A glance out the window, struck suddenly
by the realness of the tree leering outside –
picturing your bones deftly woven into the
tangles of branches, like cradling fingers,
rain falls, whispering windowsill promises
to let go, let go, trailing down the glass and
rivulets through the bark, fractal shadows
of long tree limbs cast onto the wall, dark
dancers celebrate letting go, letting go – but
all I’ve ever had is a jealous desperate grip;
I’ll rake raw rivulet claw marks before I go
Category: Poetry
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Rivulets
-
To Hear It Said Out Loud
Tell me that snow-covered hill
blends perfectly into clear sky –
that I was right to be breathless
when morning horizon vanished
into a clean page, empty canvasTell me that love doesn’t vanish,
that it has a comfortable seat in
some cosmic waiting room, one
ear listening for that right name
to be called out, ready to returnTell me that it is never too late –
that the nightmares are all gone
but the dreams are real, always,
tell me how things will work out
and mean it, no furtive glances –Tell me what happens after the
happily-ever-afters, tell me that
the stories keep going – tell me
how endings are only beginnings;
another author picks up the pen
-
The Inner Child Replies
You started this year speaking to me, again –
we looked into each other’s eyes, embraced –
and then you fell silent, quickly – afraid, maybe
of how sickly-thin and frail I had become
in the intervening decades – scary, how
traits will echo across time. Both of us still
counting our ribs. Calories. Hours. Minutes.It’s tempting to try to stay some tender age
but I think I’ve grown with you, mine were
the other set of white knuckles beside yours –
when we anticipate those swells in symphonies
the hairs on my neck also stand, that shudder
of ecstasy rolls through both of our hearts –
if you sing in the kitchen, we sing both parts –well, we used to sing. Used to skip, spring
down school corridors, used to wave batons
to conduct invisible orchestras – six A.M.
on the cold morning bus we sang out loud.
We knew each sinful way to stop caring,
and we’d weaponize the correct ones, not this
numb, drunk, dark room middle-distance –we used to choose hope. In high school
the cafeteria table turned to nihilism –
a half dozen queer kids banded together,
exsanguinated, already, not even eighteen –
all dutifully tying our own ropes, building
our own guillotines – we’d already jumped
out of the plane, but I chose the parachute.My heart sang when you saw me, last year –
oh, how close that coffin was to nailing shut,
how simple to silence a voice, surrender to
tumbling down the mountainside; one must
imagine Sisyphus defeated, resignation like
a crown of thorns – to arrest that fall would
tear out an arm, and to chase the boulder –stopping a spiral means choosing to hope.
You avoided mirrors because that’s where
you always caught my eyes, remembered
the counter-harmonies in the kitchen, or
becoming an altar boy for the dresses, or
choosing the parachute. Stopping the fall.
Believing in better yous, mes, everything –don’t do this alone. Take me with you, now –
not strong the way that stops a boulder, but
I’ll push, too, when the climb gets steep; I glow
bright, like how I painted stories on the ceiling
late at night – you have never been alone – fix
your eyes forward, take my hand – no more
nooses, guillotines; no more secrets to keep.
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Carry Water
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.♦ Zen koan
Surely better than all I’ve discarded,
but what are my hands left holding, now?
The power vacuum within broken cycles,
cults of personality with no charismatic center,
a child-shaped hole born when I became afraid
of losing barbs, of missing the fear if it ever left –
infant macaque clinging to the wire-mother –but still better than barbs.
Better than shallow cuts,
better than a familiar fear,
better than the blur of decades –
the pale shock of realization, how
two years becomes ten, better than
nothing. That’s all it was. Starved body
with no charismatic center, nothing,
better than toeing slowly around the
no man’s land of child-shaped holes,
too many to cover up, not enough
sheets to hide them all from sight –at night I sit vigils. I don’t sleep.
The subconscious throws anxiety dreams
that have lost their sting, fading out like
beloved cassette tapes played too often,
(to be loved is to be changed)
I recite litanies for the living, pray
safety for the dreamers, softness
for the waking, strength for the
shell-shocked amongst us, those also
staring blankly at empty hands –
motivation to keep tiptoeing
around child-shaped holes, courage
to peek underneath the sheets,
fill space with something better –all the love these hands can hold –
better than nothing – shell-shocked
to be a something at all, oh, to know
how much love these hands can hold.
