Sunday 31 January 2016

Beautiful disguise


Because
this is your sickness
infecting my awareness
triumph is for dreamers
I cannot sleep another second

Saturday 30 January 2016

Losing faith


“I want a divorce.”

 Jonah looked up from the sports page.

“It’s obvious this marriage isn’t working,” Debbie said.  She had that pinched look on her face, the kind she wore whenever she knew she’d spent far too much for some article of clothing but was prepared to defend it to the death.  “I’ve tried everything I can to make you interested in me, and you never will be.  You just want to live in your own little world.  Well, there’s no place for me there, so I’m leaving.  I hope you won’t make it ugly.”

Jonah stared at her. 

Debbie stood up.  “And once again you have nothing to say.  I don’t know why I’m surprised.”


If you run away
did you run away
I will not rejoice at your
falling
run away again
your life is your prison

Friday 29 January 2016

The Unknowing


I was one fear closer to here
lost in a night too dark for sleeping
was it me on the ledge        or was it you
whispering
                                                               
                                                                 
                                do not give up too soon
do not give up
too soon                                                                                                                                                                                           
when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in
with all this sand
                                                               

yet full of proof
of what died         with you
                               
                why did you bring me here to my cyclone second
when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    
cinder through and through                                                                                                                                                                                           
you ask too much                               you do
                                                               
                                               
for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers
for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 
to the fading metal moon             

the sun  it can  be cruel
now that I gave too much                 too soon                                                                                               
                                                                               
                                                Is this your plan  

               
is this your one    
your great             
your smoky last demand  


or

my intention
my blue-flame doom

because
burned across my heart your forgotten message
the language lost in time with the words rewritten
resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing
collapsed under the hope she could not believe in
the soot was in her eyes she could only cry


was this my one great truth

did I give up
                too soon?

                

The disappearing path


April 28, 2013

I don’t really get what’s going on.  This is all pretty weird.  I wish I could just settle on being crazy.  It’s my insistence on sanity that’s the problem.  Woo hoo, who cares what the truth is, because look at me, I’m Princess Leia!  Sadly, I just can’t pull it off.  So I’m stuck in half-crazy, half-sane limbo land where I’m not sure which part of what I say is nuts and which isn’t, if any of it is either.  If that makes sense.  Which I don’t think it does.

Thursday 28 January 2016

Impossibililty

when white roses on the table
give clue to the ending
whatever message God meant to send
this girl is not receiving

with no world left to live in                she is lost in the ether
gently floats past         my outstretched fingers

but as the earth swallows me whole
pulls me into never      what I could not control
this one thing I know
this one thing I know


Confession



I see a man
at the top of a hill underneath a tree
I turn to face him
we stand there for a while
the grass is green from the rain
he does not know my name
I turn to him
I open my mouth and nothing gags
he listens
I turn to run I run run run
down the hill my arms stretched wide
I dive between the tall grass
the grass is tall from the rain
he calls for the daydreamer but I am gone
I am back laying in my bed
hating myself for the telling
it is too late
he does not know my name but he knows
there is no turning back

Wednesday 27 January 2016

Unafraid


Her glassy eyes drove me mad.  In a fit of rage, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife.  She said something in that dull, mechanical voice of hers as I slapped her down on the counter, but I refused to listen.  Instead I raised the knife high in the air and became a human guillotine as the knife crashed down across her neck. 
Her round plastic head jerked back, separated from its body.  It balanced on the edge of the counter for a long second.  She had time to cast me  one last glassy-eyed look before her head hit the floor.  It seemed to roll forever, until it came to rest underneath the sink.
 I laid the knife down on the counter.  With some uncertainty, I pushed my fist into her dolly stomach, but nothing happened.  She was silent at last.
I had killed it.  I had killed the doll.

