Posts for June 3, 2020 (page 8)

whose names are devoured,

and whose names blossom in our mouths like rows of thorn-hooked roses?

speak.

give everyname the power to latch into your tongue.

the cursed dusky light trickles through my curtains
awakening me from dreams whose endings remain uncertain 

I sit up with a yawn and try to remember what I’ve seen
but nothing slips through my fingers as easily as a dream

I despair for a moment thinking of all the stories that are gone
but I know other stories await, and it’s best to just move on.

People who don’t have a mentall illness
ask me what it’s like
to have a
mental illness 

I want to tell them 
it’s like having a ghost 
wrap his hands around 
my throat
and I am suffocating 
while everyone 
watches

I want to tell them 
it’s as if someone crawls into 
my bed at night 
and whispers my worst nightmares 
in my ear 
like hypnosis
and I replay them every day

I want to tell them 
that if I put every single person 
that loves me 
into a single room 
I could look at all their faces
and still believe that they 
don’t

I want to tell them 
I have a lot of bad days
I want to tell them 
I have good ones too, 
but I don’t tell them 
anything 
because on the outside,
both days appear the same. 

Today I woke up at 3 a.m.
with a migraine and a man

pressing two fingers through
my sternum trying to convince me

that that’s where my heart is.
Definitely not the mass of fat

hidden conspicuously behind his back
as if I couldn’t hear great gobbets of meat and pulp

smack the hard wood behind him. Then he led my fingers
to my neck and proved I still had a pulse.

All we can do right now
Is hope that it gets better,
That it won’t happen again,
That you come to love your world
Like we loved ours:
Sometimes begrudgingly,
But always.  

We’ll try and often fail.
Know that we mean well.
Forgive your mother her deep love
And your father for much more.  

You’ll have all of us.  

We only ask that you carry the fire.

We don’t tell ourselves how to get born,
become teenagers,
mate and care for children,
how to grow old and die.

We don’t need to remember
the story, the story remembers us,
like the song lyrics, it’s all  coming
back to me now.

Our minds don’t have to tell
our hearts to beat.  Our bodies
know what to do.  We are the water,
not the wave.

We are the sound of rain.

i wish i could write

a poem about the way

you looked at me

across the table that night,

but i literally cannot

find a way to.

i cant decide

if its because

the moment was so

entrancing that its

inexplicable in words,

or because nothing about it

was really poetic at all.

-eyes to lower, dropping to gaze only at the floor
-ears to detect small warning changes in voice inflection
-shoulders to slump, fall and curl forward away from ears
-hands to tremble while folded in prayer deep into the night 
-chest to close tightly, drawing in only small gasps of air
-heart to race uncontrollably with fear and anticipation
-stomach to swell, rumble, churn and spew acid
-legs to shake violently yet forget how to run  
-feet to remain still, frozen, planted in shame.    

It is time to unlearn these lessons.

                       –after Candide

There is a concatenation of events in the best of all possible worlds.
Had we not been stopped short by the pandemic,
we would not be playing the violin where Daniel and Rebecca Boone were laid to rest,
we would not be deep cleaning the Giza pyramids,
we would not have left the ghost light burning all night on Broadway,
we would not be taking lessons from The Rest of the World,
we would not be turning our front yards into playgrounds,
we would not be playing board games in the garage wearing gloves,
and we would not be here to eat fresh radishes grown by our son.

This morning, I hastily grabbed my hardback,
1973 edition of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary,
with the binding on its spine worn off;
and lost my grip, juggling it in my hands,
when several folded sheets of paper slipped loose
from the X’s.  How had I missed these?

Six sheets stapled together, with the heading:
Books to Read Before College,
listed in alphabetical order, by author.
My maiden name is handwritten in ink
on the upper righthand corner of the first sheet.
Little stars appear beside titles of books
I may have wanted to read or already had.
Mutiny on the Bounty
The Catcher in the Rye

The sheets are yellowed; the crease is starting
to tear.  Each page has what looks like
a coffee stain spilled on the folded packet;
twin blotches, in the shape of breasts,
that have faded and blurred the ink.

Reading down the list today, I remember
devouring those classic novels as fast
as I could wield my library card; too fast,
really, to grasp their deeper meaning.
But, at eighteen, I already knew it all.
Of Human Bondage
Dr. Zhivago

All that preparation, that promise.
I wish I could beg that headstrong, naive girl
to slow down, to finish college, wait to get married.
But, she wouldn’t have listened.  Instead, her education
turned visceral.  I remember her screaming
at the drunk husband who didn’t seem to care,
that she was leaving; another sad story for the classics.

Her life had become the novel
she wished she’d never read.