Gormless

In the churning pit of my stomach are the glowing hot embers of the end of my affairs.
Tidying up the last minute details.
Letting my son brush my hair until it’s smooth again, though my spirit has been twisted into unmanageable, hateful, impossible knots.
No one is patient enough to follow the string to its rightful length.
I write farewell letters and then realize there’s no one left to deliver them to their rightful secret hearts.
So all my lovers will have to come and find me here.
Lost among the print.
I’ve left each of you holding nothing.
But don’t fret, my hands are empty too.
In fact,
No one made out with anything but guilt.
So it was a proper indiscretion.
You flayed me to the bone with all your thirty nine lashings.
Each one left me positively useless.
I made simpering mewling noises.
I took back the only thing I had
Which was all of me.
I clutched my pill bottle.
They have given me so many prescriptions now
That I could quiet my own shouting heart.
I could relax it until it quivered and slept, blood flow static in my blue veins.
You used to trace them
Along my breasts, down the inside of the arm
In the crook of the elbow
Your fingers lingering
Inside of me
Digging out your treasures
And taking your unfair
Share
You are heartless somehow
Though I didn’t notice at the time
Or pay Attention to the trembling
In my hands
As I pretended to get married
And every possibility was only propelling me forward along a path to you
I guess it’s only fair
To be counting out a dose
Of fatal sleepy poison
That will whip right through my body
Until my brain stops looping
And I finally drift away
Where no pain waits for sinners
For hell is on the Earth
And all the rest is nonsense.

When I come to I find myself standing in the kitchen.
My hands are busy wiping, straightening, organizing. My mind is numb.
I am staring straight ahead perhaps gazing apathetically at a pile of dust or papers or thoughts that have crept in to wound me again.
I am not even sure what has called me out of this stupor.
Maybe it was one of the thoughts, like a shout through a thick glass door.
It is gone now.
I looked up too late to see it beckoning.
I took so long I didn’t even see the torn seams of its famous
blue
raincoat
whipping around the corner.
No matter.
For is there any matter anymore?
I can’t remember why I started.
I don’t know where I am headed.
It was like this in that old house that sold for a song
on the banks of plum broke in a two bit town you needed three bits to make it
matter.
Who gives a rat’s ass?
Who?
Not me anymore.
Surrendering to the doldrums long locked away by fantasy.
For you they passed the time.
I think for me they stemmed the tide
Of the dark wave of sadness
That has always threatened to take me down.
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
To the depths.
sinking
Low
Low
In a fog
Of my own fashioning
But don’t worry
It doesn’t
Matter

Left bank I’m waiting for someone
Someone to be my friend
Outside traffic’s running slowly
I hear it from my window

Without you I’m getting lost
Without you there’s no release
I can’t hold the sun
I can’t hold the sun

It’s raining
Love is not around me
How can it get so cold

Homesick
This is how I feel now
This is how you left me

Without you I’m getting lost
Without you there’s no release
I can’t hold the sun
I can’t hold the sun
Without you I’m getting lost
Without you there’s no release
I can’t hold the sun
I can’t hold the sun

Let me breathe for you.
Let me know you too.
Let me take the pain from you.
Oh…

And let me see you through your eyes
I will be at your side.
I’ll surround you
And protect you.

Let me glow with you
And I will cut all the blues
To decorate your room.
Oh…

Let us consciously decide
That we will be each others guides
To navigate the room.
Oh…

Ooh…
Aah…
Ooh…
Aah…

Let me breathe for you.

Your silence is an ocean
That I bob helplessly in
Adrift among the flotsam
Who nibble at my toes
I hold no hope of rescue
So I close my eyes and let go
If the lonely moan of a mayday
Startles me conscious
I’ll give you a bleary eyed weary wave
And begin to sink
Into the arms
Of Davy Jones

What do I do with this raging beast of anger that stands guard in the hollow of my chest?
When I think of how I spoke to you my fears of losing my footing forever.
You pulled the rug.
I want to forgive you and not hold this furious devil’s hand but you’ve left me stranded in an ocean of worry and longing and despair.
I want to bite at you and spit and shout and scream.
You did this. I tried to talk to you and you did this. You fulfilled all of your own nightmares.
When you find out I wonder what you’ll do?
In a year or two I know I won’t care anymore.
If you ever express despair to me again about being alone I will walk away and never look back at you.
If you wanted to harden my heart, you’ve done well.
I made love to our dreams one after the other in a hazy spaced out midnight.
Each one came inside of me and I saw the glowing effervescent stars all lined up in a formation announcing my own coming.
The coming of a new soul on the wings of a self made dawn.
I dreamed of my daughter again, tall and gangly, walking beside me in the Sun and her hair had begun to darken.
She was my future. I will never tell her about you. I will hold it locked away for the rest of my time. I will never share it with anyone again because I want the memory to fade and become only a lost part of myself.
Instead I will share her present and teach her to think of only this moment. The one precious chance to be whole and never so ashamed that she kills her own self with her inner machinations.
How can I forgive you for all these long years of slavery?
When all that seems to make you happy is your own deranged freedom.
Take it then.
May you never be so free as you are now. Made perfect by your own chemical process.
I am throwing the burden of you down into the dust of the road.
I have packed you up and thrown you away.
But you carry nothing within you that belongs to me anymore.
I carry the lightened load of the sages.
You are trapped in a guilty loop of self assured destruction.
My heart’s soul comes in the night and patches me up again while I sleep real deep unperturbed sleep.
He gives me dreams of my daughter.
He walks barefooted in the grass while I soak up the knowledge trapped in gamma rays.
He pours water over my head and massages me in a baptism of belief.
He teaches me Agape.
I will never walk alone.
One day I will see God walking. And I will cry out because I already knew him.
I’ve ridden through the streets on the back of a burro crying out “where’s my donkey?”
We plod on.
You were here only for a moment.
The urgency of you was intoxicating.
The vacuum of you is all consuming.
Like the fire of self immolation.
Be gone.
But never ask to share my dreams again.
They are mine alone now.
And the beast who protects them from you, will bar your entrance at every crevice. His single burning eye unleashing the fire of his possession.
You will be reduced to cinders.
He loved you once.
But in time he became an empty thing.
And now he sees only the light at the end of time.
He will get me there.
He promised.
And together we will gently open the gate and let all of time and space pour in and be united again.
In a year or two
I’ll take care of you.

