Brijit Reed

PAPER DOLLS   paper dolls— dolls made of tin. wafer thin hallowed halls made of onion skin. sour grapes, headaches, tears on the chin. knee scrapes, heartaches, scars on the skin. fastball, u-haul. bad grace, saving face, crimson red lambskin divisive, decisive. jet lagged, windbag, politician, kingpin. windblown windows. ragtag baggage. a dust bin of clothes pins and a hollow mannequin. horizontal, continental. ice pick lipstick. tinctures that puncture your chagrin. lemonade, big parade. bushwacker, firecracker. pretty painted plastic dolls. wide-eyed, tongue-tied, constantly restrained and sufficiently contained. brains scattered. doesn’t…read more

BUTTER golden butter halo dripping down my skin, melting from my burning thoughts, scalding the sin within. fears unhinged  from my mind and now I understand how releasing them into the sky casts stars into the sand. burning light shining bright, how I wish I could see you shining here inside me. set this starship free. refine my grace and burnish this place. abolish the hate within your faith. blow the ash from your charcoaled wings, rouse your soul with compassion– your heart with plangent strings. why not love yourself?…read more

JITTERBUG  SHOES i got my lachrymose lipstick. i got my strand of polished tears. i got my father’s raging voice still burning in my ears. i can hear my storied muse gleefully tapping, joyfully rapping, despondent staccato’d heartbeats in her jitterbug shoes. always so articulate. always so precise. are we more or less honorable when we pay the price for betraying our light? a moment in fractions, distilled from actions both coarse and triumphant in every lifetime. the seen sees the seer in the grains of sand falling from my…read more

SATELLITE dizzy little moon spinning in the room, revolving obliquely, sublimely, and sweetly, tilting like a loon. shine down on me as you peel ripples from the sea of eternity. oh, satellite— you’re dishing it, you’re slinging it into orbit, parting of the waves. particles or waves? no one knows everything these days. I’m getting it— I’m bringing it home— this moment in time is brought to you by the universe and a bottle of wine. live on every station, broadcasting through the air, this is me right here. I’m…read more

  bouncing in and out of reality, like stepping on stars— light—dark—light—dark— blink in—blink out— a swirl of color through the prism in between.   if I could hold onto a moment and bend it to fit forever where would you be in the fold?   tugged out of the song, I separate, now there’s two of me— an observant One fluttering over my skin, the other weighed down by the burdens of sin.   am I hearing the song or am I singing along? distortion and static carve edges…read more

These are my atoms ticking like clocks, chiming in flocks. this is how I know time flies. and here I am again, spirit spent on trivial things. diamond rings and parcels that spring from clinging desire. highly unstable, this half-life– as my radioactive performance corrodes the condition of moments that remain. so sample my bones. we all die alone, turning to dust, and born once more as fertile earth, nourishing the fields and evening the score before returning for the next revolution.

Every god and every goddess born from a seed of electricity, stretches beyond the sleeping stars and masters their velocity. they rush together, they contemplate their density, they matter. visualize this— a sunflower spinning. a wheel of light painting constellations all through the night. cascades of sound flowing down in sonic liquid mercury, filling the bowl carved of the ear. clay thus transformed. it’s now crystal clear. all of my eyes open at once. All Together now, Thou Legion of One, just show me how life can be won in…read more

sticky, syrupy, soul, drink of the porous presence whose spirit is the nectar that shapes the hands that sew the seeds into the ground, stitching them into the soil, so honeyed lemon petals expand and unroll, spin and unfold forever. velvet planet dusted in gold, shake your soldiers loose and let them fall away into the bruised and empty sky to save the innocent fools still standing in the clay.  

Breathe While I Unhinge articulated breath, gather and flow, unbend, unfold, scraping my lungs behold that heartbeat rhythmpushing shrieks through my chest, filling fully, cells expanding, demanding release. tired ache.so hard to wakeand face another day. burning lightburnishes my plight,casting it intocommon sight. lonely visionslumbering mutely,such resolution, denying what it knowsdeep inside. still I drink and sup from that perfect cupthat feeds all wisdomand peace.