Thursday 31 August 2017

The Black Hole



Just around the corner
you can be singing
in awe of the clouds forming
or the ants running
And then you will see nothing else 
You will wonder why you 
never saw it coming


Wednesday 30 August 2017

Blowing the Whistle




This is not the person I 
wanted to be
this is not where I 
wanted to live
these are not the memories I 
wanted to decorate my
hallway with

Tuesday 29 August 2017

Deluge



I see a man
on 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 open my mouth and nothing gags
he listens
I turn to run I run run run
down the slope 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 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

Monday 28 August 2017

The Tomorrow that Never Came



I found your horses running scared
with apocalyptic thoughts and
moonlit hair
this is the dream you gave to me
tonight

I want to learn to cry once more
I wonder if I even could before
I reach to enthral your sky

But we are exposed along the line
nothing left to soothe our sunburned eyes
No notice of what still hides
and if we must wait for it alone

Because this is the dream we found tonight
this is not the dream I held inside
Gone and vapour undoing our glue

As I remember how you
found my horses running scared
shivering in the wind with
frozen hair
it broke to the touch
as you whispered goodbye goodbye
goodbye...

Sunday 27 August 2017

Pieces



Let me tell you what I know about
my broken heart
this is the rhythm of it falling apart
toss the stones in the river because
we are
we are coming up for air again

What did I even know about
guilt and sin
all of the dreams that
I was dying in
it was a curse it was a blessing it
was utter nothingness
until it skidded and came crashing
home

No telling how the earth will
record this disaster
whistling dixie in the wind
as if I had the answer
            ballet with fractured form
tripped up by vengeful rapture
the hammer flung against
the wall

Dismantled piece by piece into
a million parts
buried back with Santa at
the Christmas tree farm
what is dead is what is real to
the falling apart
we heard the siren but not the
alarm

I wonder how I will know when
the sky becomes my master
when dreams of yesterday stop
mocking me with laughter
tomorrow is today tornadoes
circling my trailer
I was wrong over
and over again

Now I whisper to the wind about
my broken heart
to unravel in slow motion
not a subtle art
toss the stones in the river because
I am
I am here alone at the end

Saturday 26 August 2017

Fading



I joined Bryan in the living room five minutes later.  He said nothing to me beyond what he was able to communicate with the cold, ferocious glare I had come to recognize as the precursor to his verbal wrath.  But too angry to care about the mushroom cloud forming over his head, I turned to Julia and gave her a big hug. “Thank you so much for everything,” I gushed. Julia, her eyes glued to Bryan, merely flashed me a wan smile in return.  

Bryan vacated the premises without so much as a peep in her direction.  Neither did he utter a word to me until we had crossed the border into Illinois.  The last time he had been that quiet, he’d thrown me into a piece of furniture and booted me from the apartment.  For this reason only it was a relief to have him say, in a voice that rumbled through the car like the echo of approaching thunder, “Why did you run away?”

“I didn’t run away.  I just came to visit.”

“Without asking me first?”

“I’m seventeen.  Do I have to ask for permission every time I want to leave the house?”

“To leave the state?  Yes.  You do.”

“I don’t see why.  You aren’t my father.  And, contrary to what you seem to believe, you aren’t God either.”

“Yet I am the one who has the final say, Rachel.”

“So you keep claiming, but I don’t know what your problem with Julia is.  What has she ever done to you?” 

“My problems with Julia aren’t relevant to you and me.”

Yeah, right.  But not daring to trot out the blackmail story—there was insolence, and then there was just plain idiocy—I said, “In a matter of months I can do whatever the hell I want, and I don’t have to tell you the first thing about it.”

“Which is also irrelevant.  Until that day comes I make the rules.  You don’t have to like them.  You just have to live with them.”

“No.”

Bryan glanced over at me.  “What did you just say?”

The undercurrent of menace electrifying this challenge was such that, had I been less damaged, I might have been quaking in my boots.  Damaged I was, though, so I answered him, “I don’t think I want to do that.”

“And what the fuck is it you want to do?”

“You know what the fuck it is I want to do.  You just won’t let me.”

