Triadic Self

i find myself here again. and fault myself for that.
i know i gone and fucked up again. i fall and all. i crash.
i am aiming for the bottom when I go back to the top.
and start again.
old habits. old friends.
my flaws, like rabbits
darting behind solid objects. i lack progress.
its obvious and true. without starting again.
i disgust my next false start. again and again.
doom. till. death? get busy living and making decisions
accruing debt and getting wet. confront the month
on each bloody turn. get it right. get it now.
is this the same lonely rock in the same puddly spot light?
possibly under a romantic lampost prostrate on a lumpish dias?
my victim doll cutie lips
non-protecting bystander lint dervish silent pretty girl
abuser i am monument to pain verbally sensitive
controlling none

i’m willing to pay for relief

Inaccessible Diagnosis

She makes me a promise
she knows I need. She knows
I won’t hold her to it
if it’s not meant to be.
 
There, a dancing in the place
where we are dilapidated falling down
houses of a ghosted neighborhood.
In a deserted thicket of forest
 
we run and get out of breath
as we chase each other and play
with our skirts bunched up and scrunched
by childish fingers gripping convention.
 
She knows how I get there.
She knows how I came.
She knows how to get there
and how to remain.
 
In comfy grass, heat bug symphony
notes tickle her nose.
I will join her with clean
feet and leave her dirty.
 
Buried there, by our roots
a treasure of two.
A measure, a brew of all
that is true.

Frank and New

He told me to meet him and I said I wouldn’t. In fact, I said I wouldn’t be caught dead there. He smiled, like he knew it was all posturing and walked away with his boys. Halfway down the block, he turned.

“Don’t break my heart!” He called to me, that flirtatious look visible even at a distance. I laughed in spite of myself.

The Nothing

There is nothing.
I can even appeal to logic
experience
reality.
I can point out the obvious
and dress up the truth.
I can cajole, act aloof, bring
the bitch out.
 
He still loves me
and wont be baited.
He wont be rushed to come to
my foregone conclusions.
He wont jump from outcrop to outcrop with me
but shouts from the top of his tower,
 
the tower I describe,
embrace,
draw attention to with sticky, outstretched fingers.
It’s all there.
It’s all there except the true name.
 
You allude,
I imply.
You exude.
I reply,
like a good girl should.
So
why don’t you
be the man
(to me)
I know you are…?
 
There IS nothing.
This is true.
I just didn’t know nothing included you.

Describing the Water

What a beast
yea, you
my funky disease
my foul banana peel loving
chemical fucker-upper
wither and break me when you come
up or down
it’s never wrong
it never flees
it never leaves
it has the right of way
and wont stay away

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.

He Already Has a Baby (ForeverYours)

Some days
What a darkness
Prevails
I want you gone
Or never came.
My tortured beauty
Your need to legacize
Yourself.
I’m your daughter
Sometimes
I need you gone
Or never came
When I survive a day
As if
There was no difference
Between us and just
Little old me.

Sometimes I want you
Gone and never came.
Because I love you and
You don’t promise
Anything more than this.

Stay away
With your blue light
Forget it
Forget I asked for you
To see my words.
Trap me in silence with vigilance

Can only own and love be
You and me.
So go, go, gone and never’ve come.
Because now I’m
ForeverYours
Condition permanent
Stark mark and
wanted
stopped
scar

Because Someone Else Believed In God

The man who saved me died of a blood clot in his brain when he was 20 years old. He died while I was in college and living in Lynn. It was shocking, as these young deaths are. I had been alternatingly kind and cruel to this boy, as teenage girls are. His confidence was intoxicating but… he wasnt much to look at.

To go to the service, I just had to get off the bus. But I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I laid my head against the glass and asked for forgiveness. I asked him to forgive me for still not being better. Not better enough to go to his funeral and say good-bye. Not better enough to be facing up to a lot of the bad things in my life.

The man who saved my life broke my biggest promise.

Please, please, please don’t tell anyone he follows me. Dont tell anyone he has hit me. Yes, he does put his hands on me but don’t tell, please please, don’t tell, keep my secret, keep my shame, keep it quiet, like all pain maybe it will go away, no, I don’t fear my life, no he never follows me, no it’s not that bad I shouldnt have said anything, please don’t tell anyone…

He told Father Doolan, a weak prissy man whom I had seen nod off in assembly, who showed me a roll of communion like crackers in a Ritz box. Weak, spineless, disgusting, why would I ever think someone like him…

No one could save me from my torture, certainly not some pudgy sinner a pompous promise away from diddling boys…

But this man, this boy whom I made promise, he believed. He has been raised to believe the church helped so maybe that’s why, I think that’s why. I don’t know. I never asked him. Then, the time to ask was gone and time was gone and he was gone. He who saved me, he who hurt me and the man of God.

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.