Runaway

Bare on the stained mattress,
hair spread beneath her
like the flame of a rising sun,
this runaway, this woman fleeing
her midlife, waits for the crazy man.

He lives in a jade forest,
cabin carved with his fingernails.
They've spied on him since Nam,
he's told her, aiming satellites close
in to listen, painting cryptic messages
across the sky with their jets.

She doesn't care.
She half believes him, wants
to believe him in her rush to escape
her glass house by the sea.

For that moment,
that sweep into another life
in her wish for a new hardness
to enter her, a fresh mouth at her breast
she has given up everything, but

he carves deeper into the forest.
The voices say she's the enemy, too.
Thorns cut her feet leaving.
Judas kisses away her tears.
A cross marks the road home.


Pris Campbell
2006


(I posted this at MySpace a day ahead of the post here. It might be fun to look at the post and comments on that site. Click HEREthen click on Runaway /View More in the blog listings up top.