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?
The woman with one breast is friendly
She jokes about feeling lighter
We nod grimly
Gallows humor
Palpable energy shift from 20 year old gamer wearing graffiti hi-tops, and 60 year old with deflation in her eyes
The ravage of time and effect, painted on women of different shapes, scars like badges of honor except when they’re not
The old lady is marked by a blue gown to our uniform pink
She exudes weariment without lifting her head from its downcast slump
Her limbs look like they have been pickled and left in hot Texan sun
She has an old ring on her wedding finger
I want to say something
But the lump in my throat and her shuttered aspect stay my hand
Instead I nod to the New Yorker and tell her there’s a free seat
Nobody really wants to sit
They want to run
Be anywhere else
Anyone else
“I miss the days they just told you that you could go“
Says the tall woman with a burgundy hair band
The woman cooked in black garb might belong to a cult
She had an accent and glowers
She says she drove from Eagle Pass because they don’t have good medicine there
Simmering rage in her balled lacquered fists
The hiss of some impossibly expensive machine out of sight
everyone meets eyes over masks, the unsaid being
Is this good medicine?
We play occidental musical chairs
The magazines are gone because of the virus, we hide our faces behind our fabric hoping for modesty that has long fled
Nurses walk their daily steps in the shiny lino corridor, their hair gleams like peacock feathers, they are harried but kind eyed
I get a young woman tech who has quiet jazz
She talks of wanting children. Her brother is sterile. She’s afraid to get tested.
I urge her to try. Thinking of how not long ago I stood in her slightly less comfortable shoes
Imaging a future
How they unfurl and then dry up and close, ready for the rush hour drive back
Mascara lines running like train tracks on masks of horror
A scrawny woman with platinum hair asked me how to do something on her phone
etiquette is said to save us
Not in the time of Covid, I think
A high school had blossomed in the pit of the waiting room
Some have been here two hours
They divide solemnly into temporary allegiances
Some like the loud mouth
Others roll at the waiting and click their dry tongues
It reminds me of paper flowers put in water
Her grandchildren are visiting. The mute girl in the corner looks young enough to be one
I ache for her fledgling fear
Knowing
None of us are safe
From the words
“Come and discuss your findings with the specialist“
This is what I’d say
If we were speaking
If cellos played ambrosial
If those who said they were alone actually knew what alone meant
This is what I’d say
To the ancestors with sepia faces
To the full family tables I could never navigate
The empty drive, unfilled road, the lack of fake
I’d say
I can’t do pretense
Or big events
broken pipes
yellow light
Or changing people
False words
Mislaid purpose
I would say I couldn’t get on with you
We fought like siblings
Though both were singletons
The vibration of only children with no children
I would say I became angry when you lied
When you faked who you were
When you got suckered by people stupider than you
When you lived in your pretend world
Whilst I ate and feasted on blisters
I would say those from wealth and those from basalt cannot understand
The empire
Of emptiness
A track road with lisping night creatures
And desert burning into mirage
I would say it seems at times
Futile to try to get close
to anyone
But I felt serried to you
That’s likely why I got so churlish
Why I stopped talking
Said nothing
Because betrayal comes unconsciously for most of us
In the voluble let downs and unseen affronts
Like a storm threatening, then retreating
Electricity in verging air
Reminding us of bigger purpose
Points of tangency and points of equilibrium
The hour until we ease into contiguous dying
The way you assumed I’d believe what you believed
I never did
I carry a heart with wormholes in it
The rain lets out
You get out
I drive on
In the mirror of oil on the road
I see you understand
I would say we were the same
Not even at different ends
Just burning with curved impulses
That quench the other
As I look in your eyes
I see myself
And it hurts and unsettles me
Worse than my own reflection
Conveyer belt love
You nearly ruined me
In the shallows, near the swamp
Where if it didn’t work out?
You dumped and moved on
What a horrible way to live
Nothing redeeming, nothing eternal
I was told; you’re born three centuries too late
For nowadays people are impatient and demanding
They throw away more than they earn
We’re The Plastic Generation … hell we’ll be buried in plastic urns
In this fettered landscape, it’s no easy thing to find
Something left beating, whole and strong.
