Defacto

And the big ball in the sky and the slit eye of Un Chien Andalou and the upturned chin wielding the knife and the rinsing sink pouring sacred wine said:

Why don’t you believe in yourself?

Others who are fair to middling to pithy served over weak tea (don’t you just hate tepid and the nudity of wearing clothes?).

The result of waiting in your head, as others stream out and strap their wings, the consequence of exile, invariably madness, the quiet kind most likely, sometimes the type they label histrionic

which is really a way of saying get it out, your woman-hood and your messy gore, leave us nothing of who you were, be gone feelings, welcome the sunshine state of not giving a good god damn

They believe. They over believe. They sit fat and grand with crown and chips and mushy peas and rosacea and secret leak-proof underwear

they preen and fetishize their dusty heads with nothing special inside the sagging tent. So why not you?

You who are marvelous, hideous, magnificent, repulsive, malodorous from not washing (did Simone Mareuil wash underneath her arm-pits before committing suicide by self-immolation, dousing herself with gas-lit-fire in a public square somewhere) 

when the rot and the unplanted bulb decays in damp corners and still produces no birth. You who are broken in the long arm of fracture and making an art of surviving by licked many times, thin string, waking to the caw of crows and their beady-eyed-scream. Why not you?

You who succumbed to the Piper and didn’t wake up, not once, somnambulist, you write behind your wafer-thin eye-lids, ink streaming like borrowed tears, nobody reads, water or divination, they simply don’t believe that crap anymore (I don’t even believe in YOU anymore)

We wouldn’t lie to you would we? (whisper whisper whisper) we tell the truth (oh surely, we do, we do) we venerate you on Monday and poach your blue eggs badly on Thursday. Liar liar liar! You let the cat out and she was run over by the hill you never walk UP.

That’s why. That’s why. That’s why.

Ooohhhh that’s why
It fits like a glove (big hands, black heart) not your glove, your glove is velvet and lost, your glove didn’t ever feel right when it was on

fits like a mussel in your mouth, squirming. A muscle unused (you don’t desire me, I have lived too long and too short, I don’t drink enough to blot it out, I am a thing of dust that isn’t touched or fucked or run-over) cold mussels in brussels (overcooked always worse than raw)

I tried to be frank (all cold thumbs, warm brain, brain on fire, leaving debris of a life badly lived, in little love bites around her neck, praying mantis wearing jewels)

you turned me down for the jingle jangle and fizz and pop (old hat, large gloves, ashen feet, holes in the middle of you like whiteout) one pierced ear, Queen of Hearts. Black nave of Diamonds burrowed deep in fecund rib.

I would if I could (believe) but your exquisite lie is a third eye in my fever dream, it pulses like Soho

It tells me not to swallow.

(Inspired by Un Chien Andalou, 1929,  Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí).

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New skin

I grew up knowing what cruelty was

it curled at the corners of day like

a well fed tiger.

Sometimes I did not think on it much

for I was preoccupied by my own

sense of emptiness and self pity or

just the song on the radio at that moment.

Years later I feel it

just beneath the surface like

new skin, flinty and unyielding, unfamiliar

and somehow horrifying

bleeding like a bruise

as yet unseen.

Maybe the brittle disappointment of

my ancestors, their sagas of

grief, shifting quiet loss, building

like ant hills awaiting flesh to

pierce with poison is my

only purpose.

There is shame in realizing

I am guilty of what I abhorred, this

softening violence, a compound fracture in

my psyche, alarming long held belief

I was kind

when there is no nice affability in

what I sometimes feel

only a wish to burn

deeply, leave charred and dead

those who would harm me or try

to fight, thinking me defenseless.

In that, I inherit the family tradition

of haters, long held like tarnished

shield, we have only endured by

cutting down those who would harm us

we are warriors without goodness

we fight sometimes because we like

the taste of spilt blood on our sorrowful lips

it is a necessary thing, I realize, that I am the last.

So when you tell me I am kind and good

do not use those platitudes so keenly

nor trust entirely, my motivation

I am every bit as wild as that feral

hungry, you bring in from the cold

who scratches you deeply, first

time you mistakenly take her purr

for pleasured trust

for I

know no such.

