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?
Would that you would stay
would that you were ever mine
would that you knew how
you strip and stir those tender passions
sterile of any other life
I am blackened with desire for you
I am white with inordinate stifle
see the end of the bottle how it glistens?
With promise and her velvet touch she
summons,
turn to me, burn with me, set me alight
leave me wrecked on your shore, blistering
this is why I breathe, to end in your gaze
this is why I ache, to imagine just a glance
this is why I die, to lose you without ever
having
there’s the rest and there’s one girl
she’s a woman, she’s rage, she’s not gentle
she can’t be caged or capitulated
the stroke of her fingers on metal
she’s tearing you up with her untouchable ways
ruining others, for they seem tame
comparison is the enemy of the weak
she laughs at your charade, your belief
she’ll ever want a thing from you, nothing
further could be true, she’s so far removed
reach for her, she’ll bite you in half
try to be tender, she’ll laugh in your face
howling another’s name just for sport
indifference is her game, she’ll toss you
aside before she’s arrived with your petty
longings and your wounded heart
she’s little and she’s huge, she’s magnification
and cruelty and searing everlasting beauty
I imagine lying next to her and it’s a joke
the nearest I could get would be a parallel universe
made of pins and needles, volcanoes and tsunami
your beauty is a storm of urges unspent
my secrets just flowers of passion unsung
feeling your way in the dark is your favorite dance
you’re roaring in your sleep and breaking the sound barrier
you compete for breakfast and throw the weak over
for the sharks
there’s nothing between us except everything
even if I were not myself, I could not be close to you
you abhor connection, you loathe obsession
fearless you parody their love of you
with mocking abandon like a ballerina
needing no shoes
you write songs with the pen of a bloody mad woman
you tattoo desire into my chest with sharp knives
thrown from a mountain
all the while not knowing what you do
for I do not exist and neither does time
it can harp and beat for a hundred years and I wouldn’t run out
of want, just the means, just the methods
just one time, just in a dream, just fantasize
shut your eyes, turn off the light, stand still, run
your voice over broken connection
nimble fingers strumming a line
from another time, one where you give me
one moment, I stand behind you, watching
the shape of your conquer
chaos in the surge of everything
anger, rage, beauty, madness
you can move someone without touching
you can devastate someone without speaking
no injury and it hurts worse than breaking
egotism in a glass vase to be shattered
where we go, nobody will know
children of night, children of satiation
I heard you sing in the past when I didn’t know
names and places, people and feelings
I was a dead thing dancing to numb haunt
you stepped toward me and I saw you
a dervish in halo, a god within a devil
nothing else, the crowd cleared, it was only you
so sure, so dark eyed, with your torture
curling me around your laugh like a rocket
I burned and drank it down and the flames
made me golden
plug me in, I spin on electric want without power
you stop and start, you shout, you demand
you scream at the complacency and kick the rulers
I am a dead star above your night, I am
the person you were before you were born
I inhabit your meaning like a false note
there is only nothing and nothing comes with
a voice until you speak
into my freeway, driving at 100 mph on
drowning streets, they cry for your attention, you
giggle in irreverence
no fault of yours the whole world adores
someone who cannot be won, or succumb
to usual rules, to anyone’s need, it’s always been
about you, about you, about you
i’m happy here, stretched on your rack
beginning to enjoy poison and its benefits
for we make aches out of wants and wants
never cut too deep, they die as they are
absorbed into daylight, scars making scars
you are the eternal night you pull me in
I struggle against your tide, you want to drown me
with your sharp loveliness
it’s your control, it’s what you know
you have the bravado of a broken angel
words leave me struck through with arrows
secrets are best left buried
dig me up, let me whisper, I would say
it’s always ever been you
say it once and I drop to my knees
I was told it was wrong to worship
I was told it was wrong to believe in
perfection or need
you open your red mouth
i’m watching, I’m writhing
how are you still moving? Didn’t you
die? Didn’t you stop breathing?
