"aneurysm" poems
I. the apparition
i don't fear death,
i fear never being born;
i fear not my last breath,
but all the breaths in between;
how do i know i'm alive?
II. the left foot
for what purpose is the sun without its light?
for what use are eyes without their sight?
for what good is a left foot without the right?
and for what joy is a string without its kite?
will i ever be complete?
III. father
as branches grow to the shape of their roots,
as vermillion bloodies every spring with a drop:
could i escape original sin?
could i become a better man--
could i become my own man?
IV. aneurysm
would lightning dare blaze up a tree
that has yet to bear fruit?
would the gods dare strike down an artist
with a painting unfinished?
fate is neither cruel nor fair.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 1:20 AM UTC
pour your aneurysm into my palm and i will love you so hard
be glad. this love is nothing more than tremendous, however
you might have Doric columns, where i have Ficus
but you're a ***** stone, a-swarm with ivy
a mind reading astronaut
i ought
and a
cat.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 4:34 PM UTC
Knowing you, I am like a girl
who willfully touches hemlock to her tongue.
For among the boney noose of pearls
strung up my spine,
you, with hands that can hold
both knives and violin bows
leak a piece of air into the streams of my back
And I let you—I
let it fever its way around stringy tethers,
up to the oven of blood in my head
while you lick your lips (the moon pours out)
and I do not watch this
because now I cannot even trample
across floors of lemongrass
or brace the line of my jaw for a tender fist.
The earth simply throws a plump tomato at my chest
smirks simmering in its oceans
but all I can do is fall there
lay near
lose years
expire here—
(the sodden match)
(the hot scoop of iced cream)
while the froth of my heart grows cold and colder.
So I can’t even smash your head (a skull I love)
into the wooden wall until it is as
soft as a boiled pomegranate.
For my own flesh is a puddle of sputters on the kitchen table
ready for you to eat (dine, my darling, dine!)
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 1:29 AM UTC
The Race
An injury in sophomore year
caused me to miss the springtime meets.
I was sitting in a cast
while my teammates won their heats.
I am no brain, I can’t sit still
No chance I’ll ace the S.A.T.
But medal wins in track and field
could mean a scholarship for me.
Near Lewis is a cinder track-
an oval of a quarter mile.
So I come here to do my laps
And dream of victory for a while.
A short fat man goes jogging by
In sweat drenched shirt and navy shorts
Gasping, like a fish in air,
fleeing from his mortal thoughts.
I doff my sweats and start to stretch
I take no chances with this knee.
Soon I’m feeling good and loose,
it pays to warm up properly.
A tall thin runner, strangely pale,
About half of the track ahead
I‘ll pass him like he’s standing still
Then he’ll be chasing me instead.
I pass the jogger right away
The pale runner, though, moves speedily
I pick up my pace a notch
Just as quickly so does he..
I stretch my stride, he does the same
And gains upon me steadily
I thought that I was chasing him
It seems instead he’s chasing me.
I never raced this guy before
At any of the local meets
He appears to be as old as me
But his gear is “thrift shop” quality.
Sure enough, he’s gaining fast.
I dig down for a last reserve
I didn’t think I’d lost a step
Bad news, if it’s true, for me
I hear his foot falls close behind
And vainly try to stay ahead
I turn my head to see his face
It is the face of one long dead.
The ghostly winner makes a turn
and passes through the gate and chains
The cemetery lies beyond
That holds the urn with his cremains
“You saw him too” the fat man gasps-
“I thought that he had come for me”
I knew he only came to run
I recognized the ghost you see.
“Tommy Miller was his name
School Champion back in 63’
.He died crossing this finish line
an aneurysm in his brain.”
