Tag: love poem

I am a nihilist,

nobody had to teach me
that and no men
held that void quite like
I can hold that void.  
they mocked me and I let
them; I
have a constructed reality
that surrounds me but I feel
a thirty year repression
birthing from a well
and it carries eels like
lightning, the nose of sharks;
past betrayals come next.
 you like rain:
a little deluge for your
flight, I feel no obligation
to anything:
my rectitude,
our plans,

or my penciled tips
on how to revitalize
warehouse row,
I’m tired and
my want for self grows and
ends in impatient provocation,
 your spiral notebook,
the bottom of the ocean.

“storm”

1

well, they always start
 the same way:
in winter, it always starts in
winter, that’s when I am my weakest.
I am usually unsettled,
raving at the window,
the frost,
the cracks in my joints announcing
themselves in arthritic temper.
   you’re so young
I’m so young at this.

inexplicably manic
during the darkest months,
 at times I know I should
be sleeping so I am reaching
for anything that reaches
to help me get through the
night.

in truth, I am a nihilist.
men didn’t teach me that
nothing ever matters and
nothing is ever coming back.
I watch my days get dragged away by tides
that become encroaching swells
and think to myself,
well, it always starts
with a storm.

“well”

0

i’ve been out to lunch since we got here.
it’s another change in seasons;
spring and everyone is out to
brunch celebrating
 maternal lessons,

begotten lies, or if they’re more
 triumphant; forgotten spite.
spring hats,
spring sandals,
spring grief,
sometimes things just go away
like missing pieces:
backs of earrings in the hotel room
at your youngest cousin’s wedding,
origami florets you sprinkled at your mother’s ankles
when you were just learning how to fix
 the pancakes to give appreciation;
diplomas, expired passports, birth certificates,
reiki and doula certifications,
everything a lover gave you,
hand me downs, or cute owl
 pajama sets that were xmas gifts
callously discarded in the great
“I saw a bed bug” throw
everything the fuck away fest.
      I have nothing left.
anything that reminds you of your
lineage: scrapbooks and family
heirlooms, voicemails from your dead
brother pleading for you to
come back, the ashes swinging from
your neck,

they don’t really mean much.
you’re here and you can prove it if they ask
with this giant gaping hole in the center of
everything
that you at last had the guts to crack;
the diamond she stole,
all winter blooms,
the time you had left,
grand ideas slipping out of your ears like ripples of
eureka!
plopping on your floor for the ants to devour
before they ever land.
you should have tried harder.

because love is boundless I can’t possess it;
it consumes me with its humility,
strangles like history,
swallows like tidal waves of
unyielding southern humidity,
and  I can’t escape it.
feelings for the flesh that steal me are so
 palpable, like ghosts, I’m moaning
exorcism! and synonyms for
 hurry up.
the climax is the body’s clever parapraxis,
and love?
I want this thing gone

so I can be empty with my tea
 and good ideas
shopping with the other women.
I’ll slice open those ants and rip my
thoughts back out,
write down our fused imaginings,
send you the book stuffed with their dead little toes
and threatening locks of my dead ashy hair.
I’m vanishing inside of myself again.
I knit a sweater full of verses I’ve never heard,
wrap it tightly for the winter.
wear the world like vapor,
my fortune cookie says
and something adds:

my dear girl, you are so lonely
 you have created all of this
        (the world just falls from my shoulders)
you are mourning events,
people, places & things that never existed
      (cut it open, pull it out)
wipe those ruby red eyes
     and take a look around
            (before it disintegrates)
but my house is a burning building
so I better bounce.

I had one fawn over me
but he fell in the giant yawn
 I stomped in the yard
and like my bright wishes,
he’s also passing me by
carrying something I don’t get
because it’s real and it’s found
he is holding it and I am
     eyes shut tight   catarina
thinking about it
again when something grabs  
my arm.

“how to forget everything day 67”

0

but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and the resolve so you’re
palms out begging for it
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.

you are God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing yourself and
binded by conviction.

you are wrapping yourself
in your lovers’
unhinging,
your lovers’ veins,
your lovers’ disdain
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow
and you’ll be around
come never.

you are distant.
you are giant.
you are waving your hands
in the air and calling it
time magic.

oh, you are quiet in your cave,
becoming whatever you say
you are.

“the magician”

0

spend too much time in scrutiny
and you find knives
 in your hands.

11.

 

0

 

in fact,
resilience is sometimes the
 only consolation.
so hold that tight
at night
like flesh.

11.

0

I believe in wormwood,
dried root,
my brother’s ashes
in a silver heart,
a ceramic urn,
a chant, a poem.
datura when the time
is right.

sometimes I do ceremony,
sometimes I just let things pass.
we do that for others:
carry our grief quietly,
we bury things deep
 within ourselves.
but sometimes in a fit,
 I spill over,
tell you everything.
you said
I like to swim
so I am braised with razor;,
 become a carnation lake
at your feet and
  you said rain,
I like gardens.
so I condensed and
waited to show off my new arms
lined in fresh alyssum.
my cycle: I always meet them in
winter where my only
light is moon.
my flowers blossom
under the chilled night:
drip a dark nectar and
I am thirsty and
you already know,
I believe in
altar.