Turning in betrayal, you can
only betray when it matters
nothing matters to girls made of stone
they sing to the siren and the siren
blesses them
this dance is for the dead
desire so long it’s bent double
it hurts to enter the temple
you burn me every time you don’t notice
but that’s your way
that’s who you have always been
untouchable
untouchable
untouchable
The bells of the church rung
He said it’s why he didn’t turn back
That and blossom in the thimbling trees so early
He believed in signs and symbols, so did I
Before I was grown and knew the torn things inside
He was the boy who learned on me
I gave what I could, but kept two things to myself
My secret was, I wanted a child
My sin was, letting him take you back
Standing fighting at the top of his marble stairwell
Smelling of his mother’s perfume and congealed cough sweets
I saw myself falling, pinwheel, before he cast me down
The imprint of his reedy hands, a daisy chain around pale throat
His child in my swelling belly, with eyes the color of regret
He said it was an accident, I felt his hate as I lost my balance
Jabbing me in the back with whisper and sharp intention
Get it out, get it out, get it out
He didn’t know the truth of us, my child and I
She wore silver bells around her neck
And in his mother’s sea blue bathroom of mirrors
I stood watching the rapture of your being, take me over
And in the night, your father tried to tear you gone
With his thrusts into me like a spear and a blunt knife
Still my child you held on
Staring through my eyes at me when we were alone
I could hear everyone’s comments before they spoke
If you have that man’s baby, you’ll be shunned
And alone was really alone. Still I thought
I am not a warrior, but I would fight for you, daughter
Quickening in me like a secret slipstream of language
I felt our connection, you were more than blood and sinew
I watched my burgeoning figure, as I removed my clothes
Thin and narrow, except where you were taking form
Stepping into the bathwater, I felt something cry and give way
And the bath became blood
Hot water on, with the door closed and locked
Your father saw water running on the tiles in the hall
All pink and gorgeous
He broke the door down and saw me sleeping in gore
All pink and gorgeous
In the hospital they whispered words of relief
She’s so young, so petite, it was a mercy and a blessing
Any more blood and she wouldn’t have made it
They didn’t see your father’s fingerprints or where
He cut you out with the slow deliberation of an absent butcher
The whoosh and hiss of hospital machinery
The soft whisper of pretty nurses shoes sliding on lino
Your father watching over me, the violence still marked on his face
When we got home, the taxi driver said; take care you goofy kids
Your father dosed me with pain killers and turned his raging back
I saw the emploring milk leaching from my breasts for you to drink
And it was red
I felt the sting of your vanishing scraped dead from myself
My stomach still swelled with your ghostly outline
Your father moved in his wrath lain sleep and mounted me
I said; I’m hurt, it’s too soon, oh God!
But God refuses sinners and pearls
You were gone so you could not speak too
And your father dove into places raw, stitched and mourning
With his eyes closed he imagined nothing and saw nothing
With his fists closed he rose above me in darkness like a wraith
Not touching the spilt evidence of you
Not realizing he was slick with blood and tears bound in a girl
Till morning when he washed you off and with it, me
As I lay in the stained bed with my nightdress hitched around my wrung neck
Feeling the milk in my breasts, the wetness of your ever spending
Feeling the tether from you to me and back again neverending
Your father went on to conquer worlds with a rod
A rich man with the same long fingernails and sharp soul
He calls me once in a while
Tells me I’m still beautiful
And if I saw him, he would bring harm
So I keep us safe and I see no one
As we sit on the balcony and I imagine
You’d be tall and you’d be beautiful like climbing honeysuckle
