Tag: poets of wordpress

My entire life has been informed by the space between us. 

There is the distance of my language and there is the distance of my touch.  Across the room but glowing. The warmest I’ll get is further away. 

They’ve memorized the muscles of my back

my pout and the echo of my cry-filling cavern
carved by the sound of my heels tapping;
retreating. Longing, and the way I succumb to holding, or allowing touch; recrudescent and poxed by them after a period of silence. Tarred by them after a period of respite. Not long enough. A period of cavern. Them, memorizing the color of my shoulder blades in the sun: tall and olive and taut from tension. Desperate for the light of distance. Spoked.  Tall, and wrought with tension.

 I am strolling. I am even sauntering.  Til I see them, I am strolling, then nothing, then tunnel vision. Emptied, but not quite that: automatic. Spurred by instinct. The pervading eyes and I am (smiling) seeing the space close in around me again. Lifeless, watching the move of my hip go from enriched by dance to torpid.  Dragged by shell. 

I am a shell.

Clench your jaw. Tighten your shoulders.Hip goes from bouncing to dead frozen in nervous. (That means it might shake).  The way there was once twenty feet between us. Suck in and walk straight. Swaying til I saw them.  Don’t trip. Ticking from nerves, looked gaily upwards til I saw them. Don’t look.  A pleasant thought crossed me right before I saw them.  My most pleasant thoughts are false memories.
Reverie.
That means I imagined the most pleasant experience of my life. 

Suddenly there was ten feet (I am smiling), then five feet (in reverie), then one foot. Suddenly the hand on my shoulder, on my middle back, the ubiquitous trail
towards my coccyx.  He towers,

“you’re too pretty.”

  I am smiling. They are a huddled mass.. So many of them with their fingers out
filling the space between us. I am smiling. Smile. They are reaching for me–
trailing their scummy fingernails down my tucked in blouse
and there is nothing underneath or inside of me.
I am vacant but I can hear the chorus, from
my safe distance.

“You are too pretty to frown.”

“the men”

2

I’m obsessed with process
and transition;
the form it takes.

metamorphosis– freeze,
liquefy and
precipitate, or the moment
before– just to
reform without final
shape. stuck.
or testing permanence
with concrete.

after all that patience
and miles of crouch
through the city,
knees broken,
admiring chalked mortar and filling
the jacket lining
with lip gloss, your ardor
growing big and bright
pulling things towards you
like the moon; oh
to be suddenly seized
by your habits again.

your hand on my back.
it’s just one breath,
that’s all it takes.

“the men” 

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shake my head no.

“I don’t intend to hurt myself.”
my thighs are cut with finger shaped
bruise and the smell of
someone else’s
laundry detergent
I am windswept,
gutted and frank,
even in malaise, I
fork my tongue to cut:

“I can only cry at hospitals
and then I usually leave.”
lean in, and they said
be gallant. he has
blue eyes.
“most of my family is dead.
I just want to be seen.”

my throat sore from
conversation. persisting
mucus. the taste of him.
takes my hand.
takes my neck.
takes my waist.
stop talking.

but I just can’t.

“catharsis” or “nine of wands”

0

get some rest,
girl,
it’s the
Four of Swords.
they say I must be
heedless to dabble in the
dark like that
and unarmed.

more unthinking;
a fiery capricious
tantrum,
stabbed in the fucking back
and fingers naturally
pointy and
webbed as things
develop into theory,
into pentacles,
into air.
time is a sequence of
cracking joints, more
misfortune and now 

I blend into the wall
when I want and you will
know me by
eyes popping open,
or my purr of a
low growl,
low to the ground,
undaunted in my
new soft black
steps.

you just hang there.

“Arachne”

0

typically, an episode starts
at the mantle any time of day
but something has to hit
and it’s usually
three things at once:
stasis plus drugs,
(that means im fucking dizzy and
no one will listen)
an acid wave in
my stomach and
a recurring thought,
(some say intrusive or imply im responding
to internal stimuli)
caffeine, throbs, jaw
tightening into one flat line–
then there’s the timing.

in no particular order:
can’t breathe
can’t swallow
can’t move my legs
and then the heart leaps
start; staggered,

the rhythm is irregular. 

racing.
my pulse burning.
mouth turns to stone.
tongue desperate, bone-
dry, lurching outwards and me
biting it to stop talking.
just want to stop talking.
saying everything that’s happening out
loud and answering their questions
but snapping, imprudent.


i don’t know what I notice first:
that I haven’t exhaled,
swallowed or stood or
  or
that I can’t seem to do anything
nor stop the group from screaming
at me.
desperate choral grove.
the candle on the altar.
blow it out.
no, lick it.
just get up.
listen to me, Cat. me first.
when I’m still, the breezes hit
and then suddenly the room falls
away.I can feel the blackness
pervade as if there is a hand
around my neck;
this ostensive power
beyond me.

i’m clutching the rug,
bottom of the ocean
as the first wave hits.

