Poems and Other Stuff

The Orphan of John 18-20

Did you not orphan me?

He says, “I will not leave you orphaned.”

Did you not orphan me?
Yet, I stand here invisible

Eyes look not upon my clacking limbs

Bloodstained

With ulcers, scabs and plasma.

Ears hear not upon my gargantuan screams,

Echoed

With squeals, moans and yapes.

Fingers brush not upon my clavicle

Cracked

With splinters, cracks and marrow

Tongues taste not of my essence

Dried

With fear, loneliness and anger

Nostrils inhale not my perfumed sweat

Rancid

With whisky, the crust of denial and attempts

Sunlight

Phototropic skin leans toward it

Purifying the putrid creature

Nourishing it

Repairing the skin and bones

Warming the tundra of enigma

On this day I will know.

What if you could see me now?

I did it.

All by myself, like a brave big girl.

Are you proud?

Are you surprised?

Did you know I could do it all along?

Once,

You believed I could.

Always,

I slow danced so with self-doubt,

Pressed up against its ribs,

Feeling it pull and pry me,

Uncomfortably close,

Lest we lose the moment.

You are never there.

Where were you

When I …

Groped and spit across the high school stage

Kissed him in my room while we listened to Geddy Lee

Smoked Parliament lights on the balcony by myself?

When I…

Slept with that boy after I walked in the snow

Swallowed ipecac after my birthday cake

Ate The Republic for a snack?

When I…

Snatched the parchment from the queen of charlatans

Lapped that Chateau Montelena from a plastic cup

Opened the blue-pink clouds with my mind?

What about when I

Made her feel the nothing?

Or,

Flashed fishnets through the slit of a long skirt at that work party?

Did you see me

Kick my feet under the sheets with joy

Float up a claret carpet to forever

Choose not to say no

Wave hello at the snow grey screen

Leap at her tiny cry?

In omnipresent absence

Where are your words? 

Who wears your effervescent grin?

I did it,

Yet I chase my tin foil gold star.

Never to Know

But without the impossible need,
Without the cable around our waists
Lifting us higher
Suspending us over river barges
Whose containers of images stack below
Waiting for us to be dropped into one

We would not wonder
Nor would we ask
"Where did you go?"
For we would have gone with you

Alas,
It's been too long.
The dust and cobwebs are one with the glass
The reflection of us is abstraction


Records I didn't mean to love

Hissing
Pop, Fuzz,
Skip

Click
Guitars strums static

"Do you think you could tell, heaven from hell?"

Certainly not.

Then again, now there is new spectacular cage.

Gelatinous walls pulse, turgid.
No more rattling bars of the cage of yore.

Memory plays its incessant horror film
upon the sides

Until I press against it, still looking for you
In all of this

looking for you, I hide from the day that would be me

This is the bondage of missing memory found.



Theft

Hearts are thieves and liars, all.

We give our own in hopes
of holding another's.

Without knowing what to do
with love received,
And,
having given away our own,

We stand
empty-handed, open-mouthed, and frosty-eyed

To be spared,
To mitigate the damage,
To avoid unnecessary,
We obfuscate

Compassion justifies the most horrific theft
Theft of Truth

On Simple Promises Not Kept

You said you’d call.

You didn’t.

You said you’d come.

You didn’t.

You made it someone else’s fault.

It isn’t.

You wished it could have been different.

It could’ve.

You made choices.

So did, I.

I chose you.

My mistake, of course.

Cole

You look up and see

Everything I can’t about myself

Race

 Zoom

I gawk, laugh,

and

Jump out of your way

You go on

Stopped

Thinning, Laying on your side

Limbs shaking

Happiness held towards the ground

I walk,

You love to walk

You pull hard to home

I yank harder

You slip free

Time

O Time,

O Life,

O You

****************

Last Bottle of Veuve

Loneliness

sucks dreams into the

Bottle where fear hides

Thanatos reaches inside my throat,

 His long spindly fingers cork it.

Trembling,

Heart racing, head clouding.

 Exhaustion.

Avoiding his eyes in public as a secret lover.

In reflections on shop windows grinning like Baron Samedi,

I see his face.

But I hear his voice

Inside my skull, his voice, screaming angry wolves.

Unspoken

My full chest implodes.