Unfinished business binds him here
A restless spirit, more than most,
The race is ever to the swift
The quick are beaten by a ghost
Dec 21, 2011
Dec 21, 2011 at 5:21 PM UTC
We drove bleached
Dumb and out of school
Heavily medicated
On high doses of lithium
And teenage spirit
Feeding and breeding
Our love buzz
On sticks of pennyroyal tea
We were negative creeps in bloom
Going to the muddy banks
Of the Wishkah River
You sat in the driver seat
Chewing on pen caps
Trying for an aneurysm
I sat in the passenger seat
Sifting through tourettes
And picking at paper cuts
That endless, nameless summer
We both reached for nirvana
To place in our heart shaped box
Mar 6, 2012
Mar 6, 2012 at 8:14 PM UTC
my aunt was a wiccan
with a sheep farm
i was the shepherd, leading the flock
until my small body couldn’t run anymore.
she knit me black wool socks
that i never wore. they made me itch.
i just put them on my shelf and stared at them
feeling bad that somebody put all that time and effort into a kind deed for me
for nothing.
she died on christmas eve of an aneurysm.
i didn’t cry
i just sat at the table
and wondered where she went
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 1:35 AM UTC
After My Little Black Dog Died of Melanoma.
After the Lumps on Her Small Brittle Body Slowly
Burned to a Pile of Ash in the Vet’s Office. After My Step-Father
Drove in His Ostentatious Truck to Pick Up Her Remains. After I Cried
in My Dorm Room and Tried Not to Wake My Roommate.
Realization that My Loss Does Not Make Me Different. There Are
Graveyards That Span For Miles and They Are Filled With More
Dead Bodies Than I Have Ever Seen. There Are Hundreds of
Thousands of Children in the Foster Care System That Have
Never Met Their Parents or Maybe They Did and it Just Didn’t Work Out.
Kids Who Might Have Lived With Their Terminally Ill Parent(s) For Years
Not Just Days. Kids Who Never Sat in the Opened Up Trunk of Their
Mother’s Black Nissan Pathfinder at the Drive-In Movies. Kids Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Old Grandparents or Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Dead Grandparents. Kids Who Were Never Told Not to Throw Snowballs Because There Might be Big Chunks of Ice in Them. Kids Who
Never Had a Childhood Dog to Cry Over. Kids Who
Don’t Like to Read Because They Were Never Read
Bedtime Stories When They Were Younger. Kids Whose
Mothers Never Called Them Tweetie or Pumpkin or Honey or ***
Kids That Were Not Told to Just Go to the Bathroom When
Their Tummies Hurt Instead of the Health Room. Kids Who Never
Listened to the Spice Girls’ Album Spice World on Cassette on the
Way to the Store. Kids Who Never Got a Peach Drink Out of a Vending Machine at the Pick’N’Save on 27th Street and Still Don’t Know
Exactly What 50¢ Peach Drink Their Mother Bought For Them.
There Are Thousands of Dogs Euthanized Each Day Because of
How Sick They Are or Because They Were at a Shelter For Far Too Long
or Because They Are a Pitbull or a Rottweiler or Some Other
Irrationally Feared and Disliked Dog Breed. We Didn’t Euthanize My
Stage-Four-Cancer-Stricken Dog or Even Get Her Treatment Beyond
Pain Medicine Because We Were Selfish. We Do a Lot of Things Because
We Are Selfish. We Waited Five Days to Pull the Plug on My Vegetable
Mother Because We Were Waiting For a Miracle That We Knew Would
Never Happen Because She Stopped Breathing the Moment the
Aneurysm Burst. My Sister is Getting Married in June and My
Grandfather is Going to Walk Her Down the Aisle in My Mother’s
Place. My Grandparents Had to Move In With My Sister After My
Grandmother Fell Down Too Many Times and Didn’t Take Her Health
Problems Serious Enough. There Are Repercussions For Thinking
You Are Safe When You Are Really Not.
