SOMEBODY’S GIRL ©

She stands in night doorways

with bat shadow hands flailing at strangers,

Newspapers swirl daily text around her bare ankles,

swollen by gravity’s  pull.

 

She smiles at innocuous strangers,

staring through toothless delight

remembering:

crimson yard day lily sunsets,

a brother’s hand reaching,

her mother’s first kiss,

before dwindling away.

Car windows close

against menacing winds unraveling threadbare shroud.

She shuffles pavement divides

sifting bare fingers through yesterday’s dinners,

tilting her head, with eyes wide open

toward omnipotent voices calling her name.

A mortal leaf

broken at the stem,

drifting through asphalt garden

aimless and forbidden.

In day prism

she is the face lost in the disintegrating sepia

imprinted ashes in daily demise.

 

Time

has deceived her,

stealing her youth

and rolling it under long coat in tatters,

tied by a rope.

 

On the brim of the crowds

in search of no reason,

she wanders  

without grieving or witness   

a long way from home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIGIL ©

I wait

A cat watching night

 trace its footsteps along the moon.

Listening to the cicadas

entwine their legs around summer

until all sound ceases.

 

You stand before me

a shadow of a man

lost in your senseless acts of attrition

that pare my heart

 down to the core

Tormented by decay.

 

Where were our dreams?

Constellations of our desires

spinning

through a maize of dark holes.

You stare into space

expecting a margin of hope

pulling gravity into your galaxy

to equate us together once more.

 

I am your battlefield

Ravaged by time

The sight of your eyes

cuts me to my knees

Until all that is left

Is this moment

A whisper

A sigh

As you leave

cloaked in your cape of deception

Escaping deep

into the night

as I shiver toward dawn.

 

Litany Burns is a world-renowned clairvoyant, lecturer, and author of two books, the latest The Sixth Sense of Children (Penguin: Putnam). Her poetry has been published in the International Women’s Year Poetry Anthology, and has been read at New York University, Lehman College NYC, “The NYC Theater Amnesty International Fund Raising Program,” Barnes & Noble Books, Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Manhattan, Hopper House Museum “Project on Prison Art” Nyack, New York, as well as in programs in Los Angeles and throughout the Tri-state area. She has worked on the infamous ‘Son of Sam’ case, appeared on NBC, ABC, FOX, LIFETIME, been featured in national magazines, Elle, Redbook, Jane, newspapers, “The New York Times”, “The Wall Street Journal”, “L.A. Herald Examiner”, “London Daily Mail”, and on national radio.  Featured in The 100 Top Psychics In America and her own video, she is currently at work on a feature film. www.litanyburns.com.