Heirlooms

Jun 2017

One day, parkouring through my uncles two story apartment,

I was drawn naturally to his desktop computer

upon which I found his OkCupid Dating profile.

I don't remember his username, Or anything about the site really,

But I remember the head-shot of a beautiful woman

framed above the desk

the sterile grey Rubbermaid totes behind me like caskets, 

How they made even the hardwood floors

look like they were holding in the dead.

For my Grandmothers birthday

my family gathered at Captain Newicks

her favorite seafood restaurant.

My uncle flirted with the waitress.

I don't think I've ever gone to a restaurant with my uncle where he

didn't flirt with the waitress.

Captain Newicks went out of business shortly after that dinner

followed shortly by my grandmothers life.

the relationship between my uncle and that waitress expired well

before both my Grandmother or Captain Newicks.

I remember asking my grandmother about my Uncle.

Tarots Fool would have predicted

my grandmothers eyelids

a silent prayer before her words.

He had two children by his first wife,

keeps a portrait of her above his desk.

She was a blessing on the family

Selfless amd loved by every one.

She took her own life

Spread her wings to break free from the cage He kept her locked in.

He buried his heart in her casket,

motorcycles, empty bottles

had a third child by a second wife

who buried her heart in drugs and strangers.

Amanda was 6 years old when her mother died.

my uncles wife. Her brother josh was 3

when she died my uncle wanted to put them both up for adoption

he didn't.

Their mother died on the 20th of September

a week after her 25th birthday.

their mother once bought a bunch of carnations

with a dead rose in the middle

and said "it looks like I'm dead".

she took a bottle of pills before going to a chinese restaurant

went out as a family

and collapsed at the table.

she was rushed to the hospital

she didn't make it.

their mother wasn't happy

her and my uncle were getting divorced at the time

lived in the same house that I grew up in.

when my uncle told the kids mommy wasn't coming home

my mother was 17 

and there to see all of it.

When my mother was 17 

she had to watch her baby cousins be told their mother had died.

When my grandmother passed.

grief bounced off of my uncles callouses

ricocheted to my cousins, robbed 

twice now of a selfless mother.

The tragedies in my family

have always enthralled me.

like shakespeare sonnets

I breath them into my faithless nights

tap an extra dream-catcher on my bedpost

in space of a prayer.

When The hearth-fire of our family dimmed 

a tealight in my grandmothers eyes.

grayed, Glossed.

she could no longer crochet 

one big dysfunctional quilt, 

together from our families yarn.

without her needle, 

I was determined to watch how our life spun forward.

The next time I saw my uncle,

He offered me a job.

Thick mosquito blinded us as we carried our sweat 

with Rubbermaid totes into a blue two story home 

deep in the evergreen thickets of Maine.

a tall white fan rotated slowly back and fourth 

Cooling the wet patches on our T-shirts while my Uncle 

flirted with the landlord

I still remember when my uncle tossed me the truck keys

the look of terror I gave him

How easy it was for him to trust

I guess when your heart is buried in a casket 

you stop worrying who has your keys.

It makes me remember

when my daughter asked for my keys 

I would sit her in the drivers seat

watch her pretend to drive.

I loved imagining her free

living how she wanted.

I still wouldn't give her my keys.

she would turn my car into a casket.

It makes me remember

when that little girls mother asked me to drive

My words spun portcullises

prison bars forged in anxiety

scaffolding out of latex secrets

Glued with siren smiles, pacifier kisses

denying cigarette smoke on her breath

fueling infernos in my head.

when my uncle handed me his keys without hesitation.

my religion was insulted by his tough skin.

I felt his simple kindness 

like a splash of holy water. 

saw in me, the devil 

caging a woman like property

holding her hostage 

out of fear.

And yes 

when She could drive she left me

And yes 

when she left me she took her daughter.

every morning 

cereal bowl of pills, I **** myself

keep a poster of my mothers face 

covered in bruises 

behind the tiny orange bottles 

to remind me why I do it.

wake up twice, 

first as Phoenix, dying

second as a watcher, writer and admirer.

callouses are not to protect us from the outside at all.

Callouses harden our bodies into caskets.

Hold in all our dead.