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC
i lost your direction
with my back against you i begged you
to unzip the sky
i was parched without shade
you looked like destiny
a mirage in a thirsty throat
i kissed the ground and broke my mouth
spit teeth that bled your name
but you came no closer
the pain was not divine
perception rose in red welts around my lips
mountains of flesh that held no beauty
i poured myself into this strange espousal of a world
cold cloudy glass
forever rounding walls
that held me in smeared thumbprints
on a hot day i am static
i dry slowly, paint
i am the ever madonna the lost woman
heroine heroine heroine
corrupt word that bursts like an aneurysm on the tongue
spreads like a warm solution
and we bred closer
fixing flesh on the bones of our connection
meet me when i come to you
don’t grow old with me
i can never change
the leash nerves held
keeping you that same size
until the sky seized with the threat
rain rain rain
and i was no prophet
just a woman you thought you could save
if your feet could make the steps
but i am not lost
i’m just waiting for you
you can find me under broken clouds
you can save me to soothe
your own self
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 9:32 AM UTC
outside
through the window
circling in blue
five vultures.
I sit here
and look at them
and think:
I am not dead yet.
something is dead or dying out there
but it is not me.
that’s not entirely true.
we are all dying in different stages
on varying timelines.
I might drop dead
on my way to the fridge
to get another beer.
heart attack
a stroke
a lurking aneurysm
a car accident
homicide or
suicide
anything might get me at any second.
sudden death
falling into the final dream
and then
nothing
that
is all one can hope for.
it sure beats
dying slowly
from
lung cancer
heart disease
diabetes
AIDS
or falling off a ladder
while pruning an apple tree
breaking your neck
and slowly
suffocating
to death
while
vultures gather
eager
and hungry
in the
last blue
of late
afternoon.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 6:23 PM UTC
I never told my mother I love her until my senior year,
and I have been scheduled lately to care for a dying woman,
struggling, gasping for dry misty air. Few weeks ago, I leaned
over a newborn to monitor his extrauterine adaptation, his cry for life.
I first learned from my psychiatric nursing class that recognition
is a form of therapy, an ephemeral touch to the soul, the kind that
gifts me little snacks as reward for small talks with a patient. I guess it is the
words that turn into charms. I once asked an irritable elderly woman
if she had eaten and she also asked me in return. I was liquified. My house
has never had picture frames hung up on the walls. Crumbles of loss,
torn wedding album, heartbreak in my larva years.
I feel so privileged to be saved by the sick or I may say, to view
nursing as a means of holding on to life.
Some time in my senior year, I encountered a woman, same age
as my mother, with brain aneurysm and every movement of
her head, limb, and torso hurt her. I assisted her to the bathroom,
then I introduced myself again.
Apr 6, 2023
Apr 6, 2023 at 8:24 AM UTC
I knew him because he was there...sometimes
in the morning drinking one of his sixteen cups
of coffee before I would go to school.
I knew him cause we would go camping sometimes
and the four of us and our dog would be in the station
wagon towing a tent trailer, to be set up and taken down.
I knew he was there sometimes when I joined cadets and
then the militia and...sometimes after I joined the CAF,
and less when I began to have a family.
I knew where he was when we were home... sometimes,
as he was cleaning his rifles or handguns, making beer
in the wine room, carving or tinkering with something.
I knew he was there...sometimes he and mom would
argue and their voices would be raised and we could
hear them through the floor, as they struggled with
reason.
I knew he was there...sometimes he would smoke
when he drank more than he should so I would
drive us home with my new licence, before that
he would do the driving.
I knew he was there in the hospital...sometimes he
would have seizures then the aneurysm that did not
take him but made him less able to be a father
and grandfather to our children.
I knew he was no longer there over twenty years
of a slow spiral down, to where the cold, cold
lay waiting...sometimes sooner for some and
later for others.
As he lay on the bed in the care home he was
no longer there, cold to the touch, heart stopped
struggle quit,... sometimes I miss him, sometimes
I am not missing him, he was not the kindest,
and I made him my only dad... sometimes I
wonder if that was, my mistake.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 1:34 AM UTC
It has been an entire decade since we last spent Christmas together.
Less than three months later, you died and you were gone forever.
The last Christmas that we spent together is something I hold dear.
Time certainly does fly, it does not seem like it has been ten years.
After spending many Christmases together, your life came to an end.
After you died, it took nearly two years for my broken heart to mend.
You once cooked Christmas dinners and we opened gifts that were under the trees.
The memories of the years that we spent together are very important to me.
When you were only 64, you had an abdominal aneurysm and I lost my best friend.