“the labyrinth”

0

I checked the time
before walking home.

a habit.
10:26 pm, no magic
in that but the drizzle
feels good on my bare thighs.
my obsession with clocks
began years ago,
616
313
919

everything in threes,
I am sobbing in front of the
young attending.
and I just can’t stop reading the titles.
begin to pick my lip.
sometimes I feel like I am choking.
sometimes I think I am willing it
through like it’s a choice
to breathe or not.

they didn’t check my throat,
not even once.
sympathetic nodding,
no real connection to the
young man but an hour of
purging. weeping.
wrote me a prescription to see
a psychiatrist about my
self diagnosed OCD.
I am always arranging everything.
I call Monday.
the psychiatrist doesn’t take my insurance.
can just peculiarly count rhythm
hearing a few notes.
and can align thoughts with
crescendo, and can align time too.

I decide to skip it altogether.
collect new rocks for
my mantle.
move art in new corners
spend a day composing.


later i will find out
that i have severe dysphagia,
a nodule in my throat.
and that swallowing is in fact
the most insidious
danger.

there are nights I don’t sleep.

“3:13”

1

we prefer rationalizing,
chronicles.
multiple guards around
us, ephemeral
longing that changes
direction but there are
no exits so we stay fashioned
to her tenuous fingers,
waiting for the fall.

cards everywhere
scattered for clarity and
I’m batshit high,
mixing herbs with ginger
and then more psyilocybin.
feeling waves form in my gut,
always finding the
King of Cups,
a bath running,
my fear of silence
an emerging disability.


i write phrases everywhere

and listen to long
chords, piano.
applause.
make words to them–
letters cut from white paper
then burned.
with force, meaning,
avarice.
tonight’s candle.
whatever she is, she
is bright and flickering
like lightning
and sometimes
she is God.

“the sigils”

0

your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self,
their own inculpability,
fragile glass faces
slightly cracked and me,
stunned,dripping a
flattening virulence,

telling them about themselves,
breaking and then
pushing them out.


I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in
sullen incubation.
I remember the oldest incantation:
the thrust I was given,
some gleaned anticipatory luck:
      God gave you a chance and

              an unfinished smile.

we needed a spark.
I grin full tooth to show you
my new porcelain canines.
now the frame is melting
and so am I
in the cradle of tar black trees,
I fight the urge to bow
and suddenly tiptoe
all around you;
two inches taller than you remember
and my tongue hits your neck
like a quill.

hold your breath,
I say and
baby,
I’m a smokeshow, they say.
wait
for some other current to take me.
bite your skin.
let the tips of my
fingers dig in and

  there are no exits.

“chrysalis”

0

sharp glances.
deep in her wrinkles when
passing windows.
can’t seem to
thwart her own self persecution
and it shows in voluble shivers;
affirmations she mumbles as
she grabs the cuffs from
the table..

told me to sit down on the bed.
told me to lay face down on the bed.
told me to put my hands behind my
back. told me to
consent and
said she liked hearing stop,
the thud of impact,
prattling remorse
and doing things
slowly,
in pieces.


with repetition.

“how guys save me in their phone #11”

0


I’m in a pink stream,
dragged by my hair,
some sensory acuity,
words come over me in charges,
sagacity, lust,
completion.


my lips are punch-colored,
moist, eyelids the
lightest of rose
and wide open.
there is no inquiry.
I’m not fascinated by the minutiae,
day to day, I’m looking at
each speckle on
a pupil; the way the
purple lights hit everything
in the room.

you’re not risk avoidant.
I’m in front of the mirror
again.

risk-directed, I engage
this way with myself, her
shifting apparitions as I
comb my eyebrows into something
stern, dark.
intimidate in silence.

told him to reach for a condom.
I’m in front of the mirror
upstairs, opening my mouth
to it.

I showed him my entire kitchen,
tonight– freshly scrubbed–
to offer him
water.  he tapped
the black handle hiding behind a whiteboard
near the backdoor.
first drawn to the index card
with marker scrawl, a code
to self when I want more
to stop    think about it.
then to the  portion of plastic
behind it.
the way you hide knives is scary.


he lifts the brown box out of
the open wooden table
near the window in my room
to find the right one and
uncovers a lithe blade
underneath and limp;
without direction.
the expressions are priceless.

there were two there.
one near the pen that I keep
in case I need to jot something
down in the middle of the
night     I’m a cheetah.
his eyes dart, glint stars and I’m draped
in mollified red up here, and
smooth from constant shaving
and lotion.

yeah, well I have yet to stab myself.
then feel it all pushed
inside of me,
entwined,
my hair pulled back.

“Artemis”

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