Behold thy mother!

(Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin
did my mother conceive me.)

She clings there, swaying,
smelling slightly of an aftertaste,
keening in a voice that
clears your sinuses.
She is old now, looks
disfigured and triumphant -
like most old things she is
probably at least a little insane.

In the folds of her clothing I
caress a few friends,
smuggled past her dimly vicious
vision.  She is inside a part
of me that mourns some death
or other - she is the silence that
makes me an island; her motion
laps shores that appear
wooded only from a distance, that
slope to a slow, swollen peak.

( to the contents page.)