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.

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.

I wipe away mascara,
Glad, so glad, to cry with you.

It was a rough day
We tried.

We are all creatures of emotion
And what do we really ever leave behind
But our attempts at understanding?

Our attempts at crawling inside someone else
And crying with them?

The loss so great,
We’re overwhelmed by their suffering as they relay their first earthquake;
Their restraining order against their child’s father.

I am the odd man out
And I’m still okay,
Wiping away mascara.

Glad, so glad, to cry with you.

There's a horse who is primed for battle. She's been broken and saddled, muscles hard and keen, her frame is lean, she's got all the necessary means to carry destruction into the heart of the fray.

But. She's afraid. She dreads the day.

There's a child who is primed in playground. She's been beaten and shoved down, she's been left to bleed, the teachers are too late to intervene. And she waits for the day for them all to pay.

But she's afraid. How couldn't she be?

There's a leader who is primed in sovereignty. She's been brought up high society with a sharpened gleam, smart and mean, quietly she gathers steam. With the tools to rule, she waits for the day to carry the horse to heart of the fray, to make them pay, to make them all pay.

But she knows the game, knows how to wait.

And still the world will twirl in its hate.
Until it needs a leader who's great.

She'll rise like the cream to the top of the pack, and pick up the slack, and possess what they lack.

And finally grasp the ultimate power!

To rule. To instruct. To provide the anchor for the ones who were broken and beaten, afraid.

And she'll heal their wounds, for she knows their pain.

She wrote poems about sunflowers
and about the colors of each of the different flavors in her afternoon tea.

She wrote about the foot-worn path in the concrete floor of the history museum;
About a stranger’s dog who licked her hand at the park.

And to her future child,
And to the boundlessness of love she knew but could not fathom that existed in a forever-expanding space inside her,
And about that brave and resilient seed shared by all of science and art,
the interconnectedness of all things.

In radical joyful tones,
she documented the goodnesses of her Ordinary on scraps of paper and deposited them into a small chest,
her Memory Bank.

The people pointed at the lonely beergazer
The outraged wunderkind
The housebound widower
Each lost in the past or in the future.
Ah, misery.
The father of poetry.
They would shake their heads,
A shame, they would say.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town or maybe the world,
the mother of poetry, undeterred,
sat in her garden
singing to the souls of the vegetables.

The clouds

lift

with a perspective shift.

Accept the gift.

I think the secret to a long life
Is to be in love with every thing.
It’s easy, honestly, to love greatly and truly.
It’s the easiest thing.
You should try it,
Just try it.
Breathe and the air is sweeter
Open your eyes
There is so much to pine for.
Being in love is noble work
And we need you, the lovers.
We need you more than ever.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
in Me and I.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the eye to eye.

(I try to see
the eye to eye)

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the desperate sigh.

I spend it all
I spend my time
on basking wounds
in deserts dry.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the Me and I.

The statements made
the inner spy
I escape
the spinner's eye.

I like myself
And by the by
I make myself
the glowing I.

I hate it all.
I hate the cry.

I hate the Me.
I hate the I.

I like myself
I like the spy
I accept
The spinner's eye.

Wine slides into my belly
Hot and acid
Mm, needs to breathe.

Empty, a domed cavern
Hipbones,
my mother aghast.

Cast the flashlight around.
If there’s a heart here,
Let it show itself and
BEAT.
Rage the kettle drums
Of war.

Unleash in pieces,
Conceal the door.

Red with pink flowers
This blanket
And maybe on my insides too.
Blossom as they break apart.

Machine, start
Crush and crunch your barbs
Flick the crumbs away and reshape:
Curly hair remorseful,
Sad and sorry face.

You know I love being right
And I knew this was going to be a ******* day.

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.

Tonight
Again
I battle myself
As Vince Guaraldi twinkles low on the smart speaker
And the baby sleeps
And the tree in the corner absorbs water into its severed spine
And the lights shine merrily
And the dog kicks and snores
And the dishwasher sloshes
And the wind chimes sing
And the clock ticks
And the wine bottle drains
And drains
And drains
And tomorrow looms,
Always so distant,
Always so near.