Am I one of your nudes?

Dickens, did you dream me up?

Am I one of your neurotic caricatures of a woman?

Mozart, did you dream me up?

Am I one of your recitatives?

Nietzsche, did you dream me up?

Am I one of your empty things?

Yes. I am your nude.

Yes. I am your neurotic caricature of a woman.

Yes. I am your recitative.

Yes. I am your empty things.

It is my turn to dream you up.

Picasso, you are one of my artists.

Dickens, you are one of my writers.

Mozart, you are one of my composers.

Nietzsche, you are one of my philosophers. 

Now paint my portrait.

Write my novel.

Compose my opera.

And tell me why.

It’s only fair. 

I’m as helpless as a kitten 
up a tree
 i make tiny mewling calls

if i jump               down to the 

ground 
 i will crack and splatter a little mass
of fur and bone and             blood
so i cling to this branch

my claws deeply embedded

i draw        the tree’s        sap from its source
i don’t know how i got here          

i look                   back along the

branch and try to follow its path

back to solid ground
even though above          the hollow

earth you stand          below like the harbinger

of fate
time shifts and the day passes into night
i watch the stars blink         their little pinpricks
through the fabric
of the sky

trying to decide how to
proceed

and music like the echoing shouts
   and carryings on

in a the high school pool

sounds off its                     ruckus presence

              either i will wait to be

rescued by the fireman
or risk falling                 on my feet

there are voices whispering and its a surprise

          because

i watch their mouths move!

not MINE

anyway
   they are speaking to me about control

one moment clear
next moment               unclear

if you’re not sure

      then you should cross

don’t hesitate, because then, you’ll just have to wait
       and wait

i wish i knew what to do
 there was no            big cat who knew

to tell me how to

get down from here

so i wait                   for the fireman
       and feel untrue
to who
I know is            you

Three
And
Three
And
Three
How symmetrical we like to be
And that which is nine from biblical seven and binary two
Or satanical six and trinity divine
We’ve come right down the line
We planted a seed in the center of the
Marriage bed
And waited for it to bloom
But it took so long that we fell
Into a deep dreamy slumber
And woke up
I the shade of our bodhi tree
Growing now
From the pure love’s blessing
Memories of happy smiling laughing upon the banks of endless ache
Or was it beautiful streams of
Consciousness
Maybe
Maybe
Is the word you give when you mean
Perhaps not
This was not the poem I set out to write
But it is the poem given to me
The word made flesh
The purest love of which we speak as we sit in traffic on the good GW
Waiting
Waiting
Love
Hating the thought of what it really means
To say goodby to all our pretty dreams
My love I cry out
This shout
This bottom lipped
Baby pout
Don’t forget
About me
Yet
I’ll have my own
And the night when all our
Nine
Collide
We’ll be
Coming out
Alright
On
His
Flip side

i can’t come home

my homelessness belongs 

to you

to music

there is a tiny tendril of a violin

coming up like a newborn blade

of 

grass

love me all the time and never leave me

please come on back to me you’re lonely as can be

you sing

that is what began the axe

fall

a swift

thwack

as the blade severed

you

that’s when it hurt me 

please remember

fragmented

without you

see

just

me

you

need

i

you

a jangly guitar

spangles 

it’s red way to the leathery handed strumming

of the bitter tones

of 

the dress

rehearsal rag

it’s come to this

long

way

down

a smashup of experiences from a long cast of characters 

weaving in like the gnarled family tree of a 

generation of 

players

but you can’t write the same words again

that will only become a 

refrain

and will have strayed from the Word’s

original 

intent

the Hollow earth

is filled again

filled

to overflowing

a forceful spewing of the words of many minds

come 

one minded

as L. Cohen encourages you

to join

the Rosicrucians

this could have swept you up once

and carried you 

a 

long

way

down

but now you have passed through so many fires

seven

of them

and you’re a bit frayed around your edges

but 

that was just the

dress

rehearsal

rag

I passed over the ghost of a house
When I walked by I think I felt the memory
Rippling under my feet
It’s frightening to face a new year alone
No one is home and the phone keeps on ringing
You can fix it so that you can see who’s calling
But you can never be sure that the person who’s calling is the person who will answer
There are things you can be sure of
But they slip through your fingers like sand
Ground glass splinters me along each vein throughout my chest my heart my being
I even thought to take another drink for you
Even though we have stopped talking
Should I bind you now
Or will you convince me otherwise
Should I bring you here to ring in the next year of longing
Or should I let you pass unnoticed
It’s not fair
No one should have to face this indecision this paralysis
No one should be forced to view their own face In a mirror
the face of their future in the past
I think we were all embarrassed when we first got here
But now we all know each other too well
And the light has gone out
And we’ve come to rest right here on the flypaper wall
Call us home again
We might come running
We are desperate people
And these are the worst of times