Fear for a child is very different to the adult and exactly the same the child inhabits another decade, in the past, another life before they knew they were who they become the child wets the bed because she misses her mother who is beautiful, ethereal, slender and absent the smell of her still lingers […]
We’re sitting talking about how we know
You’re making me laugh at jokes, about Hannibal
How I only like Gillian, because she’s a bit like you
And I can’t tell anyone, including you
You reminded me how I knew, I was still alive
In the video of you dancing, uncaring and wild
That’s how I’m reminded why
I know beauty
How women
Are the possessors of
All that is beautiful
With your downcast eyes, the color of absinthe
Hair falling in your pale face, cut cheekbones and grace
The switch of your merciless, marching intelligence
The sorrow, the humor, the passion lines
How you make me laugh hysterically and blush
Pouting, pulling on your cigarette, getting me aroused and nervous
Without trying, you command all attention
Your wit is sharper than a sword
When you didn’t talk to me
It was like a blonde flower, turning her lights out
The night was darker
Still I heard
That song you made immortal
The sway of your slim hips and secret smile
And I’m speaking to you in a language, I outlawed
Because he dirtied it for me, forever
But you sound so lovely talking in the fog
I know I have to stand at a distance, or I’d reach out
Grab the concentration from your lovely brow
But to be in your blazing aura
The tiny, angry, intelligent, firey soul
You inhabit like no other
You were the girl who woke me up
I’d give anything to dance with you
To that exact song, in those same clothes
Your then blonde hair, a chaotic wisp
The crunched concentration on your francophone face
There’s classic and there’s disheveled-perfect and you’re both
I’d take your hand and say
Don’t worry, I know the rules
But for fucks sake we’ve both been here long enough
born the same year
You got the small chest I always wanted
And you said you liked my eyes
Same color green as yours
Not narcissism
But sisters
Lovers of
Pain and hard living
We only trust those like us
Who smoked and drank and have to show on our tired faces, the weariness of living
Where boundaries are never crossed
But fantasy is free and inked
And you like being adored
I am good at loving
Sad, happy, gorgeous girls, with crooked smiles
Who hold my attention with their spark
Catching in the darkness like a skinned rock, thrown out to sea
On Brighton beach
Where we’ll always be young and beautiful
Me chasing you in the cold sea
You disappearing into green waves
Why and when did people stop being interested?
as kids we would sit on benches and talk about our pain
there seemed then, such a mercy in the air
it hung like cobwebbed dew around us and
despite the hardships we bore, our friends were
our succor
Why and when did people stop being interested?
and grief was labeled an annoyance?
why does growing-up mean we no longer write
poems like this
do we no longer feel the same
or just hide it away?
and if it is hidden how does it stay so
with the swell and the surge and the blistering salt
I hear rain falling into a tin can somewhere
and briefly I remember eating out of cans in summer
my lips sticky with apricot
it was a luxury then and my grandmother carefully
spooned each peachy globule out and added ice-cream
I hated the taste of ice-cream and I loved
the feeling of lying high in a big tree smelling apple leaves
in those days
when tragedy struck
we children who are called resilient
had the hope or the armor of youth
and the cherish of our friends
I saw her running toward me across the fields separating our houses
her red hair and freckled face red with exertion
we ate stale cucumber sandwiches left over from her mother’s
garden party and she held my hand in her own
clammy seedy palm
as if I were a starfish
I told her of my disappointments and the ache in my chest
all those who had forsaken and gone their own way
with the wisdom of child she wrinkled up her eyes against the sun
told me what I needed to do was pretend I didn’t care a damn
because one day you’ll grow up and nobody will be able to hurt you
I held onto that advice like a piece of paper framed in my chest
but it wasn’t true it wasn’t true
and I wonder where she is now
if she has children
if she is the same kind of mother she was as a friend
if I could see her again I would say
thank you for giving me the hope to get to this point
maybe it wasn’t true, maybe adults fool themselves into
thinking they are not children with ageing hearts and
brittle bones
maybe being an adult is harder than any childhood
because you don’t have afterwards to dream of
and the future as yet unsummoned
with all your magic and all your wistfulness
seen through the eyes of someone not old enough
to know the reality
I would tell her don’t tell your children the truth
let them dream as we did just a bit more
where I can still hear my grandmother knocking over pots
as she makes an apple pie and the smell