Pushing away

one day in the future they will come up with little pills and little bottles

to ‘cure’ this illness when it is not

even tangible

but something made of fibers

unseen to the eye

that set you off galloping

one day you sit quiet and rested in the sun

and just a little thing can start it all

the discrepancy of something said

the feeling of being on the outside looking in

a lie you cannot call someone out for

because they have more lies than you’ll ever

have room for

so you turn

without even thinking

second nature

and run in the opposite direction

shut down close off

never give them a second thought

it is the protection of the flower

who must open daily

and close when it is dark

she can be so sudden in her dismissal

it’s what she knows best of all

that feeling of nothing

that familiarity of naught

and if it happens they’ll eventually

call it an illness

but it’s no more sick than

stones who adapt to water

by becoming

heavier

to move

if I happen to

switch off and stop

I won’t be coming back

and it’s only the ones who

claim the deepest of my heart

whom I cannot stand to reject

who stay with me til the end

burrowed in my being

where few can ever find

entrance.

 

What was it about you?

let yourself right away in

demolished every rule, every tendency I had

an exception we bow asunder to

feathers gleaming against cold sunlight

 

The fear of others, becomes the dismissal

Long before now

there was a time I did not write

could not write, would not write

I danced, I moved, I climbed, I painted

with our heads together like arrows, friends and I

toy rabbits, ladybugs, a glow in the dark star

would entertain ourselves with crayons and pastels

plasticine and Lego, wooden blocks, old socks, foil and glue

I built fortresses in the woods near my grandmothers

house where she looked out occasionally, a glass in one hand

erected camps in trees fallen in the storms

or beneath protesting furniture that wasn’t meant to be moved

turning into a gypsy tent, bedding, blankets, string

anything the imagination could seize and shake out into magic

I did not write

even then I felt

words were just words

so glib and easy

words like; ‘have a good birthday’ from

people staying absent

words like; ‘you know I care’ from

people not caring

I couldn’t spell, so I didn’t reply

I didn’t enunciate, so I didn’t call them back

the phone would ring in the distance, mournfully

if it got too loud, I turned the music up

all this by the age of ten

I was free of words, they were not my language

a song and the movement it encouraged was

an elongation of expression and urges

and later, a dance club, even at 14, seemed safer

than three sheets of echoing, empty paper

rubbing shoulders with strangers who sought like me

to raise their arms through the strobe lights in search

of something missing

not seeking drugs or sex but the fury and beauty

of dancing away their sadness

I didn’t know it then

acting upon instinct

the instinct to run, when you cry

dance when you want to jump

push away those who clamor for attention

stop feeling the pain you do, every single day

whilst some of my friends who were depressed

listened to The Cure and other sorrowful LPs

I scorned anything sad and

stepped into the light of disco, rock, electronica

in time I found there were other things you could do

to turn off the hurt

and I did them ALL, every damn one

…

There is an honesty to admitting to yourself

I don’t know what’s been happening, but I’m in pain

everything I should rely upon has gone or never been

I am alone and I am scared, I haven’t yet grown up

nobody will help me so I have to help myself but

I don’t know how

…

I learned it felt good to lie in bed with someone

even if they were nothing more than warmth and key strokes

I learned it felt good to give rather than receive

because you protected those parts of you, rarely revealed or wanted

I learned drugs were not a menace but a street form

of antidepressant for kids who couldn’t tell their hurt

didn’t know where to begin or how to heal the

emptiness and anger growing in their bones

I learned if you are crushed badly enough, time and again

you grow a skin of fur and you become a feral creature

not human anymore

but living for the night, pulse of music playing

brief flicker of excitement, when you forget being yourself and all that comes with that

