Sissy

Sissy

You’ve been calling me names,
and I don’t even know you.

I can’t help but listen when
your voice splits through the air,
overwhelming the magpies and crickets.
You impose yourself, shooting electric assertions,
taking down the trees, igniting fires and
burning holes into our skin.
No one looked for cover;
we thought it pleasant enough,
blinded by the glimmer of glassy naïveté.

Artless fools with ashen skin.
Weak-stemmed daisies
wincing in the garden.
Your mark is lit
by green beacons,
steadying you.

You’ve struck Charles,
my good dead friend,
between the eyes,
because, he wasn’t looking.
You didn’t have to run,
but still, you felt the need
to stick your tongue out,
and you thought yourself
fearsome.

With a roar and suspicious spit,
you push me down and
reassert your position.
Hunkered down, surrounded
by yourself, you smile
some strange satisfaction,
thinking you‘d bested me
or perhaps stolen my cap.
It’s when I begin to speak
that I see the fear in your eyes.

You never knew our Syl,
only dreamed of trying
to decipher her, and even
now, when I attempt to
give you the clues to her language,
the little I know,
you wave me off,
as you would a street-beggar
or poisonous whore;
more threatening to you
than I’d ever known.

I’ve never liked blood;
never been one to marvel
at its metallic taste or the
winsomeness of its reds.
We all know how to spill it,
and there’s no distinction
in the ability to bleed.

I prefer black ink, the rich, onyx oil
with potential and venerable power;
it knocks the boorish bullies
onto their backs,
into the dirt.

I can make a fist,
or yowl with the
menace of a vengeful cat.
Boiling over,
scalding those who
dare to push, I possess
that same strength
which you have wrongly
claimed to own.

Show me,
how you hold a pen;
half-cocked gun,
full of yellow feathers.

Though Syl and Charlie
are long past cold,
lying silent,
with brittle, sophic smiles
they still possess the clout,
to flatten you.