I have never had the desire to be background music for anyone.
I have too strong of a desire to hit the high notes.
I want to captivate,
somehow,
in stunning silence.
I want to please
without ever having to open my lips.
I want your awestruck envy
pooling as heavy smoke
running parallel my little pink tongue.
I want your nerves lit,
fireworks spilling their guts in the night.
I want, I want, I want…
The porcelain sink gurgles when the water splashes
and slips from the ends of my fingers
down the drain.
It has a drowsy drip
that echoes around this room
with its green wallpaper
and too bright pink roses peeling where they meet the ceiling.
There is a supple bend in the way you walk now,
as if someone has slipped in unnoticed
and upset the balance of your spine,
has stolen a single vertebrae
and left you unspooling out
vomiting the threads of all you were
across the yellowed tile of this bathroom floor.
The box they have brought to bury your son in
is too small and too white and
it shines so clean by the alter that I think you have not touched it.
I cannot walk down the aisle.
I cannot seem to leave this stall
and I stare at your white shoes with the little kitten heel
and the way your toes are pointed in at one another,
as if they were in conversation about the trip they must make –
down the aisle,
across the grass,
to the place where the green turf is rolled out
and the small mound of dirt is fermenting in the sun.
It is too bright today to bury a boy,
and so we will stay in this stall
and hide under the bright fluorescent lights.
We will stay here, where your shoes are all I can see
and where there is nothing more
than a drowsy drip in a porcelain sink
and roses peeling from the ceiling.
The recent loss of that poor child in Florida has reminded me of a funeral I went to years ago. A different child, a different place, a whole different scenario of loss, but still…a loss.
I have perched on the edge of the heaving ocean’s waves –
a cliché of turbulent emotions raging in translucent spray.
It sends my mascara to running faster than any
fight or flight mechanism left in this old gray matter of mine.
I’ve got silverfish in my heart
and they’re eating at the yellow pages
that litter the floor
of my little castle keep.
I’m fumbling about in the rancid leftovers
of a fridge left behind.
Someone turned the power off on me
a few weeks ago,
but I never needed light for this sight –
I’m in my element here…
Here,
where the war stories of the day are bunched up under my head,
a lumpy, bumpy pillow that croons in my ear
every hour,
on the hour –
the breaking news.
And the breaking news is shattering news.
It’s crushing and devastating –
a shock to the system.
It’s the all new norm
and catastrophic in its mediocrity.
And I’m one wave crash from wiping out completely.
I’m a piss-poor balancing act on a boogie board –
I’m being eaten alive,
but the power’s off and so,
I can’t even see it happening.
I don’t claim to be anything more than I am – but there are people in this world who are especially attuned to humanity. They are effected in ways that may not make sense to others. These are the kinds of people who can read a news article and hurt so badly for humankind that they slide helplessly into a depression.
And in a world where there is so much hurting, it is easy to get lost. Bear with us, those of us who feel a little too deeply, who are thin-skinned, who wear our hearts out in the open like some big, bold flag…The world can be a little much for us some days.
My voice has become a barely legible script
careening off the sharp-edged cliff of my cracked lips.
I am unkissable, darling.
I’ve a leak in my head I can’t fix
and each heavy drop is jerk back to reality.
I’m leaving a trail of fuel and waiting
for one massive match to light
and fall
and set me ablaze.
The triage nurse wants to elevate my psychosis status.
She wants to twist the knobs at the back of my brain
and soothe the offline error tone that’s seeping
between the drought of my mouth.
I feel similar to a three year old
being taught patience, “No, you can’t have that yet.”
But I want it. I want it, darling.
Our old house had paneling on the walls –
slick with lacquer
that peeled up at the corners
in thin, wispy sheets,
the shedding skin of a home in
metamorphosis.
We hung photos on the walls
so that there were sparsely visible
little brown lines
framing each memory.
We turned that paneling into
our projected hippocampus,
because we could no longer rely
on our mind to remind us
from month to month
that we did, in fact,
love one another.
Our conversation was an impregnated thing
growing silently between us
with each reviling word that slipped
off loose tongues
and shattered in the light of our
cracked bedroom window.
We carried Medusa
hidden behind our teeth
so when we opened wide to let loose
a barrage of violent expressions,
we turned one another to stone –
frozen in the ache that can only be caused
by one who loves us enough
to speak the truth
and use “Sorry” as an empty balm.
And the day we became I,
when the old Thunderbird rolled in heavy dust clouds
down the driveway,
framed by Summer’s green tongued corn,
I never packed our pictures.
