If goblins are coming, they'll expect something.
Goblin tea.
I don't have the recipe.

Butts and stubs and the shrubs out front
but who knows what they'll want for lunch

It might be me
I don't have the recipe.

What’s your problem?
Is it so bad you have to run
Run away
Run away as fast as you can?
You’re already so gone
Gone
A stranger’s eyes have found a home inside your weary head

Deep inside you
The city burns
I don’t know what it is about this place
That everybody
Seems to be fine just killing time until the end of days

Sleep to forget
Sleep to dream about anything
Anything at all
Sleep will save you
From all the monsters that await your waking like the executioner awaits the gavel’s fall

What’s your problem?
Is it so bad you have to
Lock
Lock yourself away in your dreams?

Count your heartbeats
As long as you’re inside this cage
You will never know what it is to be free

There's butter in my coffee
I heard that it fills you up in the morning
It's the fat, they say, that sustains you.

The problem is, I haven't eaten in, oh,
19 hours or so,
And this buttery coffee is making me feel funny.
Like, nostalgic,
Plegic at the kitchen table
Staring at the new paisley tablecloth without being able to think about anything.

This house has a voice and it's making me tired listening to it scream all day.
Only a month and already I'm pushing away
You can tell, you keep trying to kiss me awake but I can't hear you over the house.
They say this is what happens, so I never tried until now.
You really see a person, they say.
And I can tell you are really seeing me for the first time in these three years,
And it's making you nervous that maybe I'm actually not okay.

Maybe I'm not.
This behavior isn't normal, I guess, I mean most people eat and sleep at regular intervals
And share themselves
And do their chores
And go to work in the morning
And live a life that resembles something.

And now you're really noticing.
Normal behavior hasn't ever really been my "thing."
But writing songs to the tune of your own heartbeat isn't the way to make other people sing.

Got pills, I’ll swallow them
Take the chills that follow them
I don’t want to wallow
I’ve got a heart that needs hollowing

The gobs I’ve been gobbling
Don’t help with the wobbling
The legs are still hobbling
But the heart’s no longer
throbbing,
This bottling,
needs a full on throttling.

So the maudlin
Is phoned in
But the tones are all
honed in this turkey with the bone in.

The drumming keeps droning.

This strumming keeps zoning.

And this mouth keeps on foaming.

Vocabulary
is, yes, rather impressive.
No one gives a ****.

Music.

It's within. Without.

We share it with everyone. We hide what it's about.

We protect our privacy. We let it all hang out.

We want it, oh how we want it all, it all defines us until we find the wall.

The wall! What a joke. We're all in on the farce. Just give us your music, we'll decide what is art. Just sell us your soul, we'll take it from here. Have another beer, we have plenty, my dear. You're valuable, oh yes, just keep your thumb on the pulse. Drink up and polish your gift of schmaltz.

But it's false. It's all false. It's the ******* waltz,  our partner keeps face while we're falling apart, and then kicks us aside when we're behind in the race. We're falling apart, we're floating in space.

I want this to have a happy ending. If you ever hear one, its ******* worth defending. Keep me in mind. I've got music for spending. Together we've got the means for the mending.

You didn't stay at the party,
Even though it was at your house
and you can still hear laughter coming from the living room.

You didn't stay at the party
You fled like a mouse
from the prey of the cat that you hoped would leave soon.

But it's five in the morning
God, you're so ******* boring

But the boy with the ukelele
Is still serenading the lady
Who has absolutely no interest
In becoming his mistress.

I'm writing this poem
because there's no way I'm a-goin
to sleep any time soon.

So you get to hear me comploon.

Complain.

It's 5 in the morning.

I've gone insane.

I get sleepy, but

if I let sleep greet me, the

giant will eat me.

My blood is thin today
It steams in the chilly humid air as it
Streams like water from a small cut on my toe.
Its red is shocking,
like paint on the black tar back patio.

"Sleep is for the weak"
They say.

And while sleeping is, I admit, my weakness
Today is still yesterday and my blood is streaming like water from this little painful cut.

And in my gut I know that it's not sleep nor pain that makes a person weak

But the ability to admit to both

again

and again

and again

Without the ability to know when it's time to admit defeat.

God.

God.

God ******

*******

I never asked for fair.
never.

I never once asked for care.
never.

And yet.
AND YET.

It's there.

The lever.

Yes,
as common as a spare tire in my trunk.

As brazen as a soldier, pacing his bunk.