I believe in overflowing
chalice.  you believe in holding
space for growl,
holding me with
distance.
you watch me lay the
dill in bowl, line the bed
with tourmaline.
run the bath with
chamomile and yarrow.
  I am full of tincture now.
I can move like a jaguar:
slow and black and
hungry.
I am hard to see that way.
you said
 I am game.

you’ve been watching
 jaguars move,
you’ve been memorizing motion,
you said
I’ll be around
and I drape myself in constellation
so you can better see me,
storm so you can better feel
me and I traipse across the forest
floor waiting to be found.    
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know that
you are game.

you are writhing
game in tiny, tiny
snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground.
I said let’s switch places
and I know you said
my name.  I become the woods
encircling your howl and
you become the kicking,
screaming, young and
drowned.

in winter,
it is long and dark
and hard to contain my
grief.    I
am gorged with nectar
and hidden by
the wind.
sometimes we do that for
others: hide our
spines.
you watch me prey;
sip the drip of
the effulgent crescent
bulb I worship
and become the
nightmare you fear.
you become the shivering
deer, caught fly,
gutted bunny on my
jaw.
I become the bath
of blood.
you were right:
we’re the same.
rewind to the night you asked
if I would ever kill someone
if I knew I could get away with
it.  the butterfly effect
demands a death. 

we become the woods
in dream and you become
my game. 

“datura moon”

0

“Everything has happened.”

–Sylvia Plath

I need it gone,
please, it can’t stay,

I am speaking out loud without
realizing      suddenly snap back to present
in the middle of a dark prayer,
in the middle of washing the dishes
contemplating when and where
and how to do it;
just jubilant yesterday that is what
disease does, it festers
and pokes you when you’re
good, when you have a taste of
joy on your tongue and you’re
ready to sing and  the next thing I know
I’m saying:
I’m going to kill myself soon.
if not today, tomorrow
and I look at my cats
and I make the motions of crying
and remember the end of the poem
I read: think, on the brink of
your death, I am asking you
to think.

it always strikes during my domesticity.
whenever I am practicing chores,
I feel it.
I put the straw down to use my hands
and I feel it:
the interminable prison of head,
of daydream, of coma
that I laugh about in public
but it’s twisting me
in crooked shapes
and I have held the ineffable,
or rather it held me.
an arm around my stomach
near a window,
my mind was blank.

I suffer from chronic suicidal ideation
and I haven’t cried in years,
I begin to the invisible audience.
I’m starting to pace,
lie down plan ways to face
it or fashion the rope
or grab the blade or jump
the bridge or anything at all
to speed up the ending and
I asked if I could please get help
without telling anyone this time
and then  I choked on a cherry pit
causing a panic attack causing a
light cessation of breathing.
you don’t know you value yourself
until you are faced with two options:
let it or fight.
but I called 911
and the EMT took me to the crisis center
when I told them I can’t quite
tell the difference between
 fantasy and reality.

the way men think I lie,
they’re right.
I never tell them how many
plans I’ve drawn for suicide.
today, I dropped the straw,
started crying.
and you don’t believe anything I say,
but there is no time to coddle you.
everything has happened.
the thirteenth draft was suicide,
but I didn’t know it yet
 and people really do try.
God won’t let me.
 feelings subside.
the way some watched me
suffer, I forgave it all.
the way I sobbed
in the hospital.
the way they said:
it’s not clean, you’re right.
the way the pit lodged.
the way I had been picturing the woman
 grinding the cherry
seeds to make cyanide earlier
in the afternoon.
the way I was seeking adjectives
for distant unconditional love.
the way I told someone over dinner
it’s called “The Woman Who
Saw Her Own Death.”
the way endings can change
without warning.
the way I quit my job.
the way it’s so unlinear.
the way God’s sweeping
fingers cradle you in darkness
and something says:

yes, that was the way it was
then, but now we begin
again.
how quickly I grabbed
the phone in terror
implies commitment to staying
here; there is no one
here to comfort
but I hold that
tight at night
like flesh.

12.

 

 

 

0

it hurt
but not as much
as memory;
not as much as looking back.
death reversed,
they called it.

and not as much as hearing it
on the bridge.
         I told you so
not as much as living long
enough to see you go and
slip and live frozen
underneath the giant
white sheaths of ice
where I leave you to unravel
in a dream.
where I leave
you
for the last time.

a spider said to
write it
that was rule number two.
you can call it the
act of taming things.
they’ll think it’s about you.
get them to read it out loud
and curse themselves.

when I danced with her night
 that night,
she whispered,
       say my name
    and you are mine
I woke up in silk
and horns and you were
flying: a bright, blue butterfly
right into my arms,
my web of lines.

“switched places”

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