Rose Aiello Morales

Something about the melancholy,
“fuck you” comes out as a strangled cry,
call for help and a declaration of no war.

Armistice heavy at my side.

Wheat waving at the end of
gladiator life, walking into fields,
a road that leads to heart’s content.

Maybe not.

Old age and ears close to the harsh
sound of mouths’ invective, I can pretend
to never hearing and it brings me peace.

Perhaps.

Close eyes and blood disappears into
the memory of red drip falling on my
sword, lips mumble saying I will fight no more

Forever.

Plowshares, I can farm out goodness
like a co-op, the million monkeys typing
out my last will and testament, beneficiaries

Amen.

God is in the silence, the Devil
is in the details, a clean sweep with
a dirty broom, excrement excommunicated

And I find religion here.

Knocking on a battered door,
I can do little less than answer.

She fell in love with a picture
from a thousand years ago
of green eyes smiling (but it was a smirk)
she didn’t know it was yesterday
a day that never was, a time she’d never know.

The man behind a painting well reversed
lay sleeping under cover, red eyes shut
that would be bright, long hair greasy
under guises of the night, voices raspy
gasping out history, her story in his sight.

She was young but much too old.
He shivered in the heat, sweating
in the cold of winter days, gathered
women, lied of youth and lithe visage
and they were dazzled, drugged by shot matte.

She was growing younger every day
and he resembled photos fading
in the way old photos do, sepia
browns and grays, she found one
hidden up his sleeve, he died that way.

She was born again, he never was,
into a land where souls were golden coin
and clear as glass, she saw everything,
revealed at last as what was true and
what had never been, she loved a photo,
left a photo hanging in a room, no windows there.

There are no points to this
nor any short way there.
What you see are diamonds
in the rough, tenuous, we call them ‘A’.

Death imagined on the other side,
a membrane made of gauze
we float through, searching
for a better term, we call it ‘B’.

Distance is a line, not.
Curved space rotates,
ideas are challenged
and we find what’s real is knot.

Universe and universe,
they talk and talk and words
lose meaning, angry is the juice
that ties in intestinal knots.

Fingers feel the pinch, we spin
and spin a story into cloth, add
characters and clauses, beginning
is the end, the end is the beginning,
our minds unraveling the secret knot.

© Rose Aiello Morales 2012

Weather,
a pencil drawing, obsidian
and lead before the first tear falls.

Power surges,
bulb condemned on thin line,
dull glow sparks, semblance of still life.

Shadow plays the walls,
flash somber on curdled cream,
faded paper drinks the dying sun.

Inside, outside,
bones grow brittle rickety,
pasty sallow shades of D minus.

Bent back crawls
along these ink smudged halls,
pallid lost, sketched in hidden corners.

©2012 Rose Aiello Morales

Snow white on the ground,
the hunter drips red,
skin translucent fades in flakes,
melts, there’ll be blood
in Springs of roses.

Alabaster purity, but what
of twigs of brown? Red earth
lies fecund, yellow forsythia
flowers in the mud pristine.

Cloud reign, subjugation,
the turning of umber planted fields,
black gold rapes greenery, crude
feasts at the court of public opinion.

Black Christ has blue eyes,
his story whited out, re-written
by the conquerors, the page is blank,
white vellum throwing off all hues.

And white becomes grey,
covering the colors of Earth,
plowed under, they cannot grow,
reign washes deep, a drop chain
binds, ivory gloves hold the keys.

Ice, snow, the Winter
of sallow cheeks, cold for years
and years
and years,
but Spring comes slowly,
oh yes, Spring is bound to come.

©2012 Rose Aiello Morales