Tag: spilled ink

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”

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”

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.

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”

shredded letters I tried using
as fertilizer,
grow something from our
sudden valediction:
calendula,

jasmine to lighten the darker parts
of my libations;
the ones that tease my hair and  
take me    pull me under the bath
water gently
as I kick and try not to
scream.
violets, honeywort, scent of honeysuckle wafting
from the roach holes,
mugwort to get my blood moving again.
Easter lilies the cats shouldn’t touch so I
hang them from the rafters
and let the leaves fall brown
one by one;
let the paws scatter the ashes of that,
mice, my previous
laurels.

cheery dandelions burst from
the cracks in the linoleum and
I keep a bromeliad at the doorway
to protect me with her spikes;
self-effacing, straight and strong unlike the
hard, twisted ways I grow to be.
orchids to wilt in too much sunlight when I’m
doting myself to death,
a bouquet of roses to give my daughter
when she becomes moss
in someone else’s garden,
feral evocation           an arboretum
started at the ankle. or
a whole cherry tree,

rooted and I can chop
it down to gorge.
something sweet to chomp
while I’m choking down
the acidic no,
extra pillow space.
my place: curtains drawn,
devoid of moons.
my place:
curtains open,
enveloped in
the new full sun.
my place,
giant cobweb stuck with
stem and black succor.

I prepare the dried lemon balm
in the mason jar,
two cups of hot water,
watch the window blanket itself in white flakes
of anesthesia,
embrace the change in seasons
openly without any phone calls,
any text, any hexed
postcard,or really,
much incident at all
considering our history

“perennial”

i’m turning another year and
I’m looking  for checks,
counting my reasons for staying
or for running the other way.
I have overdue things.

recycling and wrinkles
and Kombucha bottles
pile up
and the hairballs on the floor
I avoid without cleaning sometimes.
make a zig zag to the door
where I cast spell:
the fits of importunity,
little raps at my neighbors door
      sugar, that’s all
that make me wish I had chosen the life of a mendicant
but my knees always hurt.
I have unchecked messages everywhere:
voicemail reminders and
grandma’s leukemia is pretty bad and
I’m rotten and everywhere like her snaking
liver spots.
Mom bought me a new chain to carry him on.
i’m allergic to anything that looks like silver
but doesn’t hold its weight,
including nickel-painted gold
so I’ve gotten good at tearing things apart
to see what they are
made of.

and the red spots line my throat,
white dabs of cream and my
strapless dress     taking out my earrings to dance
with the new one who laughs with
stormy intention,
and I’m obsessed with the way men
strangle anything dear to them,
the way I run right into their butcher shop
and ask if they can
 I want to hear the way I plead from inside of you
finish me.

I got a new mural and icing lips
and white teeth.
no mercury caps unless you include
my orbiting lips.
dream of Christmas, cinnamon buns and
him choking out an
“I love you”
with my color by numbers.
I’m remembering hugging an unnamed kitten and
trying to hold onto
this feeling.
I didn’t get impermanence,
just a new bike every year
to run away from home.
and suddenly my phone chokes out a reminder
that the living are
hunting me.
i’m hunting something else.

my heels in the dirt, his hand in mine,
smile
I say for no one.
nail polish named kerosene and
gums as red as love.
my hair is auburn in the sun
and today is partly drizzle and partly
made up in my head
     congratulations, baby, you made it.

wet cheeks and leftover streamers
and trick candles
and weak knees when I’m
bobbing to the rhythm.
polaroids on the table and
girls that try to
tell me secrets.
I tell the sky all the things.
  I’ll show you all the films I like

we barely talk.
we watch films.
he finishes
on top of his fingers
and my wrapping paper.
i’m half asleep
butull of sugar
and thoughts like a
wadded piece of past
shaped like rope
tightening
and

I wake up in his forearm
biting through his moles
to get to you.

“happy birthday”