Do you hear it?
Relief sounds like
a girl’s slip
a bird’s wing
your eye lashes fluttering
against your blushing cheek
Do you hear it?
Suffering sounds like
cloth pulled by stick across dirt floor
chalk pressed violent into board
fingers opening blouses raggedly
your chest bone protrudes
more than the year before
Do you hear it?
She has written herself off
or so she says
watching youth inherit the mantle
she stares at her own flaccid chest
in unforgiving morning sun
and tries to convince herself to gently let go
light pouring in through the bay window
creating a halo effect in surround
she is bathed in unexpected warmth
her pores absorbing hungrily
that urging intensity, a happy blindness
as if the world paused in its toil
to tap her on the shoulder and whisper
it’s not near over yet girl
go out, gather your arms full
live
live
live!
I’m fading, lover
day old bread thrown to wild birds
their wink gleaning
our false rise
lover … I’m fading
in and out
washed by time and exposure
old camera, old film
new development
the blink of an eye and we’re
gathering hats for our funeral
see, there’s a swatch within
me
wild and unfettered
the brush of red in the hedgerow
uncatchable
redolent with longing
to be more than yours
greater than this
dusty shelf
empty bed
absence bound in absentia
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
Get up.
When you were ten, your body was a springboard
You bent in the wind, dashing forward.
Get up.
When did you start to believe otherwise?
With the coming of stiff mornings and anxiety in your belly?
As life crept nearer to unknown trials?
When did you give up believing?
You could again, hold the Fates cupped in your hand
And blow to scatter, seed to four corners.
Get up.
The white sheet, covers a multitude of unsaid
An imprint of the living, breathing, fear of mankind.
She appears to be a well behaved woman, with hair needing to be trimmed
But like a cake of many layers, the face fit for public consumption, is just wet paint.
If it was acceptable, she’d grab the quiet man, stooping to take her vitals
And craw in his ear, the gravy of her distress.
What would she say? That has not been said before? Who would care? In an ever-ready world powered by rhetoric?
When she was eighteen, she could command attention just by crossing her legs or flashing her eyes
But what a dismal game that felt, a fraud of poker and thighs.
They only paid her heed due to the bewitchment of youth and some promise it told their nether regions.
So often she’d mistaken lust and hunger for love and care
But they were no more than empty vessels, wishing to dock briefly in her harbor.
Her game, if it was one … of fishing for favor, a warm body, a pretend consolation
Left her desolate, like an addict without pipe
All her fancy, dried up and rotten in the artifice of it all.
And then she’d tripped over that invisible and superficial line
From youth, to something men did not wish to define and women morned.
She however, felt relief.
Not to be the party planner, proving her game was fitting in
It was gentler to command less and need no filling or straight flush
Though they say a woman’s worth, must be found in herself
For her sell-by-date leaves her invisible to the world.
And that was true. She did no longer
Turn heads or find men leant in, too close
Instead she was a ghost, haunting the specter of herself
Unsure why she claimed purchase on earth anymore.
It was as if the mic had been turned off
And everyone left the room
For the audition of younger models next door.
She was not a mother and could not connect
With married women who worried their husbands would stray, with downy cheeked baby sitter.
Nor was she eager to fill her face with plastic, just to feel a little of what she’d lost
(Why was it a loss?)
There seemed no path cut out for castaways of normal
No clear direction to take, on the other side of age.
Men … they remained mostly unchanged
Still harboring the illusions of youth, with rapidly balding heads and expanding guts
She felt so much … but who now wanted to hear her words?
Where was an audience for silver haired creatures of Artemis?
If she’d been an owl, she’d have screeched at night
And people would have woken and said; Goodness, that sounds like murder!
Such was her need to share
The preserve of her emotion.
So get up.
Though it has been long since you hopped on one foot
Or worn brightly colored hats, just because you could
And not, for the fondle of admirations dusty nod
But the sheer delight of being at last
A woman of substance.
Even the light
Is different
Testing the dura
Of oxygen
Without you
Even thirst
Has no desire
What used to matter
Hangs damp in cold room
Thin at neck, gravity urging shape
To stretch uneven and gnarled by neglect.
What used to matter
Is a stain that isn’t removed by washing, even on high
A partial magnet on fridge, without part that gave meaning
Just an outline, take a guess; bird or city, resort or wise crack
We fill in what nolonger makes sense, with the dried impatience of ninety year olds
Unable to return volley.
What used to matter
Lies between us at night, tossing and turning
If we were milk, we’d spoil before first light
But you were always practical, rinsing bottles the night before
If you’d been a typewriter you’d have made a perfect sound at the end of each sentence
ding
You take out the old and bring in the new
I’m reminded of lamps, one shiny, one tarnished
And your face, free of regret, is smooth as avocado forest
But if I tell you, we’ll go round and round, quips about green skin
And eventually sing Kermit’s song; It’s not easy being green
I know this before you’ve even moved, to rid us of silence
That has grown like icicles, betwixt our garden
So it is I, who unlatches back door and places
What used to matter
Out for recycling.
