Saturday, December 29, 2012

Potpourri


I found potpourri on a night stand all dried and dead and diffusively divine and I watched
dry-eyed and wide-eyed as the once-petals disintegrated into ash and
fragrant lies.
I am so much like that potpourri, but so much more like what it was before it died. In its afterlife it had a name....and so did i.
I called myself a certain thing and lived inside this person's skin but
I don't believe i was really me
until I dried up inside.
now I'm barren, now I'm dry. I've shed my skin--my borrowed skin--
and pressed it into the leaves of books along with
rose petals and honeysuckle sprigs.
Somehow between then and now I've become
an urn of born again ferns I've
metamorphosed from stone
into potpourri.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Breaking

I am drunk and angry and I want to scream and I know I'm ungrateful and I hate you for taking my innocence. He took my virginity he took my heart but you. You took everything that was pure and clean about me and drenched it in leach infested gasoline
and set it on fire and oh GOD I HATE YOU. I want to fall apart
I want to fall apart I'm about to crash and burn. You know i'm about to break. I'm going to break I'm going to break oh christ I can feel my heart start to crack in the spider web of gentle invisible lines I can't come to you every time i'm mad at him and OH GOD I'M SO ANGRY and ashamed i'm so frustrated with you and him and this awful mess I wish I could talk to you but i'm so scared that you'll scoff and tell me to grow up because what else is there to do in life but to grow up and grow old and wither away and to die alone always alone we're incomplete all of us. We live all our lives searching, stretching, fitting square pegs into round holes or worse forcing bigger rounder pegs into smaller claustrophobic bodies you are my bigger rounder peg and i'm too small to contain you--you stretch me out and leave me cracked and chipped and radiating fracture lines outward reaching for something that will finally break me whole and turn me into a black hole and then, maybe, I can fit you and you and you and some of him or all of him inside me without breaking.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Residue

There's a pin in my shoulder. It's a metal pin, titanium.
It pulls me down and holds me in place but when I stretch,
I wince. 
It's a minor thing, this wincing. It's a barely there, hardly worthy
mention. But still, when I breathe, I wince. 
It's the same thing when I talk. My lungs pinch
They pinch me like they're trying to hold the words inside....as though...
well, as though they want only the sound, only the essence to escape my throat
and leave the residue of alphabet to coat my throat. 
Again, it isn't something that impairs my life. It's just a trickling, trifling afterthought
of discomfort. It's a barely there, hardly worthy mention. 
There's something else inside my skin, just like the pin, just like the pinch.
It's a nagging, probing itch, the kind that wakes you up
and won't let you think. 
I can scratch it all I want but 
it's always there. 
Sometimes I forget to scratch, because I think I forget--at times--
what it's like to not itch. 
These are trivial things. Barely there, hardly worthy mentions. 
But still. They are, simply, the symptoms of living. Of living
the way I chose to live. They are the cigarettes and the street fights
they're the rope burns and needle scars. 
They are, like you, residue
of a life I chose with you.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Confession

I have a confession waiting under the hood of my tongue.
I'm going to chew it, gnaw on it, tear it down with my teeth
but I pray, tonight I pray that instead of swallowing it I will instead
release it into the midnight air and let it breathe.
 Oh lord I've waited. I've waited so long my bones have turned to glass and I've melted
into the satin silk of my wedding gown.  I've grown fragile in the sun, brittle.
I was strong once, so strong. Like the trunk of the mystic oak and now I've been weathered down, beaten. 
Perhaps, if there was a fire, a bonfire a wildfire, something ANYTHING
to get me to lift my feet, my roots if you will and MOVE.
I'm so tired. I'm so tired of watching the grass grow old and die at my feet
and me still so tied down by some unknown non-relief. 
I pray. Today I pray that my confessions and my sins will fall into the earth
that having given birth 
I can finally be free
and claw my way
out of the dirt.