If I could cling to the wire-mother –
lean into barbs, learn to love the cuts –
how much love these hands must hold.
-
Gratitudes
For the kneading claws on cat paws, like
ragged rakes reaching around your neck, for
your sweatshirt’s heavy hood cowl of armor –
for those speedbumps littering all the roads
just outside your apartment, close enough
together to jolt you from derealization, for
steering wheels steady underneath fingertips,
no cause for alarm, for sleeping past the alarms –
for buying the second box of Mallomars, and
the hot chocolate, and the bag of marshmallows –for that time you put down the knife,
decided to be disappointed, one more time
by a society that should have embraced you,
deciding that twenty years terrified was still
worth more than a gorey Irish goodbye, an
epilogue written across the tan tile of your
dormitory’s shower stalls – you hate phone calls
but you dialed campus security, anyway –
transmuted total terror into complete shame
when the bored uniform scolded you, some child
in the patrol car backseat interrupting his night –
for the way your stomach rolled right in time
with the nurse’s eyes on a cold infirmary table –
I suppose I didn’t cut deep enough for them –for not cutting deep enough.
For the privilege to witness each horror
that has followed, decisions made daily
every lonely dawn – stilling the tremors,
putting down the knife, saying the words,
for desiring the disappointments, for
seeking out new cracks to fall through –
for buying the second box of Mallomars
and all of the battered hope that entails
-
Chrysalis
To hear it all explained by my son
while I fumble with the housekeys,
arms overfull with grocery bags
and he spins in the foyer like a flywheel,
there’s just three types of parent, you see –
the normal ones, strict ones, and mean ones –
I’m stunned to be counted as normal.
I crack the front door, he darts past my legs –
another day debating disclosure. Debating
demolishing this well-constructed view –
detailing painstakingly how some parents
embody all three – that’s how they get you –
but he’s already stolen my bedpillow,
made a chrysalis out of a comforter –
who am I to shatter this kind of peace?
Like toppling over a tower of blocks,
like kicking down sandcastles, like
piercing the shell of hatching eggs
too soon, too soon, I can’t. I can’t.
I afford myself the space he’s left for me,
the sliver of cushion beside his cocoon –
I reflect on the virtues of normalcy.
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Hide and Seek
I used to fit in broom closets,
contort to whichever shapes
twisted best into basement blanket bins –
I found the quiet corners, slipped inside,
hiding, holding breath until forgotten.
Safer to be discarded. Safer in stasis.
I recited strange prayers
listening to that silent dark –
let me fly away from here,
smallest, scared songbird –
make me invisible, please
make all of me bleed into
the weight of these blankets –
safer to disappear.
Safest to not be
anything at all.
-
High Place Phenomenon
The truth is more direct –
the void doesn’t call.
It has never needed to –
no siren songs, just
a chasm aching, empty open air
that lurks outside the periphery,
darting across the street –
a dive-bombing starling
oblivious to windshield, or tire,
the quiet is the lure. Just
one jerk of the steering wheel,
a careless step off the curb, one
step too many towards an edge,
just the solemn promise – soon
you could be all stillness, too,
nothing else. Nothing else.
-
Blue Jay
I am twenty-two streetlamps,
sodium-vapor orange spotlights
counting the way back home –I am the home that never was one.
Warm comforts were made, or found,
but never a room for me in the heart
of those timbers, that steel –
windows rattling in hurricanes –
they never broke, until they didI am what remains, what’s left
after everything I gave away –
much easier to be pecked apart
like blue jays at the bird feeder
feasting on their entitlements
with a calm show of force, bullies
belied by cornflower feathersI am what couldn’t break, so
it bent, it crumpled, it folded,
I took the branding iron
and held it against my own skin,
I’ll accept all of the sin
so others need not carry it,
I like the weight. It sits
heavy across my shoulders
like my father’s duster,
lost once I left it behind –rounding a corner, cowering
quiet in the backseat, counting
streetlights silently in my head –
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…
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Blazes
Look to the leaves, how even the trees breathe –
slow, deep sighs before that first blanket of cold,
leaves orange and gold, painting desperate blazes
against a cloudless October sky; baring thin fingers
all pointing home. Rustling voices, whispering choir,
sing divest from the past, make room for new growth.