Merry Christmas, Mom, it's sad that we can never spend Christmas together again.
Dec 3, 2022
Dec 3, 2022 at 9:02 AM UTC
Every year I get older,
always marked by the same date,
but this year I'm feeling colder,
lacking heat even with my hate.
Every year I get older,
I'll be dead in years by this rate,
and there's so much weight on each shoulder,
have I just shown up to life too late?
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to,
we've got no social games, so what else would I do?
It's my party and I'll die if I want to,
"It's all downhill from here" oh god, was that true.
You know it's just my mannerism,
to have an annual aneurysm.
You know I was never one for optimism,
so here's my annual aneurysm.
Every year I get older,
that's just humans fault and fate,
and we all get bitter and bolder,
well, maybe that's up for debate.
You know it's just my mannerism,
to have an annual aneurysm.
I was never good at criticism,
so here's my annual aneurysm.
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to,
tears change my eyes from green to blue.
It's my party and I'll die if I want to,
just 'cause I'm growing doesn't mean that I grew.
Jul 29, 2017
Jul 29, 2017 at 1:36 AM UTC
just like you
allowing nothing through
the shallow skin
that begins
crawling all over
with what was clover
but now is just weeds
as the thought feeds
on the bubbles in my brain.
is this an aneurysm or just thought processing?
Oct 3, 2012
Oct 3, 2012 at 2:36 AM UTC
Nine years ago today, you ceased to be a member of the human race.
You died from an abdominal aneurysm and you went to a better place.
You're in Heaven and life up there is a nonstop party every day.
You're in a better place and you went there nine years ago today.
Time does heal wounds but a loved one's death will always leave a scar.
But I'm happy that you're living the good life in Heaven, I know how lucky you are.
When I learned that you were going to die, it was something that was hard to face.
But you're much better off because when your life ended, you went to a better place.
Mar 6, 2022
Mar 6, 2022 at 11:13 AM UTC
My brain has been running wild as I live in the holes in my heart.
My brain wanders and loses track of everything
And my heart just shakes and rattles against the walls of my lungs
My skin sweats and my bones shiver
My brain is worried about everything except my heart
Because right now it's so broken the my brain doesn't know how to approach it
Dec 18, 2016
Dec 18, 2016 at 4:02 PM UTC
A phone call.
What a terrible invention.
They only bring depression,
If I could never receive a call again I'd be happy.
It's a constant reminder no one wants to speak to you;
Someone calling has only brought misery.
But with each glance I pray that someone knows my number;
hopefully they didn't have chubby child like fingers.
Maybe they wrote it down wrong, because we were in a rush.
Maybe I'm just under the wrong name, maybe they heard it was James, even though that sounds nothing like Michael.
Maybe just maybe my carrier is down, my phone is not working.
I'll check, nope everything is working.
Why would I ask for such a call to come to me?
When the only things I've ever been told in a phone call have brought me to tears.
Things like I think we should break up, no longer see each other, just be friends.
Being told hey this family member is sick and dying of cancer,
while I'm lucky sometimes to get that call that notifies me that someone is sick.
I get those delayed calls, how your best friend just died from a brain aneurysm.
While my second mother sounds like she may be dying as well.
I don't know if she called to say I was lucky to know she's sick, or to tell me my phone *****
Because to be honest I hope no one knows my number.
So I'm going to keep talking to only chubby friends, so they keep messing up my number.
I may not always be in a rush, but I'll give an ink pen that spills
I'll tell them to put me under that name James and never bring it up again, so they forget.
can't do anything about my carrier, but I can do something about my phone
I don't have one, it rest with my best friend.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 3:58 AM UTC
It would be inaccurate, indeed downright unfair,
To label her as a convenience,
Certainly no matter of being any port in a storm;
She fell into that category of handsome women,
Tending more to the Rubenesque than the runway,
And those occasions where an evening with the gang
Fragmented into a somewhat unmatched set
Were more in line with settling into a familiar harbor,
Bereft of the intoxicating hazards of shoals and sand bars, perhaps,
But comfortable with a certain steadfastness about it,
A pleasant haven from the riptides, undertows,
And various entanglements of the open water.
