ZoeBee

Sweet mother
I cannot weave
For my heartstrings have grown brittle
As the salt-water crust on sand
Sweet mother I cannot sing
For with her last kiss she
Has stolen my vocal cords
And stashed them across the sea

Fluttering away
Lacy wings against blue sky
Where to, butterfly

I fell in love with a French mime-girl in 1923
And as enamored as I was with her, she also was with me
We would row down the Seine in her palm-traced box
Wait 'till night had come awake and kiss beneath the docks

The gingerbread house wanted nothing more than to be eaten
Which was a problem
Because what it was lacking in gingerbread
It made up for in house
 

There is an epidemic
Of old steel 
And young arms
Of thoughts inside the flesh 
Seeping to the surface
There's an epidemic of hotlines and pamphlets and therapists
But on top there's futures
Heavy as bricks

Mary Shelly did not keep
Her husband's heart in a roll-top desk
For thirty one years after his death
For my poems to be normal
Mary Shelly did not learn to read
By tracing the letters on
Her departed mother's tombstone