“You can’t want to live with Julia.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d be dead of lung cancer in six months, and she’s incapable of providing you with a structured home.”

“I don’t need a ‘structured home’ anymore.  Anyway, you should talk.  I don’t think kicking your ward out in the middle of the night counts as providing a structured home.”

For a brief second I thought Bryan might go apoplectic.  But I have to hand it to him: proving that you never know someone as well as you think you do, he exhibited the kind of self-restraint he was famous for lacking, and allowed my remark to dissipate into the air.  While unsure of how grateful I should be for that, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

The rest of the trip passed in a dead silence filled with the despair of two very angry people—one of whom had at last come to terms with the only alternative left her.

Friday 25 August 2017

Meoisis



I have been pining for you, old friend
I have been searching for clues of 
your existence
I have been listening to the buzz of
the lamps, my friend
but in the end we are all
without evidence

Because you are the final cause
you are my buried investments
When I search the heat registers for you
I find cotton balls that missed the garbage
can

I stand on my toes and scream
through my stomach
I fly off the linoleum by the force
of my breath
I plead to the cobwebs for you to listen
I wake up with charlie horses at 3 am

I lost my travel book centuries ago
burned the forest where you
were my favorite tree
You are the reality I cannot 
close in on
what flew through my hair that 
I mistook for permanency

I would like a chance to hold you, old friend
I would like to touch your materialness
But I beat against the kitchen table instead
keeping time with rhythmic
loneliness

Thursday 24 August 2017

Collision





















I will fall from the sky
into this memory 
horizon
but it was never you
only hair and 
bones


Wednesday 23 August 2017

Closed In



For a while I tried to make my new “seaside” apartment feel like home.  It wasn’t such a bad place: from the bedroom window you could see the ocean, if you pressed the side of your face against the wall and really strained.  But when that got old, and I lost interest in unpacking, I started using unopened boxes as convenient stands for things like junk mail and canvases.  As much as I wanted to care, I couldn’t.  Somehow in my desire for flight I’d forgotten that my belongings would only remind me of the life that had blown up with the barn.  When I tried to deflect this by buying a watercolor from a local shop I wound up just putting that on top of a stack of boxes, too.

The only one who seemed happy with our new life was Daisy.  Lazy though she might have been, she relished the chance to stretch her legs during our evening walks on the beach.  “Dogs like you just aren’t meant for places like L.A.,” I told her, when she ambled up to me with a piece of driftwood in her mouth.  “I’m sorry I put you through that.  It won’t happen again.”

Because even if I were lonely and frightened and not nearly as pleased with the move as I’d hoped, there was no going back.  I would rather stay with this slow death instead, waiting for everything and nothing at the same time.  Despair stretched before me, as vast as the Pacific Ocean.

And then Christine called.

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Ghosts



I heard him out there
the buzz
Don’t try to understand, he said
It was my nature to try
or my position
the master and the slave
a cause that could not be
abandoned
if only to turn black grey
white an impossible
dream




Monday 21 August 2017

The Queen of Nothing



I slipped inside of the
oily puddle today.
Even though I knew it
was there.

The twig you threw was good
enough to save
itself, barely.
Still, it was the strangest thing.
While I was waiting,
suddenly I had this tree.
Not much moves me,
but I had to move for the roots.
They were so big.

It burned inside, I know it.
The petrol had to burn the
branches inside,
had to leave scars that
never turn white.

The explosion would have
horrified you,
had you waited to see.
Oil does that—
it explodes.
And then there is nothing left.

Not even a twig.

Sunday 20 August 2017

Breathe the Free Air



I want to wake up
I want to wake up
I want to wake up

The little dog has fleas

I feel nothing
I will cut it out
this thing in my chest
All of the empty hallways
mile after mile 
antiseptic  
he doesn’t care if 
I know
he doesn’t care if 
anyone knows  

Saturday 19 August 2017

And the Rain Came Down, Redux




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 18 August 2017

Lost



All of those letters
tortured into thousands and
thousands of
words 
each one leading into the 
same grey room
the towering slag heap
only the slightest quiver
down comes the river
nothing to hold onto
it will kill us all

Thursday 17 August 2017

The Deepest Cut



I saw you then the knife
always you first
it kills in two hits
I would never know
back and forth
back and forth
even once to be close enough
how hard I wished it away
but the lie was everything
to you

Wednesday 16 August 2017

Knowledge of the Other




Here we are again, I say to the dragon.

