Jonah asked me,
‘Thomas, do you wear sunglasses all the time because you don't have eyes?’
In my head I said ‘yes Jonah, you’re right!
I wear them because I don’t have eyes,
I hide behind mirrored glass because I’m scared of the world, Jonah.
I am terrified that maybe someone will understand me--
But I can't stop you, can I Jonah?’

Those words circled round and round in my head and heres what I did say:
I have eyes, Jonah, they’re blue.

In a dream I dreamed that I was Odin,
That I gouged out my eyes in exchange
For all the wisdom and understanding the world had to offer.
Jonah I have ******* holes for eyes,
Big empty spaces where every thing goes in and nothing comes out.
I have dark pools of disbelief and
Grown-up thoughts and
The pictures in my head have edges as if they were film
Instead of fog blurring edges with reality,
And all the caffeine coursing through my bloodstream
Cannot possibly give me the energy you have, Jonah.

Maybe I was Odin once, maybe I was a god--
But that was long ago and I grew up, jonah,
So, I don’t have eyes anymore,
But these blue-black-holes will watch you grow up,
And each year they will grow darker as you grow older,
Until finally I fade to nothing more than a name painted on a wall and
empty sunglasses staring out of the past--
Watching,
Wishing I had told you:
Don’t ever, ever give up your eyes, Jonah.

A marinate was played
Full of granite and fine rings
A bathtub of nosebleeds Danny and a bathtub of kings
All the cards that were dealt all the hands that we played pulled the curtain bell
Of my sleeve up to delay what I'd say and
All the cards we swept under the rug Danny all the music we screamed
From my sore throat and broken hands came the sound of suffering on a silent note in an empty room a bell jar and a piano and a single key being pressed in time to the sound of my weeping Danny
My friends ignored my cries
But here we are now with a new drum set and two sets of sticks for hands and we break everything we try to touch Danny thinking it can be played like the single key in that lonely room
Listen there are vultures in my throat in all my baby teeth and landlocked blues
I know that's the name of the song but I wanted to play it for you
Just in case you forgot I could sing out my suffering
And it doesn't sound so horrible now does it Danny
Because you don't know the story it tells
The blood diamond behind the curtain
Well it glimmers just as well
And I'm sure we can find a way to forgive ourselves for everything that was done
But I'm in a two step programme
Where everything gets reversed
And no I haven't slept in weeks Danny you're right I know I look like ****
I just haven't had time to think about what I'm putting in me
When I try to scream and I come up on a single static piano key
Listen there are ways we broke each-other and I'm sorry I tried
But the sound of my suffering
Doesn't mean waving goodbye

There is a deeper run of color
More raw scarlet and burgundy hues
  splayed
Eying pitiless
 edgewise mouth spangled with tobbacco
Hindsight plays into the corner
barred tooth
wounded & scrabbling at the wood
Without purchase
Come now
Look at you
So pitiful and gorgeous

I was dust before
But then I knew
I was a brass bone
In the most ancient god
A point of light in
The machine twisting
Mandala regurgitating
Novel universes
@ whim

If life were true
I would build eleven cities
For you
And golden spires; minarets
Twisting to
Knife the pink horizon
Would be my poetry

Dear Prudence, Julia, Michelle, Mr. Moonlight, Eleanor Rigby, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Lady Madonna, Lovely Rita, Rocky Racoon, Lucille, **** Sadie, Clarabella, Her Majesty, Nowhere Man, Penny Lane, Carol, Long Tall Sally, Maggie Mae, Johnny B. Goode, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Moonlight Boy, Martha My Dear,

You Like Me Too Much. It’s All Too Much. I’m So Tired. The Night Before Yesterday Memphis, Tennessee, I Saw Her Standing There. Polythene Pam.
Not A Second Time She Said She Said “Hey Bulldog. I Want To Hold Your Hand. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road. Here, There and Everywhere. Something.”
I Want To Tell You I Should Have Known Better.  “Wait. Slow Down. I Just Don’t Understand. Tell Me Why.”
“Because I’m Down. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You. Hold Me Tight”
“I’ll Be On My Way”
“Please Please Me”
“Get Back. Help!”


And I Love Her
All My Loving,
Mean Mr. Mustard
P.S I Love You

so is that why
i reach this pit
of sorrow
pitch black

do my body grieve

not this time again
let go of life
one more time

and so my body will
bleed
with sorrow
for what could have been

one deep sigh
before letting go

is this what i feel
every month
before my period

that might
put some sense
to this
heavy, meaningless
darkness

At age 7, I was guilty
when I accepted an invitation
to go into the apartment of a neighbor
He smelled of beer as he groped me.

At age 10, I was guilty
when I walked home too late
because I missed the train
He popped out of the bushes
exposing himself.

At age 12, I was guilty
when my uncle forced
tongue into my mouth
because I could not
get away.

At age 14, I was guilty
when my uncle forced
me to sit on his lap
while in my bathing suit
and I ran away from home.

At age 16, I was guilty
when my uncle convinced
everyone that I was a liar
and I quit school.

At age 18, I was guilty
when I gave birth to
my first child,
because I was ignorant.

At age 20, I was guilty
when I saw the cardiologist
in the reflection of a lamp
*******  and the
police laughed at my report.

At age 30, I was guilty
when my employer
trapped me in the elevator
to ***** me, because I
was his subserviant.

At age 36, I was guilty
when I earned jujitsu honors
but risked going to jail
for defending myself.

At age 70, I was guilty
when a neighbor brought
me fruit and grabbed my
breast, because I was alone.

At age 72, I am guilty
of being a ferule woman
for 50 years and for
NOT be silent!

If time is a convincing illusion, then as I am writing this,
you are reading it; you are remembering me years after
we have spoken last, and I am noticing you for the first time.

I'm a young woman waking up in an apartment in Albany,
New York, realizing that I am finally broken enough to fix,
and an East Boston moppet in ***** pink overalls, riding
Big Wheels through the sprinklers with a boy named John Henry.

You're delivering newspapers on a cold New Hampshire morning.
I am falling asleep wondering if you could possibly love me.
You are saying that you do. You are stardust, and I am long gone.

if you're reading this the worst has happened.

a thousand bombs have exploded on the surface of the sea
causing a giant tidal wave to consume the coasts.
or maybe the scientists tangled one to many times
with mysteriously sensual black holes.

Or maybe the whole world didn't end,
but just ours.

If you're reading this:

My sand-paper quirks rubbed you down into sea-glass,
and all your barbs were reduced to arts and crafts quips.
And then you did something drastic to sharpen yourself,
but only succeeded and drawing blood from my paper-skin.

If you're reading this:
My eyes didn't shine as quicksilver as you thought they would.
And I really never understood, but managed to trick you into thinking that somehow I could.
But one day you asked me a question and I gave the wrong answer, and you knew.
Knew exactly how I lied to you.

If you reading this:
I never really loved you at all.
and you knew it.