So nice to be praised like a
state honor
Giving your heart to a donor

"Broadcasting romance forecasting"

The brain the heart is the
everlasting mind control
"Outlasting getting the taste
of food* the best treatment to
the soul well behaved to
Her voice plays the webcasting"

   EvEr__LaSTing
Life of miracles

The strong will heart heroes
No time for fasting
  The contrasting the colors
Neverlasting beats
the story knows to heat
Pieces build the right parts

Minds of selfish needs
pulled together wishful
thinking
Bring me the seven wonders
of the fish family Trump towers

Like estate will who will?
Open book in progress
the leader
But reading behind the lines
Do we trust the believer
Book of love can be
a game of mystery meeting
the deceiver

Never wanting this to end
Around the bend
"Who is on first"
Or the oldest Estate someone
leaves a comment at last

Saying just stay no rest
Like the wary
Estate schedule feels
like a tightrope
We cannot cope became
an estate neverending line
Bird wire you're always
*Welcome
Rotary phones
The pain excruciating tones
Just tweet cat got your tongue
The will hat off yellow canary
How your pride had you
The sensitive side your tooth hurt
Still flying Angelic fairy dessert

The Messenger
Kick in the pants
unknown passenger
Signed and delivered
Cruel documents the
hell wheel so fevered
Emotions to remember
the utmost condition
Like something so new
never touched

But something was there
and someone
else felt quite the experience
The feelings were overplayed
But the lover stayed eyes
Into her movie screen
King Estate pages from
her book unusual scene
Words she spoke delicately
pronounced but rushed

Not an ounce of gold
coming from the weight
of his belt like he vanished
Estate the beauty of the tree
everlasting from the root
Of his mind the greed got evil
Transcending "God" sending
We are the world blessings

The estate sale there were rules
Raised hands commending
Dinning like the Royal Queen
In her divine "Estate chair" hum
The whole entire spectrum
Predisposition in relation
Sum of all fears
His dark shirt with
suspender pants
That old Estate set two minds  
were perfectly set was not
a twinset or any bet

The everlasting kissing the
Sunset spiritual picnic
She's his peach everlasting
sunrises tic tac or nick nacks
And Plum's bunch of Irises
Those whispered promises
Estate lovebirds cage-free
Everlasting conclusion Oh! me
Eyes got blurry chipped white
picket fence
Last will everlasting dance
The state of mind ski *****

Her envelope got licked to elope
So tethered everlasting pearls
of Grandmas strings
Feeling her fingers
Rapunzel hair whispers the
harp tranquil bright tealight
Nine lives of a cat nap
Twin set laptop Estate house flip

Robin redbreast everlasting
Estate she sings South trip
She wakes up from her dream
She got the "Estate" in her hands
Everlasting Holylands

A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough,
propositions the ladybug
clinging to a flannel pocket,

You can always trust a tealight
to warm the neglected beetles,
that cling to your chest.

this Ritual of the staring contest.
attention behind the curtain:

When You blink at the Rorschach shadows
tell me, they are not mailboxes.

The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement

birch trees weaving
baskets from our branches

I'm known to cave on integrity, for the taste of freckles,
flickering tealights in the hearthstone, with a smokers cough.

tattered flags, wedding dress trains
white fringe, cached in dirt road
like baggy jeans, converse worn like religion.
Stockholm syndrome, always ran away

never left home, delicately telling
time wearing, down eight years
down in the basement, duct-tape cuffed
to a chair, bandage torn off slow

like a drag, on a thick cigarillo
from fat lips, fat teeth
fat, you know the drill
ear didn't clover though, despite her Irish eyes

she isn't lucky, enough
to have scars, that we can see
green with liberty
she is tall, held fire until it shattered

in '17, now she has flash backs
when men in black, held a pen
to her nose and clicked, now
she's just a rumor,

"I hear she used to represent freedom"

"I never knew her"

I believe,
if the statue of liberty had a voice;
and she does...

I believe,
if the statue of liberty had red heels;
she could run...

I believe,
if the statue of liberty was a mother;
and she was,

she would have died,
a loud, running, mother,
too young.