Conveyer belt love began to make sense
A logical response to an unfeeling era
Where being let down could be replaced by a clone
If you are lonely, buy yourself a Japanese doll
When you are sad, blow something up, or put batteries in
TV for the masses, turn on, tune out, get an i-phone
Be tracked by faux Politicians and told how to vote
Go to sleep with unconscious messages trying to sell you more
Who cares about love, it’s a sham, a fait accompli, an overgrown child
All notions thrown out, along with 24/7 Porn
Your husband is jacking off as you think you’re meeting for your anniversary brunch
Your wife is screwing your boss, even the dog doesn’t love you, it’s all programming
Pavlov will surely tell you that and what about Skinner and his box?
Aren’t we all lab rats in fancy colored clothes?
Maybe the thing to do is join in and stop wanting real
Because real hurts when it turns out to be false
And plastic outlasts us, polluting the oceans it stands sinful testimony
On the beaches in India you find Starbucks straws and CocaCola bottles
We’re international now, the big conglomerates boast.
Conveyer belt love
You nearly ruined me
In the shallows, near the swamp
Still I think about ideals once in a while and imagine
What if, it were all different and we found our way back?
Would Cathy let in Heathcliff? Would Anna Karenina still jump?
And Diane Keaton in Ms Soffel? Would anyone be alive to understand?
Why we lived once for love and it meant the world
Even as it was so often an empty house of cards
What if
We got the Queen of Hearts?
I didn’t care as much as the blood on the snow implied
it was after all just a horror show
you, with your nimble ways of
poking holes in my armor
you, with your kind smile and sharp knife
twisting screw
letting good drain out with bad
till meaning held no color.
I didn’t blame you at first
it’s a fact … some bite
they are taught to by pain
it’s a refuge, a coping mechanism, a
twist and writhe in slim net
of sanity and pathology
that’s all they know
the feral in their fur
if you try to be kind
they will purr
then go ahead and bite you.
I took my bleeding hand
stuck it in my mouth
to prevent saying the things I wanted to
Then I remembered all the little ways
you’d been before, the bare indifference
how I’d tried. Why had I kept on trying?
What possesses us to be kind
to broken things whose disapointment
in themselves turns to savagery?
At least it gave you an opportunity
to use that tenderness against me
I did feel a fool until I realized, yeah …
maybe you were my enemy all along
in that slow icing way you left me feeling emptied
which may say something about me
and how I should learn to try less
I’m sure you’d say; “nobody else can make you feel bad
without giving your permission.”
But I think I will disagree
that’s a passive-aggressive crock … Psych101
it’s your fault … no one else’s
with your holier-than-thou certainty
convinced you’re above us all
I walked away from the snow and the blood
a little cross at myself for not remembering
you can’t hand feed
wild cats.
Snow I have always
been thankful for your expunging
whiteout
how you take dirt
and suffocate it
beneath insistent layers
the wild and untame methods of your
settling, blown like befuddled
birds in all direction, swirling in
lost echo, falling eventually to
sugar-coat the dim world brighter
as pipes fail, their fragile egg shells
bloated with trapped water
a parallel I think
to our own shuttered lives
When I was a child I would
be told
do not go out in the snow for long
you will catch your death
and I hoped
very much
that were true
for to sleep
a red rose in bosom of white
I could fancy in my child’s mind
no greater perishment
though fancy and its
myriad ways of suggesting
death
grow less appealing
the older we get
Now I avoid slipping on ice
for fear of crushing my elbow into
shards like my father did
I see in the distance
my grandmother’s dog
he is trying to eat snow flakes
and puzzled when they melt
barks into whiskering storm
I think he speaks for us all
in this grand illusion
half wanting to be
taken off by encompassing whorls
carried to ice palace
where surely the meaning of
everything can be found
along with my mittens I lost
in tenth grade
stooping down to place
the cherry in
my snow robins
breast
Some of the forgotten towns
circling big cities, lone wolves
warming fur against bright lights
wear their bleakness like a flag
the emptied streets at night where
no merriment is found, kids have
climbed aboard their bikes and motored
through snow if necessary, to escape
into the cold clutches of wine and euro-pop.