The coming dawn is inevitable, the wheel turns anew.
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How to Write a Letter to Oneself
Consider the audience, how
she’ll jump from her chair, terrified
by the swinging clang of the mail slot –
consider the envelope, abandoned,
just joining the jetsam of junk mail
lingering lonely until slender, tremulous
hands tear into the insides, hungry to
fatten up – cold is coming, famine with it –
consider it’s already been said, she’s already
chewed it, all those words crumpled up,
tossed, and discarded – consideranother medium. Consider postcards,
how you could couch concern within
a lovely little vista. Wish you were here.
Consider the cost of stamps, versus
costs of courting with silence, how
quiet needs to be punctuated before
the ever-present ringing sets back in,
consider how emptiness cries to be wasted,
mewling, awful books chock full of blank pages –
consider the island of each postal bin, drop box,
the trucks, each conveyer belt, set of eyes
and hands which a letter must pass through –
consider the certainty of delivery, versus the
desperate scrabbling of being misunderstood.
Consider words, themselves, how they’ll weaponize,
grow like tumors so they can thrive, choke
out green growth, crawl like greedy vines, or
how tree roots glacially move the sidewalks,
suburban continental drift, slowly. Certainly.
Consider all of the costs.
Send the letter, anyway.
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Riverstone
Beachside recess yard, asphalt-hard,
waves crashing white noise, background
metronome beating steady time – youth
was wasted on me, certainly, sitting
cross-legged, sandblasted by gusts
stinging and scouring but I’m all smiles,
dedication to lonely crafts, studying
so I can remake myself stone still,
hope so far flown all my dreams are
monochrome, those escapist fantasies
are best left to books, but if all it took
was stillness, then yes – I could hold,
pray to empty dogma, turn me cold –
let erosion be the steady hand that reveals
the shape of me, she lies asleep; make me
a fossil. Break me down. Reduce me
to elements, make me the wind,
the sand, return me to the land –
unmake me, anything but soft,
just listen – do you hear it?
Waves, wind, white noise
just listen, make me new.
-
Narcissus
Maybe mirrors were a mistake –
one should not be able to peer
through pupils, into darkness,
clenching fists around a toothbrush
daring reflections to flinch, apologize,
looking for that faint, visible pulse
beating through the diaphragm –
does it move, too? Is this all true?
Last night you woke up crying, a smile
turning up the corner of your face –
there’s no smirk in the mirror.
Who knows what Narcissus saw.
Who can tell which reflection
looked back, a voice from the black
that can burn a soul down to petals
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Invocation
Yes! Yes – poems for all the unfit parents,
stanzas for the neglect and slant rhymes for
each time absent affection gets rebranded
as a lack of gratitude – yes, beatitudes for
each and every sob choked down better
than the meals I purged – yes, poems for
the poison inside me, I had to get rid of it –
yes, lines for the lies that bound me, better
than unravelling; maybe, maybe not – at least
the fiction was my making, frames for slants
to skew into a form that could align, justify
me neatly onto the page – yes, psalms for
the rage reduced to meager coals in my gut
too heavy to regurgitate – songs for bonfires,
for when those coals glow white-hot and you
burn and you burn and you burn and you burn
and if you have any voice left, then yes – hymns
for hope, the right words to invoke a glow of
ashen coals, to write the poems, break those lines,
prayers for enough time, but yes – always poems
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Bodyhopping
Sometimes the cricket, waterlogged
in a puddle, eyes sunward, exhausted
and welcoming the finality of the sole,
legs thrashing, I will die singing loudlySometimes the cat, all suncooked fur
purring beneath fingers, waves of her
contentment circulating to your heart,
teaching that peace is what you takeSometimes the backroad tree branch
voids of leaves cut out in right angles
by mail trucks, live defiantly, root deep,
you were here first; that sun is for you
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Catnaps
Walk the track counter clockwise
like we can turn back time, pacing,
pierced by the placebo, pinpricks
crawling like sunbeams down limbs
once asleep, reawakening, remember
when warmth wasn’t something to
cower from; to be seen is to be loved,
not endangerment – joys of being known,
enough of this terror of being found.
