Radio Silence

you used to tell me truths of all sizes
and I believed you and listened.
I held them in my hands like delicate glass balls
of swirling colors and flakes of mica
of silver and gold dust.
I've packed them away now, gently for later
waiting in a sense for the prodigal return.
All of those hopes and dreams they held
burried in the crumpled re-used tissue,
the tired paper
of years gone by,
of wrapping and un-wrapping,
of the sad tradition.
It is that time again,
when I hold them up to the light,
to inspect the imperfections
to make sure they are all intact
and some of them I'll polish,
holding them in higher esteem
nestled so closely
to the things that I also believe.
When you come home I will
unpack them happily.
I'll hang them joyously around your neck,
to dress you
in everything that you
have ever said.

simulacrum

last night a restricted number called
while I was sleeping and
when I answered there was only beeping and
I listened for a few minutes pretending it was you.

If I had know this was the answer
I would have stayed here forever
to be with you indefinitely
while you were biding your time.

As it is my heart is breaking at
the idea of my leaving but I can't
wait through another moment of
"you'll be okay either way ."

Your kisses were encouragement
to step away from the malnourishment
that I have been holding myself up against
all of this time.

And in this way I am thankful for 

this false courtship you have forced me through
And these silly scraps of affection
you have been throwing my way.

So, for the next few days I'll step away
from these feelings of abandonment
inadequacy and ineptitude
that inevitably accompany the dissolution of
the thing you once believed would be
that nightmare you called love.

And I'm walking away slowly pulling
the string I've caught between my teeth
pulling slowly up my throat the pill
in which I had swallowed all my pride

and that briny taste that vomit makes
will linger on my tongue beyond this 

endless day of nothingness
this waiting for the meaning of
all the things that have passed between.

documentation

having trouble writing because
I've been wanting to express myself physically
and am being held back in all regards
the re bar bumper
bump bumping the future
backwards, back towards
that once upon a time panic that
not this time sharp glare
further
grocery lists and collections notices
debt consolidation companies
trips to the vet
alternate in notebooks sideways
flat against
tax evasion
trips to sea
secret gardens
and you ask
who's going to read it?
no one it's just to document
the dragging
and you think I don't know who I am
but I do and it's these pieces
I drag through new phone numbers
and fake forwarding addresses
people say that
"They will find you anywhere"
and I say well, fine
but you won't.

testing, one two

Angry at feeling like the mistress,
always waiting for the divorce.
Be patient, be patient.
If I could have some solid ground to stand on,
it would make waiting on queue
easier. feasible.
testing, one two.


Words to remember:
I revile the moment! The moment forces me into the next and the next as if I were stuck marching in this relentless band formation. How do I escape the moment? How to reverse one's fortune when one moment begets the next?
This is the impossible task at hand.
I plan and create "mind trajectories" for myself, convinced that if I believe that is the direction, that will be the direction.
So far this theory has met with failure. Betrayal in this sense is my anti-hero, the force driving against me. Failure is the aftermath.
Moments beget moments and I ruminate on this as I tend my garden. This is the most liberating experience I can generate in my life right now. I, with my own labor, have generated enough food to feed my limited community. I learned and am learning everything I could. I pressed forward without hesitation. I applied my theory to the dirt. I had failures and successes. I modified my behaviors to suit the results I was seeing. I have carried water in buckets to nourish and have kneeled in the dirt to weed. Yesterday, we tasted the first sweet pea of the year.

like it's alive.

With my forehead against your bathroom tiles,
grout tracing time lines against my face
the small hexagons of our neighborhood
black and white and black and white
flow by like the city lights.
Every once in a while I can hear lines
from the movie you are watching in the other room
I listen a little
as if it were you,
speaking to me.
That night lurks in the memory,
a griding implication of all the
not good enough I have been
the whole time.
I feel like I'll be following you forever,
you the closest idea to perfection
the first conversation over plastic wine glasses
that never stopped.

the iso-alpha acid experience

there are no rules here.
no manners.
we are all just mashing habits together
and calling it "life."
just walking into each others houses and
letting pieces of us fall to the floor. To see what
the others would pick up.
What of me is of value to you?
Do I really have any emotions to spare?
Are they appropriate?
And so we bang away.
Pressing harder into each other,
trying not to be afraid.
trying to know who we are.

