She has never been accustomed
to weapons, to blood, but one day,
she gets the notion to sever your head
and crack open the thin bones of your skull.
She wants to scape your brains out with a dull
wooden spoon, to fry them, and feed them
to someone unsuspecting. Placed in a chili,
perhaps vegans would mistake them
for filler. She chooses a short, serrated
kitchen knife. She waits by the door.
I spend my days with people who cannot connect object to word,
word to feeling, feeling to person. Perhaps some if this seeps into me,
perhaps I’ll next be called to mime. What is the motion
for fear – is it crouching, arms braced in front of me, mouth agape?
Is it approaching a large girl with long, knotted hair and then running, silently
screaming? Is it waiting silently beside a silent phone?
My words no longer reach out to anyone. Once they were my outreached hand
that you held. Once, they were a cacoon I wintered in; once, they were my scream.
The mime pulls the rope, back leaning, legs straining, her actions
are convincing, but we are no longer fooled. Did I ever really fool
anyone – this is what I wonder now. This and how to try again,
to lift the rope I cannot see and at least fool myself again.
I am experiencing
a you specific
lonliness. It is a need
for things left
undone. You are
all hands and toungue
and voice in motion.
You are comfort, desire;
you are contentment
and passion.
You are my need.
Come home.
Look me in the eye, find some truth, find some fear
then use every word you can find to say nothing. I laid
in your bed once when you were not there. I had a nightmare
that your father found me. I let you run your hand down
my body, I let you, but you knew then, as is your habit
that there would be no more, that I would be hollow. I was another
tool, a way to discover another future. After I slid my hands
over you, and you whispered that it must mean something,
you peeled me, left me exposed. It was your nature to know,
but you left me no clues, no tea dried into elaborate patterns
in the bottoms of cups, no dried yarrow in a tangle on my lawn.
Will she tell you now? This morning
when all the twigs and buds on trees
are shimmering, winkling against one another
and you are holding her son’s cold face
against your breast, and you are weeping.
Will she tell you now, now that the chance
not to love him is past? You stripped off
your jacket last night when you pushed her
up against the door, pressing your mouth
into hers. When you saw him this morning, lying
on his side as if his body was a letter folded.
You saw him, you ran to his side, you knelt
and lifted his head to breathe into him.
But she didn’t say a word, she let you
mourn, let you take over where her mind
was as white as the snow. Afte that, there
was no way to get the words past
her teeth. Forever, he will be yours.
I
There were nights of motion, of wetness,
of weeping and pleasure, of ghasping for air.
Once, she lived in desire. She woke in the night
to the feel of you between her legs. You were
her Zeus, your hand sliding into her was a shaft
of moonlight melding her life to yours, creating in her
a divine pregnancy. The love you left there
was her salvation, her down fall.
II
Looking at you, no one would know your divinity.
She could see it from the moment she first saw you
standing outside her house in the snow, slamming
the door of a rusty truck, it’s creaking was
the sound of the muses that proclaimed your presence.
Months later, you left Perseus in your wake, her love
without a body to hold it, faltered, failed
to live up to the demi-god as it was formed.
III
Your Danae, with seven bite marks on her back
moves thru the world, different. The damage
you left, the bites, purple marks that you lift her shirt
to show another lover; the strange pattern of welts,
the shape of a whip at her hip. Feathering moonlight
between the legs every week, calling her back.
Lately, I am unable. Unable to write, unable to think, unable to work, unable to keep up correspondence. Things that shouldn’t be are taking up all the space in my life. I’m not doing anything as well as I should.
I’m getting angry.
Sorry
Monday, December 29 at Victorian’s Midnight Cafe at the corner of Fifth and Neil, 7.30 PM.
This poetry bomb will be themeless.
This note includes an assignment: Write a eulogy for that bar of all bars: Larrys.
Yesterday, I got calls, texts, and emails from several people. It took me a while to accept the truth. Larry’s Bar, home to all artistic misceants of Columbus, king of my world, has closed its doors. Larry’s is dead, long live the new King.
See you then and there.
On your back, I traced the words I was too scared
to say. You followed the path of my fingers, though,
and were disappointed by my fear. When you asked
me to give voice to that sentiment, I thought you
could be my new home. I am obsessed with a house
two blocks south of my apartmet. A two story brick
house across the street from a bar I never go to.
My house has had a for sale sign for months,
since long before I thought you could be the place
to which I long to return. I know now, you are no place.
You are a person. You will move, you will shift, you will change
your mind. Like me, you disappear. I carry home on my back.
I carry it when I take the dog to the park. I carry it when
I go to my parent’s house. Maybe this is what the homeless
woman who sat in the middle of the sidewalk this afternoon knew,
that her home was wherever she was. She yelled at me to say
she was not afraid of my dog. If we were young together, I would
take her to my home, I would undress her, I would trace words
on her back that I longed to say. I used to lie in bed and stare
at you and think, I will never love you as much as you love me.
My great love started with the thought that I would never love her.
What a fool, to think that. My great love ended with new scars
on my skin and flailing and job loss. No matter what, I can always say
I went the farthest. I am trying something new these days, I am letting
everything slide. I am walking past that house, my longed for home, daily.
Today, I heard they are closing my favorite dive bar. I thought
of the time you took me there, how we got drunk, how you wrote
my name in sharpie on the bathroom wall. I would like to somehow
take that part of the wall, to have a memorial of our home. You came
back once, but my bed distubed you, the thought of someone new
in it. My next home will have a porch. It will have wood floors,
and a yard for my dog. There will be a light in the kitchen, too.
I will make breakfast there. I will take the dog out. I will clean
the bathroom and decorate the foyer. I will hang my paintings there.
I keep expecting to run out of new mornings.
I got a new vacuum for Christmas, I ran it twice
last night after putting it together using the cheaply
printed instructions. My old vacuum hadn’t worked
in months. It collected a trash bag full of dog hair.
I put it in the trash can immediately. This morning
I woke up and could hear the sound of water beneath
the tires of cars on the street three stories below.
That’s some loud water. When I woke up this morning,
I wanted eggs and toast for breakfast. I opened the fridge
and discovered I am out of eggs. I am constantly working
against myself. One day, she told me she loves me and
tried to slide her hand around my body to my back. Was it
morning then, too, when I never said I loved her back?
Across the street, someone has driven a limosine to the food bank
and I wonder if it is their job and their only way to get around.
I moved to the city and planned to walk everywhere. Instead,
I drive. My clothing is not nice enough to handle the weather.
I am weak, I will call off work to sit all day watching movies.
I thought I was going to go for a run. Flannel sheets are
very appealing, and the sound of water under tires fades.
