Alien
In my body, I sometimes feel at home,
Sometimes an alien on a strange planet.
Skin the wall that holds me in, lets me touch,
Feel, explore the surfaces of what’s not-me.
Flesh and bone, brick and mortar of my being,
These bones, the shifting scaffolding of this,
My strange abode. Arteries and veins,
Channelling the pulse of my home’s life-blood.
Network of nerves, the wiring: synapses
Spark, in electric flashes of awareness.
These eyes, my windows to the world;
I close the shutters, find another world within.
The heart, a locked door: it yields, sometimes,
When I find the key.
This house, my woman body,
Has many chambers. In the red room,
The floor heaves, walls bulge and curve,
The air swirls with explosive yearning.
In the room of memory, spectres cling
And lunge, and ghostly voices clamour—
Echo chamber, threatening to implode.
My womb is where the unborn future
Lies in wait.
In the hall of mirrors, at night, I see,
New-grown fangs, and forked tongue,
Twisted talons, serpents writhing
In tangled hair, black hollows for eyes.
In the mirror, is it me I see, or an-
Other, my own dark twin, alien, trapped
Here, in this lonely planet, this body?
At the threshold of my consciousness, I hover
Between worlds, between me and not-me,
Knowing the way in is the only way out.
***
House of Words
[Haiku]
Words cross porous walls
In the house of translation—
Leaf cells breathe new air.
***
House of Paper
[Haiku]
Honey in a hive—
Poems hide in pages—rooms
Of my paper house.
***
