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?
What does one do in order to feel?
Not the safe kind, sanitized by Clorox wipe
left to garner in sun until just right temperature
palatable and convivial like a well heeled aunt.
No, I mean the bloody kind
coming at night, knocking your flippin socks off
just as you got used to living in a box, neat beige walls
knowing how you felt because you didn’t let it out
to crawl around and get dirty, muddy, sodden, feral
where feelings elongate into shadows and back again
tripping us up, as we shuffle to the bathroom for midnight piss.
Those feelings, the ones hammering your heart shut
as you open windows in the morning, anguish
and agonies unnamed, pour out into sore tongued dawn
you can’t even speak it, you can’t get the lump to dislodge
from your tightening throat, it’s like a scream has purchased
hooks and they’re pulling them out, fileting your senses.
The sheer ravage of it
makes you want to turn and run like a red gash
except … it’s everywhere, in your pores, your veins, the very
sentence structure of survival
how you make eye contact, which hand you use
to wipe yourself
feelings lie in the hems of your dress, the arch of your shoes
they crawl up your inner thighs and birth your secrets
with wild fingers and loose tongues
spilling afterbirth like unwanted punctuation.
For all your running in place, you’re growing tired
the careful structure of denial, unknitting itself
in a parody of lovemaking you come undone
till one day sitting at a coffee shop
someone asks you if you have the time
and it reminds you
suddenly, a cut the length of a sword
nobody asks the time anymore
and you begin to scream
rooms emptying
people looking backward
at the woman who
unfolds her horror
like a thin Japanese fan
to keep herself
from combusting.
This chronic virus grasped me by the throat
Not lover, not rapture, the thunder of hooves seeking sinner
A Gorgon, Kraken, Swamp Thing of the blood rose
I cried; Is this retaliation for not caring enough? I do! I do!
But those who don’t act, are only words and armchairs, the hypocrisy of ourselves, fattening in our prayers
Epstein Barr knew this well, it is after all, an insidious invader enjoying its art
What did I do to deserve you as my bedfellow? I asked one night
Can’t you just leave me be? Return to the days before you feverishly claimed me your supplicate?
Swimming in my blood, high levels of scarlet poison, whispering; I could give you fibromyalgia, MS, cancer, chronic fatigue
But I chose to cause you to sicken every day, your stomach, your achilees heal, my throne
And as you write, think on me, for I infect you all, only some are immune
You, you are weak and afraid, with your desire to be a writer, which you’ll never truly be
Wanna know why?
You don’t have the personality or the guts
You don’t have the PEP
Imagination and pretty words aren’t enough
You need a marketing machine, a robust ego, stainless steel skin, no demons in your head
I don’t have any demons, I lied
Tucking the beasts behind my eyes
I may not get feverish over publicity tours or spend eight hours online, learning how to be adored
Because I’m trying, despite you, to live fully, without so much noise
I want to sit on my stoop and observe the flight of birds through water
That’s how I eventually write or embroider my tongue with song
By being quiet and inhaling the vibration of life
Like our favorites who didn’t always write daily
Sometimes, there’s more in less
In our world it’s too much 24/7
The population bomb broadcasting its static purr
I am a bad self publicist, I don’t submit enough or live for attentions
I’d rather drive listening to a favorite song and tune into my imagination
You can use too many words
You can say too much
I’m not trendy enough, too pale, too short, too sleepy
Or is that you Epstein Barr?
Infecting my remaining motivation?
Obliterating the words before they are written?
That thin wristed girl, who balanced in high heels, dancing in the dark
Her head full of sound
If you came and found me now
Stroking the night clear of wreathed clouds
I’d be sleeping beneath the magnolia
Learning the runes of its roots
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.
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.)
TheFeatheredSleep 