Because reality is the toe breaker
is the dance
is the false teeth sitting
innocent in the glass

Tuesday 26 January 2016

Special

Did you tell me I would be broken
when you called me special
Did you call me hopeless
when I begged for some forgiveness
Because now I am crawling
waiting for tomorrow
With a today so very desperate
that yesterday is hiding
There is no more point here
I shout into the echo
But I can feel nothing
other than I am special
Special for your weakness
Special for my survival
Special is what kills me
I cannot defy it

But I am sane and you are not
and here we are and there I was
when I cannot breathe out loud
lest you hear me moving

Far out of your orbit
spinning in slow motion
Trying to shout louder
than a kitten’s mewling
Will the planets find me
all my silent crying
Now I can feel nothing
only my plates shifting
Into old arrangements
nothing ever changes
If you could have loved me
let me be ordinary
The world would have opened
the stars would have held me
But now I am so special
the goddess of your nothing
What you hid within me
it was not for growing
It was all for killing
what was only dying
to be loved at all...

Nothing gold


I have been thinking of you

Reminded it seems by
the presence of
something sadder than
you or me

How very long I held on
to something I never had
the gravity to
control

When now I knock against the
hollow inside
the abyss you left in each
part of my whole
So much and so completely ignored
ripping the hinges off of the doors
catapulting me into a world where
daydreams remember

How I would like nothing more than
to feel the cadence of your
pulsating love again
Nothing more than to know it is me who
you tried with your heartbreak
to protect

Instead I am left waiting on the hill
shaking with knowledge of
lost connections
I am left on the pier with memories of the dead
their sorrow pointed toward
the horizon


Monday 25 January 2016

Under water


was it ever thus?
the clouds mirrored in our eyes
the end of apology
the apocalypse of
us



No one mentioned Debbie’s name at work.  “What happened?” Jonah asked himself in the mirror each night before bed, just after he brushed his teeth.  One moment she had been standing next to the cart, complaining about tropical oils and the avocado Jonah had slipped in with their groceries.  And then he was holding the perfect strawberry in winter, talking to no one.  Only Bill, who Jonah sometimes came across in the cafeteria during their mutual mid-morning coffee break, had said to Jonah, “I’m sorry about Debbie, man.”  Jonah pretended not to hear him.  He just asked if Bill knew who had won the basketball game last night.

Sunday 24 January 2016

The lost room


September 17, 1986

My happier self has returned!  Grey skies are gonna clear up, so put on a happy face...!  Excellent idea!  All I needed was a few hours of moodiness and an ice cream to get me back to my senses...after all, I’m the only person who can make me feel better.


I remember how something could
break every word you 
spoke
make you sound like 
you were
choking

Saturday 23 January 2016

The long shadow


Because I will miss you      when I am all alone
I will ask my questions       then wish you had come along
as I sit here with my head between my knees

my hand trailing listless in your wake              no real difference between a 
choice and a mistake
the stars led me everywhere but gone
if I could I would ask you please     I would shout it to your 
stones and rivers and trees

what were we doing here                   
how could we have been so wrong

Friday 22 January 2016

What decorates the walls


She has a memory.  One beautiful memory.  Carefully held in the palm of her hands, so that no one else might find it and steal it.  She must leave it nowhere.  It must always remain with her.  The memory of that one summer morning, while they still slept.  The pavement of the driveway cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the huge Mountain Ash in the front yard, the sun burning golden at the edges.  No one must have this moment.  This moment must never be touched.

Because she must hold it so close and so carefully, she cannot hold onto any others.  She lets the pictures framed in broken glass fall through her fingers.  There must only be one world.  One world, underneath the tree, where no one else exists.  Let the others sleep.  Let them all sleep.  She is a girl standing in the shadow of a golden halo.  She must never step out.  She must live here forever.

this voice         does not scream
these eyes        open only to dream
these lungs      too full of fire to breathe

Thursday 21 January 2016

The deep freeze


I am of the winter people, you see,
of a place where the snow causes
no sighs, no filaments of regret 
to pierce the skin as one
remembers warmth and
light.