Monday, June 18, 2012

Amoeba


Let’s fall backwards through the cloudy air 
and crash into the street
gently so that when we hit we split
into our separate selves and like the amoeba contract 
back 
into one pulsing, breathing blob
shapeless and fragile. 

We’ll slink away down a drain and
mutate into an incurable strain 
and take over someone’s desperate day.

We'll remind her what it's like to try
and why tonight is going to pass them by
while he fumes over unpaid bills and
she cries over spilt milk.

Let's lose ourselves in a teardrop and
follow that broken girl into her home.
I'll slide down the chipped coffee mug
as condensation
while you chase me down the porcelain walls.

And, if there’s time, I really think 
we should make our way back to the
street and let ourselves absorb the rain
before it washes us back
down the drain.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Alone.

Once there was a hollow girl and her bones were strung with nylon and she danced.
Sometimes when she moved the earth swayed to her music and
sometimes when she stopped the world stopped at her feet.

I dressed myself in white-girl skin and skated on the brim
 of fashion and power. When I reached the top i thought the I would be free but
all that was left at the top were skeletons of an older crop
of more the accomplished.

So now i know that when I'm home
I'll forever be alone. And when I breathe all I'll get is
air breathed out by other men
who sought the air of power and
ended up like me.
Alone.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Diamonds in the darkness

I found diamonds in the darkness and
let them tumble from my lips.
They fell around me like the bells
of a christmas choir in the summer swells--
--unsettling, yes, and yet
welcome nonetheless.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Santa

You woke me up with a winter whisper
against my skin with ice-dipped syllables drenched in
acid and the venom sizzled against my neck.
Santa's here bella dear, santa'll hold you tight
Santa grabbed my virgin skin, ripped it off my fucking limbs
and let it flap in the wind
like a white flag on a battlefield.

I screamed—a banshee cry, a warrior's cry—
it echoed off the north pole and
it landed right in Santa's lap.

He fed my screams through a snow-cone machine
and gave them to my neighbor's niece while
I watched her gorge on iced candy hearts
and torture-flavored cream.
Slowly, then, when he was done,
he unlaced my muscles and blood vessels
and hung me from
a puppet frame for fun.

Marionette pretty, marionette pink
marionette dance and marionette sing...

I am bones in a bag—a bag of bones
bones in a body bag tagged for home.
Merry Christmas! Christmas hoy!
It's always Christmas when you're a toy.
I'm the puppeteer's bauble, the circus clown I'm the
ring master's slave when the lights are out
and sometimes I'll yank on the marionette
strings but
it's so tiring that I let myself
forget how to think.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Mirror Mirror


Once a mirror forever a mirror—forever a plate
of polished silver lies
and rosy grief. If I look and when I look,
I may never take the time to look
but when I do I know I'll see
not skin but ink.
The rose is for the one who
loved and loved and loved
till she could love no more
and withered away wasted like the wings
of a winter rose. The lies! The lies that
sit inked on my face are whispers from
my mother's grave. She said to me you're beautiful
so I tattooed it onto my face. The mirror! Yes, the mirror.
The mirror lived once in my eyes and when someone
took the time to look
they'd see themselves in silver light
the burning, unflinching, threatening white
light of truth.
But my eyes now are no longer bright. No longer silver
no longer light. They're heavy so heavy with honeyed-tear
glaze but still. If you took the time to look,
I promise you you'll see your face. 

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Silence

I plug my fingers into my ears and refuse to hear
your silence.
I could always live with empty words. I can believe in lies.
I can twist the sounds around your lips and lick them 
into the shapes I like.  
But you've taken away my toolbox and my modeling clay--left me instead with air 
that's dead and cold and hard to mold.
So I'll steal some sentiment from my neighbor's engagement 
ring and stuff it into the hollow thing
that once used to be my body.
I can hear the words you will not say and they've seized the inside of brain
and left me screaming from the pain
of listening to your silence.
I can't force the words from your lips but I
can stubbornly insist on resisting
your malice.