poetry
With the exception of the numerically titled, these are in somewhat chronological order, oldest to newest.
1.At the moment of my birth
My mother found the love of her life.
Her previous world of joy and purpose was abandoned, at her side
She still loved him, of course, as she does these years later,
For there has always been room for anyone who seeks it,
But her love for me grew faster than her heart’s capacity
So that after some time it mattered little that it was ever-expanding.
It was still getting cramped and unfulfilling,
I so distracted and absorbed her attentions.
It was her love that nourished her through it all
When food and money were scant and insufficient,
It was her love for me that made her get up every day
That made her find a way to make rent with no thanks to him.
“He was unfaithful and left me,” she told me when I was grown.
“But I left him first.”
2.My first memory is in the hospital whereI think maybe I’m a cartoon cat hit on the head
Because I see flying yellow birdies in a circle over me
And it’s weird that they seem like angelsThe doctors like to make me cold and I want ten blankets
This is my first time being afraid to sleep
Because maybe I’ll roll over onto my arm where the tubes come out
And something bad will happen
Cheerios and Sesame Street are lame rewards
For not dying
There isn’t even any sliced banana in the cereal.
14.We were finally old enough, finally ourselves, to be real.
We left for a town where we had no reason to be,
When we had no excuse to be out
We loped away, to escape like always but never before,
Because away is where emotions are safe,
Where declarations of truth freely call home.
We went to tarry in emotional exhibitionism,
Baring ourselves in a way we’d only read about
Because I was tired of reading,
and bursting with focused optimism.
And so, on the swings from before authenticity became a novelty,
Under dark trees that spilled twisted moonlight onto our hope-filled faces,
Dragging our feet in the cool midnight sand,
We discovered mutuality.
I.
Me, yes, I’m making a statement without qualifiers or fear
Love.
More than like, care for, no juvenile luv or <3
You.
Yes, you. Not ya or an unspecified subject—fact.
Simultaneous and perfect.
We already knew,
But saying it finally made it more than an assumption and marked
The abandonment of pretending, triviality, foolish embarrassment,
The rejection of practicing the avoidance of sincerity and vulnerability;
I made my first adult friend.
15.Don’t tell me I like being depressed,
I don’t know how to be happyDon’t tell me I like being selfish,
I care about everyone BUT myselfHow can I?
When you show me my feelings are worthless
When you demonstrate living without meaning
When you do nothing to make yourself happy
I hate you because I look up to you because
You’re beautiful and sad because
You see the whole world and only today of your life
Because you have all the answers but never apply them
Because you’ve taught me only how to theorize,
to dream
I hate you because I’m just like you
And I’m fucking 15.
22.Years ago I stayed awake at night, thinking,
Wondering what it would be like and how I’d manage
Taking care of you and seeing you sick.
Living without you. I’d cry from thinking about it,
damning my powers of imagination,
and bury my head under your sleeping body.
Your chest rising, falling, your heart beating peacefully. . .
your body.
Not being able to touch you is the worst
This living lump that provides so much pleasure and comfort
and has always felt like home,
Is now a disconnected entrapment that keeps us apart.
I joke about cleaning your blood, vomit, diarrhea,
but that’s all OK
Sometimes I see you
as a shoddily sewn-together pillow
Filled with blood-bloated cotton balls that easily fall out,
But when I touch you and you cringe,
That’s what shatters my sense of time and buoyancy
I tell myself I’m ready to handle this
And so I am.
We had no “in sickness and in health” clause,
And I always knew you would die first,
But I hope to myself every day:
“Not yet, not yet.”
24.
New man with new sharks and addictions tears at the foundations of feminine love.
. . .
What is anything?
Lung CancerHot shame cools and sparks,
Prickling my throat like so many lost opportunities
Full to my crown
with vague curling wisps of understanding
And choking uncertainty.I am self-immured,
Eyelids clinched and pasted with saltwater
From the tides of smoke in my mind.
Anger streaks across reason and grief,
Like dark paint on light walls.Surrounded by ashen cascades of future absences
The past flares like the tip of burning,
But its shadows are our only memories
And all in time
Sparks and cools, sparks and cools.
KaylaYour voice and feeling enter my head
via hard plastic and science.
Your pain fills my apartment like rubbing alcohol,
Burning my eyes and packing my chest with rock salt,
It systematically announces that it is here
and apart of me.But you are beyond the Mountains, the River, the Desert,
Enough desert to parallel your dry emotional barricade
So I reach and reach, arms turning into soft clay snakes,
That stretch through the evergreens
and rough bark carpets
Under the lips of stinging nettles
and over rocks of sandpaper
Then miles of hot sagebrush and my thirst for connection.I want you to contract
From Half-Broiled Woman to my Beautiful Baby Sister
Better for embracing and spinning up in love,
And folding you into my bellybutton.
Reno God DamnYou knew.
Every thumb-twiddler knew.
From 12 until 50 you puffed and puffed,
And you’re still at it yet.
