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  Dec 2014 Aubrey
Rose L
I want a room with you.
I want a house with a garden and paintings on eggshell walls
and to silence ourselves with birds on the lawn and a washing machine carrying its tempo
All I want is wildflowers in terracotta and linen all for us
sun drifting over carpets in the late afternoon and heavy cream curtains
I want your freshly washed hair and the pile of books you haven't read yet
cold drinks and heartbeats, trees that whisper in the wind and a peach mattress for the stars to watch us.
i love him so much. i love him so much
  Dec 2014 Aubrey
Rose L
I could never work out why my cheeks went so greedily red when you showed your teeth.
Heather says it's because I get nervous too easily - anxiety, she said
I think it's the opposite
your white lies have a familiar milky hue
And I like contrast.
******* and your perfect teeth
Aubrey Dec 2014
shifting those tectonic plates
throwing that weight
as though it's common place
to cause earthquakes...
been called a tornado
a horn supported halo
not completely without faith
though
if we're being honest
got the temper of a hornet
and the bear in the forest
don't **** with mine
if anything really is "had" here, it's time
riding that fine line between reason and rhyme
finding pleasure in the prose
that's sniffling from the nose
of the one that, suppose,
may be destined
(more like impressioned)
to be tumbling in questions
from insipid
inhibition
emerges clear decision
pointed vision
there is space beyond this place
of missed revision
Aubrey Nov 2014
I'm not sure how old he is, my step-step-granddad, but that's the advice he gives that fixes itself on my psyche.
Focus.
The act is the goal.
It's the thought of having been and becoming whole.
Focus.
Each event is like a pebble in a landslide.
I take it in stride.
Focus.
I am everywhere and there is no center, no home base, no dock on this river. I'm caught in current. Stay calm. This is perfect.
Each twist in the flow, every rock of the boat, every splash in the face, my being gives chase to  possibilities in consistent inconsistencies, sacred, eternal, geometries. Do our bodies disperse like the leaves that traverse from limb to ground, spiraling down?
Focus.
Where are your shoes? We're running late, and there's no time for another drink. We're out of milk? Look at my sink. It's piled high and I can't think with you  making all that ******* noise. What time is it? I forgot to call... that bill is due tacked on the wall. I wonder if we'll talk again. There's spam where your email should have been. All this time I thought that we were friends. I can't sleep. I'm up too late and I can't sate this need to see what I can make of missed phone calls and mystery texts. That write up? No, I haven't seen that yet. But don't forget, I told you, "I can handle it." Remember? Double. Oh. Seven.
Wait.
Focus.
Breathe in. I'm calm. That's resurrection.
Breathe out. I'm smiling. That's reconnection.
Aubrey Nov 2014
It's like
that bed is calling my name
"There's no shame in going to sleep early,"
but there's a room full of kids back there and I'm pulling my hair trying to get them to feel the same.
So, I have a drink
and think too much
and get on to them over and over
and my daughter begins to cry to yours about her "Daddy."
"I wanted to give him a hug and a kiss!"
Those sobs are real and deep and I turned off the the TV because they wouldn't sleep and she wouldn't have had this moment if I'd just let them stay up watching Howl's Moving Castle for the second time in a row.
In about two hours, she's five years old... at least she knows his face. That's more than I got until twenty-eight.
And, I know that you say I'm a great mother. You tell me I'm good to her and her brother.. but when she was crying and asking for him, the whiskey speech kicked in and I told her I didn't know. Not where he is or what he was doing. "And these kids wouldn't be here if your dad was here, do you understand? I don't know why he hasn't talked to you. I don't care if you cry but you can't keep screaming and keeping everyone up."
Tough luck for that girl having me for a mom. It's not the worst she could hear by far... but a hug... maybe that's better for her heart.
But instead,
I'll let her talk to her four year old friend in the bed.
My head has no answers. My heart crowds out comfort with hurt.
There are books about this.
Psychologists
counselors offering advice.
I just have vice
and you to offer the soft kind of love I can't give.
I never knew the donor
that was my father
and the pain that incurred was hard to bear from the time that I knew two parents could be there...
And only time made it better and worse altogether.
09/03/2014
Aubrey Nov 2014
Should be using this pilfered and minimal wifi
and, man, it seems that time does fly...
while I'm procrasti-time-wasting reading bad (well, most of it) poetry.
You see I'm used to feeling like I've missed the boat
and shown my hand and slit my own **** throat...
"It's his own fault."
How terrifying and amazing (faux)freedom is...
blood and water and choices.
Life is frosted and sort of sleeping
but not shivering
enduring.
It's too bad I identify with the grasshopper more than the ant.
I can't be bothered with preparation
because Right Now.
Right Now is full of hows and whys and whens
and so many that depend
upon shoulds and coulds and ifs
and I-need-to-make-a-lists.
It seems that I prefer the anxiety of what could be
to what is.
Control freak.
Sitting here, with my cold nose and sore bones
and more than my usual non-layer of clothes
with two very interesting up-past-their-bedtime individuals
there is no regret.
It is, and it isn't, over yet.
Supposing pity isn't the word choice,
how else would you say, "I feel for you,"
without that voice?
And even saying it is a choice I'd rather not make.
That's the thing about leaving the cage and toeing the line and finding the road...
there is no map.
You can either enjoy the journey
or feel like, "It's a trap."
  Sep 2014 Aubrey
Anne Sexton
The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
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