Come on Elaine

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Come on Elaine … this is how it would go

you’d get the email about your son, either dead, or gone, or famous

extremes of an only child, spoiled by two successful parents

likely famous, as he was in childhood, yeah … fat and famous

so now, he’s still not tall and he’s still not thin but he might be

unwrinkled and have lots of kids or … Venereal Disease

he might hate me, i suspect he would

why? Why do i think he’d hate me?

When he was the one who threatened me with a sword

when he was the one who broke the Lalique vase

i suppose because breaking hearts is worse than betrothed glass

though someone, with his desire for the world

i doubt anyone had the power to break his, because words

written by 18-year-old boys on the inside of cassettes of

music for my girl, rarely mean what they say and speak

with their hermaphroditic pricks.

i was older than him in lots of ways

i would have told you Elaine, it wasn’t my intention and yes

you remember us arguing but it wasn’t all me

when he was high, he was really high and

when he was low, he was really low

a sundial beneath the earth

i stayed witnessing, smoking chain after chain

his taking of porn, watching nude and slobbering

as i clamored in my shared insanity, letting him

have his hunger sated in my emptiness.

Well … depravity is depravity and girls who hate themselves

they’re really good at running with that and boys who

like to torture cats

did you know what he did behind that red door Elaine?

did you know what he was really like or just your little boy?

i remember his father once visiting and how

estranged they seemed and he hollered at you like he’d

never stopped not for one minute

and you screamed and screamed and screamed

i remember it because i witnessed it, see i’m not the bad penny

you assumed,  but he might think i am, that’s how our memory works

put her in this box, label it wrong; She’s the reason i got a Second at University

she’s why i didn’t fuck enough,  she’s why i fell out with my really good friends

(who weren’t so really good, if they had those seducing intentions)

and she? Sure, she let his friends do her, like she sold her soul for lasagna

or a slice of wholesome bread with Ganja

God she was always hungry, or purging

and the drugs he gave her, sometimes with prescriptions, sometimes with sweaty palms

sometimes naked on his stomach where his scar, shone like a dalmatian on a fire truck

she half-liked his brown skin and his imperfections, the matted hair, green eyes, short squat pudgy thighs and tiny cock

they didn’t threaten her, they reminded her of a girl

she felt safe even when she felt scared, his hormone injections, wild untamed stare

he said she made him calm, especially when sucking him off to a good record

yeah I bet. Swallowing is harder for those who give head, to narcissistic boys with pretty

circumcision.

Though it’s been so long, she can’t be sure, of what cut what and who bled and who left the door, slightly ajar,

because that was the year she found out she was mad

and he was too, so they sort of worked

though he wasn’t her boyfriend, though he wasn’t her brother, he was a lot of things under the covers

places where they could escape themselves and that eventual horror of knowing

you haven’t got any hinges and the world’s gonna spit you out into the gutter.

Elaine, she could tell you that your son, was actually a surprisingly good lover after she got through showing him how

or she could lie and say; We just watched horror movies, sometimes he posed me

and pricked me, and played, games, with paint and swords

which was also true, because it was all true.

We gorged ourselves, only children without parents who were home

and when you were, you chain smoked too, behind your dust and your exhausted slump

we all did, drinking your wine, eating delivered organic food, such irony Elaine

you think i was just some dumb girl with thin hips and a small brain?

You used to look at me like; Who the fuck do you think you are? And I’d look right back because I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I was fucking the world with my sadness and it really didn’t matter what you thought or what anyone thought, because i’d already decided to jump

and i was watching all the time i was standing there, in my short skirt and my bare legs and my impossible tight breasts and my impossible tight cunt, all of which you hated, because your husband had left you for one

but one isn’t me, and i wasn’t her and she wasn’t it, and you weren’t alone, you were free of him, and he was the reason your son hated you, not me.

I watched through the floor boards, through holes in the ceiling, to your life unpeeling

for your short stubby hands revealing, to the kisses you gave the picture by your reading glasses, to the wine you drank and stained your hands with, before you passed them over yourself in genuflection like a good Catholic and reached for the vibrator

to your son hating you,  as he may have loved you also, why we never quite knew, does anyone? Hate being so close to love, as sex is to horror and horror is to desire.

