What It Looked Like

I could
          describe the storm.
Its completeness. The scenery of its impact-
                        the devastation,
or sketch,
in detailed imagery,
         a picture
of the calm that came before, parading, flaunting
an illusion of peace and
           safety.
I could
tell you that the
sun illuminated dewy grass, and the
sky was bluer
                                                  than blue-
                                                  than usual.
That the
    air was 

          warmer.
That for
      just a
           minute,
every
living creature and
act of nature held its breath.
That there
was a hush just before the operatic swell.
That for
a fleeting moment, the planet stilled before it
tilted
before the meteor hit. 

And it was chaos and the picture was not pretty.  

Do you want
to hear about the
smear of people
struck lifeless where they
stood,
about
                            the pooling blood, sticky red, where their heads fell against seared

                                                                     rocks, their bodies tossed with force and 

                                                                                then the corpses, laying in an
                                                                                                           apocalyptic,
                                                                                                           barren
                                                                                                           landscape
                                                                                                    for days on end?

I could draw you in this way
              and hook you with harpoon of view and speak for pages of what it

looked
like,
make you queasy from the poison in my pen, and all
the power wielded in a story.  I could haunt with
                                                        words,
foreshadow what you know is

coming
but I think you've heard all this before. 
I think it’s worn. 
And this is just a
metaphor. 

And what it felt like is more my

             specialty.

So I want
to tell you
what happened. 

Before and
           after.  

I want to
tell you that
it was unavoidable 

and had there been a warning, still it could not have been prevented.  

I need to tell
you the price we
paid, simply for
believing
in the picturesque – in the fairy tale,
for not
noticing the side streets
littered along the way, or the solemn mockery of the ornamented, bawdy lawns- the pink flamingos
                       stuck lopsided in the sod, or how the sheen on the green of the grass was strangely bright – unnatural. 
The pleasant-ness of it all. 
We ignored the prophecy
of those prepared, those who stocked
their pantries, crying out that the
          end was near.  

It all reeked of that sharp, distinct aroma of rotting dreams amid denial. 
We chose to look away from what we lacked, to inhabit what wasn't
                                                 real

and I think, in fact, it rained the day
                                                                                                                     you left,
and I think that                                           it was evening. 
I don’t remember what                               the sky looked like, 

or whether or not it was

warm.  

But I know the planet tilted and that it was my voice that 

broke the silence                            your absence

left a crater in all I ever took for granted and that 

the shock                                       came in waves
for months and months                   I was blinded.  

And when I regained sight, I saw our house in pieces, and had to pull my body from the rubble and instead of we, there was only me, and that just the idea now of us seems far away.

Maybe, it’s melodrama.      But,                  maybe it’s all I know.  

Maybe
            how I feel
is my landscape and the scenery of               what you left behind
is stark and more
                          real
than the
ground I stood on when you were here. 
 

Slippery

I can barely name it.
It's hard to own.
Peculiar. Slippery.
So...she?
Me?  I don't know.

I am where I want
to be
but I don't know
how I got here.  Or
how I'm standing.
You are just
    outside the door,
almost perfect as far
as I can see but I
don't know why
you're there-
or here.
Because in another
life, I didn't know
you, could not have
made you up.
And I woke up from
a dream I thought
was life and there or
here you were.  Real.
Tangible.  Soft
weighted as snow
and warm
but when I touch you,
               I'm not sure
               I exist.
Because my existence
depended, always, on
            someone
                        else.
Someone I made up.
Someone I couldn't
touch. So, I've lost
time somehow, though
the facts are in.
Point A to Point B
    is written plain.
My fingers follow,
trace the
lines or path and
  I understand
  some girl
I suppose is me
must have traveled
logically from a to
b
but
the numbers mix with
letters and years with
days and time with
lapse and though
it doesn't rhyme I
still can't read it
easily.

So, I have to pinch
myself to see if I
am real but my
skin is numb in
certain places in
certain moments.

It's like, what if God
              was dead,
which is a shit
                analogy
but as close as I
can come to naming
what I can not name.

It's like any belief
disproved.  Like a
whole body transplant.
Like a story
within a story within
           a story,
           a twist-ending
so seemingly
out of nowhere,
you're just pissed off,
shaking your head,
                   rewinding.

But
     the rewind button
     is broken.
Or he was broken.
I was broken.
And I think I might
               now be
               whole
if I
knew for sure that I
       was real.

Your love seems to
touch my velveteen
and your belief is
strong- maybe,
          magic.

So, just stay
until my sense of
feel
comes back.
Wait till
I can grasp it, hold
it, skin it.
Till it dies and I
come back to life.


                         
                     
                           

Like a Dream

I finally see why I can't forget you.
I finally see why I can't remember you.

