Category: #fear
MAKE ME
When I’m not telling people
I am the least competitive person you’ll meet
I shouldn’t have moved to America, I am an anathema
I am nevertheless, competing with myself
to survive
the breakage, subtle and merciless of my whole
appears to be my greatest talent
should they look me up in the dictionary
I would stare out bleakly at Consequences in Fetus of Nicotine In-Utero
it began before words were formed, a slow
incompleteness quite unlike the robust energies
of my relatives
a thin, wan girl, slow to learn, I made up for it by being sporty
denying the gnawing, gnarling pain in my stomach
was more than a night terror
swimming for medals was competitive after all but
didn’t feel so when, head under water, the cheers sounded
like waves breaking on distant shores, easy to forget
noxious rinse of chlorine in verruca filled inner-city
swimming pool where small measure of fame could be found
among cast-off plasters.
Beneath water I felt powerful, unmolested, not burdened
by sandwich of pain in my gut or how
no-one for me sitting among keening spectators
when I came up for air.
Since then, fantasy has been my succor, I can’t deny it
perhaps I have lived half in petri-dish and tree house
with ‘here be dragons’ written on its door.
When teachers told me; I wasn’t behaving like a good girl
I said ‘make me‘ and spent the afternoon kicking muddy
kid shoes against linoleum hallways
what do they think we imagine as, willful, disobedient, opinionated
we are shunted from our positions as ‘well behaved’ to the
shrine of sinners lost in plastic corridors?
We learn the company of other Reparates
is oddly comforting, no-one to remind us we cannot
make sense of numbers and still struggle with spelling
soon I gave up trying for A’s
locking lips with strange boys who wanted my best friends
instead of this disinterested girl
briefly kissing felt like swimming underwater
but coming up for air was much harder.
I am teleported now into a body and time I never imagined
surviving this long or sitting at this table, watching birds
battle their pecking order outside in a hostile green world
I rarely visit
it’s not reluctance or shyness, they have grown comfortable with
the shifting skin of me
something that happens when you begin to leach
that essence of youth and vigor
realizing, if you can make it out of bed today
you’re doing better than the day before.
I hear in my head, the scold of my mother
who believed I gave myself this illness
and much as they’ve told me that’s madness
I am often found returning to those words
as if they have some clammy power over me
which of course, they do.
I know I was well and then I was not
just like you can remember the day you lost your virginity
or survived a car accident or inherited a country cottage
it’s a day when colors and sounds change
in this case, terror walked into my throat
sucking on me, whispered; bitch, this is your new normal.
Fight as I may, these years have unfolded like those
paper flowers I used to buy in joke stores
put them in water and watch them bloom
only long enough before turning to ink and
wet tree pulp
it’s a form of flaying when strangers are kinder than
those you expect
angry with yourself for not learning sooner
expectation leads to disappointment.
This could be why I didn’t
enter many races or attempt to claw my way to the top (of what?)
better to stay low and wait it out until
you can have your turn
only sometimes, waiting uses up all the time you have left
then it’s almost too late and you have to change
everything.
Nowadays I compete with myself
can I cure the beast that’s become constant companion?
Will it matter if I do?
What happens afterward?
Fear is mauve and dives and swoops like unmated Mockingbird
I hear the kitchen clock and fast thud of my tired heart
Somewhere, I’m still the girl in the treehouse who says ‘make me’
perhaps one day it won’t be disappointment but
something lovely, I can only hope
though my body likes to punch me in the gut
as I fall asleep and try to dream
thump, thump, thump, my mother’s voice
this was something you did wrong
thump, thump, thump, my own voice
no it wasn’t this was an explosion taking the long way around
even getting half way there would be some kind
of accomplishment
which is why I always said it’s not about winning
but making the effort
to which I was told, that’s pretty negative foreign-born-girl.
Where’s your sense of spunk? I think I lost it somewhere between
throwing up for 4 months on end and the doctors saying
maybe it’s incurable…. ho ho ho …. you see
I’m not from here, I don’t belong
though where I came from I hardly know anymore
so I will forge ahead, outcast or survivor, pick a damn straw
with every passing year I realize
I can’t win, I but I will fight
MAKE ME I whisper to myself
bloody well try to MAKE ME stop.
