Friday 31 March 2017

Magic's End

A couple of hours later Jack stomped into Jonah’s living room.  “It’s amazing we were born with any brains in our head, considering the morons who conceived us,” Jack said bitterly.  “No chemo, no radiation, no nothing.  She’s just giving up.”

“According to Dad, the doctors said it was hopeless.”

“And since when do doctors know what the hell they’re talking about?  They were using leeches like fifty years ago!”

“I don’t know about that.”

“My point is, even if it’s a remote chance that treatment would work, isn’t a remote chance better than no chance?” Jack snapped.  He dropped onto the couch.  “I just can’t believe this.  I had no idea.”

“She has been acting weird lately, I guess," Jonah said, but Jack was quick to retort, “Who can tell?  She’s always acting weird.  How was I supposed to know that this week it meant she had a fatal illness?”


Thursday 30 March 2017

Midnight



“It’s about Mom.”

Still watching the monitor, Jack said, “What about her?  Did she burn another pot roast on Sunday?”

“Yeah.  And she’s got a brain tumor.”

Jack whipped his head toward Jonah.  “A what?”

“A brain tumor.  They can’t operate on it.  Dad says she’s got a few months.”

“To live?”

“Yeah.”

Jack sat back in the booth; he looked as if someone had just hit him in the stomach with an empty beer pitcher.  “Holy shit!  How long have you known?”

“Since Sunday.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“You know how they are.”

Jack snorted, before his face fell again.  “But only a few months…really?”

Jonah nodded.

“She still has all of her hair, though!”

“They’re not going to do chemo.  It won’t help, so Mom doesn’t want it.”

“What about Dad?”

“He said it’s up to her.”

“Oh, great.  He’s leaving critical life-or-death decisions to the biggest ditz on the planet,” Jack said, and grabbed his coat.  “I’m going over there.  Someone has to talk some sense into her, and it seems like I’m the only one in this family willing to do it.  I’ll see you later.”

Wednesday 29 March 2017

One


I have heard you
echo in the distance
I have heard you
whimper through the radio
It is my fault
I brought you here
We were so very much alone

Tuesday 28 March 2017

Hiding in Plain Sight


“I just talked to Mom,” Jonah said.

His father looked away.

Neither of them spoke for a while.  Eventually Jonah asked him, “How long?”

“Three or four months.  They’re not sure.  Never are.”

“And there’s no treatment?”

“No.”

“You checked?”

“Yes.”

“Does Jack know?”

“Not yet.”  His father paused.  “Maybe you could tell him." 

Jonah did not particularly want to.  But something about hearing his mother sing “You Sexy Thing” in the other room prompted him to answer, “Okay.  I’ll tell him on Tuesday.”


Monday 27 March 2017

Release


Tell her the devil is pounding
on the gates
salivating
waiting
God reserves a special place for you
It is where the clouds burst and bang
the loudest
It is His business to forgive
not mine.

Friday 24 March 2017

Locked Away



“Oh, it’s some kind of tumor.”  His mother waved a dismissive hand.  “Who can understand a thing those doctors say nowadays?”

"But are you going to be all right?”

“Hmmmn.  Now where did I put that phone number again?”

“Mom,” Jonah loudly interrupted, “are you going to be all right?”

“What, dear?  Oh, that.  No, I don’t think so.  Tumors aren’t good, you know, and they can’t operate on it for some reason or another.”

“What are you saying?  Are you going to die?”

“Well, we’re all going to die, dear.”

“I mean soon!”

“It seems that way.  Can you help me find this phone number?”

Jonah stood there, watching his mother search the roll top desk that used to sit in Grandma Mueller’s dining room.  She’d missed a button on the back of her housedress, so that one of the tiny pink plastic buttons stuck out on top by the collar.  Cheer up sleepy Jean,” she was singing to herself.  Oh, what can it mean?  To a daydream believer, and a homecoming queen…”

Thursday 23 March 2017

The View From Here



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                                                             
                                                                 
                         don’t give up too soon
don’t 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?

                

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Fire Dance


“Just before your friend Andy came back here,” Alturis said, meticulously peeling an apple with the butcher knife he'd found in her kitchen drawer, “he shot and killed someone.  Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“Well he did.  Even more unfortunate, that person happened to be my brother.”

Meg just looked at him.

“Apparently your Andy had never killed someone before," Alturis continued; his tone suggested that he found this detail amusing, even endearing.  "It disturbed him.  So he took a leave of absence and came here.  Which is where we found him.  And you,” Alturis added, as if it were impolite not to mention her place in his diabolical scheme.  “Bad information led me to—what was their name?—the Gergens or the Bourbons or whoever.  It’s hard to find good help nowadays.”

“I wouldn’t know.  I’m not in the market for henchmen.”

“And a good thing for you, too.”

“But that doesn’t explain what you want with me.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asked, smiling again.

Tuesday 21 March 2017

Hidden


And when I choose to come here again                                                                     
will it snow how it did in my dreams
                        will I be

a story worth telling

                                    because the sadness—

it crackles in the night
           
for you           
the mistake worth regretting

                                                the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend
this planet a box that holds me

when she could not worship the sun               for so long she yearned to sleep         

but the storm came rolling in
                        the storm came rolling in

a million miles of prairie grass

and your golden-haired girl                            exposed once again

unsure how the course of right became the final turn wrong
how her rabbit-hole time for falling   

                                    just      gone

gone

  
gone

a triumph but for you 
my one truth worth deceiving
a child’s dream for tomorrow so good           it deserved to be buried
behind the wall a red she had never seen                  
     
if I had                        discovered

yet not been found

would your golden-haired girl           
be six feet underground

I guess this was why you had to go
maybe I should have known

but the sadness—
no one told me it would come with the leaving
  
especially not you
  
my last hope worth believing



Monday 20 March 2017

Fading


I know what hate is, she said.  I know how to hate him and I know how to hate myself.