Elaine, you summoned like a Magi, some kind of anger in him, at a strong mother or women in general, he was a sexist asshole, who liked men who hated women and women who let men hate them and I was a great substitute for Robert Crumbs little busty girls who bent over and let anger take them right up the ass

but he thought anorexic actresses with dark nipples were beautiful and one time i visited his office in Greek Street Soho WI and he was talking to a Jewish actress who i also thought was hot

Rachel Weisz you still are …

and she walked away with her five-inch heels and his eyes up her skirt

i wanted to say what about me? But i was just ordinary despite being an eight to his one, and she was a handsome, famous, adored shiny girl with a full rolodex and you were a tit man

who because you were a man, (though you’d never be a real man and that made you crazy) thought you could, (fuck Rachel Weisz? Seriously?) and you never would, but it was funny imagining, especially when you already had more than you ever would

(with me, the girl of cinders and soot)

so i watched you watching her and later on when you pretended it was her you took

i pretended right back because i wouldn’t mind being her or being you

and if i were her I’d let you split me open four ways like star of anise and divide me back because it’s a soulless game and I’m your whore and i’m your mother and i’m your bloody crack.

I’m sure now you have a young wife and four chubby kids with green eyes

or you might have died, by plunging into a canal, or cutting your throat with a blunt razor

if you’d started to shave after you starred aged ten in Ms Marple as the fat cheeked boy with shorts on and a smart mouth (yeah that was about right)

but either way, i hope you will let me know Elaine, what happened to your son

because i didn’t burn his house down, he did, he struck a match and he lit us both

on fire, until we stopped being repulsive and we stood charred and broken

in Camden Town, not being able to afford to drink, at The Elephant

or fuck each other in your bed, or die standing up right then and there

because burned people are shadows, they persist

in

reminding us

of

them.

I think of him regularly, whilst I’m sure, he has long forgotten me, which isn’t fair and is ironic and really typical, because men operate on a different time and hour. They think of the girl who is bending over now and not the one who did when they first learned to use their magic wand

unless she was obedient at all times and acted the part, in which case they will brag at 45 of the one they did in St. James’s park, who hitched up her skirt and got on all fours, and she was a “right go-er that one,”

Yeah I gave it to her so many times, she couldn’t walk and yeah, yeah, yeah, builders salivating in a pub talk, I guess you had me enough you could, but you’re probably an attorney and that means you like being tied up and debased, and it’s bad taste to talk about women who left you

raw

because you’re in control, you’re the passive one with the fat wallet and the penchant for sex in the afternoon in a diaper, or with a plastic mask over your hair, that you cut when you became serious, so you could hide the scream and the mess of your desperation.

Sometimes I check online to see, if you posted the naked pictures you took when I wasn’t even legal, in your bathroom, where your mom had lots of soap in fancy bottles

whoops

because we both have ruin in our DNA, and Elaine, if you’d asked, I might have slept with you both, your eyes were so lonely and I liked how ruined they were

the extending, unending madness of your family of animals

it comforted me, slowly dawning, I was mad also, I really didn’t know it, until

my

little foot

fit

your

little shoe

that

is.

(First published in Ascendum Magazine 2016).

New face

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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.

That Mad Ache

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Some of us have a need to feel the heartbeat of another

closer than words

not enough to possess a green lawn, metal chairs, bird feeder, smiling neighbors

would God smite those who despite their fortune, seek

a feeling indescribable and beyond safe?