The persecuted party was drunk as ****.

WAS DRUNK WAS DRUNK WAS DRUNK

AS ****

If the weak and the quiet
suddenly stop
to face the consequence
does it much
matter to the JUDGE and the JURY, the JUDGEMENT and Such?

Has the world run amok?

Has the world run amok?

I saw him see me.

“Hello, ma’am? Miss? Hi, can I give you a free sample?”

**** ****

“Uh.”
Cue winning smile.

I had reflexively glanced at the store name, Bee & Co.
Bee is my daughter.
All Bees are my Bee.

“A sample. Sure, thanks.”

“Can I show you another sample? Just in here. I know you’ll love it, I promise you.”

No.

“Sure!”

****! Betrayal. I follow him in.

The space is unnecessarily large and aesthetically devoid of personality. White walls, glass shelves, side lighting. Small clusters of bottles and jars arranged on a table here, a shelf there. It’s giving Everything Must Go; it’s giving White Woman Influencer; It’s giving American ******.

“I’m so excited for you, you’re going to just die.”

I am trapped, and we’re off to the races.

“Have a seat.”

He’s good looking, sort of wolfish, this salesman. Early-to-mid 30s. Well-groomed, brown skin, black hair, gay. Pale and underslept in that giddy way that comes with overcorrection. Coffee? Adderall? *******? It’s that look, that hungry look. His accent is warming spices and hard liquor, and boy is he talking.

Words like

collagen
-medical-
<penetrating>

as he enthusiastically smears a glob of something under my eye,
“This one because it has the darker circle.”

His dark circles pool under his eyes and he intently explains the same thing over and over again.

Anti-aging,
lifting and tightening,
fine line reducing.

It’s a needy pitch,
Too thirsty.

Well what if I like my fine lines, I don’t say.
Crafted,
as riverbeds are,
as canyons;
Emblazoned, each. Earned.
Emblematic of my many lives.

(A door opens at the back; another man steps out. We make eye contact.)

The serum dries like Elmer’s glue on my delicate under eye skin.
It settles in strange places,
Pulls and distorts.
Discolors and cracks.

“I look older,” tapping it with my fingers.

“STOP TOUCHING IT!”

I stop touching it.

The mall is so close. Nothing is stopping me from leaving.

                                           (I don’t even want it).

We can’t afford it.
There. I said it.
                                                        (I don’t leave)
-aghast-
“You can’t afford it?!”
Pearls clutched.
“You, what? Are you serious?”
                                              (Why can’t I leave?)
Uh. Well. I have a family.

Brick.
I wanna smack him as hard as I can
Step.
I wanna be young and beautiful again
Brick.
I wanna burn this ****** to the ground.
Step.
I wanna apologize for being broke, for having bills, for ******* around.
Brick.
I don’t like this. I can get up and leave.
Step.
I absolutely have to make him like me.

But he’s irritated,
“We might as well even you out,”
As he slaps the goop under my other eye,
Still talking,
Talking a lot, a whole lot actually.
Too much.

Okay this is reaching a fever pitch and I was not prepared for the hard sell today.
His voice edges with desperation,
Shame on you for getting in your own way.

(I’m holding onto the tow line
The boat is unmanned
Reality has become unmoored
We are, none of us, truly in control)

“It will last forever, it will give you what you’re missing, it will patch up all your empty holes with collagen and kisses.
You can’t put a price on confidence
But I can tell you honest
I’ll price it half of where it’s at
To help you with the cost.”

I gotta get out of here.

“Uh.” Winning smile.

He gives me his card
                                                     (I don’t want it)
- His name “BEN” and an email address printed on receipt paper -

And with him is a torn box.
Something and something about something.

(What is reality anyway but a deeply subjective personal construct, tenuous at best, unknown and unknowable but for the rare fleeting glimpse between the gaps in the seams of the fabric of the universe?)

75% off. Because of the box.

The mirror is still on the table.

“Look look, it works, you look great”

                                                     (I don’t want it)

****.

****.

The mirror lies to me in a thousand languages as the glue shifts beneath my skin.

If you listen closely, I say, you can hear me shatter into a million pieces.

clink. clink. clink.

Ben and I skip hand in hand through the middle of the empty room to the checkout counter,
pirouette, arabesque, plie,
celebrating the space.
celebrating my face.

I am exhausted.

Ben’s hands are shaking at the counter. The WiFi isn’t working on the credit card machine. His hands. Are shaking.

