This Tattered Turf

My stump a tusk that's waved around
in corners of a doctors' lounge.
The scan is not intentional,
but I am photos on a bed
with calenders of surgeries.
Organ grinders of despair
reciting rhymes of normalcy.
Answers in the shape of knives
would leave the footprints of a scar.

We can give you almost motion.
We can save your knuckled pride.
That crooked thing will never fit
in Jello molds or Barbie jars.

Talons of the empty space that
should have been two working knees
became a reason for a pen.
I've had enough of walrus eyes
like doormats for disabled's curse.
Medicine that meant to heal
was cropping fate like sugar cane.
I was trees to mortal minds.
Lumberjacks at harvest time
that dance across a tattered turf.








In Green

A pair of crutches
standing tall beside the bed.
Phantoms in an opera that
rumbled in her ears.
Peeping holes for winter ghosts.
The cotton balls of angry tears
that filled the gaps of all the times
she heard the rabid sound of
"Mommy, Mommy, look at her.
She doesn't have a leg!"

Blades of grass like rusty hands
that pulled her to the ground.
Conspiracies of wistful sighs
she learned to edit with a smile.
Like frying eggs at breakfast time.
Sunny up and on the plate.
Erasers of the way they moved
that smudged the white of
all the times she might have stood
and crossed a pair of dreamy thighs.
Every stand before the mirror
was Cinderella's slipper lost.
Swinging like a pendulum
across the bridge of missing parts.

The dance with words in lieu of feet.
The waltz with rhyme in lieu of knees.
And then the light of seeing how
a tear can shape a drop of rain
and turn the brown of angry years
to emeralds singing in the green.