As if skin were rent and removed and truly naked we stood

beseeching sullen Easter Island statues with their granite far away look

all those emotions burning within us like pins set aflame

rescued in the depths of your eyes, the glass of us tilted toward

setting sun and in elongation and distortion we thrive

maddened on the love of the other

where no amount of living could sate the need for discovering closer method

to gain entry into each others soul and remain there, clenched in joy

a place of belonging in a achingly cold world where

few things seem to gather meaning and much is lost when trees

drop their leaves in beds of autumn colors

I wish I had lived every hour of my life beneath you in the furnace

of our motion, when two hearts begin to forget they are separate

in my sleep I dream of your eyes and the words wrapped around me

I could not exist alone, walking dead streets with emptied stare

you are the life blood of my long sleep, I wake when you pass me by

the smell of your neck, how you speak with a slight downturn

to one side of your mouth as if amused

when you are gone, there is no tick in my tock nor

purpose to a day, I have spent too many years grieving lost things

you would be the last day on this earth worth waiting for

afterward we close our eyes and bid good night to this struggle

content that love has blessed us with one footfall, for many

never discover its map nor know how to open themselves

wide enough to enter a union where no one returns

we transform, as you and I, into bird and for our duration

sing from steeple high, the sound of us murmuring in dusk

transforming empty corners into circles

your hand on my stomach, mine beneath

that mad ache chanting her gentle balm

Some of us have a need to feel the heartbeat of another

closer than words

Vapor

Your head moves under hot lights

thrashing

a passion as you open your mouth wide

roar your words

small teeth, thin lips

skin colored by strobes

I want your impulse

your brave furious eyes

your mad flung acrobats anger

it’s the addiction to throwing aside

caution

striking out like match on ink

permanently marking your stride in heat

I watched you take a whole roomful

swallow them whole with your flame-thrower energy

spitting them into stars and tilting laughing

as they adored you and didn’t know why

your mercury vapor left them reeling

clasping my hand in the car with headlights off

driving blind down blurred country roads

inside me with urgency born of

thunder and trees struck silver

firing in strange shapes of want

it felt like flying, I grabbed a tuft of you

spun like a catherine wheel in your orbit

time was fast and everyone watched as

we climbed buildings in our wonderlust

they’re crazy, they’re so in love

they’ll burn out, they’ll extinquish each other

we never did

not until the key stuck, didn’t turn around anymore

rusted and tired of pushing wooden horses

tired in their paint and festoon

oh I would have made them well again

as I did you

just for one more shivering impulse

riding your coat tails as you took in

the capture of your swell

kissing me beneath table tops

our faces glittering from thrown aside masks

hands reaching, climbing up skin

dance of thundering hearts clamoring to be

still

as you lay now, white out, no sound

I dance contorting to cause a smile

there is none

only a wick, half used, half submerged

in waxen reproduction of what was once real

give her back!

give her back!

I yell at rooms without inhabitants

tables missing their chairs

windows containing no view

your fingers trembling in mine

if I could have

I would have

made us one

save this image; a kiss lasting past quitting time

you pull away and reach in again

no ending,  just softness

a song we live inside

calling us home

there we go

hand in hand

through the vapor

vanishing

 

Forget

Water

Tears

Blurred screens

Disconnected numbers

I lost my memory in a dish I left outside

the rain filled it up and soon thoughts

sodden and wrinkled

were illegible

It was you

you were the one dancing in the rain

you were the one who sheltered me from the storm

with your skinny arms and your little heart

It was I

who burrowed inside your cave and found

the fiery part and claimed it, kept it burning

long after the rain stopped

we lay in velvet darkness

your hand resting against my cheek

in the way only unraveled people sleep

I heard your dreams

you felt my body move

curl about you like

an extension of your desire

we contained the sum

of us

in a little boat

kept aloft by hope

when you said hope died

the flame behind your eyes

the one looking at me with such tenderness

blew out

behind in its place

soot and smoke gathered

like regretful children with dirty hands

smudging their best pictures

late summer rain drowned out

the sound of me calling

you would have heard but you had

long stopped listening

it poured, soon streets were awash

a symbol, a crucifixion, something terribly broken

something crushed underfoot, losing form

you bent to pick up the pieces of my heart

but could not read the words

for you had also lost your past and our history

I no more featured than the last time it rained

long long ago

when the trees were still thin and straight

not bent and crooked offering up their rotten roots

then you were a woman who loved someone else

I was a piece of paper

too wet to decipher

had you wanted to

and you did not

you did not

Beneath your coat

Losing your mind feels like

Slipping your chaffed hands into a pair of rubber gloves

Plunging them into hot washing up water

Hearing the chink of porcelain, knocking against glass

Impossibly fragile.

