Saturday, March 9, 2013

for the record


The photograph of you
with my mother,
both deliciously happy-
 or appearing
so
(your lips are sealed) makes me
wonder,
how now, I have only this.

Much is missing
from this picture gallery,
laid out in
     mind,
           despite the illustrations,
and elaborations,
and still,
                                            nestled
away
in a heart ache
is that pearl like
motif-
embalmed,
for grave.

So, when last night, I
didn't bother with a bath,
it came as no surprise this morning,
                      that I
         should happen on such delicious
symbol of the way I (used to?)
                                       do
things.
                         If it's
current,
it's not old.
Why do I
forget?
        The insanity is
                     alive
                     and well.  Conjoined, I
map back to determinant,
    puncture
                each season,
dry and wet
                   alike,
producing
what I
                       know I need to put
away.

I am mopping
up remains of conversation,
finding I am fonder of the fantasy
                                    than
                                    this mess
                                       inherent
to how things are,
                      and
       at present,
       am only making up
for life I've lost.
                            I have paid for
this in pain.
Overused the common,
and denied
the
truth.
I have violated voice.

So, now, I'm waiting,
         weary,
for the way of wound
                         to meet me,
                         through
                         the ruin
and the
                              rain,
                               astonished
                                               still,
by the circle
      that brings me back to
  you.

                                           

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Just Your Voice



Damn,
 just your voice,
 an elixir.
              Seven years and that sounds perfect, like some lucky number.  A
                                                                    completion.
 Some long journey absolute circling back.
            But I'm trying not to
do that-
     to reduce right away, like I am, to
                          the meaning, supreme- like I want
                          to.
I'm trying to
keep my cool.
 And each slight pause, I'm  panicking
                                               to keep it going,
 keep it coming,
say enough
 but not
                                               too much.
  I've never been good at that.
But just yesterday, a week ago,
                             a year ago,
 I couldn't breathe
 or bear the thought of never.
 So,
the sliver lines like silver
 the cloud
that's lingered, holding downpour,
                                                        waiting, of all dreams of day.  I''ll be the first to
                                                                                                            say, it's
less than sane, but it's always been that way with
                                         you.  Every cliche I've
                                                  ever worked to avoid
crashes bold and unashamed
                                                                           confessing in the beat of leaked tenderness.  Across lines, can
you tell?
 Who's the junkie now, paranoid and high?
  Oh, that great man
                 who knew so much, who said of this before me,
what was once behind me, brings to mind the revelation of what was always there.
 He spoke to me,
and the great man you held in wait, severed by,
 let's call it,
fate.
 Sluttish,
         slow and slip of tongue, of life stinted.
 I'm softly exhaling
                                  that torrent
                                            of torment
                                                 to inhale a new, less
potent fragrance
 in all its impossibility.  Can I trust my
                                           mind this time?
Keep talking, I'll keep listening, afraid to say goodbye.
 Why are you not here?
 I'd fall
                                                                                     flat with my words
 and on my face
 before
I'd let you go again.

Write at the Merge


Monday, July 9, 2012

Saturday, June 16, 2012

mastering your absence


Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.-Chekhov


Like, I'm gonna crawl back to you, live again where only shadows lie. Yeah, I'm familiar with 
                            that place where I fawn, excuse, deny.
But, oh my, I'm growing now and 
                               appealing as that sounds, there's something about the bright            
light of 
          freedom grounding me.
                                    I just trip in your cast of gloom and my legs-              
they want to
run.
I trembled once at your touch- it was all I knew.  
But 
     then all that waving nearly knocked me over and I learned to fear.
If our bodies are vessels, then I carried you.
                                                               You've broken free. 
Why can't I?
             No, a fresh start cannot possibly mean I enter the crypt of  your new found glory.  
I can't compromise
                my soul to give you safety.
                       Boulders lifted away become stepping stones where 
                                                                                                 with each foot placement, I'm lighter.
                                  I want back a heart of flesh,
division 
           now, 
              of equal rights, a solid body of strength and wholeness.
                             Imagine me a willow, but still.
Covering my own damn heart this time, 
branches hanging, beauteous and protective.  
                                      The weeping-healing.  Letting go                  lamentations, 
convulsing to purge but silent are those tears, 
           shaking body but
                    not mind.
Write an elegy of what
we were
and what 
        we weren't.
But 
black and white means nothing to my movement.
                      I'm 
                        mourning the theft but rejoicing the gift that's left
                                                                                            and seeing myself a widow.
                 I'm a tree unto myself, away from that brush of bullshit.
                 I'm fixing my hair a different way, viewing a new    reflection.
Any assumption
                    that I can't
                              call your bluff 
is a vapor of what you knew before and audacious
                            to say the least.
Our corona became a noose and your latest proposition, a nail in   the proverbial coffin. 
                         Circles do not have points - at least I know my shapes.
Sling mud- it doesn't stain.
   I'm spotless once again.




The SundayWhirl

Sunday, June 3, 2012


I crouch. 
It’s fear
and I have words, plenty but not enough…or not words, right. 
      So, I’m hunkering now in supposed safe haven, watching my own back
cause who else will?
          Split rhymes with spit, which is sort of how the word sounds, wrong
          somehow. Split heart, split tongue, split home, lickety split
                     hmm.
                      More than a crack – a chasm, cataclysmic.  But not really, right?
                                         Happens all the time.
So you think
                there’d be words….and I suppose there are, but insufficient to touch
                                             on….all this. 
                                                              They’re words you could eat.
                                                             The crash, the smash, the wrack up of the
                                                              tumble, of the final word which says, too
                                                                                                                robotically, there’s been a
failure…. in the system, in the program, in the house.
                                  So there you have it, get a new one.  These things happen,
folks.  Chisel out the cleaving, then the leaving. Clinging like ivy to the
                                   tearing asunder.  It makes no sense.  But no one said it
would.
A bond more than bruised-broken, there’s no mending.  The pierce of that
                               edge we can’t escape, the point of that no return.  It’s there we
                                                                 stand, surveying options, knowing now they’re
limited.
And yet, the end is only a term for this one thing.  There’s a beginning on
                                       some verge so maybe it’s best to just not draw this out
                                       somehow.  I haven’t been beat and you didn’t lose, we’ll
call it a tie.
Yeah, there’s a glow somewhere on the other side of this.  Maybe that’s
                                                              what calls.
                                                                          Crumple the papers but me, I’m
                                                                                                                     straightening out. 












“You have to hate someone to hurt them with lies.  Insincere talk brings nothing but ruin.”-Proverbs 26:28 GNT






Friday, May 25, 2012


Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
Anita Brookner

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Tears and truth

"Let our conversation now be without precedent in fact or literature, each one speaking to the best of his ability the truth to the best of his knowledge."

-Samuel Beckett