Without Words

as so often I am
my hands scritching at the pen
my lips twitching at the mouth
but words are scarce
and meaning more so
in the face of so much

Undressed

I can't give in
you know?
Even though it draws my gaze
ever so poetically
to the window.

To invest the sparsely collected earnings
from my tired errand
on a dress so fiercely pinned to the mannequin
would unravel my eyes
and there is no seamstress left
to reward my hem with a thimble.

I tried to tear it free once
twice
maybe more
but all I succeeded in doing
was misshape a garment that was lovely
before my greed
and leave my heart-stain
spattered between the two of us.

In the dressing room
one beautiful autumn evening
I slipped in on
felt it collect in my folds
as if the fabric were I,
but I never got to take it home.

I suppose there was a theft I could have made
but we know
all us women know
the mirror is tweaked towards flattery
and the lighting is complimentary.
The living room mirror
is the true test...
that dance we do before it
for however long it takes to know
the dress fits like a glove.

I effort now
towards a circuitous route
that takes me past the dairy, the laundromat
the Rexall, and the 5&Dime.
But every now and then
I wind up on Third Avenue
my breath against the glass of that dress.

Conjecture

Do you ever wonder what we would be
if your life hadn't choked you...
leashed your neck in a way you felt was irreversible?

Would we be lying cheek to cheek
hands locked and laced
while our desires ran the race track
quickening.

Would we have pummeled each other bloody,
to either beat a hasty retreat
or realized we were both vampires?

Would we be amazed at the level of intimacy achieved
or disgusted by the fantasy we created
only to find it as unrealistic as Hugh and his bunnies?

I guess we will never know.

That's the part the destroys me
or doesn't...
even that,
having no accessible score.

Just conjecture.

Premature Offering

Why do I miss you so much
when the sun is filtering through
grape vines that we used to dance through
as if we were flesh?

Why did you offer yourself up
as the lamb
to all my sacrifice?
Why did I?
We were so blemished.

I ran the vines tonight in my shoeless feet
and the dirt was softer than sand
so much so
I floated on it. I swear I did!
The moon rose, and the sun set
simultaneously! It was beautiful.
At least it would have been
if you had seen it.

That woman from across the continent...
she should have been you
but she wasn't
so she sang your heart instead
and it came to me on a westward wind.

I felt you
sort of.
I wanted your arms.
I needed them more.

Behind The Curtain

I think that’s what you did.
You pulled back the curtain and I saw the next layer
maybe the universe beyond that.

Was it you or I, believing
that I could draw the drape,
shut my eyes
and not feel my hearts wanderlust?

Such is a futile exercise
I have engaged like an occupation.
At first I was glad for the job.
Something to do. If there is a doing thing
then there is an undoing possible,
an erasure of the new errand
my soul convulses with.

I was fascinated.
You were delightful
and I sometimes wonder if I shall wake
knowing it the concoction of a dream.
But my dreams die quickly in the morning light
and this has been a slow death,
returning with the lunar consistency
of the living dead.

I am the watch tower
that waits within the definition of insanity
and when the immortal appears
I feel sane.

An Incoming Moment

I recognized the look
two wool coats
scratching backs in the foxhole,
her ringless hands around the barrel of her want
your eyes scanning for incoming hurts.

I waved goodbye without touch
a casual passerby within a marriage
and wondered what it meant
to see this woman fighting wars with my husband.
.
.
.

Medicinal

I wrote this down
to digest later, in incremental pills of nutrition or arsenic.

I know not which
or in what order
or if I shall outlive either one.
.
.
.
.

Menu

A vestibule...a syphon
and all that falls into the mouth of its hunger
will be the fruit of some foreign union.

What we feed upon
is rarely the meal we ordered.
.
.
.
.

Stuck Between

a dog barks
and you don't even realize
your leg lifts
as if the noise were your true North
and your leg nothing but the rising of dawn
as it always was
meant

the entrance of the sun
into a darkness you have assimilated
as the beginning of each day

what can you do with a sun
you cannot capture?

You shield your eyes.

Wake up and smell the coffee...

Between heavy lid
and the clench against dawn
there is the scent
of something waking
from denial
.
.
.
.

This year has been a silent film
emotions flickering and exaggerated
for lack of a voice.

I've run them through the centrifuge
and separated the head from the heart
the will from the way
the duty from the will
and found myself wanting, as for years now
I have

Are you coming around?
Can you see beyond all that we crafted
to all that was meant?

There is a shadow
long and gray as a nameless street through my responsibility
it limps along on three wheels
only one of which is inducted.

That wheel keeps turning
strong and dedicated as ever
and for that, we go in circles.
.
.
.
.

Sanctity

He said,
"I could be your friend"
and the emotions ran like a faucet
too heavy with the labour of it's waters.