the disappointment, the heartache, the rejection

you’re just a shivering wretch, gaining admittance into forbidden light

you’re just a body that can move and shake and vibrate

beneath the waves as they engulf the roar and scream

…

every morning I swam 25 laps

every night I ran in heels for the bus

every stroke of midnight I transformed into anyone but myself

it felt good, it felt more real than trying to

inherit the mantle of despair and unwanted closing walls

I climbed out and didn’t go back

I never wrote down a word

not even when I received

another letter stating things that were never real

words were lies, words were lies

I’ve always been drawn to truth

…

Somewhere in those years, something changed

maybe you get lazy, maybe you forget your way

or the pain becomes something you think is who you are

or the hurt is a coat you wear without knowing you do

I stopped swimming in the mornings

I quit dancing in the evenings

in my blood lay a virus of dormancy and despair

it grew and grew like a wild flower teasing out of concrete

until I’d forgotten my way through the elaborate maze

I was just another lab rat, waiting to live their life, turn to ash and regret

…

Now the irony is, I’m writing all the time

I write how I feel, I write how you feel, I write out

the hollow cries kicking from inside out

but words are fickle, they are not your friend

words convey what you mean, and equally they contradict

words don’t get things done

words are on pages, often unread

…

If it would work I’d burn my thoughts

watch them light up the night on the 5th of November

put on my running shoes

go to you

take you by the shoulders and shake

all my words out of your head

run with you down the highway

find the place we can be in my mind

get on the dance floor, pull you with me

try another communication

another way of getting through

anything but the languages that leave us empty

mistrustful, doubtful, not waiting for more

we’ve both been there before

at the end of a letter

shaking our heads

for all that was done, versus said

is often quite the opposite

you tell me, if I knew you, I would not like

the person I came to know

but you are wrong, so very wrong

it is in the imperfect there is wonder

I’m used to people backing off, going cold, erecting walls

it’s what I experienced every day

the fear of others, becomes the dismissal

there is another way

let me show you

but not like this

let me show you

in between words

with every gesture of my soul

give me this

The outsider

she wasn’t like them, so they didn’t like her

to her face they smiled and said ‘nice things’

which she knew were lies

behind her back they laughed

and made dirty-lezzie jokes

because it made them uncomfortable

to think about what they thought she did

it made them feel a bit disgusted

like when you stand too close

…

she looked like them in superficial ways

wore at times, nicer dresses and had longer hair

the fact that she liked girls wasn’t in their

comfort zone

when it was summer time they had

BBQ’s and invited all the neighborhood kids

wondering if she would be safe around minors or

would do something inappropriate

when they started a mommy running club

she wasn’t invited because she was neither

a mommy or someone they wanted to

bare their secrets with

what would she understand of husbands?

maybe their husbands liked her

because she was unavailable

when it was Halloween they made candy and

knocked on all the doors but hers

because the other mothers said best to avoid

what they did not care to know

…

that’s why she lived a harder life than she had to

for there is almost nothing worse than pretend friendliness

leaving you more alone than if they said what they thought

and spat in your face

if you think that’s an exaggeration or she feels

sorry for herself

think on the tiny percent of the world

where being gay is safe or legal

and the huge part of the world where it is forbidden or punished

think on how many lament at

the shift in culture toward acceptance

calling it a ruination of our society with all

those damn fags

compare it to those who truly feel inclusive

how every day isn’t the same

when you have to contend with not fitting in

making everyone else feel uncomfortable

just by existing

nor can you talk about what matters to you

just in-case visual images abound and people

begin to change the subject

…

if it were a choice … a lifestyle … few would make it

yet she exists

wishing sometimes the phone would ring

another girl like her would say

I know how you feel

would you like to go for a walk?

she is a gay princess in a tower

and her princess

is somewhere in the world perhaps

thinking the same thoughts

two outsiders

unable to find each other

When

You used to cover your mouth and blush

At my ability to be frank and scathingly honest

It was not a quality and you were not an admirer

Yours was the shamefacedness I didn’t feel

Whilst you, were a well of loneliness

A secret not to be discovered.

When did I become

A crass innuendo girl?

The kind I’d be ashamed of

Was it the first time you turned away?

Or removed my seeking hand?

Or the fiftieth?