of summer is all about us in a haze
and your red hair makes mine look blonde
and your freckles tan your legs whilst mine remain blue
and your hand in mine is the first hand of friendship
I would thank you for running when I called
because nobody has run since and I suspect
adults have ways of doing things
us children never quite understand
I’m thinking if I could choose a side
I’d go through time and clasp your wrist and run
into the high grass fields out the back and where
nobody would find us
not even ourselves
years from now
Your head moves under hot lights
thrashing
a passion as you open your mouth wide
roar your words
small teeth, thin lips
skin colored by strobes
I want your impulse
your brave furious eyes
your mad flung acrobats anger
it’s the addiction to throwing aside
caution
striking out like match on ink
permanently marking your stride in heat
I watched you take a whole roomful
swallow them whole with your flame-thrower energy
spitting them into stars and tilting laughing
as they adored you and didn’t know why
your mercury vapor left them reeling
clasping my hand in the car with headlights off
driving blind down blurred country roads
inside me with urgency born of
thunder and trees struck silver
firing in strange shapes of want
it felt like flying, I grabbed a tuft of you
spun like a catherine wheel in your orbit
time was fast and everyone watched as
we climbed buildings in our wonderlust
they’re crazy, they’re so in love
they’ll burn out, they’ll extinquish each other
we never did
not until the key stuck, didn’t turn around anymore
rusted and tired of pushing wooden horses
tired in their paint and festoon
oh I would have made them well again
as I did you
just for one more shivering impulse
riding your coat tails as you took in
the capture of your swell
kissing me beneath table tops
our faces glittering from thrown aside masks
hands reaching, climbing up skin
dance of thundering hearts clamoring to be
still
as you lay now, white out, no sound
I dance contorting to cause a smile
there is none
only a wick, half used, half submerged
in waxen reproduction of what was once real
give her back!
give her back!
I yell at rooms without inhabitants
tables missing their chairs
windows containing no view
your fingers trembling in mine
if I could have
I would have
made us one
save this image; a kiss lasting past quitting time
you pull away and reach in again
no ending, just softness
a song we live inside
calling us home
there we go
hand in hand
through the vapor
vanishing
Once
the storm
predicted and prepared for
still
blew away the thatch of your house
sent water pouring like words with lament
and whilst
i was sickening
i thought I heard you row
across the expanse of us
holding your roof as umbrella
your feet bare and needy
opened my cabinet of questions
gave you a draft of why?
to which you descended beneath brackish waters
places submerged in lost question
claiming to surface
a moment where you spun in orange pekoe light
sitting stroking Gato before he
tested his claws on a tree the buyers tore down years hence
i climbed that tree in my high heels
you took a photo aping for the camera
and one fixing your sink in mini skirt
that’s my girl you said
we bathed because then you had a bath and I had heated arms to wrap you whole
the ocean of the past drawing in and receding
with it, debris of unsaid and unchained
time behind and unrecoverable
…
Once
i told you I was sick and couldn’t swim
you held me above waves with your will
till you decided I weighed too heavy
on the stitch of your skin to keep
we both
and neither of us
strangers and familiar
deciding and without decision
lost that year to the storm
as it set its pulse on our sundial and drank all hope in its spiraling eye
(there are many forms of love, you chose certainty over depth)
and once
i took a raft made of need and dragged the silty water
searching for what was lost
of us
who we were and were not
for you told fate you never knew me after all
an error of thinking … no more
then the storm left and all we knew was flat and broken
even trees we climbed were crushed like sad-faced dolls
as if an avalanche had glossed over the details
leaving behind a shiny surface and no more beneath
but dull reflection
she wasn’t like them, so they didn’t like her
to her face they smiled and said ‘nice things’
which she knew were lies
behind her back they laughed
and made dirty-lezzie jokes
because it made them uncomfortable
to think about what they thought she did
it made them feel a bit disgusted
like when you stand too close
…
she looked like them in superficial ways
wore at times, nicer dresses and had longer hair
the fact that she liked girls wasn’t in their
comfort zone
when it was summer time they had
BBQ’s and invited all the neighborhood kids
wondering if she would be safe around minors or
would do something inappropriate
when they started a mommy running club
she wasn’t invited because she was neither
a mommy or someone they wanted to
bare their secrets with
what would she understand of husbands?
