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.

Tree life

So the other day I found my way to the tree where we

once used to be happy.

I pressed my skin against the grain and felt the tree push back in vain

because what lives inside it can't push clear

and I can't get to it either.

My hair got caught in the drifting vines and my skin got lost in the

browning pines and I scraped the bark with my scratchy nails

and felt the tree shudder and quail.

I guess there's still life where we used to live, if unhappy.

Sometimes

Sometimes, it's not about the words
or about the silence.
Sometimes, it's not about the pain
or the happiness.
Sometimes, it's about getting by
without giving up.
It's about hanging on, for one more second,
it's about staying alive long enough
to remember the pain
and not feel it. 

Call me.

You called yesterday while I was sleeping.
My phone picked up your words
and stored them in its belly.
When I finally dug them up, they were stale
already
and the warmth of your breath had faded
from their core and
left them cold.

If I could hold your words in my palms
and rest your voice against my skin
I'd drink you in through the thin
plastic film that's holding in
my soul within
my body.

I cannot sleep because I keep
wondering if you'd called
and gotten lost
in the silence
of my dreams.

Sometimes I press your whispers into my ear
and rewind the "dears" and sincere
slips of tongue.

Every now and then I'll forget to breathe
and only remember when my feet
turn slightly blue
from being pinned beneath
the weight of the wait
for you.

This time, I'll be there when you call.
I'll wrap every word in festive paper
and seal the vapor of your breath
in crystal bubbles,
condense the syllables
into a bauble
and wear your voice around my neck
and never sleep again.

Fragments

I dug a grave and finally gave our past the rest
that it had craved and I took
the ashes of our passion and dissolved them in a tidal wave and I
swept up the dust of our former lust and mopped up the mess
that we had made but
there's still a shard, I think, of what
we tried so hard to save and when I walk
I can feel fragments crunch beneath my heels, remnants
of what once was good and should
have lasted but
just couldn't.

Staying up

One summer night I stayed up wishing.
One April night I cried.
One day in May I chose to pray,
And one winter night,
I lied.

One day I saw you walk away,
and I lay in bed and watched. I thought that if I
stayed and slept,
I could forget that you had left.
I wanted you to turn and sigh--to wait for me to say goodbye but
you didn't wait.
You took what we had crafted and you trashed it without
upset or regret or worry that the threads would
reach out and connect
you to me.  

So one summer night I stayed up wishing
that I'd stopped you.
One April night I cried.
One day in May I chose to pray
for everything I didn't say.
And one winter night
I lied and made
myself believe that
you had stayed.

Wall

The pavement's cold and it's raining
It's a storm.
There's paint peeling off the walls and the ceiling
Layers of acrylic, yielding
Conceding after concealing, year after year
All the stains and the smears,
The badly done veneer
The lines of graffiti that keep repeating
The cracks in the concrete that keep receding
every summer but come grinning back in the winter months
Taunting and leering,
asking for that one coat of paint that would
eliminate the taint
of a poor man's inability
to fix his living space.
There's a lady in the house, and a baby.
The baby's catatonic and the lady
alcoholic
and
The poor man works through the nights and the mornings
just to eat.
"I'm home, honey," he says, full well knowing
That his wife's passed out by the couch.
No one greets him when he calls, no one answers but the walls.
Look! There's the spot that the coffee stained when the saucer went flying
And the crack where the clay mug shattered
And oh! That was where the month's money went,
Into the dents in the doors and cement
And there's the scar at the heart
of the art
that he bought for his dear
at the start of their marriage career
But
All she'd wanted was a beer.
So wouldn't it be queer
To erase
all the memories that his place
Had collected through the days
Like pieces meant to grace
the empty space that became
a collage of his fate?
After all, the only answer that he got when he called
Was from the peeling paint on the wall.