Soon the water grows murky

You cannot see, nor reach the bottom

From the top of your head to the ache in your feet

Standing wooden, bones imploring, knitted sweater itching corner of your cheek

Passion in contrast, hot freedom, dusty legs slightly parted, cold between

An urge as you stand beside the sink

To dive in

Silent impulse on a cold day to keep your hands deep

As long as the water stays hot

That feeling when most of you is dry and clothed, but part

Is submerged in warmth, feeling like fingers working their way up

Stockings, underwear, the electric wire beneath wool

Into the mirage of your longing to let go, absolve yourself of .. it all

If you could release, lie back in kneeding waves

You might let your weary cracked elbows

Then shoulders, sopping, sink beneath

Climbing into the sink, patent shoes slipping

Brassiere faded by multiple wear, a grey strap, a bulge of apricot breast

Hair loose and dripping, reflecting against dull tin

A buttoned up woman trying to gain admittance

All thoughts stewing in your head like vegetables boiled in water lose

Their flavor …

As politely you wash and rinse, checking against light for water spots

No one shall ever know, the devouring urge beneath your coat

From basket deep

Clamboring, chiming, turning inside out for lack of space

Urging in one cold grey wave of fur and teeth

Lolling tongues, hot breath, slobber and frenzy

From a distance, life resembles a dark river

Cutting through early frost, hungry for warmth

And I think of the man who paints this bleeding scape

Of land into water and flesh undulating, back to earth

I wonder if he knows better than us, how close we are to one or the other

By just a pinch of his ink stained fingers, held up

To guage perspective, before he dips his brush and renders

This mist of mouths, graves and birth and sour roots, twisting through

Surviving even as skies douse and sun bakes flat, yet beneath myriad

A soup of souls closing and opening by ritual of tide

And still, life, clops down the cobbled street, hawking seasons from basket deep.

(Inspired by FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA, especially the line, han venido los perros de plomo.)

Six Months

Illness is the defining point. It tells us if we have been going the wrong or right direction, it forces us to our knees, we find out the truth whether we want to or not.

I’d been blessed with good health. I didn’t even know it. I thought those who were tan and never got the flu were healthy, surely not me, I often felt a little rough. But I didn’t know what ‘rough’ could feel like, I mistook a morning allergy or sleep deprivation or a headache or stomach-ache as suffering. I had no idea.

I could write a book about this. But for now I want to write the most important salient things. Namely, what you learn, where you go and crucially, what you should AVOID.

You should avoid thinking the internet is some kind of medical reference library. The majority of information online is actually negative, it can scare you senseless. It can misdirect you, it can make you give up.

If you Google Gastroparesis you would come to find out it was an incurable, little-understood disease that would cause chronic life-long suffering for all who were diagnosed with it. You would not find out that in many ways, it is an umbrella term, just as many things before it were, that it is completely contradictory pointing to gross error in definition and that there are so many reason(s) for it and presentations, no one size fits all.

I often wonder who decides to write; Chronic incurable disease. Don’t they know what that does to people?

It’s pretty scary when you Google a disease and find so little on it, and what you do, is negative and bad-news. When you are sick you need hope more than anything else. You desperately search for it but all you find are horror stories of suffering.

That’s why I am writing this. In hope that if ONE person who has been told by their doctor they have Gastroparesis and has found the horror-story world of Google, they may see this and have their hope restored.

You may think … what’s the point of having hope if you might end up with a chronic incurable disease? Exactly for that reason. And because there are many things UN said about most diseases and many experiences NOT documented that should be. They say there are no cures for most things but so often there are ways to cure the body that go beyond what is ‘said’ and well documented.

Gastroparesis loosely means a motility disorder of the stomach (it doesn’t move right) which can cause a paralysis of functioning which are known as Gastroparesis attacks that often lead sufferers to the ER. When you experience Gastroparesis it often is 24/7 with cycles of ‘really bad’ and ‘bearable’ symptoms.

What the internet will not tell you and what the poorly trained doctors in most ER’s will not tell you and what the money-hungry Gastroenterologists will not tell you is if you get diagnosed with Gastroparesis, it doesn’t even mean you have it, and if you do have it, it doesn’t mean you will always have it. Yet if you Google Gastroparesis, most sites from the Mayo to the Cleveland Clinic will tell you it is incurable and may even lead to you having a feeding tube.

The first time I read that, I searched and searched the internet and found NO story of someone overcoming Gastroparesis. In that moment I lost hope and everything became SO much worse.

I was lucky, in that my family doctor thought to do an Epstein Barr Virus test on me, it came back VERY positive, suggestive that it was a virus that caused the symptoms of Gastroparesis. If you add ‘viral Gastroparesis’ to your search term, you may find some mention of virally-induced Gastroparesis going away in 1/2 years time.

I found out that it’s what you pair your search words with that brings up the right articles, and by searching in more detail I found tons of examples of Gastroparesis symptoms going away after a virus and the period of time needed for the body to heal from the nerve damage (much like Shingles). The average time being 1/2 years, some longer, some shorter.

Nobody told me this. Everyone told me Gastroparesis is a Chronic life-long disease that you will always have, and there aren’t even any good treatments for it and if it gets really bad you will need a feeding-tube and you may even have a pacemaker in your stomach implanted. Not once was I told there was any hope. If my family doctor hadn’t thought outside of the box due to having a similar case a couple of years ago, I may well have found the highest bridge in my city.

