Category: poetry

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”

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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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then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “pisces in the 8th house”

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too be fair to be myself,
no one made it easy for me.


I didn’t one day wake up
in a fit of terror,
I was raised to be reactive
and scared and I sucked my thumb
until I was thirteen.
that’s called an
oral fixation.
I have a predilection for filling
silence with phrases so
I feel heard and I drink tea all day
to keep my mouth busy.
 my jaw moves on reflex.
I have an oral fixation.
I spend a lot of time chewing straws
and licking my lips
and you always draw attention to your mouth
they say and I have an
oral fixation.

so when I returned to the definition:
a fixation is a persistent focus of the id’s pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier stage of psychosexual development.These fixations occur when an issue or conflict in a psychosexual stage remains unresolved, leaving the individual focused on this stage and unable to move onto the next. For example, individuals with oral fixations may have problems with drinking, smoking, eating, or nail biting.

once more, I returned to this phrase
I had written and rewritten again:
how many licks does it take
to get to the center of an attachment
disorder?
I turn to my therapist and say
sincerely,
I can’t keep anything out of this
mouth.

“the oral stage”

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freedom is a cage of
smudged windows
or it is the knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my intestines
soon
 spilling out onto the floor,
washed in symbol, incubated;
destroying their cotton packages,
when the day is warm and facing them
tearing through the tether,
unbridled,
unimpeded exodus,
transforming into grand ideas
and taking off
like a storm.

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when I found you,
I was in the mood for some
analgesic touch & rub and
I have always heard beneath everyone’s
duplicity or backpedaling or
hidden words in tongues that tribute
to love that is not giant,
but quiet.
not so enormous that it takes me
but the plain way desire wears itself
on people’s faces and
the plain way people hold me
even if for seconds,

 

I felt that.

 

I felt timid or dizzy
 in its presence.
I felt like I finally heard you
when you said,
just wait.
I have written and rewritten the
same phrase for years,
if not in a document, my hand
or carved a tracing of it on
my new, fresh Baphomet thigh
tattoo because bondage is a
fit I wear:

restraint is an art I intend
to master.   I always bud in denial,
rejection, stomp my way to your
cloud and let it rain,
let it pour,
    love exists with or without hope
let it flood all over your place.

restraint is an art I intend to
master, but what does that mean?
not to demure, but to
grow in body, warmth,
way.
it means, fall.

fall easily.
fall.

fall.

fall.

don’t ruin it with vocabulary
or anxious gesture
so I am letting my hair grow
full and unruly like a mane
and I am inking every inch of
space on my skin
like a map and I am
crying in flower beds again
but I am smelling them.

I remember every dream and the one where we met,
where we met,
where we met,
and now,
     love exists

I face a mirror.

 

“the act of restraining things”

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I was in a house with a girlfriend,
packing. we needed to prepare to get out of there.
there was a flood coming
but earlier I was in my hotel room somewhere else,
in a wig that had become my hair I wore it so much,
it was really me and I was thin, I looked thin.
they always say I look thin.
dancing in front of the mirror and not scared
that at any moment I may see a ghost.

I looked like a ghost: pallid face and wan body and I just
moved autonomically.   I kept dancing and suddenly in a fit,
I threw myself out into the hallway and ran across
to your door where you were not alone and I thought better of it and
turned back towards my place, where the door was not only unlocked
but slightly ajar, ready to welcome me back.

and it wasn’t until today that I knew the three,
assuredly. their names and what they meant to me.
restraint is an art I intend to master and
a flood was coming, feelings are the secret masters
of me.
I have never been quiet about it.

 

“dreams #3”

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there is no difference
between love and liberation
and some were born saints,
you say as you help me
in the mugwort bath,
the smell of rose and geranium
circling the tile.
I plucked the petals and dropped them
one by one for aesthetic.
not free of indulgence, but
patient   your fingers make
stems in the water
and I guess I am waiting
for something.

“the swell”

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I learned to say this phrase most often
to God in prayer:
             give them all the light and love
              and whatever they may need. if what they
             want and need are the same thing,
             please, don’t hold back:
           give them everything.”

 

the phrase
abracadabra literally translates to mean
“I create as I speak”
and with patience,
even an active fault line will
root new trees.

I drape myself in effulgence:
white bulb,
blue black shade covering my eyes.
a walking half moon.
plucked my eyes out
to avoid seeing what spell can
do to the meek,
what weak blood
hex can squeeze
from a stone.
I am no saint,
I tell you.
I’ve collected
beryl droplets of text
from the back of
your throat.
abracadabra.
I am santa claus
shimmying down the chimney
each night.
I am a knife in a dark room
following another knife
to his prize.
I am delivering it.
you know who I am
inside but I’m changing
 shape, becoming spectral,
coalescing
into coffins.

the litter isn’t enough to change
so I’m buying house plants
to welcome fresh life into this house.
cacti look like your middle fingers
in the morning.
the cat eats the tulips but
she leaves the sunflowers be.
I host orchids when I am feeling
 extra ambitious,
watch them die
with a soft, sad
browning.
mostly I have surrounded myself
with roses. in my garden
of goddesses,
I make offering.
there’s too much oxygen in here,
I think.
it’s mostly coalescing
into coffins.

I’m choking on particles of
corn soaked cat piss,
the expensive kind of litter that can be
thrown right into the toilet,
and clusters of thorns in
my bare feet,
a little sprinkle
of pollen on my nose.
my floor is covered in stem
decay and this bed
is just a graveyard
doused in dead
blossoms.

I say it’s over
loudly and I hear the
drag of a
chain.
it’s Monday and I
am asking you to leave,
and you are learning what
truth can do.
what spell means.
abracadabra.
you’ve been watching me bow to
altar, you’ve been watching me
pray.
you’ve been asking for
something too.
It’s Monday, I wake up
and all the songs are about you.

I never write about blossoming but
i’m seeing inflorescence in
dejection,
in the form of wormwood
creeping up my throat,
taking hold of nearest hopes
and igniting.
“Monday, and all the songs
are still about you.”  

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