Pieces from high school & junior high
Pieces from high school & junior high
|Hunted|
He kisses me like a carnivore,
Holds me in a death grip,
Strokes me hard so I can’t get up.
"If the world were perfect," he says
"I’d keep you in my closet, lock you in a box."
He pulls me close in earnest like a selfish toddler,
Straps me to his chest with hungry arms.
He thinks me greedy for wanting to own me,
Thinks me cruel for wanting to stay a separate entity from him,
Hates me for wanting a lesser leash.
"You’re so beautiful when you’re mine."
His eyes wander over me dreamily.
He loves the way I look when wrapped up in his arms,
Loves the way I taste when my taste is mixed with his,
Loves the way I move as long as it’s back to him,
Loves the way I laugh (at his jokes).
He smiles at my timidness condescendingly.
He thinks I must fear the extent of the love I feel for him.
It never occurs to him that I shiver with the fear of absolutely crushing him.
|Birth|
Spread-eagled, breathing heavy, IV wrists grasping,
heaving, gasping, You were
torn in two,
into two: Me and You.
Screaming red, clutching to
get a hold, get control, fighting
to breathe.
You and Me.
"Baby girl born 13:13 in the afternoon..."
-Is that unlucky? You thought,
years before I was torn from you,
left you bleeding,
empty-armed with afterbirth-
the space where your hard-earned child had been
-Is that unlucky?
You and Me, you
were deprived of my childhood, counting two birthdays a year,
I was deprived of that childhood,
You and Me.
I’ve got your eyes, your hair, your
Smile – stretching across my face.
I see you in the mirror, making faces.
You and Me.,
Struggling to keep afloat, keep from falling
... hard.
13:13 in the afternoon - We were exhausted.
You and Me.
Born in the same place.
Did I leave marks on your body?
Climbing stretch marks over your hips, lower torso,
You and Me.
Me, I was left scarred.
Were You?
|Reflection|
I almost choked
On the sight of my own body,
dangling in front of the mirror
lynched and lifeless.
I almost choked
On the sound of my own voice,
And strangled it, a deranged mother
striking out jealous revenge.
White fire, hot, trembling,
burning rubber beneath my skin
Quiet Rage
Who taught me to hate me so much?
I let a finger slide against cold mirror,
leaving a smudged streak down the center
of my reflection
And held my tongue.
|Vacation|
New Age facilitator in long skirts and Zodiac incense Yanni
"Call me Karma"
Open-toed sandals smiling vacuously out at the assembled self-help group.
We were paired off in couples.
My partner –Hal – A very short man with a thinning hairline and
Nervous glancing at his watch smiling randomly jamming hands in his pockets, we
stared at each other awkwardly and began the exercise.
"I’m sorry you menstruate."
The male members chanted monotonously, making good eye contact with their female partners.
"Sorry you men-straight."
Said Hal, on the verge of tears, we’d made a breakthrough already.
Karma was so proud.
"You two are on the path to understanding!"
She cooed, making him listen to my womb and babble like an infant,
arms flailing and ruddy face blubbering into the skirt I bought for Josh’s Bar Mitzvah a year ago.
Should I scream? Should I run?
"These people are weird so much positive energy it’s gone to their heads
with their orange auras, listening to the power of crystals and bestowing their fate to a deck of cards."
I wanted to send them back to their planet of over-priced Native American jewelry
and synthesized whale song albums
So that I could go home
And breathe.
"You give me life, you sustain me."
Hal’s voice whined like a late night mosquito in my ear,
Clutching at the fold of my skirt, tears ricocheting off my boots.
I watched a giant vein in his forehead pulse and
standing above, counted seven fillings in between his shrieking fits, when his tiny mouth would
expand to emit high-pitched and gurgling noises, smattering mouth moisture all about my skirt and the area rug below us.
"You embody the earth mother,"
Karma said, encouraging me to flap my arms and
yodel in falsetto in order to "Welcome in the
wind and the rain" with my feminine power.
Forty-five minutes more of surreal voices
wafting through one ear and floating out the other
Found me curled up in my car outside 7-11,
nursing a pint of whiskey
-and to think-
I had wanted a vacation.
|From the grave|
No lips, no
Way to reach out and
Kiss
Another person’s ego with my mind.
No mind, no
Way to stop
and
calculate-formulate-organize
stimuli...
No hands, no
Way to break through the
intellectual barrier with the
sensation of
warm,
familiar flesh,
tingling with nerves.
No eyes, no
To take it all in, to
spy, envision, imagine...
It’s cold down here with no soul, no
valve-pumping noisy costume...
I’m bored as hell.
I miss you.
Love me.
|Dinner Party|
I felt arachnid,
lurking in the shadows,
sneaking glimpses at your face in the light
You soaked it up -
a moth, twittering late night jitters ‘round a lamp post
Social.