The touring people who do not live in these towns
glamorize by proxy
their little steeples, the preserve of history
how charming graffiti looks in a foreign language
they do not see behind the doors
into a teen world of preparedness
all who will flee when time comes
somehow, make their empty pocketed way
to bigger cities, offering the solace of
24 hour misery
surely it beats
sleeping in your childhood cot
listening to your parents snore
inching closer to a local grave plot
they put their heads in bags of glue
just to feel like they are from somewhere else
finding it a marvelous irony
when their frigid mountain town is named
‘best hidden tourist spot’
by those who are also in their own ways
trying to escape
their stifled lot
and we said
try with all your might
to hold yourself up in this world
should you fall, do so quietly, lest
you disturb this delicate status-quo
do not be loud, do not make a fuss
these are things only rude people do
like those who talk on phones loudly
in confined spaces
penguins with plastic attached to their beaks
yak yak yak they go
but nobody seems to tell them to
shut it
and the propriety of life
misses a stitch
a heart beat
a compassionate rinse
through the annals of time
thinking of how we have always
stifled valuable voices
in favor of noise
putting up with the yak and not
the desperate drum beat of a woman
unraveling
she has spun her loom
throughout the city and its artifices
with alacrity and the sweat of female
labor, she has borne her children and
created a field of poppies, that threaten
to dazzle the very sun
she has grown her hair long and matted, until
it is thick enough to reach the moon
where she sits
howling
at the ravages of life
permitted at last
to possess
a voice
you exhaust me
with your perpetual need
you who is I, I who is me
this hungering for solace
rubbed like frankincense
on pulse points
used to be said, a woman’s evocation
was found in the thread of her blood
tasting her, found, a salt and an admonishment
for knowing mystery is not permitted
you exhaust me
with your perpetual need
you who is I, I who is me
attempting free fall, finding balance in
tender pretend, the chime and rounding of days
a music without orchestra, still she sings
heal me from the want
expunge that holy desire for more
give me a reflecting glass
that I might climb through
touch my limbs as they break into fire sticks
combusting in torrent, the woman, the girl
the crone
she sits with sun on her face
careless of time
she has put aside her duty
listening instead
to the song of a bird
whose feathers remind her
of blue black hours
I made myself a promise I can’t keep
to stay steady, even in times of grief
not obey my gut and flee, bare-foot
into thick forest where birds
never rebuke
not to climb from shaking boat
wet wood and mold, scarred paint and
many gentle hands
cupping despair in her once tree lined womb
ever tempted to fling off effort
abandon the temple of people and their
admonishments
those truthful kindnesses flung back in reproach
by those who have no use of you
standing like husks by the road
waiting to snag your heart to shreds.
The woman across the road lifts her shirt
stuck slightly with glue from hospital monitors
a strange gel they affix electrodes to
when they’re getting ready to cut
she fills her chest with the congestion of the late hour
burning in filament
like fire birds finding song in dark
her dream is to be whole again
not lopsided, scarred in rivet and rent flesh
by hands that delved into her bones.
All my life I have observed
cruelty and condemnation in
its varied shadow forms
and marveled at how, little we pay attention to
the necessity and sincerity of kindness
instead we humiliate it
as if we were telling a child;
stop crying, stop being a blubber mouth, grow up
get some backbone, stand up for yourself, fight back!
Mistrusting those who stoop
to pick up your fallen groceries,
ask how you are, give what they can
though it be imperfect, irritating to
the red welt of anger surging in
collective consciousness, waiting to strike
who needs gaslighting? When we have
a veritable volcano, ready to turn
hearts into stone.
I knew a child once, who
fought well, she wore split lips like this seasons color
and her eyes saw in the dark
wishing to change the indifference she observed
when adults stepped on toys and did not
mend their breakage
that same child grew up into a flawed but kind adult
who wished many times
she wore a thicker armor
for the chill of strangers
has never borne fruit nor become easier,
as if you wore
sewn neatly to your chest
a scarlet letter
made of nothing more than
the dye of words
that look so very much
like blooding
(blood•ing (blud′ing), n. [Chiefly Brit.] British Terms (in fox hunting) an informal initiation ceremony in which the face of a novice is smeared with the blood of the first fox that person has seen killed).
TheFeatheredSleep 