a draft

I remember my mother’s hands--

who is it that has us believing
that memories exist in a timeline
and that maybe that particular sequence is us

we folk know
it is like the air is made of gelatin
and somebody threw a stone through a church window
as it was congealing--

raw like the red meat she handled
burned with industrial quantities of industrial strength sanitizers
shrimp tails under her chipped fingernails
knuckles wide and knotted.

]short[

no hair in my face to the public--
the harsh, harsh edge of the mirror that does not meet up with life

that puzzle promised
we bought second hand

several pieces missing.

--the wind that I love on my face, the sun

untitled

point of contact
like a bullet shot through ice
suffuses the world with me, orange--
all oranges through which these moments bloom
take up the whole of time
for instance, streaking the window panes, for instance
staining a face
for instance
marking your hand when I hold it

impression/expression

when he walks through the door he says
I had to come tonight

I didn’t want to wait
he says, arms hesitating in mid air, until tomorrow

as he steps toward me the air stretches
the lamplight streaks the general greens he brings with autumn’s golds

wait, I have choked out, wait, I have reflexively coughed out, wait
but it’s too late, he stretches out a hand

and there it breaks apart
like colored glass raining down a well

The Lifespan of Tears

Time, as I drive my heels into the ground,
edges me off a cliff;

for when you are no longer a child,
nobody is responsible for you.

Too old now to blame,
old enough to blame myself.

Age invalidates my feeling,
each year a tick off my claim to victimization.

To those who say, “you’re still so young,”
I wish that were so.

A lifespan to work, to love, maybe, is a long time:
the lifespan of tears is not one decade.

If tears are what define me,
then I have been a  ghost for a long time--

unable to speak
unable to affect the world around me

except perhaps by being a fleeting
uncomfortable presence in a room.

what mother might have hoped for me

After ruining so many jacket sleeves outside the recital hall foyer
myself tucked between the last stone bench and the Eastern wall
I can hardly care about the cold, wet spot down the breast of my shirt
that clings to my spasming chest.

Fifty years, and what’s to hope for next?
What I might have to offer those withering bones
my mere comfort, a brief smile,
I’m too poor to afford.

Sonnet

What comfort, night, what comfort have you the right to dangle
out in front of me, like I were some desperate
shore born fish, lured by such temptations
as this? What salted ambrosia do you hide
inside your inked arms?

Outspread, the sky, like love foretold, enfolds in surface lights
the tense and tide shorn bay forlorn, deceives
the grieving layman maid into believing
she could wade through quieted waters out to sea and drift
unbattered, into divinity.

Conspiracy! Conspiracy! I’ll own the charge
against these natural wonders, large
though they may be, all those who ponder must recall
the almightiest God’s quickest to damn us all.

the everyday things

I can pick out from among the people around me
those whose lives realize my dreams

I need some good news fast
before things get real bad

all the things you think you’re good at
well, you’re not

all the mail that comes
the letters addressed to someone

just outline where someone oughtta be
life like wind happens to me

an incident on a day in a life

When I was twenty two years old I walked down the stairs
to the employee bathrooms and put my left foot up on the toilet seat.

I took out my standard-issue, ergonomic, safety box cutter
and set it for three-ply corrugated fiberboard.

My left leg suffered the twenty four incisions.
My left arm, too, three more.

I rolled down my pant leg, I put on my jacket,
and went back for my remaining seven and one half hours of shift.

After having promised not to do it again,
a few times,

I made a game of writing “suicide” where I would otherwise draw blood
every time I thought to do it.

After writing the word four times in two minutes
I forfeited.

So it came to this, a dull burning on my left inside calf
while I asked passing customers if they needed any help today.

the normal frustrations

the words on this page are sickening
especially the “I”s

I wish to be removed from this setting
lifted letter by letter

and placed inky blot
by spidery bleed

into a deafening fire
so that I am finally consumed by Rages

and made mute, and made unconscious
and am unmade

the normal frustrations

the words on this page are sickening
especially the “I”s

I wish to be removed from this setting
lifted letter by letter

and placed inky blot
by spidery bleed

into a deafening fire
so that I am finally consumed by Rages

and made mute, and made unconscious
and am unmade

"What have you been up to?" "Just working."

I become a stretch of road
I am six miles
I look futureward,
down my asphalt,
my traffic obscured by glints of sun

With my feet
I blot out patches of the pavement
back and forth, in paces,
until I walk
in the Alley of Shadow
upside down on the walls
same as the ceiling and floor

the day is weeping

If I close my eyes, and tilt my head back, and mouth the words, to a, dirge
I can pretend we are around a table in an afternoon, only if.
I can feel, only if, the sun, and I am breathing deep, and I am singing.

The day is weeping.