Peaceful poems are hard to proffer, my
bones haven’t steeped in contentment
long enough to slough off chill. My cat
spends hours basking in windowsills, I
could learn this kind of entitlement –
curtains drawn back, breaths drawn slow,
unbothered, steadiest certainty that
of course I belong, how else could I be?
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Slant
I am with you
under the weighted blanket,
in the silent car rides, each
lonely moment, I’m there.
I linger, embed myself like
barnacles; we’ve become one,
I feel your sun, your hunger, I’m
the fog on the mirror, the rush of
blood that fills your mouth; it was me –
I bit your cheek – scarred your arm,
I’m the hand, and the steel, that
shuddering pulse. I’m the fear.
The breath that gets held, and
the sigh which comes after –
I am what’s coming, next, but
you get to choose
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Benedictions
You started the game. Let him use your body
like a jungle gym; it was cuter when he was 3
but now your son is all choking and elbows, he
cackles while he wrings out the air from you,
presses you back into some kind of present –
it’s 10 at night. He asked to sleep in your bed,
and pillow fights quickly became a full-weight
blanket, tangles of arms, legs – slow breaths –
Both so tired. Hold him close and lay on hands,
whisper a benediction into the silence. Maybe
you can pour every last ounce of goodness
through your fingertips, into his back; his hair,
please, god, give him all the gentle mornings,
all the kindnesses deemed impossible for me –
or maybe, you were just holding it for him. Now
is his time, pour into his vessel. Please, let him
just be
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Maladaptive
Validation is yours! just a cool $140,
allot yourself 50 minutes per week –
pencil it in between the sobbing fits
the turning & the
tossing in cold sheets –
the dread of the
periphery of your vision blurring out
are you okay?
familiar territory. Just say your lines.
Tell yourself there is time; hold tight
to anything that grazes your fingers –
it’s been a tough week, just
struggling struggling struggling
struggling struggling struggling
maybe in a past life I was a sailor, why
else can I hold fast to sodden shiplines,
sinking while the storm encircles like a
slate gray ceiling crashing down, down,
no I’m not sure how
I can tie that to my dad
-
Lamentation
Pray like you used to, under your breath, for that
sort of tired that knocks you flat like schoolyard
concussion – pray to someone, maybe the stars
I remember seeing nights before the hazy grays,
pray for the aphasia to fade out slow, like a star,
for every mote of sand filling up your hourglass
pressing around your chest – choking out air like
a hug, pray for the relief of an empty waiting room,
a heavy sigh for words left unsaid, duties shirked –
pray the mantles you flee fall onto better shoulders.