Early morning hands will whisk away
All those spoilt emotions
And sun will dapple our lawn with fresh light
I figure, it’s the start
Of doing things differently
And I climb the stairs
Back to you
Thank you for loving me.
When my plait is full of burrs and
Stooping in pain, I resemble a wild thing, lost in herself
Thank you for loving me.
As night awakens terror’s and we bide our time in a pea boat, bobbing fitfully in green ditch
It is said
You cannot love, if you do not first love yourself
That is false
It was you
Believing in me, staying long past easy
Helped to quench
The natural tendecy to sell myself short
I hadn’t the heart for self love
It had healed badly without plaster cast
And would pain me when
The weather became cold
So I relocated
To a hot climate
But the ache followed
Mindful of our tendency
To repeat ourselves
Even in forgiving sun
Once
I was a narrow backed bird
My wings were thimbles
Dipped in vermillion
And male birds
With fat heads and thin legs
Betraying insubstantiality
Bowed and pecked, scratched in dirt
Of ardor and the absurd
Inflation being the territory of youth
Puff up, and let loose, shallow breath
I stood, cased in thought
Whorls of sea, hissing in my ears
Watching the pantomime of suitors
Without impression beyond wishing
To reveal innermost truth
To tell them, I am not the amaretto heart
My legs may part but the secret requires a key
The covet you have, is not for me
But a flickering illusion
Born on gold wheat and full fat milk
Where shyly school children sit hip to hip
Attempting to swallow the future, spoonful by spoonful
Wondering
Will I grow tall and willowy? Attract the grazing male?
Or stay suet and solid, in the finery of my own chainmail?
Not shifting with the glare
Nor melting beneath reporate
Feet grounded and solid
Like a much weathered tree will gain, higher purchase
Had I known then
The value of solidity
I’d have filled my belly
Stretching out like a catamaran
Ready to receive weight of water
Cupped once, twice, thrice
Until beneath us, all else sinks
A stone among stones, building
Fortress against cruel turn of attraction and other auctions
So easily sold for naught
I would have been a yellow woman
Christened by yoke
Feathered in shellac pose
Hardened in ocre sun
Yet able to rise like morning bread
To embrace the less savage road
Where love is not dependant upon
Rude strings of shiny beeds and fleeting sum
Nor the appraisal of one, unable to understand
The warm value of the feminine
And not that cast off coat, threadbare in her insulation
He will soon see right through his own
Penchant for the fantastical
She is weathered, moored in confidence, for her walk
He may never glance her way
Though when he says he saw
The sunset and it was beautiful
He may indeed, be describing
Her light
Four and twenty years
The flower in the room
Lain closed
Was no more than dim statue
Vase without rose
Color without sight
Shape losing distinction
And those who sought its open
Knew not the riddle
And so the light that came
Was always mute
Hesitant on ringing cusp
So close to elucidate, yet
What we know .. can simply be words
Spoken without access
As skater will skim surface
Unbeknownst of depth
So our hearts may idle dormant
Through many turning seasons
Held in abayance as treasure is horded
Lost over time to silentio
**
Do not put off finding your source
Though deep it runs beneath the world
Gathering sediment, silt and clay
What shape will we form, when lifted out?
Held to inspection, as writhing newborn
The metal in our veins fastening
This soul of salt
This fusion of minerals
Cast against unwanted chessboard
Where all demand a role
How do we learn to wade?
The fridgid waters of other’s demands
Yolking us back to previous destination
When all we strive for is the warrior pose
Striking our way forward in certitude
It is hard to remain resolute
In the eye of other’s storms
To hold on when you are being tossed
Over the edge of plundering vessel
**
Yet
Remember
You were born in motion
Swimming before breath
Breath before word
And they baptized you, based on their own heaviness
And they spooled you out, cast wide into frothy sea
Attempting to repair themselves in their seizure, of your liberty
**
It is not, returning to them, you go
But the highlands
Where only those able to breathe thin air
Can survive
Among the castaways and forgotten
You found yourself
Knew the piston of your core
For its oiled heart
Ticking over, even as you held your breath
These many years of half won life
**
Watch the glimmering sky dispose day and usher gloves of dark
As mime artist speaks in gestured dance
See the low swoop of heavy headed swallows
Break apart and like gloaming magnet, reassert
Their whole in sight of land, gleaming in shortening pathway
Just beyond marbled horizon, saturated in indigo pulse
Where all you always were, stands waiting
To be claimed, and shone, and worn
In the splendor of selfhood, eager to push forward and meet approaching dawn
TheFeatheredSleep 