Marriage Song

Uncertain.

I can’t make you.
I can’t save you.
I can’t see the boy you were.
I’ll never know the man you will become?

Because it’s not certain,

not in-sight.

Tired of being the bitch-wife, bitterly

you look at as mom.

Tired of “being” right and being told I’m “wrong”
Such a tired Wedding Song.

A Buick Skylark To the Sky

have your found your ridiculous exit

from down there and to the left.

heart searching for temperate pools of sorrow

lower, like as in matter, like as in mud and

burrow boil rut, water slut

center worry not it’s not me again

sagging for a friend

dragging to leave a trail of how I feel

slugging sad ass begging for sympathy

release and fuckery

Dont you know

these things are bad for you and you are poison.

What was I doing thinking I knew what I was doing?

since when is flunk so damn funky

you lied to me

certain things were half-truths

certain times you stayed mute

a Buick Skylark to the sky

Seventeen

It hasn’t been the same since they changed therapy rooms. She hasn’t been able to be anonymous and obsessively poet doodle, short tight bunches of truncated prose, ugly word combinations uttered in her head as the energy from the room swirls and colors and dissipates. She is afraid that she says too much. She is afraid she doesn’t say enough. She realizes talking is granting help just as much as listening. She makes the ugly brave request to talk about the abuse. To try to actively get to that part of the gigantic sore in the innards of her mind.

Do they always say innards? Never outards?

The week she asks for this discussion she leaves group shakily optimistic and somewhat regretful. While driving someone honks at someone and she is now in an aggressive driving situation. And that settles it. She has asked for trouble. She is now under attack. You see, he even controls the cogs of the universe, weaving the very loom of the fabric of fate itself.

Don’t tell, he knows, he knows. He keeps his promises.

He even finds a way to affect her lover’s behavior. She cleans up other messes too. She is the master of cleaning up messes, of walking on eggshells, even tap dancing on them. But the bad things keep multiplying and threatening to topple all her safe towers.

She is aware she shouldn’t need towers. But now, all her stuff is here.

A reprieve is granted and she gets another week to avoid the talk, avoid her own bringing on of pain, she has scraped herself till her ions are charged and magnetic, bringing the bad with her every attempt to be safe in a world she feels can only be UNSAFE, dragging around floating space garbage-like woe.

***.

The talk goes worse than she ever thinks it could go. The expected number when thinking about HIM, but an unexpected number for her lover.

This cannot be so and she is angry. She is not still a victim she is wrong and she is angry and the woman is wrong and group is wrong.

She thinks she can tell her lover, to prove them wrong. That his reaction would not be the angry unsure reaction of an abuser. She doesn’t think this man is an abuser. He is the abuser. She means was, she thinks to herself.

Unlucky seventeen.

This Is Why We Say Good-Bye

Im not teasing. Im frustrated. Its hard for me tolerate so much negativity and self pity. Im sorry but thats just the person I am. Im sorry youre having a rough life. I cant help much.

Desensitizing

I will not miss you
of winsome wine and velvet
roses will be planted
ivy intertwined

I wrap myself in books
’cause others
may look like me
wilting epiphanies

I cultivated her
purple pointed, lingering green
she was seen dancing
at the tree line in the sun

there comes a time
for concentration or distillation
in my cups, my ground
a drop on my tongue

home-brew
I’ll watch for you

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.

Same Places

I’m falling asleep to the thought of your voice

A grip on my choice to keep thinking

Am I sexy?

You repeat it again

A woman

Built of words and revelations

Would you be let down?

Would you bring me up and then drink my desire?

Use your laugh to smash all defenses

We shall lament

But we shall also dance.

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.

Working Things Out

What to do when the buzz dies? Because it’s just like everything else, when you get used to the high, it takes more and more to feel it. Initially, just the Sometimes Man, then my southern darlin’, my first daddy and poetry “teacher”, then the postman, then the QuietMan, then, Big Daddy…

Marian said, why isn’t Big Daddy enough? And that got me thinking, I’m a slut. But I’m an addict, and maybe that can include attention, fantasy and love. Big Daddy never forced such monogamous convention on me. He liked to hear about my escapades. One time he said proudly, My Baby Girl is so busy…

Toxic. I am a toxic human, aren’t we all? Are you pure? Innocent of sin and desire? I’m guilty of wanting to know each and every man in that quiet place where they let themselves go. I want to be in that place. I want to be that place, with my forgiving toxicity.

A little room and I’m not feeling so desirable, but not feeling the longing for my escape to deepen either. I’m always desirous of imagining, devourous of those familiar stories. He will never watch me sleep, I will never understand those eyes he gives…

Big Daddy is always right.

I can’t decide if I would trade in all the happy for the unrequited double life I’m now stuck with. I just can’t decide.