Five years
-for e.b.s.
The sunlight comes through the curtains
You ask what time it is
Your back is to me
You face the wall
What time is it?
There isn’t time
Soon. However,
you roll over, kiss me
You do all sorts of things:
bring water with lemon, black coffee, a SPAM and cheese omelette
I watch your back arch to the sun,
us waiting for me to decide when to leave
I love you, you’re here again—-
moving, but here, welcoming my love once again
Please don’t shatter it
Walk me out instead of just to the door
I am not perfect; this is not perfect—-
has not and will never be—-but please stay a friend
I love you
The apple usually doesn’t fall too far from the tree
So Broken
The heart: a place of understanding,
the doorway of divine wisdom,
the center of transformation.
Journey from the mind to the heart, she says.
Can I get there? My pure heart is so broken.
A broken heart:
it comes from a hardened heart, they say.
Did my heart get hardened?
Maybe so. To survive.
No way out?
You are not being fair.
Brought your cultural misogyny
to your new position.
Let me leave you before
I explode and my shrapnel
weakens your perceived loss of power.
Too busy judging women.
Unaware their words armed your defense.
Do you know who this is?
That person I’m supposed to be.
I’d rather spend my time writing about it.
In that space I’m safe.
I’m tired of putting on a fake face,
holding my tongue.
I lived to write about it.
I listen and watch what people say and do.
I am the Finder and Authenticator
unable to trash or delete my memories.
I write this for both of us.
4 my words the bridge.
That’s it!
It’s not work it’s art.
Both pushing the other
in opposite directions.
Yes, that’s exactly where
I want you!
Last week I got off my pins,
had a pedicure, a massage.
You know what pins are for.
So, let us line up, prep,
take stations to divide the labor.
Production has begun its practice.
One to unroll
One to straighten
One to cut
One to point
One to grind the head
and so on.
Yawn.
A perfect dream in the economy
of my head, I lift my toes,
neither Italian or Rose;
I blush and pinkly stand.
That is me in his visible hand.
Dusk caps its pen over another finish
Running in the legal sense only
my legs weave exhausted metaphors
sweat from my T soaks me
in my self-perceived mediocrity
My feet touch the pavement
like crumpled poems
tossed to the park floor
There is no more within me
Until I see the finish line ahead
and I fall into the arms
of sweet race volunteer
a walking talking muse
who wraps me in a foil blanket
letting my memory rest
(I fell in love with her a little)
Though the race is done at last
the time poor
the pace slow
the miles trekked and cold
safe in my foil blanket
I see how far I have come
I live in more than videotapes,
carry a new hope so palpable
that I cannot speak on the train.
My mouth filled with sunshine
some days ago,
I’ve been waiting
to exhale for a long, long time.
I let the scenery
tear me
apart,
I build houses with my eyes,
they rise quiet from the coastline
like bright omens,
like angel’s shadows.
And I believe
in many things now,
I believe in you,
and I’d crawl back carelessly
to the privacy of my own shut mouth,
if I didn’t find that to be another way
to lose you.
Instead
I journey guiltless to the sun,
lord knows I need it, love,
and I’m not the only one.
Nobody can filter out the grief, rather
publicize my peace instead,
please,
let it live here,
in the garden.
There are always more petunias,
so don’t cry over annual mournings,
don’t cry that the city will not listen
from continents away,
let the wind
shuttle secrets, let them remain secret.
The world is never gonna be empty again,
promising,
I’ll come back to it,
touching fossils on my dresser tabletop,
touching my own damn skin,
a place
where a different sun once kissed.
I will be loved again,
this is not just a wish.
