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  • “Name your torture,”
    one of them said
    with a wink.

    I wanted an orchard
    but I swallowed the vodka
    he handed me
    willingly.

    “The Gorge”

  • 1.throw yourself off a bridge.

    2. throw yourself into your art.

     

     

  • perhaps I will live like this forever,
    insatiable,  never satisfied,
    a bit Veruca Salt.

    I am not my habits
    although they are intrusive,
    pernicious and aiding me
    through letting go of something
    larger: the need to be seen in every instant,
    pet and validated,
    but left long alone
    also
    and to be cleansed
    unremittingly.

    if there is a safe space,
    it is here, in writing.
    if there is a true amends,
    it is change
    but my lion is indebted.

    when they ask what you are,
    tell them humbled.

    “Venus in Leo”

  • “And let’s reveal the killer. Ah, it was Venus with Leo in the 12th House.”

     

    –nightmares

  •  

    I derive so much from one word.
    the license plate that careened into the pole
    instead of me that night read
    “ prisons” and
    I knew instinctively how he felt and
    tonight I’ll do:

    a spring equinox meditation.
    brush my teeth.
    cut grapefruit for the morning
    and ride the waiting out
    pay homage to my Pluto
    and my Pisces and
    my twelfth house
    of self undoing.
    i’m becoming a panacea of my own:
    memory, tincture, flowers everywhere,
    the fuss of first love never leading anywhere but
    here in another meditation
    on the river walk
    and

    draw my poems out of the older sutures:
    undo, redress, pamper the wounds .
    think about it.
    send you a letter.
    remember the way grief sits,
    unsettled, right after dusk,
    right under your chest,
    right under your breath:
    a blue river from your fingers.
    send you that letter
    with my wounds
    pasted
    in the margins.

    reminding you to
    think about it

    pay homage to your Venus.
    she is out,
    casting cars into ditches
    while you cautiously watch the lights
    change.
    you are holding selenite in your pocket,
    standing where they
    are now sitting and wilting
    in screams, the way you asked:
    one more chance please

    you snap and they lose their
    breath just like that.

    “prisons” or “Venus in the 12th House”

  • “Strength does not have to be belligerent and loud.”

  • show me how to be an angel,
    sky,
    I think I’ve been there
    before        before I found
    what my hands can do
    when they’re not pressed together
    anymore:

    bring donuts for the office.
    offer silence in embrace,
    holding space or advice
    if they say help me get through
    it with action.
    paint houses, mend fences.
    pull the nails from my true love’s feet:
    I placed them everywhere and
    I make contracts,
    real amends means I wish you well
    and won’t ever
    contact you again.
    smile openly at strangers,
    hold the door and inner weeping.
    stop repeating anecdotes that expose the
    dark recesses  I’m engulfed in so I can
    stop
    passing this on     so I can
    save face, space for
    longing, mystery, idleness.
    it’s the surprise that I can’t take.

    I invite them to dinner:
    ask them to bring a favorite song,
    one dish and
    a defect they love.
    I like strings and female wailing;
    chords that are long, surfeit with
    unrequited love.
    I want it to sound like a heart that’s starving
    for admission but will take it slowly
    with a snare drum.
    I apologize profusely for how bright my
    apartment is these days.
    I know you expected something darker,
    I say,
    but I prefer a blinding scripture to the days I
    waded in shade and open constriction.
    they understand the situation,
    my indifference and malignance.
    they offer me some gifts to assuage
    me and I waste the night
    with demands, scrutiny,
    verbal inspection:


    show me all the books you love.
    recite your favorite lines.
    I think the world is crawling with caged geniuses
    that got lost along the way;
    are you a lonely prodigy?
    I need to see your insides;
    palms up to show
    you aren’t hiding anything.
    are you the predator or prey?
    do you believe in martyrs,
    more importantly,
    do you believe that the devil vets the saints?
    I’m no killer, I promise, but I’m not the easy way.
    do you believe in chance?
    I once watched my fate unfold across my eyelids:
    two parties coming together in black and white,
    a future that was possible but someone whispered:
    it is better to ruin this thing.
    I believe in lessons.
    I believe in dormancy.
    there is no such thing as a mistake.

