eating a pomegranate after an unsatisfying encounter

The taste between my lips is tartly sweet--
pomegranate staining them a deep and bloody red--
but my favorite fruit is little more than ashes
in my mouth. You've come-- gone-- left
me here alone, my thoughts my only company,
you with green glass curled in your elegant fingers.

I can't help but try to catch you with curled fingers
as you walk away from me; it's bittersweet
to realize there's no time I don't want your company;
while here, I am surrounded by books unread,
berated on all sides by duties undone, writing left
for another day. My notebooks turn to ashes.

Still, there's a phoenix risen from these ashes
where my inspiration died, reaching with fingers
turned into claws. They sank into me, and left
one venomous talon. Delirium drags sweet
and simple words from me, written in red,
pleading: I beg for anyone's company.

I'm bound to die unloved, longing for your company;
one kiss before my body is consigned to ashes.
Better to be remembered truthful, blushing red,
than shy and lying perpetually behind my fingers.
Just kiss me tart and pomegranate-sweet
(which is to say not sweet at all) before you're left

alone here with my pyre. Flame will be all that's left--
no need for excusing away the company
never offered. The thought is sweet--
but there is work yet to do, and I am not yet ashes.
There's my story, there's my pen in shaky fingers,
my words still to be written, to be read.

My fingertips are stained with sticky red--
once juice is licked away, blood will be what's left.
There's nothing more to write with bleeding fingers,
no further pleas tonight for your unwilling company.
Here I burn the rinds of fruit into a pile of ashes,
leaving on my tongue only a faint memory of sweet.

The frantic hyperbole pushing my fingers burns out to ashes.
Left after the exaggeration is something almost sweet:
My request for your company in a note yet to be read.

ars poetica: sestina

The day in question had a sky of brilliant blue,
as is usual for my crises. The weather
never cooperates with the unlucky daughter
of water and fire. It never sides with me.
Clouds drifted by in sheepy puffs, shifting shape,
and the day was lovely, but that's not the point.

Maybe I should just get to the point.
That day, the sky wasn't all that was blue--
I was feeling sort of down, bent out of shape,
to put it plainly, I was sick-- under the weather.
It seemed like only bad things would come to me.
I felt it in the air-- gift of a seer's daughter.

Foresight couldn't change my luck. (I thought it oughter.)
Some force of nature thought it apt to appoint
the daughter of foxes, the least likely heroine-- me--
to save the day, find from whence spring winds blew,
and record my deeds in rhymed couplets, whether
I would choose the form or not. They cannot force the shape

of my poems. All I cannot control is my own shape.
I should have stayed in bed, a shell of blankets, daughter
of birds. I should have called in sick, blamed the weather.
The alarm's shrilling cracked my shell with an audio point:
I swung at it one-handed, blinked sleepily at the blue
sky in my window, and knew things would go badly for me.

The birds outside had a coded message: "so la ti re me"
"a poem is commissioned by the fates," words were shaped.
I whistled notes back to the birds in blue:
"tell them she'll obey, loving and obedient daughter."
I couldn't see why me, why my poems-- what's the point?
I was getting ill, and besides never wrote well in this weather.

Against my instinct, I decided to take advantage of the fair weather--
pack a lunch, a notebook, spread a blanket beneath me
on the grass, and subject innocent paper to the point
of my pen-- if I could force a point through the shape.
It was all doggerel, some imagined love between boy and witch's daughter,
and my repeated creative failures only made me more blue.

Finally the shape of the poem overwhelmed me.
I ended the pointless poem about no one's daughter,
lay back, and enjoyed the sunny blue-sky weather.