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 Dec 2015 Mary-Taylor Valand
Pea
When I talk God I mean:
You
Miles of road ahead of her,
With miles and miles behind.

Exhausted from the journey,
All aid and kindness declined.

Clouds above get darker,
Where once the sun shined.

On and on she will travel,
Until all becomes aligned.
last night I had a poem inside me, I lost it on the highway
in the Christmas of red and white continuous light
on either side

there were other thoughts, in other cars - their webs spun & ready

the wind beat against my window, holding the tail of it --
"there's still time"  

but I just looked back at you, driving.
hands sure, your unsmiling lips somehow
still holding,
kind.

and remembered this sizzling, poppin' n' fizzing
feeling

and could have written
pages and pages and instead
just

burned
#1
beige sits in your skin, layers in
various shades. sometimes I mistake it for
pink, in the shadows

but no
mostly just
beige

--void
these long lines of me
have begun to curl
and split
along small vulnerable points
-separating-
till i stand blank as bone

.. but then you too peel away your palimpsest

new page
new tone
driven by us

a place where my alone is not read into
where your sidelong gaze allows for this core ruin of mine
to be unknown and unknowable

scribbled sick blue skies
gray clouds somersault and lick
eater of hue
it cannot be deleted it cannot be scried  

this is the waste we do not wait around for to be fixed
it is a space where margins are let in

as is

and i no longer feel written down
dm micklow
That year I dug up too much,
wore rose quartz memories
and stared down too many
sunsets,
felt my edges soften
and become sharp again,
the continuum of freezing
and thawing,
in someone else's hands.

That year I realised that
a name itself
can be a poem,
or a will,
or a sentence,
that mirrors assess damage,
scars resemble time,
and bones are just splintered
pieces of those I miss.

That year I was an opportunity,
a calendar choking on rotting number,
a recycled version of events,
already breathed by someone luckier.
There's a mechanism
buried alive inside you
alive despite you
sack of omnipresent water
chalk full of code
whispers of people who no longer exist
asking that same question,
"To what capacity do I exist?"

I know some sons that come from cell division
they've won the entire human race.
I must be some mutant in the main vein
spectacular artery pumping symmetry  
trying to grow up.
Look closer.
I'm not burning ants with my lens anymore
in open ceiling
side walk heat
hot enough to burn role models.

Because they ain't sorry in heaven.
Their faces can be touched but they aren't there
and the same look persists
through spilt milk
and spilt blood.
Making me hot enough to burn flags
it's ours to destroy
we bought it with dead sons
dead daughters
and ******* so dense I'm not sure which is which anymore.

Drawn lines that we rehearse in the shower.
Songs where we exist for a brief moment
then grow quiet
with numb mouths
that have separated their speech
from what they wish to sing
divided by a distance too far to dream.
Like lobbing a football or collect call
between your own split cells.

I am so tired operator.
We need to marry these two points
by their spines.
I cannot connect the dots
for others but I can foster
my insides, out.
They exist in some capacity now.
Catch.

I am at your mercy stranger.
You naive monarch .
You impatient mortal.
You radical catalyst.
Take this and rule over it like it was yours
because by the time I reach you,
it is.
You cannot stay at this intersection for long
it's dying now
for the next.
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