maybe their husbands liked her
because she was unavailable
when it was Halloween they made candy and
knocked on all the doors but hers
because the other mothers said best to avoid
what they did not care to know
…
that’s why she lived a harder life than she had to
for there is almost nothing worse than pretend friendliness
leaving you more alone than if they said what they thought
and spat in your face
if you think that’s an exaggeration or she feels
sorry for herself
think on the tiny percent of the world
where being gay is safe or legal
and the huge part of the world where it is forbidden or punished
think on how many lament at
the shift in culture toward acceptance
calling it a ruination of our society with all
those damn fags
compare it to those who truly feel inclusive
how every day isn’t the same
when you have to contend with not fitting in
making everyone else feel uncomfortable
just by existing
nor can you talk about what matters to you
just in-case visual images abound and people
begin to change the subject
…
if it were a choice … a lifestyle … few would make it
yet she exists
wishing sometimes the phone would ring
another girl like her would say
I know how you feel
would you like to go for a walk?
she is a gay princess in a tower
and her princess
is somewhere in the world perhaps
thinking the same thoughts
two outsiders
unable to find each other
There is a thin slice of glass in my foot
I cannot see it
but I know it’s there
at night when
the fan whirls like a dervish overhead
and I play the xylophone between my legs
a storm blows in
like a warning and a representation
of everything felt and bottled up
old trees hold on, their roots tested
by the metal of young wind hurling
all order into chaos
we stand in our night-clothes
looking over fences
at destruction
she has a white line the length of her stomach
he has a scar hidden in his throat
mine is without and within like
a snake who cannot decide
which part to digest first
we three are the wounded lovers
with our perpetual thirst for
promises to ring true
devotion to stay where it was first placed
by the window in a jar of water
to bloom and scent the pulse of night
but such things rarely obey
wont of humans without power
the storm and her threading fingers
lays waste to our belief we control
even the tiniest morsel of this crochet world
…(l)…
when he married her
he thought she would obey
the tick tock of her laboring heart
stay steadfast by his side in the howling wind
but she was a maelstrom of her own
making
soon the wedge in their marital bed
was a dry river without resurrection
…(ll)…
she wanted
her husband to save her
when the doctor said C.A.N.C.E.R. and she turned
to the eyes of her children and they
looked away in painted terror
but he only knew how to put out fires
not the slow melt of all safe things she had
taken for granted 33 years
so they diverged
like a split oak touched by
lightning will remain
upright yet stranger to its mate
…(lll)…
and she was the string
between the wounded male and female
her own heart hollowed out
murmuring at night like a singleton
by the small hands of trust and promises
unkept
it was as her grandmother said
a poor thing to imagine humans
to remain steadfast
after all, the storm blew everything
even our very best intentions
whipping them into the air
until they were fragments of themselves
transformed what we knew
what we were familiar with
lending no safe harbor
for the weakened need to have surety
the only thing keeping them
upright
was their conjoined pain
a frayed ribbon between three houses
in the wildfire dead of night
where even
creatures who prefer darkness
stayed in their nests
for it was only then, in the tempest
they felt themselves capable
of surviving another moment
only then
shouting their grief into four pursing winds
writing pain along the narrow margins
of life and death
they lived another day
and on that day
wrecked and emptied
found succor in the equal fall of others
bending to pick up the debris of
their former selves
rent into splintered pieces
unrecognizable and sharp to the touch
If I hung in a storefront
I’d have no label
It was torn off in the wash
The store owner lied
Trying to cover a great crime
I’m not gentle cycle, nor wash below 30c
I don’t fluff up well in dryer
Or need ironing on low heat
I’m a thrift store special
Good for a gander, then better cast off
Stuffed in the back of your closet
Forgotten until you move house
When you hold me to the light
Exclaiming; where did I buy this?