Pray to be left. For release, for abandon, dismissal
from service; it was so heavy. You never asked for
the stillness; the quiet and the surrender at night,
never asked to carry this – pray for patience, for the
needle to skip back into a groove, pray for a louder
voice when you sing in the shower, for a kindness,
praying itself, for the morning that comes after, the
next lamentation – pray for the lamenting; wanting
reminds you that you’re not done with all this, yet
-
Landings
No poems for shame chills that follow
you into the shower, run like the water
through your hair, spill down your back,no poems for 10th floor, balcony access,
for timing the fall to the church bells just
next door, aim for the field of green, quietcourtyard where carpenter bees crashed
clumsy into your forehead, wood pergola
overhead to help you forget how far you’vecome from home, no poems for the razing,
for the flood, no verses for homecomings,
forget your address, your alma mater – nomore fight songs – no more fighting at all,
just the remembering, and the forgetting –
church bells, carpenter bees, just the fall
-
Thunderheads
The storm is rolling in this afternoon,
I watch thunderheads gather out west –
tunnel vision circling around the only
real sensation piercing my lonely Sundays,
that weak pulse of heartbeats underneath
the steel edge of my fingernails, war painted,
ready to tear the very heart of me out from
beneath my skin; I tear into my heels so
I always walk on thin cushions of blood,
anxiety-numb, time-ticking rhythm, minutes
bleed away as sun casts long shadows, now,
I’m digging for the good heart that I’m told
lies waiting, down underneath the scar tissue,
the disappointing rot of everything I was told
about life that never came true, the catastrophe
of living is waking each day to new disasters –
it’s learning to love the wrecking ball, it’s the
suicide letters you’ll write to the furniture, to
the pets, to the carpet, because your parents
don’t need one – you’re not sorry; the news would
fall onto deaf and demented ears, discarded
along with other inconvenient truths about you –
watch the clouds. Watch the air draw back like
the ocean drags back tides, long pulls of water;
watch the trees outside twisting, shivering alive,
writhing against the certain fury of everything
that is to come – prepare yourself, prepare, the
world steadily draws breath. Shed your branches,
shed your skin, awake to walls burning around you
and build something anew; pray for good bones, that
the storms will pass, will gather, will pass, again
-
Apoptosis
I’ll hibernate through these coldest days –
let them count my ribs; I hunger for more
than food, regardless, I’ll never be found –
as loud and as harmless as a nightmare
handmade from discarded shame – just
malformed masked grotesqueries, error,
the kind of poison you have to bury deep,
don’t leave any marker for those secrets
that should never have seen the sunlight
-
The Quietest Reply From the Backseat
I’ve never forgotten, mom, never –
not once since you ripped the fabric
of my psyche, tore out want and need –
pruned from the pliable, young therapist
you were cultivating, as unwelcome as
my rambling my crying the fact I was
all the things your parents hated, so
it had to go. Your methods were subtle,
quality over quantity. When you struck
you never missed an artery; you’d wait
for the open wrist, for a naked throat –
that passenger seat was your throne,
the seat from which you collected all
that we owed you, all you were due, I
wonder if you knew how those words
hang like chains across my memories –What memories are you carrying, now?
Which haunted you on your four-hour drive
back home; which house did you see?
Whose arms waited for you? I hope
the story in your head is a kind one,
kinder than the interrogations that had me
choking back my breath deeper down than
my secrets, how you could never know the
fullness of who Cameron could ever be – how
you stunned me silent when I was twelve, but
here’s my answer, mom – no. I can’t remember.
I’ve never had everything I’ve ever wanted, but
it’s because the human condition is to suffer,
because I’ll run this hedonic treadmill until my
knees finally buckle – because I am all need, I
crave touch like rats frantically press a cocaine lever;
fuck food, my body is nourished only when I’m held,
because you never even gave me the things I needed
let alone everything I ever wanted, the conditions
were explicit and strict and choked me out so fast I
never knew that I buried myself, all along, all I
remember is driving home in high school, mom –
telling you that I could marry anyone, because
I just had to mold myself in to what they need – really,
is that what a teenager should believe? So no, mom –
I can’t remember, just like I can’t imagine facing you
or even mouthing the single, starting syllable of a
single angry word because all I can fathom is how
much hollow love I still carry; the tidal weight of how
a child needs a mother, remember how I needed you,
remember just how much
I needed
-
Risus Sardonicus
I dream about back seat conversations
we’ll never have, like when I was twelve
and clutching LEGO sets like talismans –
my consolation prize for enduring more
rage than any child should see inside an
afternoon – dad always preferred paying
cash for love, so he screeched into park
and stepped out for an ATM; it was just
you and I, mom. The car always felt like
a prison, the midday sunbeams burning
interrogation lamps, the seats groaned
as that sad rictus grin twisted out from
your headrest – you took a breath & said
I hope you remember how it feels to get
everything that you’ve ever wanted – then
snapped back around, like it wasn’t real,
like it all never happened, sad daydream,
like you didn’t just rip a hole in my heart
that drafts blow through while I sleep –
I dream about backseats, now, at night –
a captive passenger being carried down
winding roads which never lead home
