for the silence of night
Too sleep sound once again
Painters of the wind
Who know to open the window?
Before closing their eyes
Finding glory in the palette of their dreams

She had no dreams that night
The windows had been closed

The worlds of her subconscious suffocated and bled
Rivers of unanticipated shivers and sounds
That were not sleep
She was sound asleep
And he came silently

It wasn’t the sun in her eyes
Nor the noise of children en route to school
She woke to the rays of an ingrown sun
Fungus that stung more than it burned
A saddened school en route to children
Who dare to sleep on a couch
Exposed to their schizophrenic brother
Only to wake with a new personality

One that doesn’t trust as much as it used to
And wears life jackets into romantic relationships
Can’t stand the touch of fingertips
Damn, was that marker permanent
I hope she doesn’t press charges
I hope they don’t press no more grapes into wine
Because she might get drunk again
And fall asleep

Rise and shine my mother used to say
Pulling back the clouds of covers that warmed our nights
But the fleshy shadows of that moonless night
Stored the venom in its fangs to extinguish the sun

Rise and shine
But how can I?
When I have crusted cloud configurations pasted to my thighs
And snow covered mountains
In my memories
They peak into my daily
And structure my moment
They hide in the corners of my smile
And in the shadows of my laughter

They’ve stuffed my pillows with over exposed reels of ABC after school specials
And the feathers of woodpeckers
That have bore hollows into the rings of time
That now ring my eyes
And have stumped the withered trunk of who I am

I must remember

My hands have been tied behind the back of another day
If only I could have them long enough to dig up my feet
Which have been planted beneath the soiled sheets
Of a harvest that only hate could reap

I keep trying to forget

But I must remember

And gather the scattered continents
Of a self once whole
Before they plant flags
And boundary my destiny
Push down the warted mountains that blemish the soiled soul
Before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me
I’ll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me
A vaccination
For a lesser Gods bleak history.