The sky is blue and always
   has been.
The sky is falling and always
                                    was
in bits, like rain, and you never
listened,
                           and still,
it's not enough
to wet my memory, the sparse
                        landscape
of who you
     were
or who I was, or who
     we were.

The space I've kept you stored in is
           almost empty,
and the space you held when you were
                             here,
is still
intact,
and every time I lost
                 the key,
                           you had a spare.
But now the locks are changed and you
                                             evade me.

I try hard to recall each first we shared.
I check my skin for signs of cleaving.
Scars
from where you carved our scène à faire.
I am trying to
find the girl I was or the man I thought
you were.
My recollection
and my vision
bends toward the end.
There are track marks not on my heart
but on my
soul,
muddied, sullying the framework of my
mind,
so that I have to wonder if
I was ever sane.

You are like a dream I think I might
          return to
if my eyes
              stay shut,
so I've saved you in some upper recess
of the brain where you might slide back
into view in dark of night.
Because I could never see you in the day
and I traded sight for feel,
for trace of flesh.
And I thought you had pierced me with
your name but like scarlet henna, it's
fast fading.  Like the taste,
too, of you.  Carbonated.  Flat.  Deflated
words are all you speak without
my breath.  Still, I hear you humming
                   somewhere behind me,
                   reminding me of life,
and all
I ever vied for.

Did I dare to stare into your eyes,
                           endeavoring to find
                           reflection?
Did they dance or dart or glitter or give
                 any hint at all
of caring?
Did they endear me, the girl who wanted
                 only something real?
Did they caress my needs, undress defenses?
Did your hands ever
really touch me?  Did you only tuck me in
                                        under illuminating
                                                  lies?
Did our bodies form a pair or did
I starve in singleness of purpose beneath
                                                  illusion?
It's hard
to tell.
Do you know now
                    what I know?
Do I know now what you knew then?
Do you know?
Did you know?
Did I?  Is there anything to know?  Did
I expect too much?  Too little?

Give me back my knowledge.  Give me
back the girl I was because what I'm left
with is just a prickling like hives when I
try to scrub the dirt away.
An invisible, tingling illness in
my nerves because how does one begin
to suffer an imaginary loss?
How does one grieve a ghost?

The sky
is still
blue and always
                  will be
and I am beholden to the pieces left behind.
To bits like hail that strike like
            lightening
the place I stand and I collect them
to remember you.  I treasure
them like rare antiques and I polish
them in your memory and then they
melt, and I forget.

The Sunday Whirl

 

Was

I met a man married to the past,
and married him,
and his eyes stayed fixed
on what he thought could not be altered,
and his vision lied,
intercutting
          scenes of glory and grandeur
onto the picture of who he thought he was,
and so the light of sound was always lost on him
and our then now
paraded past
with dull veneer
and what was
       was what
        always glistened.

He had disinfected past.
Hammering with heat
of what he wanted,
he polished into
glint, the pieces,
producing slag.

I tried to introduce him to innovating tincture,
but disenchanted, he staggered back.
I tried to
tantalize him
in sepia flesh
to synchronize with story but I tore softly, over time,
within his grasp.
His fingers moved
as fast as his
lips feeling my
face to find
his own
reflection
and when the mirror finally broke,
the ground beneath us caved.

He took pictures, then,
of self and hung them
through the house-
dust encrusted,
stale art.
I indulged
flat form
but longed
for flesh
and blood.

He was as immovable as his portraits,
unmarred by truth,
and I, too, became
a prisoner
to his nostalgia
until, unpruned, I bloomed like wild lilac
upon his frame and took on exposing tint.
In wistful hope
of integration,
    I tangled
with his guise
but when gallery turned to garden,
he took his shears,
                        and cut.
Released and banished,
I mapped my chance
at cultivation.

I left behind a figment but took
             his ghost
and now I have to squint to see the sky.

