Friday, November 18, 2016

Two Blokes

You.
Are only two blocks away and this the ballad of she
Drunk.
In love with a gay.
Who won’t curse her,
Turn her vibe into badmouth jive
Won’t make her feel anything but alive.
You.
With your blue eyes and heavy sighs.
All meant for he who will never head your cries
Baby boy polite and thee most subtle might

Your kisses, I’d never have but in which
I would find the greatest delight
Just two blocks away from every uneasy word I say.

What a shitty day.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Ript.

Will your name be the last I utter from my lips? (yes)
I have lived in service of lust, treating my well-being like a god,
(Never goddess, there’s a difference)
I can’t seem to stop in desperation
And though I wish they were fewer, those silent screams
They are as much my universe as your long remembered touch

Oh how I broke myself against you, like water to rock.
A fool’s gold quarry, split and shiny but worthless

Despite this death you brought
I will love you in multitudes of forever.
But remain quiet longer.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Every Day

Scarification mornings with tea and oatmeal
Counting off each day, every day
One slash at a time, an angst burdened teenager in a middle-aged body

(I bought a house, you know. It is big and empty.)

Inhale vitamins to balance wine against fake smiles,
while I dream of a time when Gauloises wouldn't have hurt
Paper embers encircling tobacco,
small and smaller and smallest until I disappear
into the smoke of all I've forgotten

There's Me

Deciding never to write of you after this
Wishing I could do same with these thoughts
of calloused hands cupping my breasts
Of being lifted into your eternity
With each thrust

So now I am pathetic,
the kind of woman-girl at whom I shake my head

Here's Me

Closing in-on a year of oh-so-broken, in quietest whispers,
that my bones crack and separate as I sleep walk through the hours

Took time away from the bottle even
but you were too vivid without a black out

(I blame the flame for all of it.)

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Conjure

In the early parts of the last few months, I wrote witchy words on worn parchment, asking for you to come back. Then I burned them, indigo paper feathers blown into thin mountain air. You couldn’t have known the ceremony, it was in my head. It was also in my head that it was better you were gone, eventually, as each ritual became less necessary with your assured distance and my growing disdain not for you, but for having lost you.

I floated through summer blocking the sunshine with white-rimmed shades because you are the kind of boy a girl copies, not the other way around. I wear darker colored glasses now to shield my eyes, conceal any trace of your reflection in them because surely you are imprinted there. I want no one to see the chimera I carry, including myself. So I stopped looking into my own eyes even…

You ripped off the Band-Aid too soon and though I was left bloody, the scab would eventually come by autumn. I traced its rippled colors with leaves of similar crispy crimson stock… until it was time to rake them.

I wasn’t cleansed, but winter brought cold and as snowflakes melted against my hands when I dusted the car, absent-minded ritual, a previous us frozen in time…I knew I was close. There was only a faint scar.

Then you came back. You fucking came back. You rode north on metal horse power bound for high country and the day it happened I knew without knowing. I could feel you again. I could feel myself again. I could breathe the solstice, darkest day, and smell the steam from the river Styx warming the air.

Did I conjure this?

I was suddenly brave enough to look at our happy faces together in forbidden photographs, long hidden in a desk drawer, and wonder what it would mean to see you again. How would we react? Could I keep my composure, especially if the situation presented itself in a less than ideal manner? Laugh out loud.

There could be nothing “ideal.” There never is.