***
The difference between finding oneself and losing oneself
becomes indistinguishable sometimes,
at times like these when nothing stays the same.
In a state of constant flux, spinning
pieces come in and out constantly
before you can ever know what you're gaining
or letting go.
Perhaps there are times to press harder,
times to hold on tighter.
I haven't found them yet.
Love is a great betrayal
that you play on yourself,
to put out the tentacles
to reach out further.

past

life has become a series of laying in bed and avoiding.
Welcome, pillbox, to next-to-my-computer.
Welcome, enablers.
Welcome, social butterflies.
I will tell you when to go.
I will not tell you to go.
I will say, through drunken veils, through strange i-miss-you-but-don't-care-about-you-anymore conversations.
Syracuse, my humiliation follows me everywhere in you.
Syracuse, I do not belong here or anywhere,
but especially not here.

Unsent Letters, December 2007

oh, just go away.

Here it is the truth.
No one picked me up but me.
No one fixes you if you say no. No one fixes you if you say yes.
It just happens you just have to make it happen.
I'm finding that i really don't know anything, that I have to go back and re-read all the books. That I remember everything but it's so jumbled. There are big holes. Sometimes I say things and they are just wrong. But I can't tell because for years I've just been taking this stuff in and just shoving it in there, like, thinking that that was going to be okay. Like I would remember your name AND your face, together at the same time. It's like I have Alzheimers now. Like, sometimes it's just blackness and sometimes it's still 1941. Sometimes my sentences have all the correct words but none of the correct syntax.
Dear Miss D, I'm wondering if you have found the same thing.
People say when you stop, you go directly back to where you started. Which i guess is true, but I was never there. I was a child, and I have all the experience now. I say, "when I was doing xxx" and people look at me like, how old are you really?
Have I aged? I look the same. Less sallow. Plumped up. Not so grey, less smeared make up. Doesn't cry violently but it seeps out now. Like, I'm leaking.
Miss D do you find it all leaks out?
I take dayquill and it hurts. I eat too much sugar and it hurts. I get the shakes, the fear.
Like, if I go back I'll die for sure.
It's an erasing time. It's the reckoning.
This next year will be all apologies. Like, everything I can do now is an apology. Like, they will follow me around forever.
So, I'm sorry.
These are my own twelve steps, with 10 removed.
1)There is a problem. It is mine and not yours.
2)I'm very, very sorry.
1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,

buildings

the pieces of her life fall around her
crushed cinder block pieces
just edges, no shapes.
she, always looking backwards, down and
away
notices not and uses these found treasures
to build her dreams
undermining with each new addition
the very foundation of her being.
Why didn't anyone tell her before?
she wonders aloud, tripping, always
on the dust and debris.

timing

the exit doors come faster now
as if I were running
(am I running?)
slamming open and closed
unhinged in the wind
(am I unhinged?)
eventually I will time it wrong
and like a red light on icy roads
it will all come crashing down.

I love you a round circle.

The ridges in my fingernails from
the trauma of you leaving,
Deep crescents in every nail
as if someone had hit them all
with a hammer,
are finally growing out.
The ridges on the right hand are
deeper than the left,
and I keep telling myself that
when they are finally gone,
when I have clipped and filed them
out of existence,
then so will you go:
On the bathroom floor,
down the drain.

Tom Ward III. The Predictions.

you guys are great. I'll never have to worry. We all know how we're going to die. Michael, you of course will die of alcoholism. And you, Liz, will overdose, obviously.

For You.

I read you a love poem that night
through broken teeth.
I was crumpled on the sidewalk
my hair in a halo, sopping up
the blood from my gums.
You looked into my eyes and
through you I could see myself
stripped of my dignity and
pulling against the gravity,
using only the shattered remains
of my incisors
the empty sockets being pulped
against the filthy cement-
trying to reach you.
I was reading you a love poem
that night you left me
defeated
My arms and legs useless
and skewed.
As I inched forward they became
my comet's tail-
just simple waste products,
elements formally of relevance.
She must have found me there later
nose ground down,
jaw forced twisted.

Blood and enamel
inhaled, exhaled.

Two Pieces.

No pressure from " you can do anything," I can just do what I want.

The sun is starting to come out but I still can't find a way outside of these walls. Behind every door there is another door. Behind that a well lit room at midnight nose pressed up against the glass no curtains no clothing.

***

I can not feel this forever
this constant pressing knowlege of failure
the fact that you are waiting for reprimand
allows it to happen.

You shit head (my mind says)
you ugly motherfucker -
(who will never get it together -
who can not love
who will never be open again)
you stupid cunt.
you should be dead.

Untitled, Twice

My heart and soul remain in deep conflict now
half of me desperate for stability, for
anything to count on ever.
Knowing full well that nothing
will ever be the same again.