Because you are my daughter
We raise our glasses to your December birthday and 27 years
And your father he cannot attend our moments together
He may hurt us again, he may seek to take you away
He stays in his apartment in the city and grows richer
On weekends he chooses whores that look like I did
When I was just a young girl
With hair down to my bottom and no breasts to speak of
He had me before I ever menstrated so we thought
You could not exist
It was true, you did not
Home from the hospital with a pad of loss between my legs
But that was a fall I can still feel in my displaced bones
Seeing the future with each tumble, seeing his fists open and close
Alone now and you have been dead 28 years almost
And I light a candle
For what I was not meant to have
Though I would have loved you so
And I do
You speak to me when I sit by myself and the night is quiet
You tell me not to be lonely though it is impossible
I smile at you because that’s what mothers do
Spare their children
Any pain
There was grief in the last time I was myself
long-faced, retroussé nose, thick hair
broad shouldered from swimming away
cutting through water, weightless
not carrying your stare, your aprobation, your disregard
if ignored, let us ignore better, make an art of failure
suck the pipe, squeeze the last drop, inject, pop
those blue pills, as blue as you made me feel
psychiatry says nobody can make you feel anything
you choose
did you choose to feel nothing and by nothing
cause my center to crush softly inward
like the river flowers we press in our books
before you were born
carried over generation from generation
I laid in the grass wondering why
no lover had sought to please me
and the boughs of the trees revealed themselves
as my hand wandered back and forth
drenched in sweat
for who can satisfy a tin box with its lid hammered shut
who can know the heart of a girl who is told before she can walk
she isn’t enough, she’ll never be near sufficient
then you walked out of the river
green and shining like forested afterbirth
you did not care about forms and structure
spelling and photographic reproduction
you had a tongue and eyes and hands
like a thought with action
you claimed me beneath alders and pine
stretching so high, embracing unseen faith
I became a woman that day
crying out beneath your stones and mud and lillies
as white as an urge
with pink in the center
craving to crest in sun
and fall wilted back into water
The porcelain
Smoother than
Oil in water
Claiming no purchase
Beseaches dreamer
Sleep
Beneath my surface
Remove your layers
Slow A-track deceit
Your wonderbras
Shaved parts
Here you lie
Exposed
Seeing yourself the way
Nobody else knows
There is an edge
ever-changing, indescribable
and as you turn your shoulder
thinking the sun has only burnt
one side
the other is latticed
in marks of your exposure
as things of darkness will crawl
deep inside you like a well without end
and build with whitened fingers
their hungry descent
until you are changed
even as you taste the salt of your tears
staining your face like damage
blackening light into rotten parts
tearing your wings to pieces
it’s been so long you forgot
once you were able to climb
high into sky and feel something
unknown now like a lover
who has turned to enemy and stranger
instead without warning
the edge presents itself
in terrible hour like a sharp knife
one moment you are clinking glasses
smiling into the camera
and others remark
goodness she’s aged well
look how happy she looks
the next you are ripping the lies
from your arms, all that glitters
tearing into shreds artifice
tying together knots in hope
they can end
the sudden terror inhabiting you
always cruelest when it shows
just as you believe you might
have escaped
yoking you back
get on your knees
here you are, here you are
your toes grip the edge
you see the emptiness below
much like what lies inside
untethered, unnamed
for who can put a word
to terror? to hopelessness?
who can place a finger on the place
the rot set in and began
to devour the person you once were?