The arguments are less convincing. The sun drags behind it not a million colors-

all the colors. I feel, only if, in black and white, advice steeped in depression
era fancies. If I close my eyes, and tilt back my head--

The day is dead.

Such busyness is lead. It’s finished, waking up, walking out the door. It’s
finished. Reasons to believe that I could be wanted, for labor, for, labor,
to learn. If I’m not wanted, let me know.

The easier to let me go.

-- Figures

Let me pant a half breath’s worth of explanation.

Look,

I almost died.

Well I almost decided to almost die, look--

I was called for an audience with

the Dean of Students.

It was not even a semester in.

I wore black slacks

and an ironed, green, button-up shirt.

I wore heals.

I walked slowly.

I walked step step in

step step step out

step step in

step step step out--

Look,

let me just say

the second time

there were between 12 and 18 lacerations to the face

my

face

and both times

it was near finals. Look,

I tried, okay?

I worked hard.

I earned my admittance.

Let me explain,

there was a man

with wispy black hair

face down in a mound of foam that ran from his open mouth.

I had every ambition.
I stayed late, I woke early.

I cared, I tried,
I sought help
 
not once,
not three times.

I came back every week.
I came back every week.

I read, I educated myself,
I reached out, I attempted to educate others.

Look,

I believed in myself.
I did. I once did.

Hadn’t I earned this?

I believed in a meager but livable dream for myself.
Until, there was this man, see, he was

sitting outside the cafe with a discharge packet and these birds
and he kept turning his orange bottles in his hands--

I recognized the hatred and defeat on his face--

I nearly cried as he pitched full pints of water at the birds
and went back inside to refill the glass.

When my confidence evaporated under repeated lashings from the sun,

I looked to you,

and you let me down,
not because you wanted to,

because you were face down in a mound of foam that ran from your open mouth.

victitious

creamy peach

blotches

grumble and snort

beside me rolling over

rolling down

as of a canvas, in blotches

oil paints and it bleeds through the sheets

seeping down and soiling the mattress to the coils

like these

sand tan musics Sonoran

blank faced, mute mouthed

Syd Barrett style stare in flashes

striking in bolts at every vectors I am

in knowing and in knowing laughs

soaking through my whole and staining my body to the bones

as though

off white

irises

dilate at any other prospect but a lie

like lilacs laid pallid 

as of a drug induced sacrifice of surplus, anyway, goats

who are warm milk-machines

perforated for pleasures

who are

grazing

on auburn peaked mounds

swelling with the rain, swollen from the rain

that streaks across canvases such as these

pooling up in lakes of amber melted candle wax

stinking with the burn of a flesh offering

dripping hot

down the legs

of the bedframe

pooling up in the moat I made

around the bed as a mess on the floor

G.enerationalized A.pathy D.isorder

Having learned nothing I now sit alongside my status as a well-educated, highly-valued resource for many of the few giant-huge corporations that now control every facet of the living that produced my highly desirable status.

I clutch a plain mug of the coffee I have come to love over many nights holed up in darkish cafes further and further down the road from the expensive community I was made aware I was fortunate to have financed my way into.

When it comes to feeding myself I can zap a bowl of easy mac but I don't know how to plant tomatoes and when it comes to my own happiness I could write an analysis of ways I am likely to feel in a variety of situations and compare myself to other subjects real or hypothetical but I could not make a poem about what I am feeling now.

same same

same same

waves, the like,

like, and like,

same same

attachment to,

and to, and,

same same photographic present

memory like water, and like wind

seasons, sunsets, serpent skins

Brothers

Elder brother’s lullaby is keeping me awake.

When he stops singing,

younger brother’s weeping bleeds through the wall our bedrooms share.

It’s a nightmare

wrought in time, lost,

wasted in day-dreaming.

Terror never felt so pleasing.

A moment’s conquest comes at the long term cost.

Dear God, let me never dream, for younger brother’s sake.

when i say

when i say i need you to come with me all i mean is walk next to me and tell me about something that happened to your friend once, please, while i look for butter in the store so i can go home and be alone and make cupcakes and when i say i need to be alone all i mean is it takes four hours or so in a dark quiet room before i am awake and can enjoy the life i’d been living before in all that time i wasn’t alone and delight in plans for future times when i am again not alone but please if it’s after nine and i call you it’s urgent that i not be alone right then but don’t worry because all i mean by that is just say some things to me while i dehydrate myself to sleep and all i mean by that is, look, i just cry a lot, it’s okay, i always will, probably, so just tell me about what you ate that day or who you saw or if you got anything interesting in the mail today and don’t worry too much because crying is what i do when, whenever, but please when i say i need you to sit with me please sit down next to me and be patient still like you have been on occasions before because that’s all i really am asking for when i say i need you to sit with me, again, in the same way, when i am in need.