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.
Only anger
where there should be love
until we let it go
become nothing but empty
as we were before
ever finding
fickle road to emotion
all its vanity and its glory
the good and the not so
and in between, days of roses
turning their thorns into pricks of
passion and belonging
for I surely
have never dwelt in another place so deeply
as that space of you
nothing left after the hurricane
all memory fled and closed
like a cuckoo clock without bird
a hollow tree absent of owl
the indigo night and no
stars
lighting our way back
now, we can only go forward
stumbling blindly
a snowstorm, desert, running out
of reasons to put
one step in front of next
yet as humans we have this penchant
for survival at any cost
it is not always a pretty thing
sometimes our hair is gnarled
our very hide, matted and overgrown
we may never recover
the girl within who
let you in
but still in mornings earliest hour
before most things awake
there is a stillness, a hush
an abundance of hope
in slow shadows and still warm hearth
a wisp of your hair remains
caught in my brush
I will let no-one use it
it stands testimony
proof of breakage
I am not the girl I once was
coming to you with flowers
plaited with fullness of trust
we are both much older now
turning from copper
the green of rivers drowning
those early wants
carrying lightness down stream
leaving us in perpetuate shade
where you tell me to go on
without you
turn your back
becoming stone
on which I pound
my small fists until they
bruise, turn purple like
spring crocus pushing through
late snow
if saying it changed anything
you’d never leave
if love were a superpower
you’d always stay
but birds always migrate
come first cold night
every year they return
changed
still searching for
meaning in the
wetlands of life
I suppose I am
your soundless bird who fell from her
cage
wishing you would
scoop me up, make me
in your image
with the press of your devour
and when you
were absent long enough
the wide sky outside did not
beckon
I became a
nightingale
I inhabit
darkness
like a needle can pierce
velvet and leave
no
discernible
mark
I am not a singer
you will not find me on stage
I was never her
she held a sway over you, a celebrity
that I did not puncture
now I see it was always
you and she
I was never there with you
I am happier that way
though it took some mending
for no mortal coil wishes to be deceived
or possess no value
be a thing of ridicule and promises
empty and fanciful
least by silver tongued claimer, with beautiful eyes
some seek big cities, bright lights
those of us born beneath incubator bulbs
among shut out people with dull familial instinct
want something sincere and reaching
not blistering and hot, a thousand egos in a city that doesn’t sleep
I spent
a long time realizing this
I wasted time trying to change hearts
that can’t be altered
though time, for a writer
Is never truly wasted
and emotion
for a lover
Is never truly without value
even if it was only I, who loved
there is a place for all things
and I know now, what to do
the next time someone
spoonfeeds me dreams
says; It’s only you baby, it’s only ever you
I’ll check
who is performing behind their eyes
before
giving
mine
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
What can’t be said aloud
or even blown into an envelope
placed in a bottle and set to sea
or kept beneath your pillow in diary
those words and feelings without words cannot
find a place of expression
for a multitude of reasons or just one
you carry them around like a weight
dripping from your neck
sometimes in a weak moment
you feel yourself urging to spill
the bunting and string it high
confidences for everyone to see
what’s the worst that could happen?
and yet, you know, the worst
is bad enough to keep
you quiet
how many others, you wonder
carry their own list of unmentionables
and what would they be?
any in common or always unique?
if you let someone know
the sum of you
would they
grow bored?
become disgusted?
smile and say ‘i understand’
when they did not?
who can understand the deep of us?
where we dare not venture, let alone another
what permissions given and retracted
exist?
like the long necked lillies that spring
miraculously from dry texan ground
after it has rained and
the electric mist has caused wonder
to touch the barren
perhaps it is a sign when
you can talk of such things
late into the night
with a stranger you will never
meet again
or that you whisper to yourself
the varied outcomes of confession
strung on a tree, lighting dark road
no, sometimes it is best
we model our forefathers and mothers
who knew what to keep to themselves
for years they held them in jars
turning to the light once in a while
and when they died, sometimes you would find
one survived the cull
and everyone would hush and hold their breaths
in inky silence
not sure of how to respond
somehow a secret after you are gone
doesn’t hold the same concern
and maybe they were free of them
in that hour
when all who knew, discovered
they had not
known them at all
Love can be the greatest feeling in the world
love can be a lie
and when love is a lie
it can rip you to shreds or enable you to rip yourself
because love isn’t quantifiable
therefore you may never know
who it is who guts you and slays you; Is it you? Is it love?
