Lady Macbeth
Moon on the Man
Learning to breathe again

Here in the privy I bleed.  I bleed
and can scarcely think of it.
Cupping this terrible blood
in the palms of my hands
I push it back inside me
with fingers cracked and broken.
Daggers have opened me up.
I lick the sea-blood off
with his servant, my tongue;
and still I bleed.

Ha!  "My dearest chuck," he called me,
and I, his chicken, plucked out white feathers,
a drop of red on each,
to line his jagged eyrie.
Black rooster's blood in golden bowls
we have supped, and he has crowed
and crowed over me.  "My dearest chuck."

I'll leave his sons among these ordures.
I'll spatter blood on blood-hewn stones.
I'll run in circles, scaring children -
they'll scream for me, deny their eyes -
I've none.  And none will catch me.
They'll wait until I drop.

The hoarfrost in your beard sparkles
as your head strives upwards
to worry the sky's mystery.

Those stars for you are real,
bear names and substance.
As friends on the threshold
you greet their return,
hear a maze of stories,
inconceivable journeys.

They're just holes scraped in the sky
like foil pictures hawked round the doors.
Illusions.

I prefer the altering moon;
the master jeweller, whose reach
can silver plate the bowl of the sea,
shape stones with tidal washes,
sparkle the hoarfrost in your beard.

Think of this.

Fire kindled,
the flame defying phoenix
rises from ashy death.
A few faint flutters
then, at full stretch,
its feathers are a gold lace trim
on unbound wings,
and it soars
in ecstatic tilt.

Like blood cracking ice
in frozen fingertips,
rebirth is agony,
but it learns to breathe again.