my darling, let's go back now,
to when we weren't a fixed point in time.
and nothing would change and we'll still be apart
but i'd like to live us again.
i'd like to remember our love in reverse
because i know exactly how it will end.
i'd like to start with the pain and the sorrow
distance shrinking and stoic conversation thawing
we're getting younger and there's less history to share
i know you less today than i did the one before.
we're old before we're new and we're heading for our pinnacle
we're runming back and to catch the apex of our best.
i want the sourness to fall away
i want to unlearn all of you that stopped loving me.
i don't want to know you found a prettier girl
i don't want you to stop contacting me so suddenly.
and as we move back through the years
and the coarse ropes of comfort fall away
we'll regain the grace that made us good at the start,
we'll find our way back to that place.
soon i'll reach the day we first met
and you'll be that bright excitement i first caught.
then the memory will surpass our temporal stretch
and you'll be a stranger with no space in my heart.
May 7, 2024
May 7, 2024 at 3:40 PM UTC
i'm eighty pounds down and my skin is loose. shales of empty casing hanging from my pelvis, upper arms.
what will i do with it now?
it is still excess, still too much, still my same old problem.
hangs, folorn, from my frame, not sure how to be.
that summer i shop in stores that have never been mine to walk in to.
it is entering a portal to a world i've only ever circumnavigated,
skimming round flesh-toned mannequins posed for the beach, the city.
wondering if pretty prints and flattering cuts can exist beyond a size 8.
bikinis on the rail threaten the illusion that i am slim and toned.
their gaping homages to the idea that showing a little,
just a little
flesh, is the sexiest way a woman can exist, bring about a conundrum.
they will see.
they will see that i am still not it.
May 6, 2024
May 6, 2024 at 2:42 PM UTC
i gave my confession down at the beach. tide out and salted heart.
i sold it to a man in neon boardshorts
with a surfboard clamped under his armpit.
chalk pillars and a congregation of seagulls
fighting. conversational scraps.
an isthmus that leads in to the water
before it backs down.
we go.
i spilled it all, my guts, my broken guts.
vomited them up on the pebble cast.
there is something about the gait of the sun as
is it turning away from our sky-
soft and low-
that brings it out of me.
May 5, 2024
May 5, 2024 at 12:36 PM UTC
anne sexton wrote love letters to my soul
long before i was conceived.
i think she knew the ways, all the ways, in which i'd suffer, before i did.
because it's a tale as old as time; you profit off my soft heart
and i consider death, always, as the solution.
my mother suffered in the same way,
as did hers, as did hers,
and hers, and the anger has nowhere to go but in to our marrow
to exist long aftet we don't.
we birth it in new girls, beautiful new girls who are worth more than the currency
of how they can serve others.
i wanted to be different, i really did, anne.
the nuance of your long nights and painful days was not lost on me.
painted a temple in the language of supressed women
for me to see-
split at the ventricle to become the mother, the daughter, the *** goddess, the poor browbeaten housewife.
and all i do is crane my neck and admire it all, eave to eave.
May 5, 2024
May 5, 2024 at 3:47 AM UTC
there is a gold lighter on the kitchen counter.
it doesn't mean anything
but it still burns with the heat of the last time it
was alive.
i pocket it. i will try it later, when i am alone,
and watch it's smoke curl in to the crevices of the endless sky.
outside there is a dais and my family are spread across it like a luxurious french tapestry.
it is fraying, though.
or maybe it always was.
i am colder than i was here, last year.
every spring we gather to remind each oher
that we should see each oher more, shouldn't we?
i am planted in this polite, vacuous soil of words.
a bulb submerged, fat and waiting in the earth.
i am waiting to grow. to turn my face up, and away.
last year there were more of us, i'm sure;
but i can't recall the names
faces
of those that aren't here.
we are measuring our decline like an hourglass-
with each new year we are one less, one less.
May 4, 2024
May 4, 2024 at 5:39 PM UTC
salt in the wounds.
slab laid out on stainless steel
deathbed-
it is a bed after all,
a bed is for sleep and comfort dreams
but more often than not
i thrash in to it
trying to break the ribs of my
nightmares.
Jul 16, 2020
Jul 16, 2020 at 8:41 PM UTC
split in taste-
downstairs there is colour.
passion
tribal motifs and sun-washed orange.
upstairs? a more muted affair-
stocky floral borders carve peach walls
old furniture on the verge of mould sits-
a temporal mistake.
split in mood-
cheer and optimism tends to rise
bubble balloons up and up.
but there it is
me
a restless cloud covering the landing
with the threat of teary rain.
i overhang the balcony
an exhausted sunset flagging down
the night
heavy dark. sink in on itself
absence, absence.
what is downstairs doesn't venture up
into such an airless atmosphere.
Jul 16, 2020
Jul 16, 2020 at 9:27 AM UTC
somehow the world looks down on me.
standing central inside a garrison
of skyscraper's shadows
a concrete world s
liding down it's own walls-
until-
you are here- i am here
or so i'm told.
sometime ago i was here with you.
we bought a postcard and i dated it for posterity
amongst
buildings that climbed, clock faces that chimed
breathy airy floors split into windows outside-
doorways replete with someone to greet
own world in it's centre turned pinkish by heat
as the rest unfurled around us
and all we could do is look up.
i am here, i am here
looking up.
somehow this whole world looks down on me.
poor lonely soul wondering restless and old
i am here, i am here
so i'm told.
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 9:26 AM UTC
something fit. something aligned under the breastbone
ribs pattered out and gave space for breath
that didn't taste of anything.
something clicked. tortured poet keeping a journal
walks the south route instead
and sees the spiritual spin on life through the stained glass windows
of a shack church in need of extensive renovation.
she is inspired and her need bottoms out for the day--
praise is good.
good.
great.
don't bother me when i'm sharpening my pencils.
i'm preparing for divine intervention
and the clarity i know i'm owed
something hit. my words, hey, i'm black and blue
and they? they're cut through and through
with flecks of tracts lent from life and beyond.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 5:44 PM UTC
reading my old poetry is like sampling
blood's flavour on the tongue
the uncomfortable metallic taste
of something in the wrong place
at the wrong time
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 8:22 AM UTC