It was an aneurysm that took her, the type of thing
We’d associated with grandparents, aged aunts,
Corpulent colleagues of our fathers.
What’s more, it turned she was staunchly and stubbornly Lutheran,
Regular to the point of obsession in her attendance at services
(We’d no way of knowing such a thing, of course,
The notion of staying overnight at her place
To rise from last night’s sheets at mid-morning
And share a table for omelettes and awkward chit-chat
Being both curious and curiosity)
So we arrayed ourselves in stiff collars,
Accompanied by ties we’d hoped to be suitable,
As the whole affair had us a bit off balance,
And we were only able to restore our equilibrium at the end,
Just in time to attempt to bounce pebbles onto her coffin lid
In what he hoped was some witticism in Morse code.
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 19, 2017 at 1:53 PM UTC
the road gathers itself like a drained old woman,
hunched over rags, beneath the gloomy crag,
sintering as it nears the beach,
worn out through time, impoverished
it has become reflective in the chittering half-light.
Eviscerated by the pawing waves,
contradictory cracks like entrails, hanging out
crushed into solitude , it redefines its continuous retreat.
In the reductive shade
it circumvents the cove, its tarmac withered,
a battered host to foreign weeds.
Sunrise chides the posturing sky, the sulking universal remnants
vanishing in the fenestrated glare. In the near distance, air unravels,
the moving storm exhaling slips of cloud
rapidly swarming like furious flecks of phlegm-sneezed out in perpetuity
between heat and cold.
The road lies entombed beneath a scree, tumbledown stones and dust.
Ramblers and cars have sought and found
an alternative route. The moistened rubble creaks
as liquid gathers in its shifting heart, crawling out in rivulets-the rain
descending like spit,
emolliating the countryside, shifting dollops of fetid mud,
enveloping like a furious aneurysm.
Sea and land entrenched in conflict,
a war of attrition always won by seas, unleashing energy
of mindful apocalypse in the manner of a gentle sigh.
The gaping abscess of scarred promontories tottering
like feverish drunks. The mouthed obscenities of carnivorous
birds radiates throughout the cove pinpointing local
drownings encrusted with salt. Sea upon sea impose themselves
enviously on rampant shorelines feasting on sand and rock. Never ending!
Plunging ever forward like a barren plough, receding, only to
re-site its casual fury-implosion upon explosion.
The road in its sullen retreat
stumbles through narrow valleys speckled
with gloom; trees with yellow flowers
blooming in crinkled shadows,
deer leaping through high-standing grass, mincing
between tall thin trees. Loping down
into the cities, it becomes a tousled high street full
of immigrants, all yearning for the sea.
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:59 PM UTC
Danielle died the day she found a reason to live.
She blew her brains out,
Covering the walls with memories of her future.
A red, stained glass image of a flawed plot line,
Plans, dreams, habits she would never form into reality.
Danielle was psychic, Or psychotic,
Depending on one's point of view.
She would tell me stories of the future,
And how she's seen it five thousand times.
An arresting daydream that left a bitter-sweet migraine behind.
The pain takes me away from my stress
But an aneurysm would be preferable.
Danielle loved to sing songs about novocaine and nicotine,
About how my existence was a wood chip under her toenail,
And kicking door frames had become a habit.
Still, she insisted we depart this life hand in hand,
Yin and yang, polar opposites.
A love so vain, blood would rush through my fingertips into hers.
Our love was a rose caught in a riptide.
A bear trap concealed in a bouquet.
I was the shotgun lips loaded with her empty shells.
She told me once,
The rest of our lives would be only her and I,
I had the only invitation to a party
I could never describe.
A letterbomb disguised as a California post card.
She made jail look like a jewelry store,
A hammer to nails look like a manicure.
To love her was to love the scales under my skin.
The fork in my tongue,
She was my favorite part of myself.
April came,
And the confetti landed on the floor,
The way ice dripped from branches
That sound a lot like bones when they break.
