Pain, A squeezing down Into nothingness, Into blackness, Into broken bits In the chest. Pain, A soreness remains after The squeezing fist Grinds down These shards of glass, The broken bits, This blackness Into nothingness That began long ago. A damage Left of childhood Whimpers. Pain, The squeezing down Of a nightmare And The leaking valve Of this hole In my chest.
Category: Uncategorized
Words in the Electronic Ages
What we know of words upon a page Read, learned over again until sated In the richness found. Then turn to the electronic blue haze Where even words resonate, echoing fade. For the sweetest lies, a believer craves. Then scrolling over plastic flowers dancing, The words of a lover’s refrain found Written once too often In wooing others On the same blank cards With pictures of bears. The words like Cheap plated jewelry’s shine Turn black in the bitterness On the day some thought Something pure, pristine was born. Then, finally, is it known the words Of the poetic, the romantic Are but rhetoric and lies Written and said More than once But promised For one. The gravity, the gravity A black hole.
Water
Turn
Breathe warmth
Rest comes easy now
Curled around you—
Poured would be better
Yes—
Become liquid
To be the bath water
Surrounding you
Or the water droplets of a shower
Cascading over you
To possess for a moment
The ability of water
To touch you everywhere at once
SMOKE THE CRAVING
I debate:
Should I buy
That pack of cigarettes?
God knows I want too.
The store clerk
Stares at me
As if I’ve lost my mind.
I nearly answer—
Yes, I have and other things too.
Please, God.
I just want to feel the smoke
Rush through my lungs.
Skimming, skipping, speeding
The way pictures crash the dam of my heart.
I am flooded.
I’d rather be flooded with waves of nicotine.
Yes, it’d be a blessing to drown in nicotine.
Reveling in the stench of smoke
Would help dull this taste of bitterness,
Would dull this craving for a sweetness
I can no longer have.
And why not?
What’s it all matter now?
A slow roll kind of Catholic suicide.
How long could it take?
I mean, really, at this stage?
“Ma’am, can I help you with somethin’ else?”
Says the clerk behind the counter.
I am still standing there,
The crazy lady,
Trying to wring the water out
Of the water bottle I just bought.
“No, thank you,” as I walk away.
So, no slow roll Catholic suicide.
At least, starting not today.
But this patch of bitter taste,
This patch of craving for a sweetness,
Are sewn with double stitched seams
On the underside
Of my skin.
The Well of Loneliness
Originally Posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com
Searching for something
In this void
Of fatigue–
A tender touch
Or warm skin to lie against,
A hope to grasp
When against slick
Stone.
Hours pass.
Anger and sadness silently left
And closed the door.
But the heart is chambered
Like a shell,
Swirling down within itself
Until reaching a breaking point
Of being long overdrawn,
Overworked, over tired,
Over
Over
Over.
Still learning in the stillness
Of time mixed with languages
Neither known nor understood
At all.
When there be no common ground
To stand upon–
A start, a beginning is lost.
In the travels
To find new shores
In this age
Without directions
Or something resembling
The instruction manual.
Turn to ask a friend,
“How does that dialogue go again?”
But there is no answer
In the old cliché’ of “seek and ye shall find”
You’ve knocked upon the door
And no one answered.
Live days in monastic silence,
Find it difficult to voice an answer
To the Walmart clerk saying,
“Have a nice day!”
Every night
Crawl downward and in,
Say a small, silent fervent prayer—
“I will always miss you
And I will always love you.
May my soul find you.”
Waking in fragments
To find it is time
For glue and duct tape.
They fix anything
That needs to be held
Together
At the bottom
Of the well.
The Price Of Salt
Originally posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com
I went to all my baskets of words
To find them emptied out.
In fact, it seems
Anger and sadness
Sandblasted holes
Clean through the dang baskets.
Then I went to all my junk drawers of words,
Pulled each open and found each empty.
Frustrated, I tugged them all the way out
To make sure no junk, trying to hide away,
had shimmied behind the drawers.
But my efforts were to no avail.
All my words were gone, stolen.
Even my most treasured one,
Used ever so rarely for food or wine,
Used just once, only once,
For a love.