I suppose this weight is necessary,
otherwise relationships would be the castoff hankies
of the first shed tear.
And so we hang on, for each other
for the sanctity of it all.

Shit.
I never was sanctimonious.
But I sure tried.
.
.
.
.

Inability

If I could turn a dime towards the sun
I would.

But you see,
I have no hands,
and we've lost face.

Yellow

Ever notice how yellow is a gathering color?

It doesn't stand alone

but clusters together

fields of mustard

as if

it has a cumulative desire

to trump the sun.

Winged

I am sparrow

claw clutching edges

of poetry and prose

little evidence

that the hard work of soul

is in flight

Desperate

I was sitting with a friend last night who lost her husband to cancer last year. She said that it was almost as if 2010 never happened, or it was ages ago. And now, almost twelve months later, she is saying she is no longer numb, and the grieving even more desperate. And I want to tell her it will end, but we both know it would be a lie. We grieve, we die, we are reborn every day. There are moments when we are living, and dead moments when our blood is turning to alcohol beneath six feet of earth and the beetles are feeding off it, drunk and inappropriate.

No hands, no retreat, no return. Only a continual going out from our shoal, arms out, belly up...bloated and burnt. Then you lift me, with your sweat and love, desperate even in that. Desperate for that. True gifts indeed.

 

She Took Me With Her

"When she went, last night,
She threw closed a
Thousand doors and
And a phone lay crushed on the floor

It was a fire, big and wild
Of another's wood
That scorched, not warmed
And only a river of tears
Might put it to shame

She hushed me quiet
As she opened her window,
That i might see
A clenched passage

Unavoidable

We didn't speak
Or hold hands as
She guided me
To where her innocense
Had been sacrificed anew

In her hands of a child
She carried a sack of burnt offerings

I watched as they squirmed
And writhed to escape
Or perhaps, fight escape of
A resolve they underestimated

As silently I shadowed
And her child's fingers fisted,
The sun withdrew knowing
It had no place here

She sat me on a bench
And looked away as
She settled beside
My torn shell of helplessness

Then it began,
Just a tear, then a stream
Finally a river
As one by one
The bag was emptied.
She cried too

Purge,
First a history
That should never
Have been written,
Then a guilt, mindless
Of compassion

Next,
A horde of miscreants
Masquerading as love

Brothers, so called
That might have sheltered
But instead hid beneath her,
And a sister that might have loved
If only she knew how

Efforts,
To fix, explain-conceal
Music
That fell just one note short
Of true healing
And two wine glasses
That lied about forget

And finally,
Mothers
That never were
And weak, foolish fathers
Who never could be

And when at last

the bag was empty,
Swept away
In the dirty flood,
Then she took my hand

And it was no longer
A child's frightened squeeze
But rather the tender hold
Of a beautiful woman
Who would no longer

Carry other people's trash

To the curb

Then close, she let me draw her

as I kissed away her tears,

And her sweet face

Found my shoulder.

She let me hold her

Having learned her hurt

And she taught me love, again

The way it should be.

And when

There was no more to do

No more to cry

No reason to linger

-She let me walk her home

I liked that she took me

I like that we held

I like that love still lived

In a home of broken windows

And dirty linen

Where rats rule the cupboard

But I hate that her heart had to shatter

Once more

As purchase for me to learn

That her love is unbreakable" -  9/15/11

*Sigh*

On the edge of all I know
I am brilliant
clearly
the things I fight against
are truths that wish to be known

And yet
all I can do is live what I know
as today
and acknowledge
that I am fucked, either way.

.
.
.

the things we do against all we can't

It's 5:00 AM, I'm on my bike beneath a teenage moon that's still wide awake from a night of heavy partying. His eyes blink drunkenly as I follow the beam of my narrow headlight. If he wasn't so hung over, he'd be doing a better job, or at least give way to day. But the sun will hurt his eyes, and he's in no hurry whatsoever to fall behind the world.

I pedal to the coffee shop with my goosebumps on full alert to the temperature of night. I stand at the counter, rub my eyes. "Decaf." She looks at me askance and I shrug. I take the long way home...stopping to window shop and sip the cinnamon off the surface of my Java. When I get back to the house I tuck myself away in the backyard...book of poetry, a flashlight, my warm mug. The moon yawns and slips just a bit...just enough that the world becomes silhouette, and I nothing but another black mark against the skyline.
.
.
.
.

Easy Out

Ommission has a backward ease to it

you can't return
to the forgotten
once your footsteps
have hardened in clay

so we shrug

there's no power over yesterday
today
and no ruse to circumvent
error

Let us lie
at the intersection
of our parallels

(poem response to a 3 Word Wednesday poem. Photo showed construction of two bridges that ran into each other.)