Why I still think in a few French words
when the man who made me like that has long since
passed from my life?
Vacance, just the same, so I can dream, and survive
another brutalizing week
but then I will float along water
propelled only by my own muscles
Lie for a moment in a little winter sun
Re-enter the lives of my characters and
end their stories at last? They have been
waiting for me for years, to be considered worthy
of another's eyes
Hike in cold hills nearby and come home to
home cooked food
Exercise for hours and meet up with strangers
and stay up until really late and maybe see snow
explore life inside and out
After one more hellish week

I must ask myself, why this keeps happening and I know the answer
its because I'm afraid of you, my partner, who is supposed to work with me
but we only met a few months ago and I'm already sensing you'd rather feed
me to the dogs than change yourself, which is what they, the company asked you to do
So I said yes, and of course I used to think: this is only a problem in love
In love I get kicked around, but I'm OK with everything else but that's not true
it's the same **** thing with you who I will never be in love with because you are
a woman and just like me
and I don't even know if you know about yourself what I know and that is it is obvious
to me that you feel like you are invulnerable
but I have just survived a battle, and garnered a little respect and some advice from
someone who should know and now I do have a little bit of leverage
oh, how I cried to a stone who could no hear me and tallied it up to me being crazy
but if I'm to keep this job, I can't let you steam roll me again, you see,
because my shoulders hurt and I've been up since the crack of dawn on a day off
correcting a zillion papers that I knew would appear if I agreed with you
but at that moment when you were bellowing at me, to back down seemed the
only thing to do.  but now, with no break and feeling like I'm sick just because I've
been sitting here all day with a warm laptop on my legs and no swimming or even
going out to do anything but laundry and it's still not done I know that
I can't I must I must learn to stand up for myself in my terror, the
terror of a small child inside.

All that is left are silent pictures
I wish I could reach out and touch you
Your ashes, all I have left
of you my friend, gone too soon, why?
Nature is cruel, and final
what I wouldn't do to have you back again

The blows come, the lies
the incompetence that frames you
the person who doesn't mind destroying you
if it will make her life easier for a moment
We are rocks beaten by waves every day
Sometimes a storm, but always that ceaseless battle
And yet, inside ourselves can be a safe haven
or a basement of agony, if we side with our attackers
against ourselves.

An aquafer, underneath Saudi Arabia
As far down as an oil well, maybe further
A desert country with too many people and
for five years, the desert bloomed
then the well ran dry
as it has for us
and we don't even know
We can't feel it through our wealth.

Little girl synchronized swimmers moving to a piano beat
Toes pointed, smiles on, gotta keep that happy going
I remember in the haze of childhood, a faint clip
walking around our WW II housing turned Married Student Housing
Underneath empty clothing wires--why sugar and spice?
Which spice and could I really live up to being so nice?

And for the scary boys who liked to tear the tails off little puppies
Why did adults arrange things like this.
Polar opposites.  I was supposed to love a boy
with a ****** tail in his hand?

Quaking with fear all day
as I was going to follow through
with plans to say what I believe to be true
and now to have my thoughts known to authoriy
to say it into the air in his private space
in the company of the protection
Tears could be squelched
I felt wobbly and drained but not defeated
The aftermath was solid ground, not road ****
A strange new world of dignity for myself