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.

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 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

I saw something today on Instagram
One of my many astrology pages
Informing me that this is the time
To let go of pessimism
And external validation.

First of all,
I’m not pessimistic.
I’m a ******* delight.

Secondly.
How would I ever get anything done
Without the promise of a
High five at the end?

Silly moon,
You know not your small pale daughter.
Leave me in peace
And I will leave you to your royal fullness.

We are always waiting.

John Lennon or someone on Facebook or God said:

"Life is what happens when you're making other plans."

Life is what happens when you're waiting, and soon you'll be dead.
That's what that quote says to me.

So I'll just wait for eternity
Quietly.

And if I'm in line at the grocery
or synching my phone
or whatever it may be

maybe I'll use the time to write poetry.

Leave my little mark,
help the world remember
that while I was waiting I was still
me.

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.

We are all mothers
As we care for one another while going about business as usual
Our greatness in the guidance of the women whose scalloped hands stirrup our feet in the rooms and halls and roads of our lives
Who we notice only when we focus our eyes on our own faces, on our own working hands, on our own burdened hearts.

This morning
I woke up late like always and there was almost no time To
Comfort your crying
I thought it was a nice weekend and I wasn’t hungover
So I made you breakfast
Of the breakfast you made me when we were feeling so good
Potatoes and cinnamon rolls
You said the alcohol sugar kept you up all night
Hands in your hair.

It’s a poor paraphrase of I think Maya Angelou
that when people show you themselves, you should believe them the first time.
What if all you know, all they show,
Is what they’re not?

Tomorrow morning if you’re crying
It’ll be the same thing
I’ll wake up late
As I wait for you at 2am to join me in our bed
After coming home to an empty bottle and you
Feeling better

The spinning hand
of fickle fate
Will rarely land
Square at the gate

So if it do,
Set fear aside.
With faith anew,
Push the gate wide.

Oh no.
This is it, isn’t it?
When I wake up tomorrow
It will be time to go home
To start my new life.
Early 60s guitars, Connie Francis
Singing “who’s sorry now?”
in that eternal swoony teenage croon.
Dissolving the gathering dread
Into sand for the hourglass
Rather than lock it away down down in my gut
to harden into glass.

It's been getting worse.

6am was open for sinners but 10 was closed for repairs. Imagine the disappointed frowns drinking coffee reading regretful emails.

The afternoon sun hurt my head, I miss your cave.
In my bed, pillows over your ears and eyes.

12 pm was better but 2 was embarrassing.

I hate to leave like that. I never want us to be mad at each other.
Crying at the kitchen table, no it's not you.

Calling myself an idiot in the car for routinely missing turns.

The mall wasn't crowded but it felt like it was. No dresses fit for the wedding tomorrow. Staring at a red scarf listening to Burning Down the House over the loudspeaker at Dillards and feeling my eyes in my head and wondering if David Byrne ever dreamed he would have songs playing over the loudspeaker at Dillards.

You shouldn't have done that to yourself.  I'm sorry I suggested it.
It's ok, it's not you.

It must have been 50 or more dresses. Four hours.

This has been the worst day.
We've been talking about this for a long time. Sitting at the kitchen table, ugh, boys.

Smoking through the window.

My great grandmother made my *** my pants when I was eleven because she was cursing the door she couldn't unlock.
I once saw someone lose a prosthetic leg while riding a roller coaster.
TJ had a cat named Rodney.

We found burn holes in her mattress when we moved in. All her stuff was still there.

Reconfirming value, standing in front of the mirror in wedding clothes. Red heels. A white scarf to a wedding that doesn't belong to me.
It's ok, it's not you.

Nick started talking about what he's going to say for our wedding.
I told him not to worry about it, I don't have any idea what I'm going to say at his.

Cigarettes in the cold. Adderall and ZzzQuil and Dr. Who prints on Etsy printed on old dictionary pages. The world is falling away.

Write a poem.

3:17am is open for sinners.

It's been getting worse.

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.