I’m sorry I didn’t tell you
about the real me
she’s not happy with her subtefuge
it cost her heavily
the weight of deception has always
sat like curdled cream in a bowl
waiting to be thrown away
or consumed and in so doing
poison truth from her hiding place
she’d be forthright if
it didn’t cost more
than she had in her purse
purchased inexpensively
in a local artisan’s market
that closed years ago
when creativity waned
and people hoped their kids
would go to Business School.
Good girls don’t spill the skinny
spit, instead of swallow
extinction demands a pound of flesh
leap from windows, arms akimbo, preferring air to cubicle hollow
good girls don’t defecate, chew with mouth open, scratch, pick, pull apart
rotting articulate
good girls make breakfast constipated, and suck your morning off just right, handing you the Listerine
good girls pretend tight jeans are comfy, Baise-moi against a public lavatory is joy, and you look tasty at 6am
good girls close the door when you leave for work and remove their good faces
unravel the facade like a guerilla loads guns
hiding disappointment along with amphetamine trace
a sound like the whisper before fire starts
A last look around your voided heart
that’s where I marked the days with ink
that’s where I lost a virgin’s dream
he’s you and he’s me and he’s the girl who said she wouldn’t repeat history
and they’re all up there on your shelf of ex-lovers, plastic Golems in caliph
i’m the dumb fuck who gave them the stage, hot lights, ravenous applause, hymens shores
(it was rather funny to pretend several times to lose the same thing, easy to bleed when you clench your teeth)
you made your bed, she lights a match
pours diesel cocktail, nitro swath
goodbyes are for survivors, with swivel grace
stepping ash into ash, Dormez bien
emptied years, new face.
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
Remember when they used to bug your phone
The sound of rolling open polymer handpiece
Secrets folded in purring circle
Click, click, can aches be fixed?
What if you died
And left me a note
What would it say?
Who stands as muse
Now life has fled, her stockings shred
And bottles are emptied without drinking
I think the blood of us is watching
The shard of darkness cutting swaths of fracture across your face
Full days don’t exist
Come back here
To the light beneath the door
What does it do to beckon from shadow
If you paint from a photo, you capture no movement
Just faces in gouache
Stainless steel and fascimile reflection
A few minutes fooling ourselves
Nothing was sacred
Not even one thing?
If the lie was eaten
Did it vanquish all the time I spent, believing it
Was I the lie?
Inhabiting falsehood and words that curled like suppliant flesh
Weren’t you there with the needle?
Obsession
The other players were faking
Plunge the sharp, feel holy numbness
I’d follow you into the hollowed mountain of your madness and my error
For of emptied places only, you reign
Heartless and ready to start over new
As if nobody had existed and nothing was sacrificed
Memory in hose and mask plays her tricks
Writes a new damask script
And obedient
You condemn
Throw me tender under bus
With falsehoods and generalization
It feels like it did the first time
That’s when I knew
And still
I let you in, to scouge and vanquish, remove me by rubbing
Those promises
I didn’t beg for them
You gave freely in pretend
Though each one wasn’t meant
Then you went to church with a clear conscience
Because only Catholics have to repent
I was an addict and I didn’t know
My drug was you. My drug was you
My drug was you. My drug was you
Guilt
Is a rare bird of shame
Its plumage
Breathtaking
For guilt
Captures the beholder, willing or not
Averting gaze from all else
Guilt will render paradise dowdy
Comparing freedom with the chains of its capture
Guilt is an old, fond bruise
Reminder of moments left torn to shreds
It will piece them carefully back
Twice as convincing, twice the weight
Strung round your neck like noose of sea pearls
Begging to be drowned
Guilt is a rose bush with bleeding thorns
A shudder as you catch yourself thinking of
Those pursed secrets you’ll never disclose, even to yourself
Snapshots you expunge, that still, listlessly, rise from the depths
Never speak of it, even to the merry faced doctors
Plunging their needles as far as they’ll go
Guilt
Makes you sick
Wan faced, old before your time
Aloof in the varnished secret
Guilt
Steals your liberty
But like a lie
Guilt is not vanquished, even by truth
There are things better never admitted
Keep them so deep inside you start believing the deception
Until
Like a wide eyed bride
Guilt takes your hand
And plunges you back where you’ve been all along
There’s no solution to shame when it’s too late to undo
The poison that you drink, the person you’ve turned into
Guarding yourself like a wreck against sharp rocks
With less and less by the day to salvage
If you spoke it out loud
Surely the very sky would catch fire
How many of us must carry a spark?
