Feel Good-
you should,
So you never feel bad.
Easy it is
to say,
when it isn’t pouring rain.
Hard to fathom
painting
anything but grey.
If you grab them
little rain clouds
and Squeeze out the pains,
you’ll find a silver-line
with peaking rays.
I can’t continue
to make myself mad
when I was made to be
something happy:
A little light
for a little time.
Seared onto the soles of my feet by the coals
burning for eons, the sins of my great-grandmothers
remind me with the aching that I am not the first,
nor shall I be the last to bear my witness.
Some say we inherit our sin.
Some claim we each start fresh,
but all I know as I dig my toes
into the clay halfway up this mountain
is that I carry what is mine, what was theirs:
spiraling salacious thoughts exploding
across neurotransmitters, blasting
on all cylinders that will not let me rest
until I reach the peak ahead.
They were once condemned as blasphemers
for having too many thoughts. I count myself
among the fortunate, since the flames only
licked my feet, did not consume my body alive.
I crossed those flaming coals to prove
something to myself, not for anyone else.
To allow the pain to teach me,
guide me, mold me into the shape
of a woman I could grow to admire
as I ascend into the human being
I am becoming, each aching step at a time.
Hair like tumbleweed.
Fingers tremble like keys on a player piano
As I fumble my way through my debit card number.
Three day funk, smell of spent dopamine,
Bouts of excessive sweating and stale blankets.
The dealer never judges; she sees me at my lowest,
Skin clammy as a baby bird’s, I walk on fault lines
Landmined with egg shells.
That makes our exchanges more intimate than sex,
Better than sex—no touch required—
Our little secrets—no one else knows my commitment
To my little hobby— The most intimate relationship I’ve ever had.
Skull hookahs, neon oases, weakened pulses mainline
Dance beats that throb from some unidentified source,
Detoxing junkies wiggle those hips, twerk,
Get their groove on with beats
That camouflage their tremors,
A guy in the back revives the Macarena—
The upright skeleton at the Hydroxy-7 case
Shakes with such force he comes apart,
Femurs unglued from hips,
Ribs strewn almost radially around the heap,
Disembodied hair absurdly resumes its greasy part.
His fiancé witnesses it all on video chat—
They were conferring on brand and dose
When it happened; her screams conveyed
The terror of a lost fix, louder and louder, such force
Until she oozed gelatinously through
The screen, ectoplasm squirming past
The bones of her broken lover toward
The glass case’s reflective glean—
A hand extends partially from the slop
Like Adam reaching out for God
On the chapel’s ceiling, recreated
On the burnished tile of the Capitalist temple.
I’m going to take all my blood back, baby, everything
I spilled or gifted to the world. The sunlight whispered
that if I suffered a little longer I could have it all back.
Commanded me, hand in the open fire and dance, baby, said
I need you to test time’s bluff, prove an hour could last forever.
Make me last forever. Attest these fresh wounds are worth this
sweet promised infinite. So I did it faithfully, baby, the burning.
I come proud, skin stripped to bone. Now, just required to wait
on hold, aflame, for the check to be cashed. Soon I’ll have everything.
Riffles orange yellow brown
to and fro fro and fro
slowly sagged through
Aunt Virgie’s fingers it fell
to the small black cat and me
to fold our selves into
for napping it gave her hands
something to feel after
Uncle Carl left the house for the
hospital and never came back.
a meadowlark’s lazy whistle would drift
across oat-grass and white sprays
of Queen Anne’s Lace
the summer I was 17 and in love
or strong and clear, it would reach me
through the open window of my car
as I sped back home from college
by fallow fields’ nodding heads of purple thistle
–like a long sigh of contentment
if I were a bird, it would be my summer song
Today, the noon heat has herded a knot of black cattle
into shadows beneath fencerow trees.
A few counties over, folks are making a last stand
against a proposed data center on auctioned farmland.
On our farm’s gravel road, I am walking
between pastures toward the pond to cool off
when the hot, still air carries a meadowlark’s call to me
–as loud as a siren over the cicadas’ saw and
the low hum of tires on the highway a few miles away.
I’ve never seen a meadowlark,
but I know its song, am too old to know
what summer will sound like
after the last meadowlark is gone.
A few days ago I read dad jokes to you
and inspirational sayings
about fathers.
I said the Spanish prayers
for the dead.
It once was a day when
the kids called you
one by one
for lengthy phone conversations
about their children
and the Minnesota Twins
and the weather,
all safe topics
you were eager to discuss.
But now it’s a one-sided
chat beside a grave
about the minutiae
that probably does not
matter to you
where you are now,
so far away from us
in a much better place.
My dental insurance paid
up for another year.
July to July, Summer
Solstice to
Summer Solstice.
Housman wondered how
many springs he had left?
I wonder how
many teeth?
Call me a haint
’cause I’m haunting this town
like a spectre made of ash
and regret
Call me a saint
’cause the road to hell
might be paved with good intentions
but I got lost somewhere along the way
and paved it with sin instead
Tar and feather me
so that I might find redemption
through agony and retribution
then quarter me like pocket change
lost in the wash
rattling in the dryer
like a snake in the desert
flicking its tail in fear
I invite this healing pain
like a martyr for the cause
but the cause is self-love
riddled with failure and loathing
I invite this torture
because when it hurts on the outside
I feel as if I can breathe
because it makes sense
and I am whole
and I can manage
and
anything is better
than this godforsaken
sadness