Yes, he answers. Here we are again.

I am tired
I wait for the snowdrops each year
and they come
and I admire them
but the wonder is gone
this was why I never meant
to know.

The riddle. When?

There is no riddle.
Just whispers that eat away at denial
not the rotten bitter kind
but the type that keeps the
hopeless alive.

You are still afraid.
You are ruled by fear.

So easy to say when you can burn
what torments you
I do not have that luxury
I must stand on my toes to look over it
try to admire the
snowdrops in the
garden
I must make peace with
dwindling denial
that blue sky I saw it
I believed
now I am resigned
tell me
is this victory?

There is no winning,
the dragon tells me.
There is only acceptance.
Remember the riddle.
It is your only choice.

Tuesday 15 August 2017

Lost in the Ether




There is a devil in my closet
I am not afraid not afraid
Do you want to go on a picnic?
No.  No.
We should take the roof way
I am a thousand dreams of
yesterday burnt through
We will float in the stars 
like a dying planet in search 
of black holes.
We have no choice
the sky never forgives.

Monday 14 August 2017

Locked In



I beat the walls
scream for mercy
give me just a little
escape
for all of my bleeding
you must believe me
I could never turn traitor
now

Sunday 13 August 2017

Here, Alone



She has a memory.  One beautiful memory.  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 they still slept.  The pavement of the driveway cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the tree in the front yard, and the sun burned golden at its edges.  No one must have this moment.  It must never be touched.

Because she must hold it so close to herself, she cannot hold onto any others.  Pictures framed in broken glass fall through her fingers, because 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.

Saturday 12 August 2017

Ghosts



And the whole world falls apart 
explodes outside of the window
so that out there in
the darkness
nothing exists
nothing ever was

Someday my mind may break
someday my mind may snap
but you, little world,
you will tell me to believe in 
daydreams
to bleed so that you may live
to kneel so that you may rise





Friday 11 August 2017

1988



If I raise my arms
and try to fly
only the sun will be
out of my reach
when the sun is
all I desire.
For a century, at least,
I have stood here
with my arms clasped
to my side
waiting for the dew to share
its secrets with me.
For a century, at least,
I have stood here and
waited
my palms facing 
the sky
my eyes turned toward
the sun.

Thursday 10 August 2017

The Black Hole
















I cannot tell yet what you have
done to me
you are victory and you are
vicious murder
even the trees shiver at 
your advancing

But in your heart and in your heart
listen
I keep everything in the 
greying sky as I wait locked
outside
I don't mind
To be warm is a lie I lost
the reason to tell

Wednesday 9 August 2017

Slow Train Coming



The defense has become the obstacle
I cannot give it up
it is giving me up
it is waving goodbye
please please please
I look out of the bus window and I see
houses and a golf course
not ready
keeps rattling at the gate
let me kiss you goodbye

just wait
just wait
just not ready yet

The defense has become the obstacle
there is no turning back

Tuesday 8 August 2017

The Truth Trap



Despair rose up in me like a flash flood; it had almost reached my heart when I heard a gentle snorting noise.  The small puffy dog who smelled like cake shuffled out from behind a bush.  “Are you real?” I asked her.  “Or are you going to disappear, too?”

She cocked her head and bared crooked teeth at me, as if to say, Does it matter?

I dropped down next to her.  When I wrapped my arms around my knees and began to cry, she butted her head against my leg until I stopped.  The setting sun was hot on my neck.  “You shouldn't be here,” I told her.  “You should go back into the woods.”

For an answer she rolled onto her back. 

Tiredly I laid down on the damp, cold ground.  As I closed my eyes I heard some more snuffling sounds; I then felt her strange fluffy head rest against the palm of my hand.  We will be safe tonight, I thought to myself.  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess.   Absolute safety would never be mine to have.  It simply didn’t exist.