For Lucy (part 1)

Your eyes are full of winter.

Your expression is humming against the moody ribbons of color etched into your skin. The scars of your past triumphs become only notches in wood. Your lips are red and swollen from kissing the frigid air. I hesitate to touch you; your skin is fragile and vitreous, like frozen porcelain.

You used to play the piano. Your hands were the only living parts left. Now, your delicate fingers crack and fall away into the snow. The blue-ridged mountains, your mountains, are pleading with the sky. The clouds are held up only by your unnervingly limpid gaze.

Crystals form around your mouth as your breath curls upward. Your eyes are screaming now, as your syringe melts in your hand.

It's sucking the life out of you.


Rachel J. Clark

Stranger

I see an old man walking down a nearly empty street.

He carries an umbrella, but it catches no rain.

The sun slaps his slumped shoulders

and he does not see a truck that nearly hit him

when he crossed the street.

I wonder where he is going,

who he goes home to.

His salty expression makes me curious

to explore the canyons

in the crows feet

at his corners.

What is contained

in the cesspools of his shoes?

He is carrying something much heavier

than his autumn jacket.

It is February,

but he walks in October.


Rachel J. Clark

Nothing.

Tonight, I have nothing
but tomorrow must be something
because it's from nothing
that something comes about.
In that something,
will I be no one?
Will I be no one doing something?
Or will I be someone
doing nothing
in the midst of something?
I hope that some day
is tomorrow
and that one day
it's the next day
and I'm someone doing
something
somewhere
and that no one
doing nothing
was a thing of yesterday.


Rachel J. Clark

take a shot for me, jeffrey.

insofar as I am

in so far

that i cannot look behind me,
cannot look down,

and cannot sidestep,

i have only the wind at my back,

and the change in my pocket,

and a balloon of optimism

to propel me forward.

cheers –

in the hope that it’s not

just hot air.


Rachel J. Clark

Sitting at a Dinner Party

it is never

when i am alone in my

bed,

or when i see couples

kissing in the park,

or when i read your

messages

that i miss you most.

i find that i feel your absence

most unbearably

when i am surrounded by

talking heads,

who give me no reason to

feel lonely,

and i selfishly wish

that they would all

disappear

and leave you in their

place.

Rachel J. Clark

.

I love toying with

the keys to my demise –

So much so

that every glimpse I have

of the end of my life

is enough to make me

bare my teeth

and challenge it,

to laugh hysterically

and offer up wild 

chants and hymns,

punctuated with profanity.

It is not my youth,

nor is it an inflated sense

of invincibility

that makes me stretch

the elastic of life and

death.

It is an unabashed desire

to suck all the juice I can

out of this existence,

and when I have had my fill

to fling myself unapologetically

into the mouth of Never,

knowing that ‘could have’

‘should have’

and ‘would have’

went in the other direction.

Rachel J. Clark

Black Holes

god is not

in any church

or any building

or any group

god is not

in any one person

or collection of people

or in nature

god is not

some big man in the sky

or a statue in a

temple

god is not

in anything

or anyone

or anywhere

god is in

the nothing

the black holes

that we keep running from

what would happen

if we ran towards

the edge

with arms outstretched

would god be there

to catch us

or would the force of

gravity crush us

i guess i’ll never know

but i’m more curious

to jump into black holes

than to pretend to speak in tongues






Rachel J. Clark

Awake.

It's midnight.

The quiet gurgle-

gurgling of pipes in 

the walls 

and the scritch-

scratching of pen

on paper 

comforts the sob-

sobbing toddler behind

my temples.

The ceiling breathes

softly.

Miles away, you

sleep, oblivious 

to the thump-

thumping of moths

behind your curtains.




 Rachel J. Clark

Crosswalk

in this city

there are unapologetic monuments

to human genius and

masturbatory celebrations of

our superiority as a species

'thank god we are not

like the pigeons and sewer rats

doomed to simplicity!' the

pedestrians think pedestrian thoughts

as they stick to the sidewalk

and adhere to stop signs and

advertisements and eat mcdonald’s

and care a great deal about

the kardashian sisters

and i imagine what someone like

hunter s. thompson would do

if he had lived to witness

jersey shore, the roar that

might be heard from coast to coast

as he starts a new situation

i imagine and smile as

i step in front of a moving bus

and feel the surge of adrenaline

as the driver stops the bus

and hits me with his middle finger

and i welcome it

because as my generation

is doomed to desk jobs and obesity

and drugs and disease and twitter

this might be the last exciting thing

to ever happen to me

Rachel J. Clark