I am a captive of my own ribcage
She swallowed the only key to open my chest.
I turn to find her standing at the altar
Shrouded in a blanket of amber.
It’s over now.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 12:33 AM UTC
If you hadn't died, today you would've become sixty-seven.
But God called you home and you're with him in Heaven.
Because of your bad infection, you had an aneurysm and couldn't be healed.
As I watched you suffer, it made me cry because it was a terrible ordeal.
I begged God to save you but sadly, his answer was no.
It was your time to leave and that was why you had to go.
When I found you dead in the hospital bed, I began to mourn.
One of the greatest days in the world's history was the day when you were born.
Because of your death, hell has been what I've been through.
Happy Birthday Mom, I always have and always will love you.
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 1:48 PM UTC
When a person dies so young, I have to ask why.
I still miss you as each day passes by.
When my brother told me how sick you were, he told me face to face.
He didn't want to tell me over the telephone so he came to my place.
Until he told me the bad news, I didn't know just how ill that you were.
It was painful and heart breaking and your death was hard to endure.
You didn't die on the operating table even though the surgeon thought you would.
I was unhappy eight years ago today because I had to say goodbye to you for good.
Because of an aneurysm, my brother and I had to take you off of the respirator.
We did this to end your suffering and you died twenty-something hours later.
You said if you were ever on a respirator, you wanted to be taken off if you couldn't make it.
We did as you requested but your death was devastating and it was hard for me to take it.
You were living proof that a person doesn't need a big education to be smart.
Rest In Peace, Mom, you were a wonderful lady and you had a very big heart.
Mar 6, 2021
Mar 6, 2021 at 11:38 AM UTC
You were my mother and I have something very important to say.
I love you and I lost an important person when you passed away.
You had an aneurysm which was what caused your untimely death.
I was in the hospital room with you when you took your final breath.
I was devastated when the doctor told us you were going to die.
Life would never be the same again after I had to say goodbye.
On the day of your death, I cried and I felt mighty low.
But I'm feeling better now than I did half a decade ago.
Even though time has healed my wounds, I still miss you.
Dying is terrible but sadly, it's what we all eventually must do.
It makes me happy to know how much we loved each other.
Rest in Peace Mom, you were always one hell of a mother.
Mar 6, 2018
Mar 6, 2018 at 9:15 AM UTC
For Pat Stone
I remember you from a time once before dinosaurs roamed
the city streets, reeking of peach scented candles and boxed wine,
yearning for some sort of darkness.
Reading from the novels of Stephen King as if they
were revisions of the bible.
Who found darkness in a mammogram and shoved it into
her pocket along with the rusty brooches and earrings.
Who lost love with an aneurysm.
Who lost love with withering age.
Who lost love with pneumonia.
Where the remainder of her loved only existed in her short,
black hair growing from the roots of the past.
Where her eyes look back onto the golden infinity known as
the old cornfield next to the big red barn of Mid-Western-Minnesotan
conformity.
Of the calls made to mother regarding how she'll die each time
she notices something new.
Who cried with me when mother had left me for sailing the sky.
Oh, she was the mother.
The mother of a generation much like mine.
The mother who was the domestic wife in her natural habitat of
pots, pans and aprons.
The mother who was softer than the belt.
The mother who kept family gatherings illuminated with award
winning short stories of brother, brother or sister.
The mother who dealt with apocalypse that was Karen Grenier
as a child.
The mother who did it.
The mother who created lives and the mother who took death
as one of her daily pills.
Brother, brother and sister now out the door, gone to make
their marks.
The mother who was left only to mother the darkness in tastes of
boxed wine and Stephen King.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 8:24 PM UTC
how I will die what for and how
will it be for a cause or just burnt out?
in the darkness alone or with love
around me. Will I cry out my last pleas, to Jesus?
Will I overdose
or quick be gone by a bullet to my head
or an aneurysm?
Suffer with tumors or cling in a coma?
Destiny is dying.
I will, if given a chance, gladly die for
some young soul or a dog or rat or a cat or a flea
if I died for another.
I would die for thee.
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 11:57 PM UTC