I left them hanging in their little square blocks
framed by the yellowed ash from
our woodstove, because
we needed reminding of who we had been
and I
only wanted to forget.
I think it is true, that it is only possible to hate and to hurt those that we truly love. In that spirit I was reminded today of the past. Thank you to MindLoveMisery’sMenagerie for the wordle prompt.
For those of you in the Maryland area, I will be visiting Chesapeake College on April 16th for a Poetry Panel. Myself, along with two other local poets, will be taking part in numerous poetically themed events throughout the afternoon.
I will be presenting numerous pieces, including ones from my upcoming book, I Am. You can check out the trailer for that here.
I hope you can make it out to the college and meet me!
If you’d like more information, please contact me and I will answer your questions.
3:30 AM
and I am awaiting the hallucinogenic memories
that slip into my dreams
like we slid,
slick, hot bodies,
across the yellow vinyl of that ugly couch.
3:32 AM
and you are my gateway drug,
the little pill I pop under my tongue
while the shadow growth on your face
rubs a passionless rash
across my cheek.
3:35 AM
and I am as flat and stiff beneath you
as a carcass under the steady,
sharp beak of a vulture,
I pull away from you,
scalded by your touch.
3:48 AM
and your breathing has deepened
to the steady rhythm of slumber
and I dream of yellow vinyl couches
and the first time you slid,
slick, hot body, and shattered me like an ancient mosaic.
I just finished a book, The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve, and without spoiling the story for you, because it is amazing and you should read it, the main character spoke numerous times about passion leaving a relationship as the time past. It inspired this piece, along with the wordle from MindLoveMisery’sMenagerie.
I hope you enjoy my new book trailer for my upcoming book, I Am! More info to come soon on a pre-sale date!
Remember to sign up for my mailing list, if you haven’t already for a monthly newsletter with exclusive information on my upcoming works, submissions, sales, signings, and other cool stuff! For a limited time, when you sign up you’ll receive a free downloadable coloring book.
In the first few weeks after I met you,
you formed the habit of placing your hand
on the back of my neck
while I drove.
I thought it cute.
You were addictive
in your senseless charm
and I was a careless heart,
struggling to keep time
with the beat.
Decidedly, the tempo increased
and the knuckles scraped
a tap-dance slide
across concave cheekbones,
stark and thinned
by my hungering smile.
I thought to terminate the dance.
I thought to notify you of my intentions.
I thought to step back from passions raised
and push my narrow chin in the air,
to settle my shoulders back
and stiff as rigor mortis
my words would fall
and in their strength
would not break as they hit the ground.
Instead, you showed me the weakness of my spine
and your hand on my neck
tightened its grip
and my words fell hollow in the squeeze.
I watched them shatter,
as only sparkling good intentions can do.
Every home boasts its own unique dialogue. We form terms of endearment that may, or may not, sound so endearing to foreign ears.
For instance, I call my husband an asshole with the utmost love and honor I can give him. He is a wonderful, caring, loving man. He is my best friend.
And he’s also an asshole. He is. He’ll tell you himself. And at midnight when he turns the lights off while I’m in the bathroom and I open the door to pitch black only to have him leap from the floor at my feet and scare the piss out of me…he is, in fact, an asshole.
We also say things like, “Seatbelt stupid.” Which is the family friendly reminder to buckle up.
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This is another example of a big helper.
Big helpers are characteristically famous for not actually helping. They do something, however small, and immediately claim fame for doing it.
While this is sure to provide a good laugh in my house, followed by pats on the head and goading comments of, “Oh what a big helper you are!” and “Aren’t you such a good boy/girl?” or “Awww, want a cookie?”…the world is full of people who actually believe they need some kind of recognition for being a decent human being.
We are living in a country where there is a serious possibility that the biggest bully to ever kill, skin, and wear a mongoose as a hairpiece stands a chance of becoming our President. We have formed a panel of liars, thieves, and bullies to promote the never-ending message of violence and hate.
And we’re sitting back, watching it happen. Voting this term is difficult. The choices suck, at best, and the few shining beacons of light (*coughBerniecough* my only voter opinion drop, I promise) are forced to battle for a stage against the reality star drama of the popular candidates.
I continue to hear people say that they aren’t even going to bother to vote, that there is no point, that their voice doesn’t matter, or the choices are too bad…
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I’d like to tell them, “It’s your responsibility and if you jerk around with that, you get absolutely no right to complain when this shit show hits main stage.”
Instead, I’ll ask this: Won’t you all please go get yourself a little I Voted sticker? You totally deserve it. You did something amazing.