Is this the price?
The price I pay for salt?
But this isn’t essential
To human existence.
No, I should report a robbery.
Call the cops and say,
“Someone stole all my words
And my most treasured one.”
Then I could file an insurance claim.
Perhaps collect something incalculable
And patch those dang baskets.
But how would they calculate
The value of such a word?
Used so rarely for things
And only once, just once
For something, someone rare?
How to calculate exquisite?
Happy Endings Are All Alike
Originally posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com
Or so they say.
Wish I may,
Wish I might,
Find one to curl up into tonight.
But it’s too late.
Far too late for that.
I can imagine what those endings are like.
I’ve read them in books.
I’ve seen them in movies.
I’ve even lived them for little while,
A season, maybe two,
A few years and played a fool
Because I wanted too
And didn’t want to see
A truth or two.
I have friends
Who model happy endings.
It’s really sickening
In the syrupy sweetness
Of it all.
Yes, they are all alike,
I do suppose.
Perhaps,
Unhappy endings are most interesting
Of all.
I don’t really know.
I’ll tell you at the end.
Window Shopping
Oh, do so pardon me,
Window shopping only, dear.
No temptation to try it on for size
in some strange dressing room,
to look in the mirror to see
exactly how it fits.
No touch of whimsy
to impulse buy
only to return,
and God forbid,
pay any re-stocking fee.
I may appreciate the look.
I may so enjoy
reading the product description,
but no,
no thank you, my dear.
Please, no trial samples
to increase the clutter
I’ve collected over years.
You see, love,
it’s like in Ecclesiastes,
there is a time to buy
and a time to leave it on the rack.
Yes, sweetie,
I know it’s on sale,
but the return policy
is too exhausting with disclaimers
to know if it’s worth the risk
of finding a good fit.
So, for now, my sweat pea,
let me just peruse
the clearance stacks
and perhaps read
the product contents
out of simple curiosity.
Perhaps, one day,
though, I doubt it,
my dear,
I’ll find something
that strikes my fancy,
take it from the rack
to the fitting room,
try it on for size,
and find a good enough fit
to buy.
The Bluest Eye
Originally posted on Whisper and the Roar and Brave and Reckless. Written for feminist book title prompt: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
In the bluest eye,
I thought I’d found
Home.
My heart’s desire,
As Judy, in the movie,
Once said.
Now, the bluest eye
Holds no warming flame
Of home.
It turns a mirror
Up to me and shows
The fool that I have been
For selling pieces of myself—
The plates, the cutlery,
The sheets, the towels,
The quilts and bedspreads,
The leavings of a life.
The leavings of a house.
The leavings of myself—
Without a proper winnowing,
And sold it all at Garage Sale prices.
In return, I thought I’d gained
What I’d always wanted.
But I leave emptied
Of all my leavings
In the bluest eye.
In the Songs of Birds
When I was three,
My mother taught me to read,
And words
Became playthings and playmates
As I sat in the back of the restaurant
Watching her work her dream to death.
Later, as I grew,
Family losses piled, heaped
Weighty upon the shoulders of a nine-year-old.
Words became
Escape, shelter, survival,
A path out of destruction.
And so, words stayed
For more years than I’d care to say.
But now here,
Waking mornings,
Hearing birdsong,
Or in early evening,
The warm sun blanketing
My skin as I fill the birdfeeders,
I hear words in the songs of birds.
Silly though it may seem,
The cardinals have much to say,
“It’s cheaper here. It’s cheaper here.”
To “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”
The mockingbirds chatter away
Announcements of “She’s here, she’s here, she’s here.”
And I’m not sure which bird continually asks,
“Wanna see, wanna see, wanna see a receipt?”
All the while, the Blue Jays squawk away,
Warning all the others,
“Stay away! Stay away!”
Then in the chittering of the squirrels,
I hear the demand,
“Where’s the food? Where’s the food?
You let the food run out! How dare you?”
As they scurry away,
Pretending, at least, to be afraid of me.
Among all the noise and chatter
All the words of birds and squirrels
One word, never felt before now,
I feel move within my chest,
Peace.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 