Nauseous and weak from the chemo,
You smoke. . .smoke. . .smoke.
You inhaled our family’s hopes and potential
You exhaled broken beer bottles in our stomachs.
Now you search for god, for meaning,
For something more or for something less,
And for once my anger is everywhere but you.
HousekeepingI opened my mind, but there was only blood.
SO much blood, staining my earthen body,
I thought, “This color is GORGEOUS in my hair.”
DelightI know it’s lost although I can’t prove it existed,
I feel it down deep and up high,
The space that is not a place
Where my thoughts and my feelings can freely float around
Won’t be shot down by cynicism or facts
And other heavy things that cannot fly.
Open, undefined space, where
My ideas cannot be hindered by observation,
Where my insides can be out
Without unwanted appraisal.
No opinions may be applied to my abstracts,
My expression of self without discernible senses.
I want to feel, I want and want, to feel everything…
Without having to explain, to discuss, to analyze
Without all these feeble, useless words.
I want freedom to know because I do know
And I know, know, know some things,
Maybe they are good, but there will be no interpretation,
Only knowledge itself without application
Because god damn applications!
Only skill for skill and joy for joy:
Raw materials suspended in possibility.
My space is of perpetual transience and grace,
Beauty without aesthetics
Because I love and I love and I love,
Without direction. I glow!
I don’t need anyone or anything to love in my space
That is both empty and entirely full.
KenGrandma tells us at Christmastime,
“Your great-great-grandfather was from the old country.
He had too many daughters and not enough sheep
So he traded one off in marriage!” “Ha ha—how backward!” we all laugh!But wouldn’t you gladly trade your only daughter
For your favorite, sheepish son?
He was born defective and you fought for him,
You loved him, until he was healthy and perfect.
She’s only the result of a malfunctioned sponge,
A symbol for all the things you will never be.
But he kissed the shotgun barrel years ago
And she’s playing in the yard.
And I know that
The bottles you neck with are only short bus cousins
To gun powder
You are not fictional
And the only sunset left to ride into
Is your wait-listed heart attack.
Spirit Guides in Your HeadClad in idealist dirt and twinkling,
your idea of stylish,
Repetitively wandering with hopes of hobo heaven,
Pointillist landscapes of forever 5 o’ clocks,
Moonshine in boxcars.
On sweaty desert days and frozen nights
Your delusions stick to you like soul mates, solid.
Bumping into walls. . .
Remember when we laughed?
Now we walk pin-pointedly and faltering even though
Absent wishes and dreams make reality come true.
Makes your subjective truth graduate to objectivity,
False or not.
My words let go against my silent unreadiness
For I am always your glass sanctuary, underfoot
When there are no more contradictions, my querido,
You will die.
Awful, WonderfulI love not being with you
The daydreams, fantasies,
The rushing of my veins.
My Ian Compass stretching
Trying to feel your presence from afar,
Trying to guess what you’re doing,
Trying to picture you.
It makes me think of all your sweetness and
Smile at our bickerings;
The really heart-pumping ones, too
The ones I manage to remember in
My hyper-twitterpated state.
And I am reminded most of all,
Just how much
I love being with you.
That Old RobeYour dry reticent eyes reflect tears
like whetted stones,
Nesting hen-like on neglected screams
Draped in the numbness of the medicated masses,
Wrinkled fingers scroll and potter without touching. Heavy steam fills our lungs.
You areBecoming increasingly and alarmingly male,
Too depressed to be without gender
Puffed out by doubt’s whispers, feeling
Soft as scar tissue.I see you
Withdrawn like crumpled papier-mâché.
So Many Dirty ShoesOur embarrassing nakedness is safely clothed,
Beneath layers of clean white cement
And comforting black asphalt.
The old brick and cobble-stone streets,
Crude and organic, all are fixed
With a healthy coating of solidity,
And superb engineering;
Now we may walk and drive to our heart’s content
Protected from pesky mud and suit-staining grasses,
Allergy inducing flora and frightening, wild fauna.
Stomping, struggling, slithering, wherever we may please
On our peg-track routes through the city;
And wouldn’t it be nice
Now that we needn’t worry about Natural irritations,
That we might finally enjoy the beauties we have made?
Bathe in our successes and material comforts,
And admire the sleek domesticity of our handy work,
If only it didn’t stink of human urine.
Moyo IslandWaterfalls on a rain lit day,
Lush ferns and bright orange flowers perfume the air
So alive and moist I can feel the soil breathing
As I stand nude in the clear, spray-misted rock pool.
I paint myself with red clay mud,
Each stroke a new emotion, a fresh expression.
I am my canvas, erasing my weaknesses
With the Earth’s perfection.
I pick a deep crimson blossom from the bank,
It smells of undaunted passion and robust sincerity,
I adorn my hair with its beauty
And daub the cool peace paint on my face.
The sky relaxes, gently giving up warm tears
And I tilt my head to partake of Nature’s kisses.