“Uh.” Winning smile. “I’m really excited to start using this. Thanks for your help.”

He visibly relaxes. Has he breathed even once since I’ve been here? More employees arrive, they smile toward us. All men. All men.

I can tell Ben likes me now. He’s pleased, thank god. My whole being recoils at the thought of disappointing him, and I uncoil intentionally.

(Don’t think too hard about it.
You can’t put a price on confidence.)

I hope we never see each other again.

“How old are you?” He actually asks me.
A lady never tells.
“I’m 40.”
I’m 39 but getting the feel for it.
Forty. 40. I’m forty. I’m four hundred and forty.

I am ageless as time and vast as consciousness.

He feigns surprise.
I tell him he looks young.
He calls me cute and gives me a hug.
I turn to dust and blow away.

“Can I show you something? I think you’ll appreciate it.”

You don’t know me.

Winning smile.

“What’s that?”

He takes off his sweatshirt - “don’t worry” - and rolls up his sleeve.

A tattoo. Just above the crook of his elbow. He beams triumphantly.

                   TRUST THE PROCESS

Look around and tell me, who’s happy?
Isn’t happiness the goal above all?
Or rather to avoid feeling sorry
For ******* away the springtime in spite of the fall?

Stories!

Thousands. A thousand thousand thousand.

All misremembered together,
A plethora of memories of memories

- that's what they say, when you have a memory it's of the last day you had the same memory -

on and on forever,
a treasury of pleasure and grief and madness and drunk sadness
floating like leaves
through the air.

And it's not fair
That you get to have them
Because you're home
And I don't
And I'm not
And I feel all alone.

I’ve been unsupported lately.
Not a leg to stand on.
Some would call it untethered.

Floating.

A kinder soul might liken it to flying,
But they would be wrong.

Flying starts and ends with both feet on the ground.

There’s a certain blurry gentleness to denial
A Tylenol bottle cotton plug of protection
Muting the inevitable rattling,
A scratchy puff, a cloud,
Shoving it down into the bottle
Until it’s wedged Somewhere Else
now just a half a whisper you can almost hear
On a tv with no subtitles

I like it here.
Swaddled against such unpleasantness
Nestled and unfocused.
That’s the key.
Focus your attention on anything for too long and you’re *******
The spell will be broken
That little whisper
Now a shard of glass
Now unforgiving and sharp edged on your naked awareness

Now, it insists
Now
Hear me NOW

NO, ****!
So many wishes spill out when you lose,
The blood of your unreason stinging your eyes like black pepper
Like a floodlight in a dark room
Pluck it out or shove it down
It will find a way to find you
Outside or inside you
In front of or behind you

You can’t escape this time
Or can you?

If you sink to the bottom you can hide awhile
With the anchor on your ankle
And the waves on every side caressing, pressing oh so gently
Like a kiss, like a smile.

Bliss endless and tidal
Like denial.

You're so floppy.
Like a puppy,
all arms and feet
gangly, knobby.

We sit together
to work on work
but nothing gets done
it's all just talk,

Just stories about grandpas
from World War II
Freedom of love
Religious views.

And through it all
in your attentive eyes
I can see your heart
And can see how wise
You are for sixteen
And I'm twenty-nine
so that makes thirteen
years between us, christ.

I hope I see you down the line
Ten years, or twenty
And you're still just...fine
I fear for you in this terrible place
It's unkind to a gentle mind
It can shut down an open space.

But it feels like nothing
Could create a person
Not years or experience
With such clarity of vision
And depth of innocence
As you showed me today
Under the tent where we spent the day.

I believe in you.
And in who you'll become
You've already got the glue
Now you just need some
Confidence, but it's ok to be green
When the world is bright
And you're barely sixteen.

It's floating and falling at once. There's no footing, but still a softness that eases the passing hours. If tomorrow is a problem, it's tomorrow's problem as I sink into a perfect nowness that extends beyond the reach of time.

It's dark out here under the cloudy half moon. We sit comfortably in silence serenaded by the popping drops of leftover rainwater careening to their next place of rest. They'll surely be gobbled up by the cracks or the ******* air or the perfect flow of water right down the drain and out to the rivers and the lakes of the many.

Alone with the smokey dark, so unlike the music of the forest songs in the old home that now belongs to some other child who might be wondering at my initials in the long dried concrete. What ever became of the small strange hands that cast their delicacy immortal on that casual day one summer, one year, so far away from the tiny reach of these brand new fingers?