Burning in our secret hearts?
And maybe this is why
You never know another person by what they share
Instead
It is the unsaid
Electric in the air
We recognize in others
The tarnish of shame
As clear as promises once given
Cannot be refunded
Show your tongue to me
Let me tell you
How you are
Roll up and discover
The underside
Where panther unfurls
Too hot in the sun
We wear our outside smiles
With blisters hidden
Connected in swallow
Board a bus, get out
But the breath will know
Shallow
Deep
An ease in this hope
There is clear air ahead
Just breathe
Away the false
What cannot be spoken aloud
A sore throat is never
Just a sore throat
You try to convince yourself
but the only person who believes you
is you
with your hands in the warm water of the sink
faraway you hear the sound of dishes being washed
see a woman standing straight backed
her toes inverted
she’s staring out into the night garden
wondering why she believes herself
when everyone else can see she’s a fraud
a pretence
someone who subsists on delusions
like age doesn’t matter and
success isn’t measured by attainment
her thin veined hands
busy with pots and pans
to keep from stillness striking her dumb
behold her truth
she has gone through life with her mouth sewn
tied into knots of her own doing
and a few given her at birth
when they lifted her out into the stale city air
and said
well I see that
it’s a girl
I lied and the lie was more honest than the truth
I’m not bitter I said
and it rolled off my tongue like peppermint lip gloss
I’m not bitter about anything
my nails digging deep into my palm do not
give me away
my grotesque sham
remember that ardent denials are always the ones
keeping disgraced secrets in over-size boxes
those who protest the loudest
usually guilt-ridden
I was guilty of detesting myself
and wearing too much make-up to show my artifice
I was guilty of saying I felt nothing
when it crawled up my neck like a necklace of shame
branding me queen of fibs
you see, it’s easier to be a boy
you can talk dirty, masturbate on trains, act like an asshole
and forgiveness will find you Joel
but a girl is supposed to be on a higher plain
we’re not expected to be so filthy minded or prone
to indolence
one mistake and you’re out
easier to call a girl a slut
than a boy the equivalent
what is the equivalent?
I regretted the day I chose you over the others
we unfolded our crosses and plugged ourselves in
you gauged me most likely to say yes to sin
enshrining stereotypes with the spit of scorned teens
I’m not bitter I said
if you choose her over me I understand
she’s got nice tits and a pretty strong right-hand
tormenting slanted Hannya masks coo
making faces, eating my scabs as they formed their tasty crust
give up your delusion Juno
as a girl your time of freedom is half as much
so bitter I spent so long on my knees sucking you off
again childish hope it would sate spilt outcome
pouring out of black taxis in crotchless hose
did I hesitate when I heard the echo of the earthbound train?
shaking myself free of girdles and suppositories
did the short-lived titilator
licking his plumaged groin
leave cleaner finger prints?
grinding into each other
purgered halves
reckless in gyration
rejoice
I’m not bitter I said
I just want to kick in your fucking head
lay on top the carnage, a maraschino cherry
well masticated and raw
a girl’s muscular jaw
opening to grudgingly reveal
her true Noh expression
of horror and humor
Of late
PBS has woken me up
furious with their hypocrisy
purporting to be fair when clearly they are not
and half-an ear to the news
I thought of all the times I refused
to hear the truth
sloshing in the saucer beneath the china cup
so breakable
if we step backward and review ourselves
why we did what we did
it is as if someone else steered the wheel
avoiding black ice
I could no more tell you how or why
than the neighbor who hears me in the morning
feeding the strays
tuts under his breath, taking a drag
of menthol cigarette
because the strays you see
piss against his wall leaving
yellow stains on his brick work
and I did not consider that
when I opened the tin
TheFeatheredSleep 