So they sent her to someone who could teach her how not to hate.  He had nothing to do with God or Christs nailed to crosses.

It took a long time.  But she learned how to not to hate.  Instead she learned how not to trust.  

Friday 17 March 2017

So Far Away


Spread your arms                                    wide

dive

the snow envelops my knees
it makes me want to believe                     in you

your candle is dim                                   a flickering light

in sight on top of the hill
I am pushing

a thousand clouds to insulate the sky

only the beat of the ice crunching                            underneath my feet

purple the color of your hidden majesty

in this river flood of oncoming night
                               
play your sad drums for me
underneath the tree

up there on our crayon hill

keep it steady           keep it still

but in a minute I am undone
I cannot cannot leave you now

in the world all gray I wanted to feel
zephyrs and sunrise against my face

it looked so warm
                it looked so warm

from the other side

so I strapped on my wings
took to your sky

                blinded by a million sparkling dreams
                snowflakes falling into infinity

the howling drums of wind and war echoing
around me…

and then the
candle
                went out




                                

Wednesday 15 March 2017

Volcano


I met her at the cafe where I liked to read the paper in the morning.  At the time she struck me as nothing special—just another smiley college student waiting tables over the summer.  Only after she gave me the wrong coffee three days in a row did I really pay any notice to her.

During her rambling apology—“I’m so sorry, I just can’t remember if the white doily means vanilla or regular, I keep thinking white has to be vanilla and then I think, no, it’s the opposite, and then I get myself all mixed up”—I didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her to go away.  In the end I did neither.   Eventually I would come to wish I had done the latter.

Tuesday 14 March 2017

2013, England


If tomorrow is here then so be it
but don’t ask me to say amen 
because I won’t believe it I won’t 
believe it I won’t believe it

Monday 13 March 2017

Three



The clock
            is a lie that
                        I must keep
                                    unwound

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

And yet too late
just one second too late
maybe

The joy was in
the terror of
the box

The Face in the Mirror



“I like your t-shirt,” I told her.

The girl smiled at me.  It was a relief to realize she couldn’t quite talk yet.  But when she gave me a little wave and turned to go with the dogs, I knew what she was saying.  She would be seeing me again soon.

Sunday 12 March 2017

Fire in the Hole


Hi there.  I won’t ask how you’re doing because I know, so...I guess you’re all right.  You still smile sometimes, although yesterday you were pretty angry over a dumb dominoes game.  Okay, it wasn’t the dominoes game that made you mad.  It upset you when he wouldn’t leave you alone, why won’t he leave you alone when you ask him to?  Anyway, you’re spinning and sinking again, I can tell.  You’re just sick of all this crap, you wish it could be over and you wish you could make it vanish, or at least not matter, but you can’t.  Just accept it.  Yeah, I know.  You’re getting that scared feeling in your chest again, it had left you alone for a few weeks but it’s back again, like it or not.  It's not going to disappear anytime soon.

Sorry about that.  We can't help it.  You just won't listen to us.

Saturday 11 March 2017

Locked In



Whisper it to me while no one is listening
tell me I am a fool
tell me I am not
tell me something that makes sense
and then prove it

Friday 10 March 2017

Encroachment



“Let’s play a game,” Alturis said.

“Let’s,” Megan agreed.

“We’ll ask each other questions.”

“Great.”

“I’ll start,” Alturis told her, and leaned forward.  “So tell me, Megan Cooper.  What part of yourself would you most like to kill?”

Megan had the feeling he asked all of his victims this.  Even so, she answered honestly, “My memory.”

Alturis sat back in his chair.  “That would be too bad.  Because your memory is one of the only things in life you own.”

“I’ll sell it to you for cheap.”

“Fine.  Sell it to me.  Tell me why I would want it.”

“Because it might amuse you in between murders?”

“But surely I must have a sample first, correct?” Alturis said comfortably.  “For instance, when did you first realize you were in love with your neighbor?”

Megan shrugged.  “I never was.”

“Then why do you look longingly at his house?”

“Just remembering,” she answered.  “That’s all.”


Thursday 9 March 2017

Phantom


Where are you tonight?
I see you sitting on the low-backed sofa
only a cat could love
discussing Jung and astrology in
the same breath.
I see you you are so unknowable
I hate one person more and that is
myself.

Wednesday 8 March 2017

To Bleed


suffering is noisy is deformed
it spits on the sidewalk in front of innocent
bystanders it makes no apologies
it wipes its nose on its sleeve it whines
for sympathy it licks the hands of the compassionate
it howls over a broken fingernail
everything reminds it that it exists everything
mocks its existence everything shouts it
is ugly it is a freak at a freak show it is
the rotting leftover shoved in the back of
the refrigerator it makes everything smell
as its final biting and weeping vengeance that
it exists at all

Survival


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 from her.  Of that one summer morning, while the others still slept.  The driveway pavement cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the huge Mountain Ash, the sun burning golden at the edges.  No one must have this moment.  No one must know it exists.  This moment must live inside of her forever.

Monday 6 March 2017

Joy, Unexpected


I woke up as a fairy in the empty restaurant next to the woods.  From the time I was a girl I'd longed to live in the dollhouse in the attic.  But not until I opened my eyes and found myself crouching in the furthest corner of the kitchen pantry did I know that my hopes and dreams beat inside of a tiny heart.

Empty



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?