mila violet

Accidental Love Song

he makes me want to live in trees. We lie around like gazelles

and the sun is driving us mad. When the stars come 

we cry and try to trick fate, we have stolen nights like theives,

screaming anthems from a lost generation

in someone elses bed. I watch him rest on a dead man's chair,

he pretends to draw on my skin. We taste like cheap wine and ice cream,

saw mermaids in the sky

and in a Chinese restaraunt near a lake

we thought we might die.

------

Crown Recluse

In her room she hides, pulling 

at her Jean Harlow hair and searching 

for invisible spiders. In some car headed West, 

away from the circus, soon 

she will make her escape from

The Queen of Fools:

with the bloodstained lips who writhes 

on the floor, whining for love -- 

her china-white skin and jumping bean eyes

bulging with betrayal, her mind like a telephone's busy signal;

The Ersatz Socialite:

who gags on speed and double cheeseburgers,

broiling her corpulent body in tanning beds --

her prerecorded voice skipping where the record has been scratched,

she pushes herself deep under the grime

of other people's personalities.

The Girl With The Smokescreen Face:

the artless one who cuts meticulous holes in hearts, 

bored in an imitation gallery that she has turned to a galley

where aquaintances she has grown tired of hang from snake nooses --

no one has ever seen her real face.

The Boy Who Always Smiles:

with the broken shoes whose imp eyes shine with deceit 

as he tears away parts of his psyche, lending them out for weeks

at a time, divulging the leeches who suck on his spirit.

The Men in the Shadows:

who wait with wolf teeth and hungry eyes, 

convulsing with bloodlust in their weak shackles.

Death pulled back the curtains,

ripped off their cracking masks.

Something sick inside of her 

likes to feed on saccharine lies,

but Death with her laughing eyes insists she leave,

"Life is much more fragile than I will ever be."

She presses her face to the mint countertop,

she'd like to lick the sapphire ice cube floor tiles

or let her ragdoll body fall down the stairs,

but instead she grows taller and begins to walk away,

little girls in jellybean coats staring at her legs 

and eyes.

She has already packed 

false eyelashes and too-small rollerskates, 

lipstick that reminds her of blood,

Art Nouveau posters and virgin journals,

half-memories, a wooden owl,

cheap pink champagne

and what is left of her soul.

------

Insatiable 

She bleeds: mouth and wrist, thigh and sex

once there were teacups and sad-eyed toys, radios that spoke slowly,

a cake for every day of the week,

the sun stretching across the walls like a tired dancer's legs.

She always bleeds now, bone on bone, metal to skin, tears to wounds,

the moon forever bloating and miscarrying.

It is something like stigmata, blood for dead flowers and lies,

broken bottles and unspoken liasons.

Blood for desire and cruelty, blood maybe for just being alive.

She bleeds like Eve and her mother, like a breathless virgin,

like a baby lamb 

she bleeds 

and bleeds 

and bleeds 

and bleeds,

the mirrors and televisions of her mind 

forever flashing.

------ 

Vacancy

The child is in the hallway with the dust,

toy in hand (perhaps a teacup, a fat pony, doesn't matter now).

The walls were white and once she'd pretended it was a hotel,

imagined the signs red-hot and nervous flashing

VACANCY VACANCY VACANCY--

the perfect hotel.

Pancakes and psychotic cartoons and polaroids.

The child could hear the Mother voice and the Father voice,

voices that fancied themselves whispers, 

voices banging into eachother, into the walls,

staining them with dagger words,

words like her name pushed side by side with words

like

Mistake

Accident

Ab(h)or(ra)tion

The toy slept alone that night, stars in the sky over the hotel

shut themselves off and

then the child was a woman,

hand over heart

mouthing

VACANCY VACANCY VACANCY.

------

Librarian

I chopped all my hair off a year ago, 

went violet-black from Bardot.

I always wanted to be a librarian. 

I pass the library on the way to the bookstore.

The old men who come in with the sun

throw moist money at me

for literature about coins and trains.

Also there is the lady who is trying to learn German 

from newspapers,

the deaf Brazilian girl with twin braids and science books,

the fatherly Lydia Lunch fan,

the bald vegetarian man who gives me tips on what vitamins to take,

the clench mouthed Southern Baptists and their lemony stares,

my art history professor from senior year,

the women with black lead credit cards 

who have no time for charity

(they have already given enough 

to their children, 

they explain).

It is here that I am adored

with breathless brain, 

repeating lines that are spat at me,

drama class with no dignity.

Lunch is thirty minutes for:

the coffee shop, half a cigarette, nearly crying with infection, 

a black coffee and multigrain roll-- diet pills are cheaper than food,

half a cigarette, breaking nails,

pulling at my own hair, 

spilling coffee on myself. I always wanted to be a librarian.

The rate of pay is $7.25 an hour and ominous dreams. 

Feeling the heavy books in my hands 

reminds me of university.

I pass the library on the way to the bookstore, but

the library never calls me back.