Posts for 2020 (page 167)

i used to bite my fingernails when i was nervous. bite away the nerve endings of my nail beds. until they’d bleed. until i was ripping my nail from my finger. a small form of self harm that could go undetected

i was always told it takes 21 days to break a habit. i marked my calendar for the day i could paint my nails. they were heavy with polish and 21 days worth of feelings. looking at them i realized my fingers are crooked. i laugh well shit there goes my hand modeling career

when i had my first girlfriend i trimmed my nails consistently. because i wanted people to assume we were having sex. as if my hyper fixation on my own dead skin mattered to anyone. as if they’d even notice. as if we’re not all trapped in an endless cycle. focusing on the beauty of our own hands that we forget to look at anyone else’s

Life is what you make of it,
It’s as good or as bad as you want,
You have the power to change it,
It’s up to you whether or not you want to be happy,
Some may disagree,
Those are the ones who chose the wrong path,
Whose lives are filled with misery

The name was a wet, embarrassing  thud.

So I call out for that body smacking tile floor hard.

Name like grasping for an elusive shower curtain

that lingers behind the body like angel wings.

I call for a temple on porcelain bowl,

sick flash of white light head trauma impact

all slick from water slick from blood or shampoo

on a floor of stringy black hairs and tissue paper 

Name like the seizure that follows and the

empty static of the house it echos in.

Name that taste like choking on vomit and froth.

Name of convulsion and empty eyes.

I call that naked, limp body of a name.

I hear nothing. No reply in my empty house.

I forget the name as soon as it leaves my lips.

I forgot the name as I step into the shower.

every morning, my pen gathers
drops 
           to glisten  
                            the love of you.
the ears of the flowers hear me,
they joy at the sounds 
                                      falling 
                                                   to earth,
though i’m anywhere but there with you.

then, like no one living
you break me 
                            down 
gently with a look, or
in a trice, with severing sword 
bring me
                            down
to parky water pools
where the fishing is 
fabled, and easy.

and your poem buoys my shallow depths.

and i learn 
these futures we plan write themselves,
and i’ve a false face that only you know. 

red is the color in her hands before and after and always.

putting down her spear and painting her palms is patience,

henna in heeding her brother Baʿal thundered call.

she is cold and caring and can wait a night to stain her skin

and to braid her hair

while the storm strains the air and pleads she loose the rain of her sword.

and though gods and men are made as lambs in a lion’s mouth, she is made as fangs and molars

are in a lion’s mouth—

as they are made into her wreath and crown, the tooth of her spear and the point of her eye,

which sever and slaughter so she may lace unhanded fingers into her sash.

and if red is her color,

and if red is the color of love,

it is the color Death sees as she greets him, saying, ‘No more will you take my Brother.’

Last blood.
Most, I know, do not receive
this knowledge ahead – a gradual surcease, then
the last time is the last but you don’t know
until months have passed….

I will not miss
waking exhausted. The vise-tight wrenching.
The involuted seeds, swollen beyond distortion
and meaning     oh pluck them please

But
today with the flow descending, finally comes a whisper
of hesitancy
– oh I am more than ready to feel hunger again –
yet this barren, engorged flesh I have been carrying
for so long, will its leaving leave me
bereft? Or grant me blest, a hollow-full
of Crone lightness?

if i press the bruise on my thigh will it feel enough like your fingerprints?
i was cold before you, i’ll be cold after
the weight of multiple blankets isn’t always enough.

tried waiting for the words
to come like ants to the onion
I dropped beside the grill,
haphazardly feeling themselves towards
and away,
making contact in the dimming light
with one another in no discernable composition,
feeling curved contours, perfectly seared
to my blackened taste, and retreating,
to tell others, point the way
in hive mind harmony,
collectively conscious
of their next meal;

but nothing came

                       Ode
I have not seen you for years.
I write this poem for you
and no one hears its brevity
as the words go across
the page and down.

In a dream, I found
myself attempting to cross
a fallen tree over Old Seventy
Creek to get to you
in the dark, I imagine, with tears,

streaming down your cheek,
for I hear you sobbing,
but I do not get to you,
for I fall off and down,
though I do not hit the water.