Rita Cerniglia

Your truth burns my lips, so I take little sips,
gradually, by degrees, coming to grips.
Holy Water from your faucet drips.
Like lies from lips,
...

Though lust
like lava
runs through my veins
...

You have not learned to peel the fruit,
Smells of a life lived good.
Exciting excess makes your mind pollute
Each tangible of food.
...

That makes me more colorful to others than I am.
You coat the empty hours, the failing tongue,
The fear of mediocrity and slipping youth.
You make me glamorous in the eyes of some.
...

'Do you have a special tea in mind? '
She asks me every morning.
I never have tea on the mind,
much less in the morning,
...

Heart-Heavy clouds lumber low in the sky.
Black is the dress of the evening.
A flock of night swallows pass over my sky.
One I don't know I hear grieving.
...

Like candles
your image
burns painfully.
...

Little pale feet so cold and full of flight
tredding across the golden apples of the sand.
Anguish step each black dissolving white,
a surface grey surmounting into bland.
...

What you see is what you choose,
Myopic eyes that squint and blink.
Splitting shadows into twos,
Little Windows with big views.
...

We are not so different after all.
O' to be young and to do it all over.
To sing as a dolphin embracing the waves
urgently loving life close to its graves.
...

At night when I lie down in bed
at practice for when I am dead;
coolly pressed between the sheets
in nakedness while reading Keats;
...

...

Cat-like eyes aflame
glowing eagerly like coals
deciphering fire.
...

Cast your shadows
warm your wheat
grow your blossoms bright
...

I have no ambition whatsoever
to make a mountain out of this
small stain
this drop of dirt
...

I love you, dumb, indifferent cow.
I worship holier than thou,
but you're content to chew your cud,
to spill your milk, sleep in the mud.
...

inside our dark. We spar
like ghostly daggers
till one of us lay bleeding
...

Curious of life?
Curious of death?
Inhale, exhale
Or hold your breath.
...

...

As the effects of her anxiety

and Valium chaser wears off,
...