Possess no place
a day may show itself
long or near from now
where pain and fear possess no place
their greedy place at your table outstayed
uninvited guests
came into your life, wrecking balls
fathomless of the despair they could put
as wicked times will have us ensnared
forgetful of former peace
hostages to the ease with which
sickness makes strangers of us.
Who inhabits this body of pain?
when did normalcy include such horror?
what lurks behind the shell of our discontent?
masking the urge to cry out with futile restraint
who do we hide our agonies from? Or is it that obscene need to appear
while and strong? While behind public doors we collapse in mock
no succor for the actor of their own wellness
Give me hope we clamoring souls sing in our flung prayer and rage
let me believe
believe again
find the keys, the healer, the drug, the end of
this
or I think I wish
I never existed
a thought I’ve had many times before
though none are without regret
some of us excel at impoverished thought.
I do not remember the me before
mornings of hurt, nights of pain
was she a creature capable of delight and desire?
did I feel alive?
Sometimes it’s hard to know
the fall is long down rabbit hole
make me
myself again
whomever she was
a better dream
than this
slow living just above not existing
hardly realized
quiet in accepted
thirst
for another grasp at hope
for any
recourse
where fear and pain
possess no place
We cried a long time ago. We don’t cry anymore.
A warbling, holding, green glass pain
Like joined hands make paper cut
Invisible like girl in crowd, falls
Deep as ink without light
Stinging with clamoring cymbal
Tears almost bare themselves as first night lovers, tremorous
Retreat beyond the naked streets
It is not brutal gnashing strength
But soft lipped resignation
And a little elipsing hope
For bare faced ceasement
Lain like prayers and rushes and thrown flowers wetting paving stones
No ceremony. Only, black cars devoid of dust
A trail without salt. They bent lower to seek. Not yet.
It’s hard to say it. The wind chokes words. Before.
We walk on. Omphalos in fatigued lament
Toward reprieve, illuminate in muted tempest.
Furnish in her own time
It’s the fantasy
something out of summer, as you’d dream it
bare legs tucked beneath white cotton and trimmed thick lace
laughing clavicle, slipping straps
the long necked wonder of descending evening
that sting on skin from days in sun
I’ve been here before
the last time, I lay beneath a boy with cut glass eyes
who bought me flowers from the night market
before they bombed Bali and innocence was our town
wearing a sarong of blood red and mustard, half grown
walking beaches at night fall, crabs coming up through sand
scuttling into still water, the recede and ebb of thought
knowing he wasn’t the one, still desiring the idea
of love and its myriad faces, the strange places we
take ourselves to feel alive, writhing beneath
his pinion and faith, you’ll stay with me, I’ll
make you like my kind, turn your eyes away
from the obsidian girls who set out sacrifices for Gods
orange petals, I am thinking of her beneath clothes
watching from hibiscus waves, will she learn to
secret away her longing in the deep pockets of
a sarong too wide for any more tucking?
what do we know? We’re just kids building sand castles
on empty beaches and he takes my hand and asks;
let’s keep going until we fall off the world
Please, let yourself, just pretend …
the wild of saying, yes I’ll follow you
travel the globe, searching stones for blood
finding in things that feel wrong, another direction.
Now I have come full circle
we’re not old, but we’re not angular children
thin boned and boundless on their bikes
dream life filling xylophone chests
her eyes are hurt by his stories, I can tell
even as I am the fantasy and the observer
thrown off scent by, my painted toe nails and sunlit hair
the slope of day closing like a picture album
grass like cat fur beneath naked toes
bent wrists spent of expression, limply wait
for electric cumulus as thirst penitent may
befriend dry river bed
I want to say to her; Don’t be trapped any longer
pick up and run away, half flung around the globe
leave the mounting regrets at your door, with the disappointed
find your self again, diving into the gleaming future
sleek as a wet dog will shine beneath and shake off
water weight when back on land
because you can, you know
it’s not written until you write it.