Here winter is a relief,
a signal that what is
inevitable has come to
pass.

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Disappointment


Kitty was coping with her own sense of rejection.  In her four and a half years at the University of Wisconsin, Kitty hadn’t seen one sign of anyone from the Interior.  If she didn’t still have the bracelet, she might have convinced herself that she’d dreamt the whole thing up.  She had even started to wonder if the bracelet came from some rummage sale she’d been to with her mother, and that she’d spun a fantastic story around, in her need to feel special.  The more time that passed since her last visit, the less real the Interior seemed, and the less she remembered about it.

Sometimes in her dreams she could hear the King talking to her but, of course, she never saw his face.  Nor could she recall what the apartment looked like that she’d stayed in during her convalescence.  The much-faded scar where the Minister’s knife had gone into her side failed to jog her memory.  Even when Kitty went to visit the Minister’s grave, she found no marker, presumably because no one had known who he was.  Its absence only heightened her sense of unreality.  Not for the first time did she wish Jack could remember his trip there, if only for someone to validate her experience.  But she seemed fated to just forget more and more about the Interior until, somehow, it would cease to exist in her memory at all.

When you are a 
vanishing star
            a galaxy stuffed into
my little heart

Tuesday 19 January 2016

In the cold


Where is                                  here I am        

gone home without you

when I would rocket from the world
out of an ocean so impossibly asleep                                     

is the rain your final call

because I am wondering what this was for
           
why you ever loved me
why you do not anymore

there is no witness here
only ghosts of words that nudged into breath


the shape of a fool      shivering and wet       


your blanket thrown over the bed one cold night too late
 my eyes, heavy with dreams 

but you—                  
very much awake


how I welcomed the chance to be wrong

to never ask why you had to leave
why you had to come at all

was it to drift away from this eroding shore

or was it

not wanting to be sorry
not wanting to be felt sorry for


one last secret for memory to keep


Now our half-truths ship out
under cover of a cloud-filled sky
the sun you once spoke of
never any friend of mine

                                   
can you feel it rain
can you?          

Monday 18 January 2016

Wisdom, and the lack thereof


2013

Your heart has become their most deadly weapon.

I don’t know how.  Who in this world ever tells the truth?


before the knots of existence 
come undone
please 
just once
tell me I have done enough

Sunday 17 January 2016

Heavy is the head


2013

Well, then.  Calm down, will you.  No wonder you are sent to live in the closet!  Learn how to behave you insufferable child.  No one wants to hear this.

            Go to sleep.  The angels will be with us.

Because predictability
is a lucky thing
A coin with two heads
or two tails
as the case may be

Saturday 16 January 2016

Echoes


Do you need me now

                                could you hear me if you tried

not quite alone
not quite within

                straddling my own dimension

                                in time
               
what does it mean to lie
here

                the place you fell down from

                                                was the air so pure up there
                                that before you could warn me I
might find you

                                                                in the rustling of the trees  

you lost your breath
                and I was trapped
                under this avalanche of leaves        

                                nowhere                

to know you

do you need me now

                                                could you speak if you tried

the story that binds me       to you
a balloon floating up into the sky
                                                                               
                when there is too much to hold

go ahead                               say it was supposed to be so

                That the color of light would blind me
                And the mystery of this starry night would deny me

                      the reason why I loved you
more than  snow on my
birthdays in December

Too close for me to show

                                do I need you now

could I hear you if I tried
could I speak the words to kiss this rumbling faith                      

        goodbye

Prophecy


All of the followers had gone, sucked up in the girl’s funnel cloud.  Everything lay on the ground, broken.  The restaurant would not be serving again.
I was wondering with a pang of regret where Marietta had gone when a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped over to me.  We just stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”
“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”
“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared, rather against her will, I thought, into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

The clock
            is a lie that
                        I must keep
                                    unwound


