"housebroken" poems
Distance has a particular way of hurting:
It begins slowly, and is self-contained.
Because our mothers would often speak about Love,
and how everything falls helpless in Love,
Distance becomes a housebroken dog.
It is powerless, and whilst I love, I am powerful.
On Sunday, our fathers would teach us to put our faith in things unseen,
and so we grow confident and complacent.
Just when you think you’ve understood it,
It sinks its teeth in hard and deep.
An idealist tries to make it out light and easy
They will often write poems about finding
ideal love in the real world.
But I will write about knowing
real love misplaced in an ideal world.
It’s a world where comfort could come in binary files
filled with digital empathy and memories.
Where typed words and numbers that form
black and white promises could replace
the real and organic voice of reassurance.
Where wires between my webcams and your headsets
could entangle themselves in ways our fingers
used to be intertwined.
Where waiting for an email meant as much as
waiting for you to return home to me.
Where the strategic positioning of your punctuation marks
could transform these passive symbols
into active symbols of love and concern:
A comma, like a shared pause for when our eyes meet
Exclamation marks for when we wave to each other from across the street,
or as a passionate gesture from underneath these sheets.
A question mark for when you’re sick and I am by your bed
Worried, because you wouldn’t eat.
A semicolon for when we argue,
and a full stop for when we finally give in.
A parenthesis for containing moments of vulnerability
that only seem to leak out late at night.
You won’t know it but,
I dream mostly of an online conversation,
filled with time stamps that affirm your presence.
If I’m lucky, I will find an ellipsis
Small creatures of continuity with
heads heavy with hesitation.
…
And - if I’m really lucky,
I’d undo those black buttons of suspense
and see you once more.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 10:20 AM UTC
heartbroken, housebroken
I lost your nuance, pray remind me
redness across my chest, heat and too many voices at once
heartwarmed, housewarmed
big sweaters, his sweaters on your shoulders, no makeup
the basement with gray fabric trees, and baby kisses, and baby steps.
the milk-foam and the let’s-meet-again espresso hiding untouched posited tomorrow
among banana peels and pearls and tissue
and after, cranberry stains on teacups piled in the kitchen
(a very narrow human interval between two tiger heartbeats)
and tight sweaters, grown-up make-up
that same basement, blank before morning
and the Philosophe, my favorite couched villain over us
too many voices discussing horticulture or eternity
I Do Not Recognize Eternity, is what I told you
tigers slow down for the night, sometimes
--the quickest change of heart, is what you thought
and I, again, chose the stars.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC
a costume party in my father’s house.
my mother
in her Sunday best.
little old
hermetic
me.
loudest brother
in the attic
with a stick.
in his mouth.
my most housebroken
sister?
basement, on a stack of bibles.
other siblings, non locals, dogs, my father…
all in the mind
of your private
nudist.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
Ethereal. That's the squirming quality of that health-hazard house,
where a byproduct of divorce emulsion slept in a bare room on
a bare air mattress, vacuously lying around with the blinds down,
vicious AM radio mumbling through the walls. Homeschooling was more like
becoming housebroken, given that my social network consisted of thirty feral cats.
I suppose some boys require a deadbolt on their room's door.
Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
The apathy cloud that crawled the house led to a
(the deadbolt was to lock me out of my room; not in)
prison break; I awkwardly assured myself that I would
never be anything if I was still Pinocchio, and pleaded
to go to liberal-dominated-non-Rush-Limbaugh-approved public schools.
I did; I got into university, I got a grant, I do research,
I got a job, I got a girl, I got a job, I got a girl...
I don't know how to leave my room now that I'm free.
I still hear the crackle of conversative talk radio.
'Cause we'll put a boot in your *** / It's the American way.
Like trembling flotsam I drift into every class,
every party, every... A poem can regurgitate a person who is all
covered in spit and acid and memories. I still know that house
better than I know my own breathing body. I'm just going to keep running;
like a yellowed refrigerator housing second-amendment-upbringing-coleslaw;
like an overheating computer; like I always do; statically, in stasis.
Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 7:37 AM UTC
I dont want to be the dog
who returns home
after a few days
realizing how good he had it there
I want to roam the unknown
beyond the domesticated shelter
live or die
there are more experiences to be had
than what this shackled society has to offer. . .
obedience nor allegiance
holds no reward for the likes of I
after all
I wish not the mindset of a housebroken animal
unlike some humans.
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 5:51 PM UTC
We can sense it.
Something deplorable
is about to happen--
we can no longer stop the ranks
of housebroken infidels
from migrating into the wild
they have never encountered
beyond photo and film.
It's coming out! The stampede
of hairy-legged pheromones
we could once browbeat
into prepubescent shame
with the speed of a smack
upon the tender noggin!
It takes courage to enjoy
the canned campfire stories
we passed off as ageless doctrine.
How they once recoiled, squirming
like slugs thrown in a salt mine!
Now the writhing is self-inflicted,
the sweat off their brows no longer
cold, damp beads but now welcome
lubrication that slithers down
their lecherous masses of flesh!
Despite our most dogmatic toiling,
the iron shroud has revealed itself
as a featherweight curtain within a few tugs.
Anyone else feel the walls shake to and fro?
Why does the water in that glass ripple so?
Has it arrived already? The end of our reign
as dictators of the prevailing value system?
Fetch thee the community smelling salts!
Too late! The young and vulnerable
have already begun to trample!
Push the powder out of your wigs
to blind yourself from the carnage!
*The Age of Inhibition has screeched
and skidded into its evil twin's Renaissance.
Big time sensuality has straddled the saddle,
too busy racing avenues to declare victory.*
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 2:46 AM UTC
the night vet drawn into a field by the pink glow of a housebroken piglet. when the piglet blows, the vet may want to rethink his face. forgiveness works alone. I have never seen an attractive god.
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 11:48 AM UTC
Foolish, foolish girl.
You should know better than to
Gift swine with a lady's gems.
I would have drawn your tears
Before you even knew my name if you
Placed your will in my
Two-faced hands. I have sides to me
That break beauty by habit,
That cannot be trusted with hearts.
Foolish girl. Others have wasted time
On me, then left. You should listen;
They were right to. I was there.
Someone unknowing would say:
*All men can be changed. They break
In the end... Get housebroken.*
Someone knowing; knowing how some things
Should hurt, would say: *Let All Things Go
That Wish To.*
Girl. So kind, so smiling to
Me from the outside, handing me a basket
Cradling your every last egg.
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 7:34 PM UTC
Forgive me...for my monumental
misapprehension, of your ineffable
Whomsoever.
I ****** upon the cloth that cut us,
because I was a housebroken dog...
forgive me.
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
Bandit
By Joeysguy
That first day he took his own room
He doesn’t want anyone in there
Especially to sweep with a broom
From day one he’s been housebroken
He barks at me like crazy
If he were human he would be outspoken
When it comes to rodents he is daring
He’s gotten slower and other losses
One being his hearing
He has lost some of his sight
He won’t go down the stairs
I have to turn on a light
About his nose for him to smell
When I take out food
It’s like I rang a dinner bell
He won’t leave me out of his sight
He follows me around the house
He must be with me day and night
He likes outside in the cold
He dislikes summer
My dog now at 15 years old
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
our neighbors have gone underground. I hear beneath me the beatings my son wants to answer. there is no way to keep quiet but alas we are addicted to betterment. bike lock and wheelchair. the outsider’s visual aid device. things invented by no one for the housebroken all. my daughter puts words in my mouth and I use them. my younger self is an alert. think now of what you will say. address the secret responsibility of having mice. my wife goes next door often and comes back with the food she left with. we eat for a week. we blame each other for being so close. our visitor has no ticket. as the visitor explains, the ticket is god. few pregnancies fit the bill.
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 3:18 PM UTC