Oh, I should have been fog and not a person.
Fog or sunlight,
Something untouchable
And unintrusive.
Something easily waved away or shaded from.
It is so tiresome
To be a person,
To *crave the way souls do.
I am sorry, love,
That I am so coarse and revealed,
That I cannot fade into the background
So quickly
So seamlessly
As I usually can.
I promise I usually can- I have made a life of it.
This is bad form, on my part,
A slip, a trip-and-fall, a faux pas.
I have been undone
And it seems I'm caught unaware and unprepared,
Scrambling, trying to tug my skin over the parts of my soul
Where it has unraveled and failed me
Its usual disguise.
Where, I wonder, does my mind's gory skin-and-bones sense of touch come from?
Maybe my body
Is where the feelings live and char everything.
Maybe if I could lose the canvas and frame,
The paintings in blood scrawled by all my stumbles into love,
Maybe this gauche, needy thing I call a soul
Would get gone too,
And I could comfortably be something....
Untouchable- Fog, or sunlight.
Something less lonely and less weak.
But I have this pounding pulse
And this fluttering stomach
And this aching heart
And these bones full of hollow light,
And they control me,
And my skin is a fragile lantern that makes a blazing holocaust look like a tealight candle
From outside.
It is flimsy as wet paper, stretched tight
Over the searing claws and fangs of a soul
So
Hungry for this world,
For the things I love
That in fear and resignation my heart
Scores little hashmarks into the cage of my ribs
Counting each tremulous day
One more
That hasn't ripped me to shreds just yet.

When I'm set aflame
I'll burn through the night
     and I’m afraid
the fire burns
     so hot and **so bright

Loneliness is an epidemic.
To have all your breaths cut short
by the ghost of a boy fizzled out.
Just a burned down wick,
the aluminium shell of a tealight.
I didn't even burn at both ends.

By the mist of an old bee sting.
Was pain any better than this?
I remember deciding to stop feeling
but not why I did.
Loneliness is a piercing migraine.
I am a bottle washed smooth by the sea.

My skin is a reused Manila envelope.
Well used and travelled,
every scar is an ink blot, how did
you know where I was going? You didn't.
Loneliness is an epidemic and yet
you scream in my loneliest moments.

cracked tealight
candle fissures,
molten chasms in a
waxy cradle.

dip your fingers,
capped, hard,
cooled pumice-wax.
peel your new
finger-mould,
digit capsule.

The outside is off limits and a doorstep becomes a dais,
To show frustration and sympathy,
To light a candle, to mourn
To stand with others when we cannot touch them.

The world is in chaos and the doorstep is a sanctuary,
To appreciate and commemorate,
To clap and laud,
Yet people are not paid in applause.

The doorstep is a safe space, but it is not a powerful one.
Isolated, a single tealight in the night,
No change is affected through a clap in the dark.
The doorstep is where the buck stops.

Another candle makes our streets no safer,
As women and flowers are trampled,
Pinned to the ground by the colleagues of a murderer.

A banging pan pays no person’s food bill,
As you judge your neighbours for their lack of civic pride,
Smug that you do your bit,
While you vote for those who have forced nurses to foodbanks.

A doorstep is as far as you go to remember loved ones,
Whose funerals you could not attend,
Whose deathbed you were absent from.
A doorstep where you miss them and ponder
Who is responsible for their death.
Is your doorstep where the buck stops?

Today, we have surgery
I sink my chest into yours.
Your blood pumping through my veins for a bit,
I feel heavy.

I want to turn to a whisp.
Like the Night Elves in World of Warcraft.
A floating blue orb of energy
weightless electricity,
Spirit in the power lines, like that spark we felt.
Tealight in a gas stove, left on for 6 months

When I am cremated
My ashes will be Kept in little ziplock baggies,
Filed away in the back seat of my mothers car,
Until she parks in a bad part of town
You break in
Leave the quarters for the tolls
Leave the GPS cupped to the windshield.
Then snort me, in my mothers backseat.
Thinking you just hit the jack ***.
That's where I will be.
Charcoal cave painting your nasal cavity
coating the inside of your lungs like a cigarette.
Replacing your addiction.

This surgery
The Aorta of copper perfume,
Scalpels summoning blood,
I, scavenged from the wreckage

my heart inside you,
the rest scrapped in a kiln.

If they botch the surgery
cold Iron will be the last thing you smell.

I, a spark
grounding from your chest.

Heart still beating.

3-6-13

Here, alone
Outside, danger lurking
Inside, safe but uncomfortable
There, not understood
And alone.

