Free Fall

    Scripting (2003)

    She penned the life that was to be;
    naivety and bliss of youth
    furnished its tone and hue.
    Then life, the chameleon, reared its head,
    smudging the masterpiece.

    A good educator but
    an ethereal marriage but
    a beautiful baby but

    the marauding twins—
    pain and abuse invaded her lair,
    eventuating the destruction
    of almost everything
    classically holy,
    issuing forth from this paramour,
    her lone Romeo
    throwing her empire into chaos.

    The action never follows
    the script the author pens.


    The Dwarf (2003)

    I fear the power in your eyes.
    At the moment of your wrath,
    the woman in me shrinks
    to be the child you demand me be.

    I fear the death in your eyes,
    but this dwarf must hero be,
    cowering, placating, martyring her soul
    so her kids won't have your eyes.

    I fear the power in your eyes
    and your machismo ministry.
    I swear I'll cease to be the other
    who threatens your fragility.

    I fear the death in your eyes,
    so I'll pay tribute to you,
    O mighty one, plunderer of youth,
    murderer of dreams on a platform of rebirth.


    The Ambush (2003)

    You touched her kids,
    you wounded her soul,
    wracking her womb with pain,
    and shook her well-worn faith.

    Then leaky faucets finding gutters
    on her freshly pleated face
    gushed forth in insurrection,
    the last stance of the damned.

    Ungovernable thoughts, one-liners
    raced across her brain,
    repetitious, torturous rituals
    of excruciating pain.

    Her eyes grew wide in knowing—
    the knowing of the lost.


    Crossroads (1995)

    My God! My God!
    Why hast thou dealt so harshly with me?
    Why hast thou forsaken me?
    Why? Why?
    O God of my childhood,
    sweet gentle Jesus,
    I had not known You thus.

    Why are pain and unhappiness
    constant residents of my being?
    God, remember how we were
    intimate once, You and I?
    I was the lamb frisking
    in the green pastures of Your presence.
    We communed then,
    You and I,
    while all heaven looked on.
    It was good then, so good, Lord.

    Now visions of the grave rise
    before my eyes and scare me.
    Every moment I fear the end,
    for in the menace's eye
    is the ominous presence of death.

    And what is left?
    A God who seems absent,
    abuse from within and without
    at the hand of a stranger—lover and brother.
    Oh, my God, it never stops.

    I'm the cornered fawn,
    forever retreating
    before the heinous hounds of hell.
    I'll be good, I say to the menace,
    but that's not enough—
    nothing I do is ever enough.

    I weep in the shackling gloom.


    The Sequel (1995)

    I will not cry.
    I must not cry.
    This is no time to cry.
    I will insulate myself
    from the intellectual excrement
    of the bogus lecturer and philosopher;
    from the vain babblings
    passing for Biblical creed,
    mouthed by the unfeeling pastor;
    from the barbs of pseudo friends
    and the plotting of witch-hunting—
    pointy, index-fingered foes
    from the hell-bent conspiracy.

    Yes, I will ignore
    the whole shebang:
    pastor, principal, philosopher,
    husband, all.
...