Morning sickness is a pain.
Morning sickness makes it hard to gain
healthy weight for my baby boy.
My best friend is made of porcelain.
Joy...

Minutes of pregnancy
Siouxsie can't placate me
I'm wandering in the darkness...
in the underbelly of life
scared of my own body,
now I understand the strife...the fear inside

I didn't fear it
but it is here!
I could laugh at it
until I see it coming straight at me...
and nothing is fun anymore

"I'll be the pregnant punk girl at class,
Another brick in my strange life.
I'll be worrying until I see what's up"

Minutes of pregnancy,
minutes in hell.
It was the darkest shade,
that I would be a mother,
so much shame over me,
the little girl that got eaten by the wolves and her worms,
the worms of her cobwebs, long, long cobwebs.
I know I am a hysterical child,
moved only by my own terrors.
What will I do? I ask, worried, to anyone who wants to hear me.

Will you be with me?
Will you hold my hand?
Or leave me there to bleed?
Is mom right about this?

My most feared performance...

It's 3am
And I want you to know
that I am thinking about your lips on mine
and the way that you show me how to trust again,
All in good time.
Thinking of how you leave a trail of fire on my skin
When you trace a line with a finger, or even breathe
On my neck; lights dimmed
Hearts shine.

From the outside looking in
This love is scandalous
It has been since the beginning.
Remember the time your girlfriend got me high?
I was expecting a girls night in
Maybe some dancing, maybe some wine
But no, she picks me up,
pill in hand, gives me a luscious kiss and says
"wait until you meet him"
(See she had been chasing me for quite some time
And I was of an age, thinking maybe I'll give this a try)

Now, I was no longer cognizant of tick-tock time
Perhaps an hour or more had gone by
She had me dressed as a fairy princess
She was dressed to the nines
Then you walked in.
I gave an audible sigh,
I couldn't believe my luck!
So handsome, piercing blue eyes..
How did I end up here?
To sleep with this girl, and this guy?
But this is not the moment to be asking 'why?'

Pretty soon we were all high... As a kite
She is a ******* and she likes to bite
(I had a mark on my *** a month after that night)
We all got naked to Howl at the full moon,
I didn't know what to expect
But I knew it would happen soon.
Making love in a euphoric glow
Feeling connected, in tune.
It was my first time so we went slow,
But in the end we just wanted to spoon.

We all lay there in a bubble of ecstasy
Counting my lucky stars to have these two next to me
And we knew it was fast, but the morning after
The spell was still cast; kitchen filled with laughter!
And perhaps I'm just daft or..
Naive, or too young..
But I accepted the invitation to move in.
And I sung praises in celebration
Of living among such loving openness
It was not an imitation
We were happy... For a while
Until she set this rule:
No *** without her.
Well, she had a different style
And we played her for a fool
Because we couldn't share
This deep, soulful jewel with her.

I still miss our nights spent naked in front of the fire,
But I had to set my sights on a new object of desire.
Should I leave now or later
To avoid any fights,
To avoid being a liar?

Alas, this threeway was not meant to last,
But I lost a third and I gained a half.
Because no matter where or who
We happened to be with from then on,
Our hearts are now glued together,
Like some myth from ancient times long gone.

More than two years has gone by since those days,
I've faced so many fears to find my way out of the maze
Of confusion, of woes that was my short marriage,
And you know how it goes "then came a baby in a baby carriage".
Yet still you were there while my belly grew,
I am so grateful to have spent some of that time with you.

My soul has been laid bare,
I've been made anew,
Acquired a new layer,
Like now I'm a new mom and I talk about poo!
I haven't a moment to spare
Between diapers, dishes, chores, bathing, cooking, studying.. laundry too:
Single mom style, a beauty so fair!
And yet you still look at me and tell me true,
That you love me even with sweat-plastered hair,
Dishevelled, and missing a shoe.

Well, that's how I feel most days
So just call me a hot mess,
But the heat from your gaze
Still makes me want to undress.

Sodden ceiling, corrugated,
a berth that wanes and shivers.
Forced between compounded cubes,
inhabited by givers.

Glitchy limbs of ash on puddle;
inverted self-reflection.
Paper walls, weak from
blotted acid rain ingestion.

Tattered cloth and matching veins,
pupils full and vacant.
A nauseating gulp of tar;
reaction with the pavement.

Every morning, overwhelming
waves of sober sickness.
Sixteen weeks is past the point
to turn around and quit this.

Another man, another bump.
Irreversible.
Another baby growing tough.
Inconceivable.

Tepid womb and nine months soak
can wreck a little one.
That's why they always took them
and left her to mother none.

Breaking water, babbling,
a window darkly stained.
Two nurses, prompt and tidy,
searching out a vein.

A mangled city sky scrapes
against the cubes of givers.
A doctor breathes a solaced sigh;
a baby is delivered.

My mommy said I shouldn’t eat the watermelon seeds, that it would hurt if they made a home of my tummy. She’s a little loopy, my mama, and I don’t believe her sometimes, so I ate the seed and it tasted really boring. I swallowed the seed whole and nothing happened, mama.

My mom told me not to eat the watermelon seeds, that, in a few weeks, a small black tear drop floating in my body would hurt once it found a home in my belly. If it claimed my gut, it would throw out the food I tried to eat, greedy of the space, growing and swelling inside me until the button of my worn jeans would no longer snapped shut. She’s a little dramatic, my mom. I ignored fruit-flies swarming the chewed rind left on the counter, its sickly sweet scent swallowing the space of my small apartment.

My mother warned me never to ingest the seeds of a watermelon, that this little black tear drop once wedged into the sweet sponge of the fruit would one day decide the house it made of my torso was no longer its home. It tore its way from my body, strangled the sides of my diaphragm, round after round of reverberating contractions bent me over until the sweet clear liquid flowed from me. Then came the melon, my melon, that once found a home in my body – falling from me in clumps of sickly sweet spongey mush through shaking fingers into an unsuspecting porcelain bowl.
                             She was right, it did hurt.

I'm about to have a baby at 36 weeks
My wife is the only person I have to talk to.
My only support structure needs my support.
My rock is my son but he can't speak words yet.
My family seems preoccupied. Even during times like this.
I have friends... Oh wait... Where?
The first time was so stressful because we weren't sure what would happen.
Now we are just unprepared...
There's emotional support but everyone stops short of actually helping. Sad but true.
Meeting my daughter was supposed to be different.
I'm just upset I couldn't make it perfect for her.

I saw you, I heard you.
Today on a screen my future appeared all black, white, and grey.
Nothing at first but bubbles of contrast
swells of innards and technology.
But then I saw you.
Your bones a beautiful highlight,
Our blood; flutters of movement -
Head bowed the two of us saw through your mind.
And then I heard you.
Pounding spikes, white rhythm on black.
Tiny pump like a machine blinking -
My own heart beating faster.
Alive and real, your beat fills the room and echoes through blank pages and clean slates, into empty homes or ones not yet built, cries out in the night with warm comfort and soothing heat.
Now your likeness sits in my pocket
Until the day we meet.