Don't stand on the big fan, child, or try to fly by lifting your long skirt just enough to feel the hot billows underneath. Wait (oh the waiting!) for the hand of god to fill your body with balloons, and only then will you rise straight up and up and up till the farthest star is a blaring blot behind you on the white black sky.

Sit  there with the moon then and ask your secret questions. The answers in your swollen heart will sing like the cicadas clinging the trees and the jungle air will float you home on a cloud in the breeze.

I come to you again.
Always do.
And sure as eggs,
You’re always here,
Right where I left you.

I bring you the mundanities that weave me together;
I hope they’re beautiful in their ordinariness.

Pointillist.

You know that painting,
The one of the people in the park?
Like that, my mundanities.
Like if I step back one day,
My moments will be arranged into a perfect pattern of great and universal significance.

Having a daughter.
Tasting an orange.
Holding.
Being held.

Writing a little heart song when I should be asleep
The words of my whims dotting the landscape
While the dog smiles and snores at the foot of the bed.

Oh, look, I’ll say.

I see it now.

There are veins
Arteries
That connect my heart to the rest of me
Something so vain to plainly see
Your heart exists floating free



Ooohs and aahs

I've never been the kind to shy
Away from another's mistake
And the clouds that live in my house were just another obstacle to shake
But there's only so much a tree can take
And my bows bent so low that I'm ready I'm ready to break
I'm ready I'm ready to break
I'm ready I'm ready to break

We venture into the storm
Against my better judgment
(I’m ready to go home)

The wind kicks up
And a thousand
No
A million flower petals
Swirl around us frenetically.
Great beasts of raw, hungry light snap their jaws
Not so far away

You aren’t scared,
Your curls wild in the dark.
The storm, you say.
The storm, Mama!

The sirens, now,
And the rain,
And so many flower petals.

We turn and head back inside
To wait a little longer.

I read a beautiful poem once by a poet named Mary Oliver
(My uncle will tear out pages of The New Yorker sometimes and keep them in a box  the way some people of a certain age do)
called The Poet With His Face in His Hands.

“You want to cry out for your mistakes,” she says rightly and wisely, “But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound.”

Mary Oliver tells me (she has my attention now, she speaks directly to me, my face in my hands) that if I’m going to do it anyway, that I should travel far away from civilization where I won’t bug anyone, a noisy place, like a waterfall or the Internet, where I can scream unheard, a tree falling in the forest. Where I can “drip with despair” unobserved by nature her very self.

Mary Oliver doesn’t want to hear it.

So I go.
I take my hiking boots and my entire supply of shame, guilt, rage, doubt,
Fear
I slip it all into a secret compartment just behind my ribs
And we set off together past the city limits to the wastes.
They’re crushing me, the wretched fruit of my faulty design. Too heavy to go on tonight.

I quietly wish Mary Oliver had never been featured in The New Yorker where my uncle would find her, where she would mildly wait for me to crash into her on my world tour of destruction.
I wonder into my dinner
(beans, like cowboys)
if Mary Oliver ever trekked to the waterfall, if I’ll find her there,
an etching, a manifesto.
I imagine myself stepping through, somber, monk-like, and Mary Oliver’s glowing apparition slowly gathering before me.
“You’re so cool and smart,” her energy-being murmurs,
and I wake up feeling important.

Cleveland is so grey in the winter,
my grandmother’s favorite color,
like that song.
The morning sky rides my shoulders and I feel deliciously tragic,
a broken-hearted pioneer woman, maybe, escaping into the wilderness to mourn the loss of her baby…****, too sad.

…to mourn the loss of her old mule Hank, and to find herself among the…
I look around. Generic Cleveland Trees. ****.
I wish I knew about local foliage,
everyone is impressed by a person who is At One With Nature.
I would know if I were a tragic yet somehow glowing from within pioneer woman. Head down, wondering how it can be 53 degrees on December 10th and trying not to think about the polar bears.
I soldier on.

Mary Oliver recommends traveling 40 fields and 40 dark inclines of rocks and water.
(A sweeping arial shot of me traversing the expanse, majestic hair blowing behind like Vigo Mortenssen at Helm’s Deep).

Beans again, like cowboys.

I feel good tired and wonder where a person finds quality poetic landscape like 40 fields and 40 dark inclines of rocks and water.

I didn’t really think this through.