Here … take my hand, I’ll help you
and we jump, weightless
her short nails digging into the soft of my palm
read my future, she whispers into my neck
her breath is cherry, her eyes smudged black
I see the ransack
all the reasons she snarled and bit
for she made it this far, don’t push her
let her furnish in her own time, a place of grace
where light pours pure and undiluted
onto her heavy shoulders, hunched with rage
let it go
you don’t have to be here anymore
we catch the tail wind and it is warm
she murmurs, her eyes wide and seeking
the whole world awaits
I AM A TOTEM OF MY OWN BRANDING
I’ve been told I’m a chronic pain in the ass
after all, it’s easy to destroy a child in an adult’s body
with past-tense words
and now in the time I’m meant to be at my strongest
chronic has visited me and stayed a long while
on a good day I think; This will not be forever
but temporary has always been a long way off
the doctors love to tell us; It’s incurable, get used to
living like this, hostage to something unknown and strange
as if that’s a normal thing to do
but if enough of us live with chronic illness, it will become normal
and that is not a good thing.
Before this …
I took chances, because you think
I’m invulnerable, sometimes I can fly
health, you take for granted
though I truly convinced myself, I had checked the boxes
right weight, exercise, organic, vegetables, no pre-made meals
(well, this is what I told my doctor, sometimes a couch counts as exercise, right?)
if I ate a slice of pizza, it was a treat with friends
though I like root beer, I never drank it
maybe making up for cigarettes, smoked in my twenties
but I thought if I keep jogging, if I keep living healthily
I won’t be felled, because you ARE WHAT YOU EAT.
A few months before I got sick, I recall
feeling strong, climbing through snow drifts and laughing
boundless energy, working long hours, feeling intensely alive
people saying; you look so healthy, your skin is radiant!
Those are not things people say now, unless
I apply a lot of make-up, to camouflage my fraying edges
instead it is me, who declines invitations
I am sorry I cannot go with you to eat, even though eating out
is the number one leisure activity where I live
because my stomach is ruined and I cannot digest much
I live plain and simple (and boring), like a nun and I am numbed
to the pleasures of wine and sauces and garlic, spices and oils
not recognizing my bloated mid section in the mirror
from the girl who once was told
she had an hour-glass figure, with a wasp waist
could run for buses and catch them in three-inch heals.
I know everyone has their burden
but when you get sick and it doesn’t go away
life becomes a series of scolds and let downs
you find out who really loves you and who harbored an anger
used the opportunity of your downfall, to insert a knife
it is the cowards way of course, but freedom of sorts
for none of us need, that kind of negativity in our lives
there is a blessing in disguise, when you find your tribe
the people who care and know the real you
not wanting to tear you apart, because it’s easy to kick you when you’re down.
But blessings do not salvage, the hours you spend sickening
remembering how you were rarely felled in past years
strong of body, sound of mind, juicing and walking ten miles
everything is turned upside down, inside out when you find
a burnt fuse, at the end of your outstretched arm.
There is no cure, there is no future
when you live, in a jar for the jarring
for a long while, I blamed myself
maybe in part, because someone I trusted told me;
“It is your fault, you must have somehow caused it”
easy to throw stones, at glass houses
I was a glass house, with many windows
break one and I cannot repair it
the wind will come in and make of my space
chaos
the sun will come in and make of my peace
madness.
Those things that brought me joy, were gone
instead, the regiment of illness strode in and stood firm
you cannot feel passion, when you are sick
ageing in hours, rather than decades, trying to stay above water
it is hard to feel hope
you rely upon the kindness of others
which is hard to do, if you are not used to it
and when they lift you to the light, you promise
if I can recover, I will try ever so hard to never be ungrateful
but with every mercy, is a dark day in hell
those days take it all out of you, like a scourge
the sickening can age you, more than a nightmare
one minute you recognize yourself, the next you are unknown
vulnerability, of not being able to take care of yourself
the expense and fear
your world crumbling around you.
These are things you get used to and when you have fallen
to the bottom and can no longer get up
that is where the truth lies
that is where you can find
your true self and the end of fear.
They tried to tell you that you were insane
making it up, all in your head, something’s wrong with that
crazy lady who pounds her fluttering chest in vain
tries to catch the eyes of doctors, with beseeching side-glance
SEE ME! HEAL ME! SAVE ME! WHAT IS WRONG?
