poetry, or something like it
2am poetry. oct 21.
dim light; in tender moments alone, it is a little bit less than i’d expected, a little bit more; sick for three days but i still love the way your lips feel on my forehead; you murmur in your sleep; say, ‘i’m sorry. did not mean to do.’
pink light; i write and pause; worry about waking you.
i can run my hand over your face; you will not stir; your sweet sleep breath forces itself out of your lungs while i work.
cigarette break is not as beautiful without you to pass it back and forth with me.
i think only in fragments and snapshots; imagine the winter and fall in backwards motion; snow growing upwards into the sky, trees summoning leaves onto branches.
finger sans ring
Not a word.
You can’t sleep either,
else you’d be snoring
in the next room over.
When I could,
I dreamt of murders
and escaping with you
from evil men,
but that was probably
too much TV.
I don’t read anymore,
just stare blankly
while you walk through
the living room to smoke.
I hope you’ll notice (I heard
the quick pulse of anger
this afternoon, but it never
came to fruition).
I sobbed last night
and didn’t quite know why.
You claim it’s loneliness
and perhaps you’re right.
But mostly I think it’s the months
of wanting and wasting promises,
wishes never anything more
than exploded stars.
My first memory
is a held breath.
february 20, 2011
[untitled]
morning stretching, & sunlight
like seagull song swimming across
the plains and mountains, desert
and wheat fields… knees tanned, we
swam naked in the fishing hole, slept
solid until 3am. i miss the way
dawn crept up on us each morning, the way
you crept up on me, nights i stayed home;
the foggy feeling of your arms around me
a few inches from the surface of sleep.
today is overcast, and lonely
in the way each box of neighbors
sits sealed in individually-wrapped,
air-conditioned packages, sterile
until the sound of a phone call
or gasping bliss bleeds through
the perforation of sidewalks
and thin walls. i laid in bed for hours,
trying to get the taste of you
back. to remember the way your lips
made mine burn the first time
you held me up against your car,
mosquito bitten and chasing lightning.
i knew i’d seen sparks, and tasted
electricity on your tongue. tomorrow,
the forecast says you’ll have thunder.
i’m sure it will look like it does here, now,
only thicker, heavier with longing
for moisture and release.
august 18, 2010
closeness
my heart was dry grass, waiting
for yours to ignite. you filled me
with the quick spark, let me see the matches
stowed up your sleeves, and aces, and a whole history
of something we both felt but never had the guts
to try for. and now the alarm clock sounds,
five minutes to one; i pause.
we don’t sleep anymore, but wait.
i wonder at the way our bodies might
pass the night together, yet apart,
separated by dreams, individual migrations
through the complications of slumber.
i’ll lie still, smoothing
the rough parts of your restless nights,
waiting for morning, and daylight.
because now we are apart, yet together,
linked by horoscopes and
calendars.
may 29, 2010
[as yet unfinished]
front yards
i still feel at home here,
on an empty porch, beneath trees
breathing the life of water
into my lungs. i forgot how nice
their voices are, and the voices
of our neighbors—the rasta’s kids
screaming like birds; birds chattering
like old gossips. the sunlight
filters itself, and trees
dilute it further, until i am
swimming in crystals, naked
to the knees and able to breathe again.
softly.
may 14, 2010
blessings
thank god for the sundress
and other inventions that keep at arm’s length
inevitable beads of sweat that might like to pool
at zippers and seams. tomorrow
i will sing like an ocean, while
hearing you echo in my seashell ears
love you, all hazy, sleepy like
raised eyebrows, before bed the other night.
yes, thank god for these things
that hold me together.
may 13, 2010
of good and bad days
It’s much bigger than smashed toes, although there’s been plenty of that. At work, in a hurry, I dropped a box of something heavy, rolled a vacuum over my foot, hit a toe with the corner of the door. I was so busy and strung out, I didn’t notice the blood pooling perfectly near the nail. At home, in the bathtub, I washed away that hurt and tried to starve the other.
-
My heart is a piece of garbage. I don’t know why I ever bothered to forget.
-
Worries. Lists make me calm. I organize the death spiral inside me. Twenty or more things I can’t control but wonder at, and thinking makes it worse.
-
When I write, it’s everything that we don’t know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions, without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking.
Hélène Cixous, from “The Laugh of the Medusa”
-
I haven’t done anything today, except fall apart. I woke up thinking I might as well sort myself out, if he didn’t love me anymore. I made my bed, folded my laundry, cleared the bathroom counter of all these silly useless things I surround myself with.
-
It’s too sad. I cried in the shampoo aisle. I call it love but I’m not sure I can feel that now, below the numbing fear of loss and the inability to breathe. Urgency, like if I say everything, everything, I’ll stop the bleeding, fix the tear in the hull of the ship. Titanic was sad for so many reasons.
-
It’s been too long to count, and too muddy. I don’t even know where we’d place the marker, the flag, dogear the page… Months, probably longer. Days filled with longing, hurt, hurt longing, love, wonder, excitement, hurt. And now he’s mad at me. I sobbed like a marching band, and he was mad. Too mad to care, and he told me I’d get over it in no time.
-
It’s been a bad year.
-
I want:
a white picket fence/ picnics/ talking in bed/ a steady income/ laughter/ a garden/ date nights/ a dog/ a car that doesn’t break down/ holding hands/ sleeping together without fucking/ fucking without sleeping/ long car rides/ getting to know everything about him/ waking up from a bad dream and having him there/ big hands to help me open jars/ going places/ meeting his friends/ making dinner together/ taking care of him when he’s sick/ having doors opened for me/ seeing things for the first time with him/ the second time/ the eightieth time/ love.
-
“I’d have thought love to be a bit stronger,” he told me. It’s not my fault I’m weak and slowly losing strength still. I can’t cope with the yelling. He was so mad.
may 9, 2010
one.
we rub cricket legs together
and it is music. your barn-broad
shoulders are something
i could get used to sleeping inside.
may 5, 2010
popsicle stick
would
i could
fix you
and that
bastard, because
he hurt my
sun.
shine-
r, bruised, like:
that’s how boys play.
a joke is all
i can give.
free-
zer burn
is like elastic
when ec-
static longing
makes you
shiver.
seems
silly now, the c-
rush
of tooth;
ache after
elbow hit
face.
april 20, 2010