An itch, a burn behind my ribs,
like stars,
like cravings.

A peek.

Just one! Just one, Mary Oliver,
just a ****,
they’ve been in there for days with so little attention.

No one answers, inevitably.
No one’s there, just me, always just me, alone with all of my worst days in the dark in the woods.  

Just one peek.

I wake up and its bright as hell.
What the ****.
What is the point of trees if they don’t dramatically block out the sun at your lowest moment?
The sun.
I squint and automatically say a little thank you,
the sun is so rare in the winter.
A ritual in the cold light.

I flash in, awash with readiness
It’s sudden
Something is coming or something was here but my stomach hollows out like a fake-out gut punch

Was here
Something was here, last night, it’s surrounding me on all sides
Yes that’s right, I remember and Im sorry for the remembering because I’m creative
and before I can stop myself
I’m swallowed whole into the darkness
Just like I wanted.

It’s a struggle,
The swirling absence of light from last nights indulgent, masochistic self-harm parade has expanded like smoke to fill the third space of my body. I am 2 dimensional, a 3rd grade drawing of a person, flat and scribbley, a poor representation.

They always come back.
Sure as eggs.
Sure as taxes.
The greatest hits, everyone was there,
Ripe and healthy,
My well tended heirloom misery, dismal in the garden and aching to stretch its creeping vines.
A vessel to feed on, a disciple,
Bleeding on the alter of self sacrifice, oh happy dagger, ecstatic drag over the open mouths of those cherry coals. Faithless and perfect. Crimson crisp is a broken spirit,
Brittle like nails, and sleep, and ego.

My friends, too, wars within wars. Pale and desperate. Trauma-bonded and aging faster than their parents did, who bought a house, who had three kids, who saved for college. Wars within wars. Shame, guilt, rage, doubt, fear. Pain. So much pain.

I’m lost.
I’m lost in the ******* woods and this poison smoke so black so black it’s in my eyes burning my throat my lungs swirling now sure as eggs sure as taxes I repent I release my will please it’s crushing me I can’t make it Mary Oliver, you shining city on the hill, where are you, Im losing, Im alone, alone, no one knows
Not a cowboy, or a pioneer, or a ranger, or a monk in a waterfall cave.

I’m a poet with my ****** face in my hands.
I’M THE POET WITH MY FACE IN MY HANDS AND I WILL NOT FEAR CRYING ALOUD FOR MY MISTAKES.

They come then. Every one of them, as I knew they would, just outside the gate and waiting ravenously  
My endless flaws  
Powerful and obstinate in their glaring humanity
The constellations of hurt snaking from the roots of my well kept garden
Barbed and bound to everyone I ever loved. The horned monsters of unresolved trauma and the ego machine

Deafening static roar, mechanical swarm of devouring plague locusts
descending upon the 40 fields
Oh here, oh now
In the dark of course
Where else but the smoking vessel of my brokenness
I want to laugh at myself for constructing a cliche within my own self reckoning
Choking on my own toxic exhaust and crying  and choking
This is hysteria, I think
Blurred and muffled on the edge of the hole, a ******* slurring descent, it’s there if I want it
I could dive in and

Mary Oliver.

What is happening,
What the ****, Mary Oliver?
Of whom I’ve never seen a photo,
who is crowning now from the bubbling tar pit, who has chosen this  moment to reveal herself, a nice touch.
She rises from the epicenter of my chaos
Like a blinding beacon of holographic light
(Again I check in with myself that it’s weird she is holographic, why is she made of rainbows)
Beautiful and terrible and 10000 feet high
My mighty dragon. What an entrance.

I laugh again, of course Rainbow Bright  is my big bad, how did I not see this coming, the final girl against the final girl, myself against my greatest self betrayal
She is me
She is arbitrary denial
She is suppression and avoidance
She is vying for approval
For attention
Validation
Every embarrassing moment and every unbidden 3am attack of self loathing.  
Shame and guilt and doubt and rage and fear.
She is my pain, this awful manifestation, this truly depressing personification of all of my absolute *******…

MARY OLIVER I AM THE POET WITH MY HEAD IN MY HANDS

Blink

Blink blink

She turns and sweeps down
And grabs me tightly, ****, oh god you have a nest dont you?

Through the air and I’m wet and dripping and…
is this a cave?