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME? WHY DID I WAKE UP ONE DAY
SICK AND IT NEVER WENT AWAY?
And yes ! Something was wrong with me and still is
not my doing, not my causing, not my dreaming
despite you saying; You bothered us, when you called and were upset
no mercy, no mercy, no mercy, that is not love.
Helped me let go. Don’t hold on to negativity.
Oh doctor, get it outt!
and if you can’t, then give me the key, the saw, the pick
so I may survive myself and somehow continue on.
Am I to label myself chronically ill, or in recovery?
Surviving or dying or all of the above?
how do you define what doesn’t go and doesn’t kill?
Spending all your money on alternative treatments that
don’t even know what they pretend to cure
how do you describe one good day, followed by one in hell?
others won’t understand, because they are well
what I would give to return, to that safe water place
but even if I did, I would not be the same
you live years with a loaded gun to your head, everything changes.
I am not me anymore
I cannot see out of my left eye
I cannot lift heavy things, with my weak foreign arms
I can walk ten miles and not break a sweat despite this and be told
by friends and foes; OH YOU DON’T LOOK SICK
I am an apparent scar of contradictions and pain
I hurt every day, my stomach feels like
something is eating me from the inside out
it convulses and retorts and shouts
“you will never win, you will bathe in pain the rest of your life”
but I will still try
because I don’t know how to give in to enemies, I cannot see
and even as I cannot eat normal food
one day I am good, the next I am dying green
even as nausea, has become my constant companion
and bottles of pills and vitamins rattle in my pit
even as I fight to be gracious in the eye of the storm
and those I thought would stand by me, try to drown me instead
I know there is still a moment
I am well enough to remember who I am
never to find that peace of mind again
but maybe recover to another state of being.
I wake in the night covered in sweat and the disinterested doctor says
“get used to not sleeping, get used to all of this, it is what you must suffer and many others do”
as if it is normal to be like this, as if it is something we should not mention
I will never think it is normal to be hijacked!
I jog into the forest, because it reminds me I am still living, my feet still work
I fight with wilted hands, when they tell me there is no hope
that I should just consign my former glories to a picture album and put
my feet up for a fifty year occupation of sofas and couches and day time oblivion
because THE POWER OF ME can overcome the power of negativity and this I believe
as I see in the mirror a girl who doubts but stares back unblinking.
I have lost my will at times
I do not write as much, I have less energy
the last time I had a romantic dinner was in a dream and I
sleep with a heating pad on my stomach every night instead of a lover
but I still pay my own way and my own bills
I have a pride in pushing back against status quo
DEFYING the prescription of HOPELESSNESS.
they tell me go on disability. Just give up
I am not going anywhere, but to the finish line
I learned
by losing everything and having nothing but
the sheer will and dim light of my existence
I can do this without those I thought I had in my corner
because I am stronger than I realized
and this grieves me, as well as reassures me
but I come from a long line of stoic, strong women
and it seems sicker than I am, that we should hate each other
because life, surely we have found out, is fragile
and love is all that makes sense
but even without love I will continue and not
let the flame go out.
Sometimes I ask myself why?
why not just give in? Take the knife, swallow the pill
to oblivion or some non-sign-posted destination
I don’t have children to protect
it would be easy to slip out of this world and its sword edge of pain
but somehow I feel I should protect myself
maybe because others did not
maybe because you defend yourself in the end
when everything else is fallen and you are still
somehow, standing.
I am weak and tired and prematurely aged into
a hunched over version of myself
hair greying with shock, skin is sloughing off and my
body is tied to the rhythm of a sickness that purges and gluts
I was told this kind of disorder was permanent
but nothing I have found, is ever guaranteed
so I have chosen to ignore this and believe
we can all fight and overcome
anything
even a death sentence
even betrayal
even silence
and when we know this
when we are strong for our weakness
realize our tears are just water and salt
burning the frustration of our visiting menace
then, we know nothing can hurt us, more than it already has
and we are free to dream
of a future without so much pain
where death stands to the side and lets us regain
some of our former dignity
for there is nothing dignified in sickness
and you don’t know me when you said I was glamorous
that is the last thing I am
I am beautiful for my courage
beautiful for my fear
beautiful for my survival
beautiful for my defeat
beautiful for my mercy of those who have no mercy for me.