Tension on both ends
Pressure the outcome of both decisions
Like a seesaw
Never steady
Only shaking
Like a tealight
Flickering amongst the darkness
One more huff
and I'm nonexistent
Blending into the darkness

and so yes i did go back to where
we'd once balanced
on stools  

from the chill night into the buzz
where memory
waitfully pooled

but no right here was
"Brendan"
pouring the gin oh so slick                      

sizing me up across the bar
said that he'd make me something quick
(and slipped some ginger

in the glass)
asked me to taste for
"a surprise"

but all that the bottom
of the glass cupped
was the reflection of your ice              

in the bottom of my glass, still there
that reflection, oh yes
your ice.

oh no i didn't want to talk
i clearly wasn't there
for him

said he'd just read something Chris Kraus
said he'd just watched something Goldin                                    
then he leaned over

took my glass, and lit
the tealight
swift and sly

but all i saw deep in the flame
was the reflection of your ice

so when he turned his back i fled  
out of the dream into my night.

outside the snow lurks
a cold dew kissing warm birk
and inside our house
the tealight candles will melt
a flame will flutter
against a fogged window pane.

oh how my breath stills
captured there in bright beauty

Slam my hip down
Hipbone a Warm teardrop
Ripples on impact
My body
Of water
The stage

Walls turn wonderland
As the pills kick drum
I am the bass drop
Hands dove letter
To my mouth
The room waves
As she stands staring
Knees locked in contrapassto
Pinstripes in my eyes
I have no need for the white eyes
Or white fabric
Purity was always
your delusion
Dreamt into syringes
Pricked into tiny faves
Fat with cake and promises from their daddy's
Or any man
With a poloroid camera

I am standing on the ceiling
Chandler trees raze
And solidify a shining icy stasis
Large and formal
Cold and towering
Tables glued upside down overhead
tiny tealights stuck too
Fire flickers down

You are a spotlight
Head
Chest
Skin
All Lighthouse

Peninsula
Ocean
Curvature of the earth
You beam clairvoyance
Shake your head.
Free of these lighthouses
You are under tealight s
A woman dances

Your hand touches your tie
Pen
Wrist muscles with fingers stimming
Champagne watch
Navy sleeve
Shoulder
Cheekbone

Soft hand on your cheek.

A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough

propositions the ladybug

clinging to a flannel pocket.


You can always trust a Tealight

to warm the neglected beetles

that cling to your chest.


This ritual of the staring contest

Eyes that shift the room temperature

behind your curtain.


With attention,

uncomfortable attention

when you blink at the Rorschach shadows.


Tell me, they are not mailboxes.

The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement

birch trees weaving

baskets from our branches,

attempting to disprove the illusion

that ghosts aren't real


you aren't real

If you, ghosts, or ladybugs are real

I'll stare 'till death do us part


I must, stare...

I must witness all I love

to it's end.


To lose a staring contest to a ghost is to
never prove that ghost is an illusion.

Blinking, disturbs reality.


I don't need any
more obsessions that appear red
with black spots.


I used to stare at the sun.

It's bad luck
to **** lady bugs....


How lucky am I

to witness death?

Is attention a weapon?

Is attention a weapon?


I would **** more...

I pop open the blister pack and poke the pill through,
dip it in sugar to mimic an advent calendar.
The doors are endless, a childhood dream.

I can’t get used to the lightness of despair.
I’ve mastered depression- damp, bell-heavy,
but despair?
It’s almost ethereal. Fairy lights in the breeze,
a brief twinkle
the wink of a tealight before it concludes.

The children hand me treasures they’ve found in the mud
Forest School, or playing outside as it used to be called,
before everything needed branding.
I smile, another leaf for my hair
more stones for my pocket. Anchors in open water.  
‘Are you okay, Miss?’

I sink into mauve bubbles, not trying to drown
only grounding my weight again.
Lilac shimmers the water and I trickle it over me,
smearing life across sallow skin.
My Rudolph earrings hang florid
tinsel etches my scalp. It’s the Nativity today
and my beaming face will echo that of the angels.
Happy.

When you started to love me you created a monster
The devil inside
My demons on my shoulder
You promised we would always be bonnie and clyde

In the dark corners of my mind
There is a tealight of hope
Thats dimming by each passing day
My stomach feels like im walking on tightrope.