An etching, I have to find something
Something
A manifesto
I desperately search and my teapot is boiling, boiling, boiling over

And there behind that jubilation and water fun
I find no trace of Mary Oliver, who is me and I am her

There in that moment when nothing has been gained and my body begins to release from its own tension and collapse into itself from exhaustion and despair
I notice the air
Fresh and cool and fragrant and something else too
My dragon, far from slain, squirming a little inside me, feeling prodded and suspicious of this quenching.
At least we had this moment
Oh it’s you
Oh god it’s me

And finally then,
I throw my head back

And wail.

Irrevegant scapegoat with uncooked beliefs sheaths his knife when he finds the doubts he worked so hard to bury.

The words don't carry that weight anymore, he mused, and laughing aloud at the faces of the brandy-plied crowd he turns on his heel and vanishes into the rain.

We watch this, silent as only a stunned mass can be when faced with eternity, then turn to each other to mutter low-murmered threats about the night and the sight we'd just beheld.

A special time for all, as we sink back into hell.

Rachel coughs in the room next to me
A mattress on the floor cradling her softly
As the air mattress beneath me dies a slow, excruciating death.

(I chose this for myself -
Rachel has a bad back, remember;
My own back groans in protest.)

We moved you from Cleveland to San Diego -

three days of driving

- Rachel and my competing energies warring silently the entire time,

Both wishing

The other

were not there.

I reflect on the number:

3.

It’s your brother’s jersey number
And everywhere in your mother’s house
(Ten years now since he chose
To leave this earth)

We three kings,
The magic number,
Prime.

A crowd.

Its my birth order
Three of Five
-the middle child-

Guess I’ve always been
The odd man out.

The clouds

lift

with a perspective shift.

Accept the gift.

There's a brand new world
A new universe that doesn't include me. I try.

I try.

And it's not their fault.


There's a brand new soul.
A new universe the doesn't include you. I try.

I try.

And it's not your fault.

There’s a family of bullfrogs nearby
Their cries rise and volley
Shimmering in mezzo-soprano melancholy
A torch song to the new moon,
Pleading her silver bloom
return to the black spring sky.

It's not so much the giving. That's living, the burst from your heart that connects to the hive mind; the leaving all the doubt behind.

It's the after. Exhausted and shattered and sweating out all your exposed emotions, and nothing. No word, no glance, as you stuff all your **** back into the red suitcase that contains your world and no one else's.  

There's no expectation for commendation, but you wish someone would attempt some relation as you mop up the ****** mess that once was beautiful, but is now splendorless.

Music is useless for making a statement. The whole world is trying to make you complacent and you'd smash your guitar, but your money's all spent so you cry in your bed wishing you were a poet (or a surgeon or a botanist or at least brilliant) instead.

I remember the first time I got high.

My boyfriend’s mom
Had bough croissants
The day before.

It’s Thanksgiving Eve
And these croissants
Are delicious.

Today,
there was pain
and work
and realization.

Tomorrow will be the same.

I’ll allocate any deviation
to be microwaved into tea or stew
and consumed by a select few.

The contents of my self
are delicate and subject to change,
are easily manipulated and fragile and strange.

So I lay it all out
And walk away.
Tomorrow is another day.

There.

Are.

Horrible.

Things.



You.

Are.

Responsible.  

For.


No.

One.

Knows.


The.

True.

Meaning.

of

Regret.

There’s a monster lurking
Jerking
Working at the chains fixed to the wall

It’s gnawing,
ever sawing
Ever sawing through the gristled gall

And here I am
A traitor
Telling tales
Upon the bristled ball

Oh treason, tongue of daggers, poison apple take the fall!

I stare into the maw.

- - -

I wander through the mists of mourning
Pearls adorning every limb
As tears.

They drop and drip,
they pour in
waves, cascades
they coat my lips as fears

And warnings, death and din
And here I am, a berth of sin
A deer,

the headlights imminent,
the rain downpouring,
glistening and raw;

I stare into the maw.

The darkness is
alight with static
filling the air,
washing the barren ground anew.

She sleeps just there,
I see her from the ceiling,
measured breathing,
stealing dreams from the ether blue.

On this snowy night
may we each be warmed  
against this frozen blight
with the promise of summer’s dew.

Well, I like me,
I say aloud to my reflection,
Wiping a tear from my cheek.

I’ve been in here awhile.
Time to get back to work.

It’s dry and still in the house this afternoon,
The way houses are at 4:00 in December.
I feel a little itchy and claustrophobic,
Sitting on the floor.
I hate this ******* carpet.
Berber.