Friday 15 January 2016

Through the looking glass


This one last time                    come along with me                you run so slow I lost you centuries ago                     now is not where you said you would be               leaving me alone and out of breath                    this breakdown in the making                        where are you love      where are you sleeping            I am awake I am all aware      that I am here and you are there                         you do not belong to me         you do not belong to me

Whose truth will be accepted             as war rages against my memories                  I cannot say for certain what I expected          or even what I thought I believed      but I am jumping off the cliff into this pillow of air              while you are a voice warning me from the canyon floor                   because this is where you disappear               and where I wish for something more

for you to send a message please        to shoot me so far and so wide           how do I survive now love     how do I feel alive          when you call to me from an exploding star               when you sing to me from the briny deep                  how am I supposed to hold onto you when I have nothing here I am allowed to keep                    

Because he was a vision in snow       
the carrier of my fears             he infected you with my reality          he melted you with my tears               he held out his hand as I looked for you             he was the last of my projections                       this hologram I could not see through the carrier of your rejection    

So I left you near the valley stream                I left you on the greenest hill              I left you in the hardest rain               I left you standing warm and still                   I left you there in front of me             thinking I had been too kind                 the guardian of all my dreams                        a slow motion horror to unwind         now this torn frame is the only clue  of what I can never find                     what does forgiveness have to do with me    when I am the one you left behind                      

Yes you were a picture in a book                    nestled between a cranny and a nook             where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors        and I am prostrate on the floor                       you do not belong to me               you do not belong to me


Thursday 14 January 2016

Normalcy





It was cold even though the rain had ended and the sun now peeked out from behind the clouds.  In Wisconsin the coldest days were always the sunniest.

 His father came up from behind him.  “Farmer’s Almanac says it’s going to be a wet winter.”

Jonah nodded, lost in an abstraction.  

“Have something to tell you," Dale said.

Jonah looked over at his father.

“I’m moving to Florida.”                   

“You are?" Jonah exclaimed.  "When?”

“Tomorrow.  No point in staying here.  The realtor says I’ll make a mint on the house, and I have a condo down there.  Bought it with your mother right before she got sick.”  Dale cleared his throat.  “Be nice if you could visit.  The condo has a guestroom.  You’re welcome to use it." 

“Right," Jonah said slowly.  "Thanks."

His father nodded.  “Okay, then.  Tell Jackie I said goodbye.”

“You’re not going to tell him yourself?”

“He’s busy tonight.  Something about a poker game, and I didn’t get a chance to tell him before that.  The movers are coming Saturday.  You mind checking in, to make sure they’re doing things right?”

“…Okay."

“Maybe you can come in April.  April’s real nice there—not too humid.  We could go to Disneyworld, or Universal Studios.  Always wanted to take you boys there when you were young, but...”  Dale cleared his throat again.  “Okay, then.  Be good.”

Wednesday 13 January 2016

Memory's drawing


December 19, 2008

There is a dragon in the elevator
He will not tell me his name but
I know it
I’ve heard it in my sleep
He says, stay asleep, little girl
I will not harm you
but I only pretend
I am here and I am alive
If a dog howls, is it sad?
or is it just talking
saying how it feels?
I dare not howl I am not that brave
I am tiny a little speck

Tuesday 12 January 2016

January's Relapse

Most remained here with me

I gave some to the wind                       the wind that separated my toes

but something stayed crept poked inside
mocking me with icicle whispers to
never mind the frost outside
inside is just as cold

whatever stole into my pillowcase
left me silenced
crystallized the dripping ceiling
buckled the paneled walls

I could never begin to wonder how
it came to happen
how I whimpered for it to go away     
yet still forgetting to scrape off the scent
that yesterday is a dangerous thing

this something has left my cheekbones bruised
this something has cut into my knuckles
why God has given me these fingernails                      I do not know

but maybe forgiveness hides in the mattress
maybe in the frozen droplets trapped
on the branch’s edge...

Most remains here with me