    they show me teeth, piano, films:
    Begotten.
    I laugh, I’ve seen it:
    I show them the drugs I bought,
    my darkest cackle and matching garter.
    show them a dozen ways to trample gardens
    with a notepad.
    do you see how I can write the future?
    look, I planted bombs everywhere.
    I show them demolition.
    I show them scribes can craft the wicked.
    I show them altars, smitten
    eyes and a tongue that’s wound around
    the Earth.
    I show them what my insides look like:
    wounds and trillion year old dirt and
    I light three candles,
    wear them like a rope.

    have you ever let a thought just pass?
    one interrupts as I dangle over his
    crown.
    let me down.
    and I repeat to him what I meant to say
    the first time we met to explain the danger
    of restriction:
    it is nothing,
    time    a longing
    and I wait.
    I say

    will you teach me how to wait?

    “ricochet”

  • perhaps I will live like this forever,
    insatiable and never satisfied,
    a bit Veruca Salt
    throwing temper over everything,
    and alone.

    if I can’t forget anything it’s that
    I am alone.

     

  •  

    it’s the feelings I can’t take.

    I can’t sit still.
    you never sit still.
    I don’t take breaks and
    I can’t rest and I can’t stop
    once the frantic pacing begins
    and today is special, it’s a
    double moon day and I knew it
    before I woke up.
    it’s a two of swords day.
    it’s a double shower day where
    I try to cleanse myself
    obsessively without confessions.

    now I am sad about two things:
    the way I let things go
    with grace
    that I can take a bath
    about and mourn publicly
    because anyone would expect that
    and then there’s the more insidious thing:
    the way I ruin things privately,
    what no one sees
    with grace
    to stop myself from
    sabotaging everything,

    there are men in this town
    who know me.

    1.

     

    (the red book)

  • this is the edge.

    that place we walk,
    that line we pace
    where we are crossing borders
    but we aren’t ready to let
    go of the hand on the other side.
    a tightrope and I’m a leo
    so I want you to see me
    learn balance,
    learn control,
    learn poise in public agony.
    there is no point without an audience.

    so here comes the men.
    the men.
    the men.
    the men.
    and so begins
    the slaughter,
    dripping red,
    the men.
    me, my insides;
    them, their insides,
    us together in a swirl of
    chaos of my choosing.
    the three phantoms beholden
    to my unceasing confession.

    “And why do you tell these men
    things long after they’ve left?”
    my therapist asks.
    tell the truth.

    (Because I miss my fucking brother)

    But what I say is much longer.

    “the men”

  • it wasn’t just about us,
    it was about everyone.
    the way I’ve touched everyone,
    or better,
    the way I ripped myself apart
    in front of them.
    to pieces.
    my self deprecation intertwined
    with resentment.
    they say i’m bitter.

    you say I’m graceful
    but you have not seen me undressed.
    you say I know you
    but you have not seen me undressed.
    you say you’re naked
    but you have not seen me undressed.
    not the way they have.

    and that makes you jealous.
    you want to watch me rip my hair
    out and tell you to tell me to
    stop.
    oh, maybe wait a while until
    I fall in love with someone else.
    I’ll hit you up years later,
    suddenly, in a panic,
    so I don’t confess to the wrong person,
    I’ll slit my throat and tell you
    whatever comes to mind.
    tell you everything about me and
    tell you to tell me to STOP.
    they say I carry myself with grace
    but there are men in this town who
    hold various secrets about me,
    various veins I have given them
    in an effort to assuage the dark
    thing inside of me:
    my impatience,
    my want for everything,
    my lack of trust,
    my water spells,
    it’s the feelings I can’t take.

    you haven’t met me undressed yet.
    and the third phrase I have written over
    and over again in a patient way to understand:
    I come over wearing everything I own
    so it takes forever to get to the bottom
    of things.

    “the rose”

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