I know you love me,
But sometimes I wish you would let me destroy myself completely.

Darkening winter gray settles over us in a dull film,
Berber carpeting the world.
It seeps into the house through cracks in the doorframe you kicked down when we were locked out that night.
Into me too, coating my brain and joints and dreams in liquid fog.
The streetlights will be dark awhile yet.

Cotton ***** fill up my mouth
And I’m fine, just fine.
My grandmother’s favorite color was gray before people awarded points for such things.

It’s nearly night, now, and the sky swirls with peek a boo pink and blue where the clouds are thin and blowing.
No streetlights yet.
The shadows gather at their feet.
I pull out the spaghetti;
Time to start dinner.

The air is heavy with a million million souls
Parts of wholes that escaped in the breaths of prayers
Whispered at windows of the desperate and the faithful
In the apple-core-rot towns and cities of America.

I’m standing in my driveway
And I can feel them all,
Bearing down like storm clouds in the heat.
Another offering could bring the heavens crashing to my feet.

My forehead is sweating, standing there in my driveway,
And I wipe it with the back of my hand,
Squinting into the haze.
The waves of energy
Their ecstatic mass vibrating, buzzing, clicking
A dog’s toenails on linoleum  
A tiny ear pressed to a mother’s chest as she hums. A heartbeat.

I feel dizzy
and wonder if the entirety of the universe
is made of the hopeful, wasted energy of unanswered prayers

I will dig a deep well inside myself to deposit the seeds of doubt, I say to myself and no one and the universe,
and despairing for the orphaned dreams surrounding me,
I give in to the indulgence of wishing.

The sky sags under the weight of a new plea
As I prepare to forget

Uh oh

Here we go

Everyone look out below

Is it sickness?

I suppose.

Baby fever’s

Got my nose.

Reclaiming my time
From tequila to lime
Breathing the air, and
Pretending it’s mine

I am 4.
14.
24.
38.

I am 38 and you’re making me scrambled eggs.

You got the call and you’re making me scrambled eggs.

It’s the night before the morning of your transplant.

Old women sing of their mothers.
And I know I will always miss you when you’re gone.

But not today.
Not today.

I’m sorry, I say.
And you say, no. I’m your mama.

I’ll always be here to make you scrambled eggs.

I am 38.
24.
14.
4.

And we’re at the kitchen table. You’re so tired and I’m so little and it’s so late.

I’m sorry, I say.

And you say, no. I’m your mama.

I’ll always be here to make you scrambled eggs.

I place the pacifier not -in- your hand
But near it.

You surely will find it there
Right there
In the dark
When you are searching for comfort.

I nudge it a little closer,
Thinking of little girls whose parents don’t protect them
And wishing I could climb over these rails
Into this little crib
And hold you hold you hold you.

I bid the pacifier take over,
Sleep tugging me away from you with its persistent hand.
A curse, really, to abandon my post.

How many hours do we lose to sleep?
I would give them all up
To stretch this time out and out and out.
You, dreaming your mysterious dreams
And me, right there when you awaken.

I’ve mined for gold
But I’m getting old,
Too many holes.
Searching for souls
Has taken its toll
An empty bowl
For a mink stole.

Winter noisily clears his throat.

“Good Christ,” he says, “I just can’t shake this thing.”
He theatrically spits,
paTOOey, like Clint Eastwood,
into the Great Lakes region.

(Another record-breaker in Buffalo).

The Wind hisses, snaking through the dead leaves that carpet the frozen forest floor.
“Repulsive,” she mutters, and the waving grasses nod in agreement.

Winter is not in the mood. He freezes the grasses where they stand.

The Wind shimmies up the nearest tree and settles herself on a boney limb. It sways gently, as if underwater, and a few lean grackles startle and take to the air.
“What’s eating you?”

The sky will be the same color all day,
so it’s difficult to tell the exact time.
Could be nine or noon or 4:30.
People hate days like this,
but Winter relishes them, revels in them. Nothing comforts him more than an oppressively slate gray sky.

“I scheduled my favorite sky today but I can’t enjoy it. I think I’m getting sick.” He summons up another storm and accidentally drops it, this time on New Orleans.

“You’re getting sloppy, old man,” she says flatly. Winter is blustering and aggressive and gets on The Wind’s nerves when they have to spend this much time together.