The Sunday Whirl

The Mag

Completion

"Words are spoken at considerable cost to me..." -Edward Hoagland

Tonight, away from the euphoria,
       I am waiting.
I am listening for patterns 
in your breathing,
        and needing sleep
to relieve
me of this new, insufferable hush.
I am needing you to break it
like you do
and tell me if my heart
is beating.
I am twisted in this cocoon of sheets
        and crave emergence
 of the morning.
I fear I have driven us away 
  from the day 
           the rain fell through the trees
                    in summer's
                        scenery, licked up
by sun's buttery heat and I touched
you and didn't speak, and everything
       and nothing
was enough.  I fear because now
                       it's winter.
I fear that night creeps in
and my hair turns golden
and your neck is bent
and so I gaze vainly
at my own reflection and I turn away
from you and when I return, you face
                     the wall
and I lie contemplative willing you to feel
               my desire-
be kin to
               my own sonnetist self
and see me as if after
birth, flitting against
                    a crimson backdrop.
See my soul's beauty when
       my body's beauty
drips oil black as Jezebel's
                          eyes,
because only with you am I intact
       and I am still in awe (in fear)
of whole.
Split for years, I don't know
how I managed to survive or live
             at all.
I knew only the echo
following, flickering in the hollow
  of my thought, but I could not
                           believe
and I learned how to weave
                              temptation into
satiety, drawing in only
                  what I did not want-
cunning spider catching fly
                             to pulverize
shed scent and soft-shed
kisses, devour with deceit of tongue,
but you are wingless and your limbs
the muscle of my intent, the strength
by which I grow and tonight, I feel
                                  the amputation
                                                     in
the limp lamp light hampering
the glow of dark's usual clarity
                     and during this sick
paralysis of lips, I am wrestling
  against the 3 A. M. noose,
choked voiceless I can not answer
                                 and when you
give in and up, I am left alone,
        incomplete mind attending to
                       the monsters in my head
and I can not protect you.  My bones
without your frame are flimsy and gray
unwanted space, my skin.  My brain
frays like an old forgotten lover's, aged
          into decay and so now I know
             there are two ways for me to die:
in a fever, leveled beneath your devotion
or by means of this wide chasm, slow
               and tortuous.
Do your dreams, in my absence,
tell you that I'll be okay?  Cure me
with your daring.  Embrace me in
                                my reluctance
to close my eyes, and shuttle me
into your vision so that I can see me
in you.
Enter through me
and make a still life of my pieces.

The Sunday Whirl



         

                        
                                         

"...english isn't a good language
to express emotion through
mostly i imagine because people
try to speak english instead
of trying to speak through it...."

-Nikki Giovanni

We both sat under wing of safety
looked in
and found each other
but              you
ventured out first,
came in to me,
  and now, together, we look
           out,
             
and these days, I can't get my mind
anywhere but                       you
and I don't much care
because
   even when everything else
                                 is shitty,
and I can't pluck
all these flapping words
              for anything
              and the calls come as fast
              as the cliches
              and the tears
surprise me as much as the sight of you
standing, unruffled in the kitchen
   and I'm helpless,
                          so huffy,
                               and my voice
does just what I don't want it to,
                        I know
                        it will
all be better
when you come home.

And I am rushing through the day-
            maybe, for that moment-
doing this
     instead of that-
satisfying what?

Waiting        watched         wavering
between too much
   and too little.

I want to sing,
face you, inch closer.
                                             

I want to see me through your eyes
               see                     you
through
your eyes.
I want to rhyme,
         to invert,
and go out
into the world
              with you like a kitschy
                             love song
chirping in my head,
                     your persuasion perched
                        on my shoulder.
I want you to sweet talk
me out
      of my suspicion and translate
                                all I'm sick
of speaking of.
I want your hands as warm as coffee
in the morning, to stay in bed all day
                                and keep me safe,
                                and to just be me
with you and
        you
be
you.

I'll go in even when I'm afraid,
I'll go in breathing in and out, slow
  like you're standing in our kitchen
                       and I'll nest
where you do
and turn in and out, softened
and turn in and out
what is in and out of me
so I am ready.

Under Cover

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon..." -Joseph Conrad

The moon is pulling waves, even in our bedroom,
tonight, in the middle blue, and I am trying to find
where to talk
from
and my voice.  I rarely speak freely and when
         you look at me, I look away.
I am
trying
to speak from what I know. Simple words
                                     naming happiness or
                                                               sadness.
This is hard because have you noticed it's never
               really fully dark, even at night?  Even
                           under cover
snatched up and around to hide from the breeze
                               or the heat
                               or your eyes?

Under cover of the stars that fall when
obscurity's passion breaks.

I don't know how to unslant
                                     sadness and even less
how to tread
         these tides where my center
bends.

How to say that every single
   other
   other or
nightdayyearlife was a lie and this
  is the truth.

How to unglorify,
             unmuddy
this pastpresentfuture and see
one moment as clay-
just touch
just hold it
               in my hands, squish
               it through
my fingers without some
           grand plan to mold it
                                          into
a gigantic, daunting whole story
paralysis.

I have binged
on words, shoving them
                        into an overpacked
sentiment and then had to lug
     them back home.
I have boxed them neatly, organizing
                      them sterile and tidy.
Square and tight for an overhead bin
      and flight.  I, tonight, can not
                 give them wings but
                              maybe, I can
defer to Angel of One Woman's, All Women's
Blackouts and Clean Sheets
                 and Fire and Hope and Love Affairs
                          and I can ask her,
"Do you know taut pull of moon,
its haunting light(ness)?


Do you know how to speak of one
                     without
                                the other.  Other
without the one?"
Apart from all these words and still pulled
                           everything paired is one.
The moon speaks without
                             words
and I am trying
               to say that (happy or sad) I love you.

The Sunday Whirl