Lonely Little Alice
Hot little fingers
Slip down into groping lips
Until lips go numb,
Until rigid teeth are aching
And bleeding head is pounding
And spine is arched in feline seizure;
Fingers with nails painted red
And smoothed with files,
And trimmed with metal shears,
These fingers dip deeper into the longing tunnels
And bring up the choking oppression of beauty;
Hot little fingers
Poke upon the table,
Twitch at the edges of iron wills,
And refuse.
The roar from below,
The roar that frightens, that echoes
In the rejecting walls,
And that envelopes what she sends down to it,
And turns it into dense inches
Inches and inches
And inches.
Eyes meet themselves,
Projected in the glass that distorts,
And makes them see what isn’t there.
Just one more day, just one more inch,
Another,
And another,
Until there are no more inches, and she is gone.
In the red darkness, bodies move,
Bodies writhe, jabbing bodies
Sweating, moving, twisting
Dancing
And in her mind she stands and watches
Because she has nothing else to do.
Cold and burning, she lies
Curled on the floor, with her hot little fingers
Fisted against her chest,
Wanting to smash the glass and rip herself apart,
And take herself away;
While at last, lonely little Alice
Loses control of her numb lips, her hot fingers
And wastes away
Into dusty bones and dusty eyes;
Bleeds herself into the ground
Until nothing remains
Of lonely little Alice
But the pointed bones,
And the stretching skin
And the icy wind.
And until nothing remembers
lonely little Alice
But the shivering, trembling mirror
That, inch by inch,
Moment by moment,
Whisper by whisper,
Stole away my life
From me.
Slip down into groping lips
Until lips go numb,
Until rigid teeth are aching
And bleeding head is pounding
And spine is arched in feline seizure;
Fingers with nails painted red
And smoothed with files,
And trimmed with metal shears,
These fingers dip deeper into the longing tunnels
And bring up the choking oppression of beauty;
Hot little fingers
Poke upon the table,
Twitch at the edges of iron wills,
And refuse.
The roar from below,
The roar that frightens, that echoes
In the rejecting walls,
And that envelopes what she sends down to it,
And turns it into dense inches
Inches and inches
And inches.
Eyes meet themselves,
Projected in the glass that distorts,
And makes them see what isn’t there.
Just one more day, just one more inch,
Another,
And another,
Until there are no more inches, and she is gone.
In the red darkness, bodies move,
Bodies writhe, jabbing bodies
Sweating, moving, twisting
Dancing
And in her mind she stands and watches
Because she has nothing else to do.
Cold and burning, she lies
Curled on the floor, with her hot little fingers
Fisted against her chest,
Wanting to smash the glass and rip herself apart,
And take herself away;
While at last, lonely little Alice
Loses control of her numb lips, her hot fingers
And wastes away
Into dusty bones and dusty eyes;
Bleeds herself into the ground
Until nothing remains
Of lonely little Alice
But the pointed bones,
And the stretching skin
And the icy wind.
And until nothing remembers
lonely little Alice
But the shivering, trembling mirror
That, inch by inch,
Moment by moment,
Whisper by whisper,
Stole away my life
From me.