It got me thinking … we need to be more responsible about information and most positive. I’m all for realism, and anyone who knows me knows I’m not always glass-half-full but when you experience the negativity of the medical system and the incompetency (and the sheer cost) and you get only bad news, you quickly realize that something is very, very wrong.

If you are reading this and you have been told you have Gastroparesis or you suspect you might, bear in mind, for every negative story there are stories of cures and remission and complete resolution of symptoms. It depends upon why you got Gastroparesis and how you body copes and how you cope. There are things you can do.

First and foremost, you’re going to feel like never eating again, you may become anorexic unwillingly, because who wants to eat when they are sick all of the time? Nevertheless, keep eating, eat like your life depends upon it, don’t quit, eat through gritted teeth, eat when it makes you cry, because your body needs its strength and this will get you further away from the risk of having to be fed via a tube.

I felt a moment where I could have given in and quit eating, because truthfully I HATE food with a passion right now, but I hated the idea of a feeding tube even more, so now I eat even though I am NEVER hungry, NEVER have an appetite and hate food. I eat enough although it is very, very hard and some days I throw up what I eat and I have to wait and begin all over again. It has been a total nightmare, a complete living hell, and many times I have wept with fury that I ever have to eat again, but I remind myself of those who have NO food and I remind myself of my goal (to get well) and I eat.

Second to eating, when you have the lowest points where you may have to go to the ER to be rehydrated, because you cannot keep anything down, don’t forget that THIS WILL GET BETTER. Keep telling yourself you are strong, you are healthy, you are a warrior, this may lick you but it will not beat you. Remember during a really bad period where you are sick EVERY SINGLE MINUTE that you will recover, you will feel differently. Hold tightly onto that.

I have been BLESSED with friends who have helped me through this. My friend Mark is now my brother, he has been more than I could ever, ever have wished for and I love him dearly. It still astounds me that anyone like him could exist. He has selflessly given and given and given, even as he himself suffers. He is the perfect rare example of a truly selfless soul and has renewed my faith in humanity tenfold. I may not have had much family support but that has been made-up by the support I have had from my friends and it is true, in sickness you find out who your true friends are and often there are more than you realize.

Let me take a moment to thank anyone reading this who has been one of those people, I have thanked you personally but please know, your mercy literally has saved me from the brink.

So if you are going through this yourself and you have anyone – reach out to them. If you do not have anyone, contact me and I will help you. We must be willing and able to help those who go through these things because they cannot do it alone and should not have to. I will write more on this as I go through this – I am going to recover. I am going to get well. I will document what I learn to help others. We need to pay it forward.

Finally (for now) take the experience and grow from it. For me, I have experienced crippling anxiety with the Gastroparesis symptoms, the doctor(s) told me this is due to the nerves being damaged and how the mind-gut connection is so close, what feels like mental anxiety is actually physical anxiety and you cannot tell the difference. It feels like a huge panic attack. There’s not much that works against that, except taking some type of anti-anxiety medication in the short-term or long-term if it helps. I used to think taking pills was a last resort and yet, it’s sometimes necessary, to get through really hard times.

I have learned that if you had any anxiety beforehand (which I did) it will be exacerbated by Gastroparesis symptoms and you may also experience other issues connected to the reason you got the symptoms in the first place. In my case, Epstein Barr often causes very bad fatigue. By understanding what is going on, taking sublingual Vitamin B6 and B12, you can keep your immunity up, and keep your hope alive. After all, even if it’s a year from hell or two, it’s not your entire life.

That is what I am trying to hold onto. I may wake up heaving every day right now, but I’m hopeful that won’t be the case in a years time. I panic and worry that it will go and then return, but what I have to do as my friend told me, is take it day by day and not imagine worst-case scenarios. I can honestly say the advice and support of others is how you get through the worst of days. I may be too sick right now to work and I may be broke but I am more grateful than I have been in years, for the kindness of those who have extended their hands and said ‘let me help you’. Those words are a miracle.

My friend Mark says what helped him the most with his illness was to pay it forward, and focus not on himself but on others. I hear him and I am attempting to do the same. Currently it’s day-by-day, some weeks are unbearable still and I pray to die, whilst other days I can almost remember how I was before I got sick. What I do know is, if you get sick, with anything, don’t rely upon the internet as your go-to, and don’t isolate yourself. In my case it was my family doctor, not the fancy high-paid Gastroenterologists, who found out what had caused my sudden and violent symptoms. I have learned so much from this experience and continue to.