And life is a wax and a wane
life is a torture and a friend
I am the totem of my own branding
I may live in a time where nobody else of my kith and kin remain
and once that would have filled me with pain
now I know you cannot rely upon
labels of safety
it is only by looking into the hearts of those
who stayed by your side when the storm hit
even if it is one, even if it is naught
you remain behind
the tempest cannot roar forever
eventually even agony ceases.
I wish now, to be everything you were not
to love others unconditionally
care for those who are in need
be the change I want to see
I want to find myself
at the end of all of this
I want to tell you, sickness
you do not win
you are just a miasma
I am a spirit with a soul
I will endure you
the me, of me, will remain
long after, to remember her worth.
Before this all began and through it, learned
only the fierce remain
only those willing to FEEL
and not those who run from feeling
with the ease of the damned.
Faith
My love
it is so hard to keep
faith
with every day there are changing shades from day to night
sometimes I am comforted by fireflies and evening moth
who dual beyond the porch, betrayed by flicker and swat
I imagine the patterns of her wings, that magic sting of light
so short their lives compared to ours, so rich and meaningful I would infer
sometimes it is the exclusion of pain gives me rest
when I can at last unroll my carpet and forget
carrying the weight all day, a vase of ache absent of flower
to place this nowhere and have it melt away
I lie in the bath and heady steam dissipates reality
in those musings there is only the delight of a girl
seeking her passion in lingered meandered imagining
and you come to me, full of health and unharmed yet
by cruel flint and staunch of your absent conscience
and you lay me down and make of me what you will
a thousand pieces of me broken and rebuilt
which I give with my all, for you were and you remain still
far more than sense can convey
in the hour of day when dreams are gone to sleep
I see the cruelty of your take and take and take
the hunger of your keep and how I was but a thing, in your
cabinet of curiosities to be taken out and squeezed when you
thirsted or when times were hard and you needed the succor of
kindness to tuck you in, nothing of you was sincere or loving
all that I held dear possessed the sound of my own breaking
it was as if I had become pupil to mistreatment
learned many times on illiterate whip of inheritance
children soon become acquiescent to disregard
I didn’t know how to be worthy and you took my pain
pinned it to a velvet card and called me Opodiphthera Eucalypti
my blush and powder, the soft rubbed fur and bleed of color
round and round my pattern and maze, sucking from thistle
the gypsy without, I live in silk and attraction to light
pollinating only the fruit of predators like yourself
as you pinch my wings with your greed and whisper
my lunar, my atlas, spin your silken web across my longing
for I have never learned my worth and you wish to
gobble on my spirit as you may an Autumn apple
the fragrance of your dissection
my love
it is too easy
to stay my life in wait of your call
watching others continue onward and myself find
nothing but the covet and anguish of a prisoner
if I had the strength to
I’d hurl myself against the glass
leaving a smudge of myself in technicolor
for children to press their noses against and wonder
oh what ever life could make such a kaleidoscope
and in these mixings of burning and yearning
parched by want and crushed to nothing
the dancer emerges broken and fragmented
to spirit into night her ether and the longing
she is free of her torment and bound to the wax and wane
of one who has rubbed against and been caught by
a terrible rope, woven with obsidian, the shade of pain
my love
it is too hard to remain
faithful
to your brand of hurt
and live in dying with every pursuit
I have long imagined I am already prepared
for the hour, the moment, pain exceeds its curse
and slipping like oil and water and vinegar bound
we change from solid to infinity and beyond
where only the stain of who we were and what we bore
that burning need to consume, that hunger for
all the poison within your sickening and how
never did you rest until the very perish was wrought
standing still like a girl reaching for
something invisible
my love
it is the fresh unopened rose
and her tightly closed promise
shall see tomorrow and claim
the glory
for I will not be there to witness
this new day and those trespasses for this comforts
me in such a depth as if every kind of anguish
were salved by the knowledge this too shall end
and you will dissolve in time
beyond the fragment of what has been
into the very air like things we cannot yet see
whirling and catching the air in relief
for moths have never lived long enough it seems
to know their beauty and how it is
for us who live sometimes too long
and rise to see another day, alone
The affiliate of memory
Die is cast
thrown and tumbled
woman is born a girl
girl is born a woman
when she is young, learning to tie bows in sensible brown shoes
spit and shine, tighten pigtail, don’t get your bobby socks dirty
what does she know of her future?