The best of tales

I fell hard, such is the consequence of a colorful lure

Flickering in shallow water lit by hope

the world was messy, like a thirsty rag soaked with blood

still not gaining sustainence

sickness an albatross, urging me to frail edge

I had yet to learn that words can possess no value

be simply pretty things, we are misled by like Xmas baubles, turned over to reflect pattern

how can a writer realize, words can be emptier than a hollow tree?

people who write them, do so with convincing candor all enveloping like hard sales pitch

it’s impossible to believe they’re just words, without meaning, or worse, deliberate opposite

of truth, that sparten ideal, sucking ice for nourishment

when the wet ass hour comes, and it always comes

those who stay, are not those who wrote long entreaty

not the flatterers, cake-bakers, trumpet players

they are usually the last you’d believe, quiet, unobtrusive leaves coloring your floor

when your loud friends have quit you, it is they who step up and inquire

are you okay? Do you need help?

I learned this directly, as if fed by a poisoned spoon 

the ache of losing louder voices and reward of quiet ones, whom you didn’t believe cared

because you listened for the caucophany and wordsmiths who

know their trade as story tellers, so very, well

and I, who also wrote stories, fell hook, line and sinker

for the best of tales

the one where it’s all about them, and if you fall short you’re out

why it took so long to see, the value of things as they stand

plain in the rain, but firm of foot

is down to the fanciful nature I had

before damp veil was torn off and sickness

cast her long net and kept you underwater without purchase

in that drowning you learned, the only lesson worthy of a mortal

it will not be those who come, bearing gifts, cherry lipped

it will not be those who say; you are wonderful, adorable

it will be the person who seems aloof and speaks volumes

because sometimes a story teller is just that

a teller of stories without depth, milking our need 

they do not stay when you reach out, just the length of the tale

long or short, it always comes to an end and then

they go on to the next book and you are left

dangling with pretty words, tied in useless bouquet

now I don’t know what to call myself

“recovering” of some sort of fairytale lure

and in that recovery I find the simple joy 

of people without tall stories
 

This is to thank so much all those magical folk I did not know would step up and to acknowledge those who spoke loudest and did the least by way of mercy. Each to your own I learned and I grew.

 

Constancy

Oft maligned

Great virtues found

In the small

Not opening a wallet

Nor showy endeavor

But quiet, steadying

Loyalty

Found like a blue nest

In a grey forest

Constancy

Is a clear bell

Ringing when others have only

Tooted their own horn

She waits

After the herd have had their say

And empty promises lift their helium mouths

To the great void

She stays

When it would be easier to flee

Safer to avoid

Quicker to cut off

And I was your constant

That is why you loved me so much

Though you didn’t recognize the steps

We both took

When it came time

For my turn

You bared your teeth

And took a portion of me

Breaking trust like

Water can never be held

In cupped hands

You slipped

Grateful for escape

The absence of light

There is a Devil in my belly

She calls me on a shiny red telephone

Wrapping the cord around my throat

Exanguinating hope

An angel resides in my heart

Her lot is heavy but she refuses to be submerged

Even as we all spy bruised storm, gathering momentum

Life’s hungry dust bowl howls across my bare feet, thirsty for saving

And you 

You write me in posie

And despite the ocean separating us

I feel you clasp me tighter

When I ache, you assuage

When you cry, I collect your tears

To swell the ocean and bring my craft

Over emboldened water

Whenever sickness or sheer twist of living knocks us down

When I fall, you stand 

When you falter, I am balance

We’d have made good slapstick act

We capture each the missing half, with fullness

It is the turn of our dial

Sometimes set on hot, sometimes cool

Arcing time and years like birds on wire

Sleep and yet, do not lose

Their position

You are my compass

It is no longer possible to imagine

Longing, without you

You are my appetite

The favored toast

As we shakily celebrate survival

While day closes her arms and slowly

From Wardour Street we pick our way

In search of open places, like ourselves

Braving against

The absence of light

Purple

Where did you learn

Your need to pull 

Away?

Burying truth behind

A visage of clay

And where did you start

Believing distance was safe?

Or ice over warm, each time you’d take?

I wished I met you

Before

You learned in reverse

Drove with eyes closed

Radio tuned to conflict and silence

If I had the power

I’d rewind you

Like a China doll

Breakable and yet

How hard your ceramic stare

You penetrate any pretense

Even as you hold your own secrets

Tighter than a rubber band

Turning pinky swear

Purple