A little wistful, a little disgust
Just like a spare thread can run
Through any knit and mar its form
I was shrunk on hot and stretched in cold
Long before you grabbed me out of the lucky dip bin
It was the elongation of my experience
Like wool is malformed turning huge in water
Expanding and reducing, I am the sheared sheep who took off
When the shepherd came to my turn
I never backed down, nor avoided spitting in their eye
My fur smells of energy and emptiness and freedom and neglect
You wear me when you want attention
Or to be someone you’re not
And I’m sequins gathered in a pearls bosom
The knotted mohair and impossibly soft angora
But most of all, I’m the time you left your possessions behind
And rode in the dark without lights
Imagining your bicycle a horse and you …
with your dress catching in the spokes covered in oil
You just wanted him to catch fire on your edges
Sounding the cavorting need you had to bloom beneath
Then you were a water-lily and even years later
You are reminded each time a candle is lit, the smell of wax
How he burned your fingers with his inelegant desire
And you opened like origami to his bewitchment
Then you were a dragonfly, passing through fountain
If I hung in a storefront
I’d have no label
But you’d purchase me all the same
Over again
Smiling
At the memory of
Something you couldn’t quite grasp
They tell me it is wicked
to need more than you can have
and I have wanted the sugar cube
melting into hot coffee
watching you stir it to vanishing
the quick switch of your hand
mindful of those savage times
when I lay beneath you
cradled in your surge
until the sky grew pink and grey
and like with all happiness we put away
the dream
you turned as I passed
profile in regret
I waved back
it was caught in
blur of movement
ever going from you
ever saying goodbye without recompense, for nothing can
mend the emptiness of hours spent apart
still I wave
my arm aches from how hard
I slow the car and through the rain
time and again I see you receding into distance
everything is blurred
my eyes cry even as I do not know they are
the world is awash in water and salt and regret
and yet I do not regret for how, how then?
to say it wasn’t worth the pain when
that break in my chest feels like I am dying
and living
you don’t see the place within me that is yours
nor do you realize how I clamor for something
beyond this mortal torture
where you are always obscured by time
and I
I wait inside for no one else
there is only the sound of rain against glass
only the smell of car radiators trying vainly to
warm the cold
there is only the feel of your hand in mine
only the movement of us against the other
one last time
dissolving forward into car lights
reflecting against weeping tarmac
shining, they dance like lovers across the pitch
blinking away tears
only the reach of you inside of me
there is nothing if there is not
that
for you are
that essential part of me
yearning and hurting
with joy only found
before
goodbye
Answer me
Please
Climb out of impossible and
Dipping quill, write backwards in time
Angling mirrors to lipread
Da Vinci’s reflected scrawl
tell us the unravel to the mystery
Where in this hour should we go?
When they let you down slow
Removing fantasy, layer by layer
Are you there?
On the emptied pier, bare of hope
Dour endings posted like nails in my palm
Is that you? Cresting wave in falling darkness
Light, just a slip of a girl spilling over her dress
It is cream and carries each stain like a mast
Are you there?
Crunching underfoot, doubt that goodness is lost
For you, with your thin shadow, still manage to
Fill me with light
A radiant being, rarefied
How often to find, one whose mission isn’t self
But the betterment of others
You, who don’t even know your worth
If you did, you would hiccup and grow embarrassed
It is not your need to be praised, you are a child of mercy
Your pleasure is in lending kindness, to mend the scold
For this world can be so lonely, and you
Are a house to come in from, settling cold.