In the dark of night,

 where all is really seen

The bottle expands

Bubbles press on glass

My ribcage stretches

I push and punch and wait

Fighting to keep it closed

But there I am, alone with Thanatos.

He comes like a suitor,

Slow and shy

Then demanding and possessing.

The bottle comes uncorked

Storms, mushroom clouds, judgments, failures

CATASTROPHE

So I put it away - waiting for that special occasion

When all wear black and look away,

When we will be together in the light of day.

*****************
Daylight at Midnight

A piercing whistle, the clanging in the doorjamb, back and forth, back and forth

Wooden door clatters in its frame.

Wake and check the lock. I

Stumble one a.m. darkness

See shards of daylight-

 Solar eclipse of daylight pierces space around the door.

 Save my reality

Protect illusion,

from the day outside,

the lock must hold. 

keep out omnipresent flood of light.

The deadbolt slot eroded by years of gnawing termites,

 and uncounted years of opening and locking again.

Unlock, open, close again, turn the lock, pull to check.

Still, the deadbolt  fails.

the door opens by an inch.  

lean against the door, push against it

as heels slide across polished pine floor.

Outside. Away – 

the daylight of midnight.

But the house is tired from the constant crushing force of its walls. 

Old woman -hold the door up still.

A door without a house cannot save us from the day

***************************

Come Back

Last line, last night, last shard of glass

Smashing, thrashing, trickling across the veins of pine.

An excuse to scream and release the demon thickening the wall between us.

You say, “Calm Down.”

Fear - stop the hurt

What then holds me to you when I can’t see you through the light
or hear you over the maddening silence?

It will not tame me.

Put your hand on the door. 

I am here, always.

**********************

Because I Pushed You

And she’s dying…

And you fucking left me;

By myself.

And  I can’t breathe,

And she’s dying,

And she’s dying.

And she’s angry,

And you left me;

By myself.

And you told me. 

“Enough” with the red wine.

And you crushed my heart;

Because you were tired.

Of course you were tired.

And you left me.

And, you said I had too much wine,

And I exceeded whom politeness said I should be,

Because really it’s all about you and how your life is

And I am, 

at best,

a by-product of something meaningful once.

And I am no better than

 collateral damage.

And you!

She tried harder than you or me,

Or anyone,

Or any  couple who  could have possibly  imagined

What she said

And I misjudged her
or claimed that right.

And I’M SORRY;

And I’m always Sorry. 

But tonight.

Tonight let us not

Be truthful to the truth inside you

Sell not she who could have ever loved 

lest we tell the truth.

******************
Handcuffs

Hold Us Together, please

I step barefoot on shards of glass

Oh delicious agony.

Any excuse to scream.

You breathe

Boiling angry tears

leap off my cheeks.

Fury releases the demon who thickens walls between us.

I do my worst.

Never will I stop if the hurt cuffs us together

Light hides you.

Silence mutes you

 but you won't even hurt me in return

February 7, 2014
21 days until my last day at my company. I spent today, in an office, literally an ivory tower, in the sky. The entire day was on the telephone, watching rain pelt the window to my office and wild, chameleon clouds roll past me as I navigated the giant hairball of policy that is the modern corporation. At long last, I succeeded in fulfilling my client's rather simple request. I haven't accomplished anything really, simply the satisfaction of having the fortitude to badger people until I got my way.

So, here I sit, struggling to plan this project. It keeps evolving and changing as I post some of the things I've written over the past few years. Perhaps there is more of "me" in this after all. Perhaps I do want to tell my story as well as his. It feels strangely narcissistic but necessary. His story will be necessary but not sufficient to quell the ache in me. This is after all, really about me.

Who really wants to hear about a child, like any other, who lost someone dear to her and with it the innocent belief that really horrific things happen to good people everyday and God or whomever allows it? I once heard someone say that "childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies." Ok, I admit it, it's the opening line from Breaking Dawn. It rings true for me though. Maybe I want to capture who I was before I left that kingdom forever.

Maybe it's time for me to just let something happen and see what it becomes. It reminds me of Hegel, the divine constantly thinking and willing itself into existence in the eternal state of becoming. It's not the same as this new age "presence" or "mindfulness". It's more than that, it is thought with intention - a divine loop of creativity in which I can chose to participate or watch. It's time to become.