leaving a scarecrow
others do not see inside
the stuffing ready to ignite
they only see the perfect smile
accoutrements without truth
glittering like shards of glass
scattered in the night
Show me how
to thrive
not simply devoured
by starched white spread heart of palm
telling fortunes at Waldens pond
for the ice is surely as colorless
as mine own frosted breath
held in dove cot
awaiting relent
Show me how
to thrive
in wood cut and lithographic land
forging in Shakers wrapped hand
measurement of generations
prescribing latitude
and those born beneath ice water
hardening by each ratchet and slip
We may resemble the other
I assure you
I sink while you swim
festooned in spring
I hear your delight
caving snow into spectacle and whim
scoring snowy hide with virgin bemusement
leaving blushing to first flower
Show me
how to thrive
unwary of the cut of fencer’s lance
skaters take their effortless figure eight
cut me out while watching me sink
bleary are the reflecting lessons gleaned beneath
as trees wearing cost of growth will shield in poplar costs against fall
scooping handfuls of strain into colander air
Wait for the transport
urge yourself into print
pick a destination
maybe a flurry
picked in shake and shuffle
a bridal bouquet
wet confetti
new days
following season
over wooden bridge
frigid with warm step
Show me
how to thrive
If depression were a shadow
when it is my shadow
waking me up with glass behind my eyes
replacing authentic feeling with
stifled, muffled, agonies
depression tells me; don’t get your hair cut
the hair dresser will stare too hard and you cannot
bear to be scrutinized as your father who called you
many things like plain-faced and ungainly but most of all
stocky leading to a starvation worthy
yes that father who because of his own mental defect
could not really stand long in the sun of parenthood
you’d have been better off loose and lopsided
with latch key children
to climb dog piss stained trees that barely held your weight
as they pushed through concrete with white pealing hands
as city green must
an effort make
we would chew on wild rhubarb, give ourselves stomach aches
eat dandelions and wild plums and share a precious few
hard-boiled sweets sticky in our pockets
some turned our mouths the color of tar
behind the corrugated iron where bombed out houses
stand like disfigured moments
collapsing in tombed neglect
we chased skinny wild cats and built fluttering camps
fortresses around destruction and sadness
something I learned to carry inside
when I sought to travel far from the city
its anonymous bricked faces
lending little grace
when I said goodbye to prefab family who
had their own lives
I was an appendage
needing to find my tribe
instead inheriting faulty DNA
tingeing my wake with sorrow
much as I tried
even on the warm days I wore leg warmers
pretended to be auditioning for FAME
when I ordered a hot chocolate and watched curling waves
change sequined shoreline in slow swell
though the world amassed around me
glorious and glittering like water touched by fire
as bleating sun dipped low against horizon
I could not find a way to feel unburdened
or climb aboard the impulse to slough skin
care nothing of what others would say
try hard as I could to become
laughter
that ephemeris
out of reach … thing
I didn’t know you felt that way
just as the golden-haired girl
with bleached French roots
didn’t know I felt for her
(or worse, knew, and felt
less than dismissal)
we are ebony dominoes
pass the plain papered parcel
our affections whittled and sharpen
by the smoky knowledge we can never
confess ourselves or pardon
to objects of secreted passion
so remote and out of touch
the girl who falls for
a woman who loves men
the heterosexual who has a crush
on a flamboyant boy
things get broken without throwing
why is emotion so deluded?
I will never tell her my secret
just as you will not reveal yours
in our actions and what we do not say
there is the truth
explaining the easy pain of social discourse
masking itself behind awkwardness
when she talks about the men she dates
I dare not say … choose me you fool
I could make you dance
in a way you have not yet discovered
some people hang out of reach
even for sailors
leaning into the confessional surge
I can empathize
I would never have said yes to unwanted
dinner guests
so why should she entertain a cliché?
girls who like girls fall for those who
cannot be reached across life boats
better I hold my green tongue
admire from afar
the provoking shape of her
the way she knows
people are watching
her sway to
unrequited love songs
She has not answered the door in many years
even when she had a door
even when there was a bell to ring
or wood to pound
she recalls once
feeling as if it were only herself
and the world
miming in pirouette masks back and forth
echoing on either side of a shard of glass
and she cut out that feeling with thin lines
blossoming under the bath
bubbling their way into unconsciousness
until lifted from reddening closure
she could not recognize afterward
thin on blood and holy water
her face in the hallway mirror
though she saw how badly the brass frame
needed polishing
perhaps if I smooth the glass
it will show me as I feel
not the scars and the fear
dancing across with pointed shoes
every year she remained patent
underneath the mossy dander
listening for the interupted caller
watching herself grow in reduction
a vile experiment in self exile
once a color, become ash in circles
for her tongue to lap
words left beneath earth
chanting dieties
and her child
was in a bottle set out to sea
playing mahogany violin
that could be captured by
circling satelites looking
much like stars
TheFeatheredSleep 