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?
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.
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
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.
Not if, WHEN I am well, I will not squander, but should not have needed, a second chance
It will be / It already is / a spiked and harpooned, learning curve
There is humiliation, in not being insightful enough
That it took, being brought to kneel, flayed by horrors, to be grateful enough and find strength
As only when / it’s almost too late / we plead and beg / for one more chance
It is the truer person, who needs no such prompt, but lives rightly, first time around
I am declaring reincarnation and broken-handed, putting myself back together, limb by limb, until even I, do not recognize, the survivor within
She has sore knees from beseeching and a box of unwound screams for keeping
Maybe together, we can shift the albatross, tie on our ice skates, and, leaving bearly visible lines, skate the circumference, to where we last left ourselves, before water absorbed and we sunk, full of the weight of years, undone
Long ago and just now, these worthiest goals lay fallow, ink blots of punctuate
For the urge to live fully, is always most powerful, when denied.
Then, it is up to you, said the rise of each, urgent day
To scatter yourself in those lined troughs, awaiting divine chemistry
To grow once more, whole, when the door is opened and light let in, again
I pray for all, who yearn to begin
One way you can see, throw a penny in a pond, watch ripples cast divination
Fortune can be such a fickle playmate, the one who steals your efforts from your plate or, coin shall surface, catching sunlight, glint, at days ahead, not so dim
And while you wait inside your bird cage, the journey of even those imprisoned, can rise, from the depths of status quo
The lost and lingering who have forgotten how, to float on water
Before
is a color I cannot describe
a place I don’t fit into anymore.
Even if I am restored
things will be changed for good
for most of us there are times
that shape our marrow
could be in the form of torment
maybe sorrow, sometimes joy
often the hardest times leave deepest imprint
perhaps it shouldn’t be that way
we should rejoice our luck a little, usually too busy enjoying ourselves
to leave permanent mark or maybe, challenge speaks louder than mirth
it is easy to accept a good day like a hot bath
than deal with a bad and hollow foe
that’s when our quick is sharpened,the story of our lives written
on the tip-toe of endurance
and what if we do not want to endure?
too bad, shit happens, legs break, minds crack
we’re going to end up there at some point
better waterproof our leaking sides best we can
the ocean isn’t a forgiving mistress.
When I fell, my mouth filled with salt
even then I didn’t know how far torment, reached down
it was a well, beneath the sea
a second drowning
for those who long to be free above ground
shackles of the merciless kind
only then I wondered at the strength of others
enduring from such an early age whilst I
ran long in the garden, unawares, chasing butterflies without a care
thinking I knew real pain from a momentary hurt
I knew so little
just a moment ago and a life time apart.
I am a twin of my previous self
we stand on different sides of the same coin
I am submerged, she is still, basking in the glow of a harvest moon
sometimes I look over at her and feel such envy
anger for my lack of appreciation when I, was her
but you cannot lead a horse to water
you cannot teach a child what she must learn
getting stung on the principle, she discovers through pain
it wasn’t in my thoughts that I should be
the girl on the other side of the echo, pleading to return
I don’t know if I will be permitted
but should I ever, walk again without curse
it won’t be as the same person, but a mixture of two
once you’ve seen yourself and begged for mercy
everything alters and everything stays the same
it’s up to you to be mindful of what you learned in that maze of pain
I learned what we think of as hardship
is often just everyday life
what we believe is suffering
can be comfort compared to other lives
when we don’t think we can change
then we aren’t given a chance, we know we should have
it is in diminishment we find elucidation
it is in horror we see truth.
Let me back inside my life again
and I will not be the girl who, took the easy road
for she now knows, just how deep anguish can go
it is in the tangle of the briar
and the wormwood of old trees
whispering advice never heeded
by the youth who believe themselves free.
Before
is a color I cannot describe
a place I don’t fit into anymore
The kitchen, the harth, the space, is unlit
Weak light, nothing stirring
She is as still, as a breathing creature, can be
Sound… is for the world, chasing beyond itself
Where girls like her, hold tight to bus rails, wind messing their hair
Where children cling to parents, shy in perpetual game
Where men stoop to kiss women, full cheeks upturned
Music and the chink of movement, gypsy motion
Color and the russle of long skirts, like painted fans
A sky as blue as country girls eyes
The haggle of time
A red river, carved by motion
She wore those days, like a red dress, loose limbed and free
Unknowing yet, bestial crush of illness
Jeering like envious stranger, swallowing thin air
She is as still as a breathing creature can be
Sound, is for the world, chasing beyond itself
Your mother would scold you
pick yourself up ugly child
clean your room, scrub and polish
until there is no room for doubt
you may be unloved but
you will keep a straight back and shiny shoes
and you
learned quicker than a mouse
can covet cheese and steal itself a piece
to keep yourself small and burning
for a time to pounce
back under the hot lights of attention
turn this way and that until you are
bronzed like an award you make yourself
for surviving
I am owed
you think as you spit on your reflection with shirt cuff
and shine it brand new
I am owed
for my childhood
all the taint it took, not to reduce to rubble
instead I built myself a fort and became unbreakable
because this world eats the tender-hearted
with morels and mustard for breakfast
crushes underfoot truth in her glass orb
it is better we inherit the sharp cold heart of our destroyers
lift up our skirts and cross the puddles
with insulated rubber boots
than wallow in the frigid water
wondering why
most of what we do and say is
superficial and a lie to
garner peace and stifle the dagger
aimed at our center
all good but for the gentle
soul who can no more hurt than
turn away from need
she who cups water in her hands
to feed the thirsty flower
struggling to grow through concrete
by the side of exhaust-ridden road
what miracles we behold
surviving against the odds
it is this solace
keeps us staying who we are
when the world would pitch fire
extinguishing mercy
leaving battlefields full
for crows to pick through
we endure, laying down our
arms, our faces pointed toward
the clouds and wait
for rain to pour down
TheFeatheredSleep 