how can a feeling have the power to empty you of hope?
or leave you ransacked
how can an emotion
something that can’t be touched, or jarred or bottled
hold such sway?
cut with deep scythe, parts you thought impossible to reach
was it the other? Did they own the power
or was it giving them permission? To dictate an emotion
or is love, proof of being human
and the sorrow of that and the beauty of that
a very human trait, along with hate and indifference
which at times seem, to take the place of love
and when your eyes, look at me and there is no movement
only the wearing down of time, a series of frustrations
when you fidget and seem to want, to be anywhere but here
I imagine you in years to come, remembering nothing of us
then I wish I had no capacity for love, I wish I had pretended all along
replaced my heart with coal
but it was never an object, never something you could hold
love was almost a virus
you walked into the room
and I caught it
the fever and the aches
they may never leave me
now I have a relationship with them
in absence of you, I’ll find myself inheriting memories
wondering how, some people walk away, almost light-footed
and others stand in place and burn, the oxygen all gone
unable to speak the words
of loss
This therapy doesn’t work
I take an hour to get made up
so I do not look like the long toothed tiger
I feel inhabits my emotions and wishes
to roar and cry uncontrollably
while she sits thinking about
her recent vacation and what
she’ll have to eat for dinner
because after all this is just a job
she is just a human
who has a right to time off and a life outside
the pain she allots 50 minute slots
I am convinced
paying for therapy is a little like
paying for love
you get little of the real stuff
and a lot of compensation and emptiness
I feel alone in the room
hearing myself drone
I want to tell her everything
I want her to know how much I’m hurting
I want to express my fear and my loathing
but she is a stranger
who takes my insurance
maybe I should be thankful
but I’m bitter and repressed and tell her
what she wants to hear
after all, therapists want to believe you’re doing alright
even when you’re one step from the edge
after all, therapists need to sleep sound at night
just as I childishly wish she’d turn around and say
this isn’t a job, I care, I really care about YOU
let me in
and if she did I would, but that’s supposing
people aren’t who they are and they very much are
professional detatchment
closed-off, remote, shuffling from one hour to the next
waiting for the time they can walk out the door
not think about other people’s problems
there isn’t much empathy going around these days
we’re all so tired and I’m getting to the end
of wearing cracked masks
even when I need to break apart
which you can only do when someone
gives a shit
nobody pays for reality
and as much as it is known
‘therapy is a gift you give yourself’
and as much as it is claimed
‘if you do the work you’ll grow’
I don’t want to go through the motion
I want to be cared about
I want her to give a shit
I want things that are impossible
because she’s a job and I’m a client
but this way around it feels like
I’m the hooker and she’s the john
because I’m blowing hot air
and she’s sucking it up
It was raining the day the movers truck pulled up
piling furniture into the back, exposed to wet streets
everything dirty and unfamiliar
when you take your safety out of its box
when you unlatch your secrets
and expose the insides of a locket
sticky mouths seek to further that exposure
until nothing of your peace remains
but the belly of your secrets on display
as if you were sitting in class without underwear
as if the abuse etched in your soul were a t-shirt
as if his fingers weren’t in the dark but had been
dipped in luminescent paint and everywhere they went
left their grimy imprint / yet you think
this horror may have been the very best thing
as wretched as exposure may taste
at least it wouldn’t be a case of disbelief
how many women does it take?
for one person to not hesitate
how many must say;
he did this / that happened / we are not okay
because of this / why do I have to prove / with gore
and soiled soul / the truth / why isn’t it sufficient that I say
why why why
did he lay a hand on me?
how many women does it take?
a juror in the Bill Cosby case disclosed the reason for his guilty verdict;
I believed he was guilty because he said he had drugged girls
hearing it from the horses mouth got my vote
are we bidding on a horse? Did you check the inside of his mouth?
what of the SIXTY women who spoke?
their voices do not warrant proof?
were people just speaking words?
to deaf sign posts stating;
move on / get over it / don’t make a fuss / why should we believe you?
one person has lied before / you must be lying / that’s our automatic default
what hope then
for one girl?
one single soul
violated in the dark
of a house when all is moved out
and she is left inside a shell, within a shell
the echoes of trucks taking memories
somewhere else
how many women does it take?
to be heard.
TheFeatheredSleep 