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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