Gillian

Gillian May 2014

the rain used to sing to me through these old skylights...lead and glass that teach us to look up for the light...sifted through the flakes of chipped paint - stark white against the dust, leaves, old papers...like sifting ashes to save the bones...keepsake, a reminder...and the asphalt out there has turned to water...walking upon it you were like a prophet rising up into the streetlight like steam pouring from a manhole...pavement angel...that black bird singing to me again in your meditative silence...and you made it closer...heaven was only half as far that night...like some secret stone i must have stumbled on in a dream when i had seen your tears...i left daisies on the dashboard and thorns in the palm of your hand like nothing would ever be beautiful enough to show you...candles flicker in my bedroom to the heave of your last sigh hours after you've gone...you'd kiss off the shadows with a lover's eager lips and a child's curiosity for answers...you used to drive into me with this force of growth like a new born leaf, wet with dew, yawns and stretches into the day...i put my face in the sun, shut my eyes, bite into my bottom lip and think of when i pressed my lips against that place just below your earlobe with my chin on your shoulder...and the greed and taunt, the seduction, the clenched teeth, the taught thighs, the thrill of watching you wither into a pile of sweat and breath on my chest like you had seen it all now and if death could please just come now and take you away from all this now because you don't know if you will ever be this happy again now...and i lay beneath a wasted you, looking up for light, because heaven was only half as far that night...

Gillian May 2014

going home...

returning is bittersweet, full of that madness of longing and relief...some homecomings are indulgent and pacifying...you really can't ever go home again...mumbling among the ruins of a childhood you are reluctant to belong to...pouring over the pieces of life that you once owned...culling the crowd in search of that one face that you need to see...and it is enough because it is all that's left you...

Gillian Mar 2014

hobbyists

a portrait dodged on my mind
spotted and retouched
silhouetted in the grainy penumbra

a soft-focus smile with a motion blur
at the edges of the mouth
where the fixer could not hold

candid grey card hand pushing the negative
framed by the infrared cautions
my perspective agitated in my stomach

a stop bath of underdeveloped words
like a graveyard for my depth of field

those muted views from your apartment door
solarized in the albumen light of our distance

a carte-de-visite from your camera obscura
rapping on my ribcage like my heart is
enlarging and must be cropped

Gillian Mar 2014

apostasy

someone's misplaced a pear.
a sandy green one
there - between the turnips and onions.
the man in the striped red shirt
he's slapping price marks on braeburns...

your lips were hallowed ground
in aisle seven at the supermarket.
underground sundays in your arms
watching t.v. all day.

like a fog that drowns
first intentions wandering burrs
clipping from sleeve to sleeve,
my fool flesh tried to get somewhere
our kissing touch migrated as
if we'd never even heard of the ground -

watching warped window streaks
of scattered april rainfall,
a streetlight shadow symphony
on your bedroom wall;
my rumpled exhortations constantly
shocking the angel in you.

i didn't want to stay if you left
i'd be nothing to you,
a gone face, fallen like embers
voyaged away like the waning pitch
of a siren in the nighttime,
like i never existed at all

can you tell me that i don't
have a hole in my heart...
the world is home to billions of streetlights;
it has more to do with windows
than with the pleasures of flesh.
just to look, (is often enough).

Gillian Mar 2014

this is love

if you walk away, I walk away
if you don't walk away, you will resent me
if you don't leave me, you can't let yourself trust me
if i don't walk away, i will never be sure of you
if i don't leave you, i can't forgive you
if i walk away, you will chase me
if you come back, you will be wounded
if i come back, i will be broken
this is emotion beyond my judgement.
this is love,
and i am not fit to be near it.
if you walk away, you will look back.
if i walk away, i walk away.

i walk away.

Gillian Oct 2013

*Vermont*

will we remember the shades of grey and the days not smiled of our youth?
will we always place those memories by the river, sunburned daisy days?
that soft tinsel laughter of trees blending with a symphony of frogs and
crickets like echoes of the twinkling Vermont skies, and all the poesy and art
life takes on in a place like that.  coming from the dust made us stronger
than most.  We always know what we are made of, and never fake a thing.
a place is the people who make it.  was it those hard times that brought us
closer?  climbing into each others bedroom windows with our mutual need
to be saved and comforted from the sloppiness of our teenage years. sharing
all of those secrets that swept the dust off our souls.  all we needed in the
world was a cup of coffee, an afternoon, and each other.  these missing
pieces and slanted recollections, remembering them slowly - the feeling
of crunching leaves, big squishy sweaters and those everyday hugs that
were furiously important - so much changes, and we are lost in the
mystery of what changed it.

Gillian Oct 2013

the glory boys

I am here today, but i may not be tomorrow - a hitchhiker i picked up somewhere between Bennington and Marlboro Vermont*

The library at Packer's Corners had
the smell of damp and old
as a lush august climbed the faded
wide wooden planks outside
and we schemed our
nightly dinner theatre performances.
The gang congregated disorderly
across the rocky garden before the (stage) barn,
plates and carafes of wine, rapt in the play.
Marti, a painter with knobby hands, salt and pepper hair,
the face of a sage and a speech impediment;
Veranda must have been a muse with her sharp
bohemian features and sleek black bob,
smelling of rosemary and musky Parisian perfume;
Oona, so young and stormy crashed about
those mountains in moods as protean
as Vermont weather and jeans
that were more holes than fabric;
Cootie, in his black goatee and the scent of
cooking oils under his mottled and freckled skin
would squint through the bugs and heat wave haze
to Marco on the pitcher's mound
scuffing his mortorcycle boots into the
sandy tan soil riddled with stones and
laughing with the reckless abandon that
waters the eyes with antifreeze for the soul