All my inhibitions are washed away
And all I hear is the even drumming of waterfalls.
In the City it is Always TwilightSilent mouths yawn with the hushed, white noise of dawn
Brick and concrete stretch into the sky until they scrape
Buildings stand unyielding like glittering, glass soldiers
In dark slacks. Selfish edifices, like possessive lovers, grope at the sun
In the nefarious shade of the steel trees that never sway
The motley scents of newsprint, car exhaust, and rotting
Food aimlessly drift.Throughout the asphalt paths of blinding,
Dim traffic, penury and bedlam,
Everyone is shady.
[perpetually unfinished]Crepuscular Rays Make Any Scene Seem RomanticThe pressed stiff suits of the business class
Cease suffocating their pale hosts. Maturing leaves relax their grip on life’s hand
And joyfully submit to the vibrancy of autumnal blusters.The grays and blacks of workers’ slacks
Coordinate with the sulking sky.The native tumult and hate disagreeably clash
With the inherent merriment of summer and spring,
And become too consumed, buried, in sullen wintry caresBut autumn is quite becoming to the city.
Unicorns and FaeriesI stow away my frivolous ideas,
And forget about them.
I disregard my dreams,
The imaginings I know are worthless;
I overlook them
Until I exhaust their socially approved counterparts,
And the necessary adjustments begin.
I gouge out my naively placed passions,
And stitch up the holes with more seasoned plans.
I dice up little sections, redistributing them throughout;
The original middle eventually becomes the end,
The beginning is discarded and replaced
By something striking and practical.
And as the anesthetic sets in,
I feel a tinge of motivation and optimism
Surfacing and overpowering
My previously dominant regret.
BelltownPretty shells go waltzing down the avenues
Like hollowed-out eggs at Easter time, freshly painted.
Dear and lovely smiles parading with shrill laughter,
So delicate and refined, so carefully crafted,
Like a magician’s best selling gimmick.
Shining, vacant eyes gaze with contentment
Upon the filth and heartache they care not to see.
Their beautiful, stupid faces hide their ugly, stupid brains
And oh, how happy life is for all of them.
[From when I was a bookkeeper!]TrilliumAs I dress for work,
And pin my hair up out of my face,
I happen to catch a troubling thought in the mirror.
A thought of escaping the city and all its repressions
A thought of who I would and could be, and
I think she is beautiful. Sparkling fire and curiosity burn in her eyes,
Newness and pleasure coat her naked skin.
She is unabashed and outrageous.
Her face is the subject of windburn and excitement,
Tanned and gleaming with a sweet, mischievous smile.
Her legs are lean, dirty, and torn,
Perhaps from midnight adventures through the jungle.
Feelings of every pigment and hue flash across her face
As frequently as most people are bored.
Her hair is that of a person who has never viewed a mirror
Gnarled and chaotically strewn, and lovely
Delicate fingers, callused feet,
Consequences of chasing moonbeams
And dancing from rain cloud to rain cloud.
Youthful innocence with a tinge
Of melancholy knowledge,
Passionate enthusiasm
With the ultimate haphazard and freeness
Of coincidence;
She is the embodiment of happiness and understanding.But I pick up my purse and rush out the door,
running late.
[life without Ian was dreary and full of melancholy]MelianearyBlind and lost in the emptiness
I groped along, heart pounding in my ears;
I was clumsy and foolish.
Everywhere I went walls sprang
From where there recently had been freedom
And, frightened, I tripped upon your presence.
You had been patiently sitting in the labyrinthine void,
Waiting for reality to presently arrive.
I did not recognize you at first, for I could not see,
And you could not speak.
The nonexistent world growled garishly
From the surrounding nowhere
And I felt the smiles, and the love, rise from our throats.
PerceptionsLike a parasitic freeloader I feed
Off his words and smells.
I don’t need him
Not his body or voice,
His ideas and interests
That I so readily absorb
Are not why I love him. He does not matter.Like the tiniest shard
Of overlooked hope in his shoe, I burrow into him,
Fascinated by the world he sees.
He makes me smooth and polished
Reflective and painful,
Resented.
He does not understand.
I do not worry
About poverty and success
I do not care
About the drugs and sex;
The events of his life do not matter.
If all his facts were lies I would love him–
I would need to protect him
From the universe and his endearing madness, I care.
I care about the him that doesn’t die.
Mixed MotivesListen to her,
Weaving herself into a trance of secrecy
She sneaks along, wafting through the air
Through the steepled buildings,
Through the deserted parking lots,
And lands a gentle kiss on my ear
Hushing my smiling lips
With forbidden truth
And overly accepted myth.
ErikI release my hopes
From the tourniquet binding my heart.
I drain this fever away
Tearing out the stitches,
Blood on my fingers, I empty this shell
So you no longer live inside me.
Gone WalkaboutHot coals to tickle my toes
Barbed wire to brush my teeth.
Being pushed away, being thrown away,
Leaving you.