Failings

furious pile
of laundry
mocking my
meager efforts
so what
I rocked as a mom today.
I say fuck you laundry.
I can do dishes tomorrow…

***

Read this.

Concordant

I don’t have trauma,
I have history.
Protection is suffocation,
perfection too hard to keep.
I’ve buried my treasure too deep,
forgotten the veritable weep.
When I regain my true self,
I wont be afraid to use words.

The Death of Me

there is

no poetry

like real

life

Rule Fucker

I miss him and his body.
I only saw pictures. I only saw words. I only heard voice
of everyday prattle. Design
but so divine, so MINE.
The rules always fuck me.
One time, they will protect me.
Farcical fantasy,
man for me,
destiny.
The builder has been deconstructed.

No end to those who can live without me,
lonely little fuck rule
squeals me. Build me…

I want to say
what to the men who seem to know me…
Don’t desert me,
bereft please be
due to lack of me.

Something essential: fuck me or leave me.

The Remains

The shootings in Connecticut leave me raw. She with the Blackish Brown Eyes is exactly 6. I can’t face that the parents dropped their kids off on a Friday and will now never see them alive again. It’s so unbearable. I have no reason more than others to hold on to that sadness, but it lingers. I pray and weep during the vigils and ceremonies.

I come in to work very upset about gun laws. Thus enters the man from Southie. He was a cop at one time; he has no problem with guns. As far as I know, he might still have one.

I know better than to start the discussion. Gun believers are the worst in their temerity, in my opinion. And peace is such a simple concept to understand, not so simple to achieve.

And yet, I do. I do start the discussion because earlier another father of two I know says he has a gun. Locked up, of course, rendering it totally useless in the case of a break-in. But his willingness just to possess one angers me. He does not hear my argument as logic. I back off and let go of the fight. The man from Southie, like always, gets my wrath.

I start to get angry when he insists on the freedom to bear arms. He won’t tell me why…why does he believe it? Why does he want to carry and keep what are only devices of death and destruction as an option for people in a society without proper care for their mentally ill? He becomes angry.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you.” And he walks away without giving me my answer. I decide to hate him. He has no reason, and I am right and now he is an instrument of death in my spoiled, little girl mind. I hate him because I’m scared and he has made himself a target, the poster child for the pro-gun movement.

He always takes the brunt of a woman’s anger, swallows it, turns it into something hard and hurtful inside his stomach, worrying himself into stomach ailments and sleep disorders. He can’t seem to apply his lackadaisical attitude in life to the female population, you can see how he craves love, routine, understanding.

I would worship him if he asked me. But that’s another story. So this is our relationship; I’m a little girl, he is the father yearning for his daughter. How we sip each others empty and digest what we need from it.

We aren’t talking. He is in his cube and I in mine. Three cubes from him, someone starts banging on the shelf over their computer. She is choking. I laugh at the ruckus at first, thinking its just typical acting out. Then frantic tones mumble thru my ear phones. I do the Alex P. Keaton chair slide to look; our coworker is not breathing. And the man from Southie is performing the Heimlich on the choking woman. He is perfectly calm and willing to try to save her life, regardless of if he can’t, regardless of a what a huge failure it would be if he COULDN’T save her.

That’s what he does, he steps up. That’s how he is a man. that’s how he is a DOMINANT man. And that is how he is Boston…

The Forever People

Gentle
legerity
I am taken with yours
your square peg fits my odd-shaped soul
blessed.

In This Little Garden

I find you everywhere
in clumsy composition.
Or am I just trying to find
my piece of mind
among the ruins
of a ragged start
to something real?

Can you blame a girl
for trying to get a
little something going?
Is my other side showing?

Lift a leg, no Daddy
I won’t put a skirt on
Those cards.
I’m going to lay them down
Down.

It changes nothing and everything in this little garden.

See Me As You Were

You can pick one in this life.

You can pick one and have that one.

If something comes, if someone comes along, someone who is supposed to be yours, not your wife or husband, but YOURS, that’s different.
 
It’s hard for the one and for the one who receives the one.
 
How can you deny yourself me?
 
Shouldn’t you be SO proud I am yours, so proud someone so talented, smart, clever, loving is yours?
 
Shouldn’t that surrender feel like the biggest gift you could get?
 
You’ve tied my hands since.

We can’t talk about it, like what I need that you have given me and hold back from me now.

This is a death, over and over. I don’t know if I should walk away. I don’t want to. The list of things I want…
 
If I beg here, right here in public, Big Daddy, would you make it all better? Take me back? Tell me you love me and I’m your Baby Girl again?
 
Because I will. I will beg.
 
Please Daddy. Please. A million times please.
 
Know I do not want to replace your true love, know I don’t want to destroy all you have worked so hard for, know the two can exist.

We could have a healthy relationship of no consequence to your marriage.

You think you can just ignore this, that we can suffer thru with the chaste digital existence. That is not living. Denial.

Yes family is so important to you and I…mine…

Maybe you do see what I see or see me as never moving on and always demanding more.

This is not prayer, but a desperate plea that you see me as you were. 

You did love me.

Of Course

of course, he says
and I don’t ask if he means
of course I agree or
of course you’d believe that
and I think he expects me to ask
(and I suppose now I have)
but I don’t then
I don’t because I don’t need to
I know.

of course, I know.

Thrown Valve Moments

Oh the glorious moments after the children are bedded down. I settle myself in my evening safe space, laptop, blackberry, weed, bowl. Lighter. The pressure valve that’s thrown, the release of a big puff of air when you realize you survived another day. Another whole day of kids and husband and life. Disasters, holidays, happy days, homework time, random moments of a practically spiritual nature. And laughing. What else can you do but laugh a lot. That’s how you get them there, give kids roots and give them wings, as my friend Libby would say. I’m sorry I can’t give them more and I’m proud for what I give them. I agonize over every misstep, every fall back and broken expectation. Like fractured glass. Then, there are spelling tests. 96! And the LittleOne says “Mommy, can you scratch my back?” And you do and she throws her head back and says “Ahhhhhhh.” And you can’t believe it!

It’s worth it. For these thrown valve moments.