...And the Angels Arrived

poetry by kitty

Rain

God's tears fall in sorrowful sheets,
unrelenting, unrepentant, incessant... unnoticed.
The gentle drumbeat overpowers
the music playing silently in the background,
beating a tentative tattoo
on my mind,
lulling it to calm.
Shimmering black ribbon--
stretching to eternity
before and behind me,
illuminated by a thousand white lights
that speed through too quickly--
passing me by,
one by one.
She falls gently into sleep and
it's odd...
I'm the one dreaming.

Five Hours in Virginia

Green and brown blur,
minus detail--
carefully blended streaks, painted
onto a canvas of ridges
and edges and slowly rolling
slopes.

Gray on blue;
green on green;
white and gold on black;
lines, curves, and
distant hills on the horizon and
I'm hypnotized.

A cross
sits by the roadside,
memorial and call to worship
wreathed in silk and ribbon--
the Message blinks quickly across
my travel-numbed mind.

Figures sit on rickety porches
in rocking chairs,
rocking,
surveying darkened land
and violet sky--
I'm almost home.

Slender

limbs reaching,
seducing
from glossy pages,
bony fingers with painted nails
poking at my un-self confidence;
starvation
with perfect skin, a
white/pink smile and
an angular face without
shadows, only smudged makeup.

everything I should be,
wrapped up
in a cute miniskirt.

eyes contradict,
heart pumps a faint negative,
voice sounds, loud and unwilling to
pay tithe to the
Church of Anorexia--
but always finding a way to confess to
that secret desire
of the not-so-perfect:

surely it's not too much to ask,
to look like that girl
in the magazine?

Rear View

On the road for hours.
I wake up and he's still driving
with the volume off
so I can sleep.
He yawns as he looks at the passenger seat
but won't let me take the wheel
because it's his job,
to take care of his baby girl.
I guess I let him keep the illusion of control
because he loves me.

On this road too long.
We stick a CD in the stereo
to pass the time and Daddy
beats on the steering wheel
while I bounce my head and look out the window.
We sing about love and the beach and
how we all have a Caribbean soul we can
barely control,
and the harmony isn't just in
our song.

The road is an eternity,
and trees and signs pass in a blur
while we fake a
polite conversation,
a little father/daughter chat
about not much of anything.
Yes, I miss the house, my room, the cat
when I'm away so long.
He really wants to know, but won't ask:
do I miss him?

I glance into the rear view
at the picture of us not looking at each other.
My mind flips the message around:
objects in car are closer than they appear
in the mirror