Turkish delight

I didn’t have time to un-knot my hair or brush it down

it used to hang to my thighs and I had to cut it

when the sickness came and I was green with bile

all those years I held my hair as my calling card

for I had nothing else

so when you see me this way you know

I’m not pretending anything anymore, this is me

this is the girl you once loved

I remember thinking I was old back then

what a laugh

and time is a cordial of horrors and trickery

what we need to know is, it’s all in the eye of the beholder

so if I feel tired and beat up now, remember, I tell myself

in ten years I will rue the day I forgot to dance

I dance now

bare footed with dirty soles

to the memories of

our liquid union

and planes do not fall out of the sky

the day is quiet

despite the tornado in my mind

I would let you in and not let you out

shut inside me like a favorite book

chapter marked by the sinew of my want

clasp you tightly with my muscular need to belong

within your kaleidoscope, a star in your universe

behind these accoutrements and forbids  I burn electric

you never get too old for longing

I want you to take me in your arms

crush me into sugared pieces

eat each one and never spit me out

I want to become you and stay

inside your candied warmth

where amber things are less real

set in time to wait out storm

but you care about them more

as part of your compass, to set your destination

I was born of your desire

I am now without wing

soon I will fade into pieces

and nobody will pick them up to eat

 

 

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Anger

The therapist

she doesn’t look her age, though it wouldn’t matter

she is wise in years and that’s what counts

her skin reminds me of a Swiss lady I knew, she has the color of travel

and I trust her which is all that is needed

she asks me, why I don’t get angry

I think about where my anger has gone

after all I was an angry child

only the other day a friend’s parent reminded me

‘you were a naughty little girl, but I know it was because you were mad’

it feels like she’s talking about someone else

because I have lost my ire

that’s not a good feeling

if I had it back, I imagine

I’d rage through the streets, decrying the bad deeds of an indifferent world

but I sit quietly reading a book and the clock is ticking down the hours I am not

angry

for anger …

can be a severance, a sword, a spike

and we know that

so we tuck it, tightly to sleep

there it lays, sometimes for decades

burning a hole in our placid smile

I know someone who is angry, and they

are a short rocket full of sparks, able to go off at slightest provocation

whilst I, am measured and sensible, like a bad calculation

it gets me nowhere

because I am hurt

deeply by the injustice of little and great things

whoever told me not to be angry, that I didn’t have a right, that it was selfish or

low-brow or just plain bad manners and SHAMEFUL

isn’t here now

and I am, stuck on the wheel of sickness where they like to say

‘isn’t she calm and well adjusted to her own personal brand of hell?’

I thought strength was not letting anger get the upper hand

but i’ve been in a war without any weapons

sometimes anger is better than turning inward or, staying still

it fuels the urge to live

it leaves bruises you remember

I am angry

behind this painted mask and ironed clothes

I am a raging angry woman, with still unbrushed parts

who wants to throw the phone when it rings, out of the window, deliberately breaking glass

I am fury and it is a desire of mine

to scream until my throat is sore and beseech the skies

I am quivering with rage and if I could, I would, throttle the fates

for there is anger inside and though it is buried deep

it has a voice and that voice says

why me? why me?

(Not meant self pityingly, rather, a hard truth.)