Involved.
Alive.
I felt so cold, so calculating.
Hungry there,
waiting where light
shied away,
waiting for you to turn
unaware.
Entangled.
Smothered.
Lifeless.
Waiting
to suck you dry
and go home.
|Solitude|
Why I can’t be alone... My father never fell in love. My father will probably never fall in love. Some people fall in Love like slipping An only child hearing only myself think at night, I don’t have any hope that I’ll ever have
|Alabama: A series poem|
I. The Alley. II. Her Bedroom. III. Hotel Bathroom. IV. Our Bed. |Haiku series: Hometown|
My grandparents made love under the Christmas tree before my Dad was born.
They never loved each other.
Nana’s bitterness was born when her young love died and she let herself get Old,
Married to a self-loathing alcoholic, a brilliant gentleman who made her feel like Hollywood –
So precious and elite.
She had died years before they were joined, combining his empty seeds with hers to
produce a family of stifled, angry genius-children
Afraid to feel,
to Feel,
To feel anything but Shame.
And
Somewhere under stained blankets, wound up like a Frustrated Rag,
twisted around nervous knuckles,
My father couldn’t sleep.
Wide-eyed, avoiding the snakes under his bed that would never go away, hiding
Under the coffee table, in hollowed-out trees to
Hear about himself inciting love or rage or any passion
Through another’s voice.
He went deaf in one ear
And he didn’t hear anything.
Raised by a generation of dead people, blackened on the inside.
Bleeding, unaware of the cancer in every 1950’s casual cigarette,
Barbecuing their innards, leaving themselves charred, reptilian.
They didn’t know
They couldn’t know they were numb.
My grandparents were dying, dragging their perfect, angry –
Perfectly Angry Children with them:
Strangling them with Mathematics,
choking them with Literature, Languages, Science,
Muffling their screams, any indication that these were real
Feeling Creatures.
Down their throats, cramming it all like camphor oil...
And the children learned to pretend
that the rank taste was sweet
because they didn’t know how to say it was bitter and that it prevented them from coughing up
what was really inside...
Even with every fancy word handed down on a Silver Platter, they
Didn’t know how to say Real. Feel. Me. I. Emotion...
Prodigal Angry Children grew up, excelling in everything but knowing how to Live.
Ashamed of himself, his parents – I think it’s been a chore to
dare to even look back: at them, or inside.
Intellectually, he knows it’s his duty—to comprehend feeling.
And he’s trying,
And failing.
Maybe his standards are too high. Maybe he never attracts the
Right People..
On a wet floor,
Into a vacuum.
For Some People it’s impossible to clear the stars out of their eyes
And blink
To See.
Anyone else in my head talking to me, anyone else’s arms -but my own-
To always be at my side, around my body.
I would learn to detest anyone so loyal, would learn to despise them,
Push them away before they learned to hold me as well as I can.
I can’t sleep at night because the
Silence is Deafening.
So loud.
So lonely.
I try to drown it out with thoughts, memories, with voices,
Crushing my pillow over my head
... To keep from being alone.
Airy children, floating in the early morning fog..... suspended.
I have known Angels.
Indecisive, paranoia-ridden cherubs.... antsy for a cigarette.
I have known Angels.
Wings like heavy chains,
Sterling post halos jutting out of their heads,
Petal feet crushed into combat boots.
I have seen Angels
Scuttling home before dawn,
Scattered, discovered insects.
Black tendrils on white cream.
Cotton clothes slide off like satin,
A reptile shimmying out of its skin.
She dances in front of her mirror,
Hair orbiting about her face as if she was willed by gravity to
shine.
I must not breathe as I
Watch her skin take over
Through the hole
In the door.
Licks my scrapes, stinging.
Water, heavy in my hair pulls me back
Bath Demons outstretching tender arms,
Pulling me in..... deep.
Deep.
Where sounds stifle and a
Scream becomes a hum.
Deep.
Where I am shrinked and stretched,
A thinning canvas over a frame.
Where I can slip through the sounds, the stress, the sore;
Slip through the impending, depending-demanding, slip through....
And down the drain.
Deep.
Lulled sweetly to sleep.
Through your flesh I reach some peace,
Some assurance that tomorrow will rise with me
And not against me.
That the riches of my dreams will remain in my grasp when I
awake.
Eating a brownie,
In complete Zen Solitude,
At one with lunch bench.
Small cat lurking in
Nearby abandoned field,
Preying on Big Macs.
Beach bits in my hair
My clothes, shoes, bag - everything.
Sand in the nachos.
Curled up heap of clothes
Silent, unmoving, discard...
Snores atop bus bench.
Smoke, sweat and urine...
Who suggested we meet here?
I'm going to class.
Flies buzz around a
Rotting squirrel's cadaver
Baking in the sun.
Life Is Too Damn Short.