If you’re reading this and you feel hopeless, know that you are not alone and there is hope.

Just when she thought she was complying, she raged and broke apart

Things at a distance …

The child learns

Not to burn herself on cooker top

Not to hold someone to their word

People don’t always return

Love

Things learned at a distance

Words do not describe reality

Reality is not as they say

Life is funny and tastes of rain

One moment it flows then everything stops

Changes course

And you

Child

Sometimes you are forgotten

For adults

Don’t always recall

The necessity of keeping their word

 

And that child

Grew with restraint and without rule

Clad in scraps of query and uncertainty

Unobserved, she learned not to learn

She didn’t sharpen her pencil and master how to take orders

Her mind they thought gifted but her’s was just a glib mouth with fast words

Sounding beneath the press of water, betraying its weight

Underneath she had no end to her dislike of being told what to do

And they told her

You’ll regret the way you are

Discipline helps breed patience

Patience is honed a virtue

She had none

Never learning her multiplication tables or grammar

She slipped as she ran

Away from the rod

He’d hit her you see, too much, and caused a break

Until she didn’t know how to mend her cracks

Only fury lay

Between her fingers spread against the sun

Silly frivolous fury, the kind girls are mocked for

Usually they are scolded, Child don’t you know? Real suffering exists! True pain! And you have so much and you dare say you are discontent?

Even the shame of knowing on the outside she was a white parody of excess and indulgence

With her predictable dysfunctions all signs of a weakness of spirit

Delving into emptying with hands tied by nurture and the unbearable shake of seeing

If you just got up every morning and jogged, if you just put that cigarette down

You save yourself you know

Of course she knew and like a woman weighted with stones she wanted to walk deeper into the water because every scratch of her fabric was flawed

Why did you let me be born?

Why not give my time to a marvelous well-adjusted mind who will study science and never play hooky?

She played it all the time and had nothing to prove nor music within her movement

No piano to learn

As long as someone

Who wanted to learn

Would

 

And she

Wished to walk in olive groves hurting her bare feet with dry shrub

As the Corfu sun burned her scratched arms

Creating ugly stains for how she felt inside

Marks of time mottling her skin

Brands of all the times she tried not to be

Herself

And invariably

Returning to the mirror time and again, a looking-glass behind her eyes

There was her father’s jaw and elongated forehead

His thin red weathered skin tried by the hour

When they found out some DNA was stronger and certain people were genetically likely to outlast others

She laughed

Because she’d known that for years

You only had to taste the quality of their time

and in the future

They ran dry like a Texan Arroyo long baked by merciless sun

 

Her father once said

You reap what you sew

and she has thrown herself into air

With no seeds and no design

Just the bare howl of being aware

Knowing the grief she was ashamed and compelled by

Ticking in her imperfect hiccup of a soul

Unable to avoid the error of her need

To rebel against the majority who never seem to mind

But plod perfectly in time to some hidden chant

While she spun, losing ground, hurting and grasping

Never ready to fit herself into a shape commensurate with moving forward

If there were an edge to the world she’d be the one to push herself

Off

From the outside who would know?

Born unhealthy

never bruised

from the outside who would know?

the script runs, ticker tape without parade

bleeds over page

paper makers who grind words flat

pinch their rabbinical noses and laugh

huffing ink turning to night’s best epitaph

words words words

what if no language were taught?

gesticulating without benefit of lamp

deaf to injury, blind to plight

what if I shut you in a box and told you

start over, be something else

when your cocoon matured and sticky with life you reemerged

what would you choose?

if not language then

how to describe the pounding of our skinned hearts

pummeled by trespassing probiscus

or fear or loss or something beyond vowel and verse

such as it is

greatest emotion has only, a mark within person

no color no lines no regular interpretation

I put your citrus fingers on my shoulder

stay the curve, feel the hurt and rhubarb joy

rising and falling collapsing bestowing

levitated notions buried and choking

no accent no ethnicity we come from no place

we are no one

in a world sucking through graceless cherry straw

the fervor of acquisition and absurdity

our stage unheated flat and spartan

we learn no lines no mantra, no soliloquy

the actor stands and reveals himself

without pretense, wig and powder

shining underneath a hot summer pulse

blue raven turns his glassy eye

in shuttered shift of crimson cloud

toward cloth moon and catches hare’s quiet

spring

into infinitum and beyond boundary

speak to me

speak to me

speak to me

use what you have within