Do you:
give in
straighten up
consolidate your debt
very low interest!
easy monthly installments!
Do you:
trade in your rust box and
sign a lease for Something Shiny?
Pay Your Bills When They Arrive.
Brush Your Teeth With Bleach.
Or do you:
GET OUT NOW.
pack your shit up for your landlord and
throw yourself to the curb.
leave your dog at your boyfriend's with
that spare key he gave you on her collar.

TAKE OFF.
hit the road running
head south and
start a fire without matches.
Build that bungalow with a sod floor and
sleep in hammocks wrapped in
the heavy scent of magnolia.
Roast persimmons with light bulbs
and smear that juice,
that red orange of liberation will just slide down your throat
Like You've Always Dreamed Of, and

no man will ever swing his cock at you
again.
Willl never make you suck your yeast infection
from his foreskin.
Will Never Hurt You.

You will sleep naked,
with no fear of violation.
There is a woods out there where
you can start over.

1920

Onyx and I in our plantation
on our new stone porch.
each of us enjoying this new thing
in our different ways.
She, in the sun curled up calmly,
observing quietly what she can
of the world.
Some invisible chain holds the two of us together,
which isn't love but could be either the beginning
or the end of love.
A quiet tolerance touched lightly by disdain
or resentment.
I, forever on the other side of
the stone wall, legs curled up quietly
letting the beer warm up
and the food cool down.
Wondering which old wound will fly open next,
which will seep pus through my clothing.

E

M.

on days like this life falls apart.
neutral milk hotel against
slate grey skies
and I wish I could answer everything you
have ever asked of me including,
What are you doing?

I heard the party line last night
from a person I trust for no reason
I’ve noticed that people who want to keep me
to themselves
are the ones who tell me this the most.

“Everyone has told me that you are
really crazy.”

I will one day build
the architecture of the world
using only my words.

And this crazy will eat you
alive.

Girls like us are always just
biding our time.

one call from you always changes everything

unintentionally

I. in a city far away
your ping has finally answered my ping
and the two sounds lay softly together
vibrating
dissipating.
I’m wondering if I can’t write anymore
because I’m out of things to say to you.

II. she used to watch over me
with her deep brown eyes.
I used to lay down with her and inhale.
cry into her.
I waited too long
and it was the most painful betrayal.

III. you may have brought up an excellent point.
how many bottles of vodka HAVE I gone through this week??

IV. you are too much work,
you have been killing me.
“I thought there was something different about you,
you are not being weighed down anymore…”

V. you, me and her.
and then in the morning, you were still there.
and here we are.
making faces in the dark.

The Performance (reprise)

giving up on love.
fuck love!
spending my emotions
like a credit card,
too quickly.
without thought.
representationally.

when you go.

use math to paint the picture goodbye.
write a computer program to say I loved you
write over the old memories with random 0111001s
leave me with nothing.

There are things in my life that are secrets.

insistent drip

why don't you
why won't you just
why can't you just leave
why don't I get to
dictate my own terms
why don't I get to
hold on to the things I want
why do they always
just slip away.

I always make this mistake this
sober feeling things mistake this
horrible hari kari stupid mistake
this shut up and run.


"the answer to each moment must be yes"


I know I just addressed you in a letter, recently
but here I go again (self indulgent)
here I go with the i am not invisible
the insistent drip of
please stop forgetting me the
get out of my heart
or my big empty void thereof
but you just sit there
heavy.

You just stay there, don't move
I'll leave.

Waiting Again

I am a stranger in a very familiar place right now and it grates on me.
I have lots of promises and nothing kept.
Slow pace no pace going nowhere.
Waiting again and to what end? What's the reward?
Tap tapping on old type writers with no ink.
Dried up tapes.
Flaking.
That's what this feels like, watching you.
blowing up now.
leaving the atmosphere.
dreams are made of this,
this ache searching
going nowhere.

from your lips

How messy we were
Stealing from someone else
Our secret language lurking
In liner notes.
Peeking through prom dresses.
Getting in with our passports.
Klonipin in back pockets.
Cocaine in purses.
Crushed into the corners.
Under our nails.
You were supposed to be my wife and
I was supposed to be your wife
And there could've been more
Games to play after that.
You were always so demanding
it was so unfair to me
How easily bored you can be.
But, these are our secrets.
I have written you a thousand poems
since you've been gone
And this is the first
I have left for you to find.
And we were just two girls leaning,
One foot up,
Against a brick wall
Smoking the same cigarette.