She arches her back and sighs in irritation, disturbing the surrounding fauna. From the canopy above erupts a cacophonous flurry, jarred from their roosting place and screaming into the air: cedar waxwings and white-crowned sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves and a lone red shouldered hawk, which arcs above the rest eying them hungrily. It selects a small sparrow and abruptly knifes down toward it, effortlessly slicing the sky in two.

Winter and The Wind watch quietly, interestedly. It’s one thing neither of them has control over. Fate.

Evolution and animal behavior can be influenced to a degree; landscapes and eco systems crafted; civilizations built and destroyed as quickly and easily as drying up a river. What’s written in the stars, the plot and grand finale of every living being, that’s a different department entirely.

Winter leans in,
“My money’s on the big one.”
The Wind rolls her eyes,
“How on-brand. I would have bet on the little one anyway.”

The two birds, predator and prey, swoop and dive gracefully through the dark daytime sky, a carefully choreographed dance imprinted on each of their DNA since the dawn of their creation. The little sparrow is fast but the hawk is just too big. It will clearly catch her.

“I think it’s because I’m overworked,” Winter looks at The Wind, continuing. “The snow quotas were raised just about everywhere except my usual route, you know? The Poles are really starting to freak out and it’s like, I’m telling them, sometimes you’ve gotta give a little to get a lot. I don’t want to promise them a new Ice Age just yet but all signs point to yes. It’s time for another big boy freeze, Wind, I can feel it in my bones.”

The Wind is still watching the birds. “We can only do so much planning right now while everything is so unpredictable. My schedule has me fanning California wildfires this season and it’s a real drag. I didn’t agree to this project, but you can’t just say that, right? So I’m there, I’m doing it professionally, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a little outside my scope. Like, wildfires in the Palisades? I spoke to Fire and do you know it wasn’t even on her calendar? The extinction process is always so laborious and disorganized.”

The hawk is climbing altitude now, it won’t be long before it goes in for the ****. Exhausted, the sparrow flutters weakly, unable to give up.

Time briefly suspends, then a flash of feathers and talons and beak and it’s over. The little sparrow dies silently and maybe even gladly. She was so tired. Away, away, balanced upon the line of the horizon they both go, away to a nest or a cliffside to both fulfill their roles in the divine comedy.

“******* Nature.” The Wind has sat with Winter this way for aeons, since the birth of this place. She always bets on the small ones.

Winter smiles at her. “It’s been a long time since I had an Ice Age.” He clears his throat again and makes to rid himself of it, but The Wind cuts him off.

“You’re disgusting, I can’t sit here with you while you snow, it skeeves me out. I have a meeting with a weather system over the Baltic Sea that I can’t be late for anyway. Look, if you’re sick, you should rest. The next Ice Age can wait.”

She blows him a kiss and is gone, and the forest stills.

Winter is alone again. He begins the satisfying work of preparing for the evening’s offerings: black velvet darkness beneath a swath of gray expanse. An ice storm in the wee hours will see a glorious sunrise in a crystalline wood, the light dancing and refracting joyfully from blade to base to branch. He enjoys Wind’s company but doesn’t miss her. No one will lay eyes on tonight’s workings but the forest creatures and the celestials. This one is for them, and for the white-crowned sparrow. She deserves a holy funeral.

The hawk, back in its nest, gazes steadily at the slate gray sky. Night is coming. The hawk breathes in and out. In and out.

In.

And out.

I hugged you after the show
My phone hadn’t been working, you were supposed to bring your drums.
It worked out okay, though - a ***, a music stand, some chopsticks.
You’ve been so distant and it was a relief to feel the beat held in your hands
as I played and sang and Karah sang the harmonies and played the tambourine.
A perfect closer.

When it was time to say goodbye, you wished me safe travels and I realized exactly how close we are to the end of this chapter.
I’m not finished reading you, I thought, feeling insane,
And hugged you so tightly it was a little embarrassing.

I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable in that moment.
You’re a difficult person to understand sometimes, I wonder if you know.

What was it like to hear the songs on their own,
Without a band?
I hope you liked them.
I wrote them all for you.

There’s a spark
Cradled in the hot and glowing dark
Divine
And all mine
A hidden or forgotten corner
Once a wasteland
Now a hearth

(Burn this ******* forest to the ground)

Kindling catches
Discarded matches
Wild; raging
The brain detaches

I don’t know what you want,
What you like.
Write and write
To the tune of my own insight
Little praise,
Wish I might.

For a validation addict,
Pouring out my heart
To crickets
Is a nifty trick.