when then, what hour marks, her turning, her awareness?
the tempora fragility of her succulent heart
will she be like her grandmother, a blubbering mess?
able to condone slithered evil in the hands of her husband?
look the other way, for her choices are meager
will she be like her mother, a loyal lover?
seeking a man willing to hold her closer to the sun
melt Icarus, melt, till you can stand the radiance no longer
but what of your child? The one you think is poison and deadly nightshade
what will she be like? In that wicked knowing?
when after-birth is dried and shell chewed to starlight
and she stands tall and unversed like a question mark
when she wants to scream out;
whydontyoufeellikeido?
whydontyouwanttoscreamwheneveryoneelseislaughing?
she’s the burnt slice of toast grown cold on countertop
everyone else is easy in the sun like white wheat and blackcurrant
they shine in their shingled merge
children thread their way through oboe chair-backs like grass snakes
the meadow flowers droop in her sweaty palm
she’d gift her indigo heart if it were taken or sensical
learning many years ago
don’t lend, what you can’t live without
she has enough air to fake it for fifteen minutes, then she’s out
caught in the idling headlamps of smoky cars
no destination
just drive
far
to escape those pitch eyes, drained of regard
the ease with which you are
the ease with which you are
in the loosening of your need
an affiliate of memory
put in glass jars along with sugar
watching you lean now, so evenly
toward tomorrow’s sun
By one who feels
for indifference is the sharpest
knife of the set
worse than anger which requires some care
and love that turns on her heel constantly
like a feathered Cuban girl in 1930s Havana
smiling, til her cheeks ache with sheer
marvelous spectacle
it’s been some years since I danced for you
from shadows to light and back again
fooling myself into beauty, rendering
moments stamped in both our minds
for the joy of the unbound
my feet hennaed like an Indian wedding bride
your fingers possessed of music and silver rings
we wove our limbs together as plaited bread
baked in the glory of that unbroken hour
before ochre sun’s urgent assent and chime
of other people began lowing in impatient light
there is something about darkness I have always
felt contained magic and even if others do not see
I taste it on my tongue
I run my hands along
its quiet shining surface
much like a lake swallowing
a stone when thrown
with all the violence known
by one who feels
everything
First & last
“Everybody’s talkin bout it
Only the echoes of their mind I’m going where the sun keeps shining. Through the pouring rain” Nilsson (from the incredible film, Midnight Cowboy)
The ghosts
in blue mountain mist
when early morning
without mask of sleep
hiking the trail
moss, lichen, turning with seasons
from brown to red
snails leave their silver lines
bugs shed wings and legs
all becomes humus and is recycled
air remains still, days elongated
the stone in the field
is in the memories of many
who use it as their gravitation
where they first kissed, sitting atop the world
thinking themselves the only ones
when it is the stone, smooth with wear
coarse with textures varied
who gives them their fantasies
pearlescent when wet, like the moon
nestled in long grass
its reflection held against sky
I hear birds waking
crying to an unforgiving bird god
their beaked woes and delights
and the worm waits for false patter
to rise and be consumed
a ritual, as anything
the dust of ceremony, rising and falling
jewels encrusted in boulders
black earth laying deep and gaping
as open-mouthed children
stare at bewitching cloud formation
and wish to inherit the future
as their parents
dream of retracing
the lowing
of their former lots
…
The ghosts
in blue mountain mist
when early morning
without mask of sleep
I feel your absence like
blunt knife run along my spine
in the fallow chapbook of my heart
quivering her spent arrows
as I strain my neck in search
of ways to forget
the goats and sheep remain
black and white finger paint against
yellowed grass coarse as raw silk
a sharp outline of grief blurs
the edges of what I see
where you have all
gone
your lives full
and mine empty with echo
I think if I can ever reach the feeling
maybe I’ll join you
where it glitters and preens
like a girl catching herself
in shining mirror of
first times
TheFeatheredSleep 