Heating and Cooling--A Work in Progress

"Sure, come over so we can emotionally destroy one another. It's for my art." I'd said this as a joke. But I'm no longer laughing.

  

"Maybe I no longer find you smart, charming, or funny." I never said that. Not out loud. Never out loud.

"A tulip in the desert won't last long." You knew this to be true, you who claim to love nothing but your children and "hedonistic adventures." At least you love something. A man who loves something can never be truly evil.

I believe you loved me, but at the same time, somehow, deep down in my darkest heart, I also knew you played with my feelings. As if other people's feelings somehow weren't altogether real to you. As if you never trusted me to love you if I knew the truth. The truth of your fragility and terror. Life has been so cruel to you. I know. I smile and say nothing. We risk being subjected to worse cruelties.

But you have many cruelties.

I still can't escape the feeling that we've done this, all of this, before. There were portents; signs to be read and interpreted. We are familiar and yet do not know each other. Why did I even write this for you? In part, because you're so breathtakingly perfect that it makes my soul ache. I still have this fantasy of you. The perfect you. The dream I had of you and I in perfect union.

A Very Basic Misunderstanding

I realize, too late, that we have failed to understand something important. I've tried to pinpoint the exact moment of misunderstanding, but cannot. Nor am I able to discern the exact nature of this failure of understanding. I know only that it was important that we not fail. In this failure there was a decisive moment, that I cannot recall, when your heart hardened against mine and there is no going back. For us it was a point of no return. Don't worry. You can blame it all on me.

The Goodbye Notebook

You were lost to me the first moment I set eyes on you. I just didn't know it.

There is a universe where we are together and there is a universe where we are not.

There is a universe where I stroke your hair and give you the sun;
you are happy but 

I am not.

I want the light of the cold blue moon to touch my heart


                   to be loved for my mind and nothing more; it’s okay 
to change your mind.

Analogy of Simile

It's like pain yet also unlike pain
It's like feeling yet also unlike feeling
It's like love and yet

Sick Rose

You are a cultivated rose; imprisoned

unaware of your hybridity. Or that you’ve lost

your sense

for sharp, painful beauty.

I am a cactus flower; tenuous

in my hard case of thorns. Impatient

for the night. 

in which I bloom.

Beneath the stars I stole for you.

No Second Tony

Lover, tyrant, hero-God, my Achilles
heel, cruel tiger, sweetest love,

Beautiful blue-eyed boy,

perfection,
cruelty
Sharp lines (lies)
A tongue

A curved
dagger.

A fatal flaw
pain from pleasure
inseparable. Glass
splinters

shattered inside all
succor
implied pleasure.

You will break
me a thousand
times over.
Save yourself.

just cut me open

leave me in peace
(pieces?)

which knife?

I, ritualized self-abuse
You, solitary vice

I, now you, a tyrannical beast
we don’t make it easy
the terrible things echo and crack
     gunshots
    in a mountain
        valley

Abstraction Distraction Loss

I sit and I read
Poetry
by
the light
of
the moon
I listen
to
Bats
Birdsong
the sounds of
Night
None of it brings
Me closer
to
You

The Expiration

By John Donne

 

So, so breake off this last lamenting kisse,

    Which sucks two soules, and vapours Both away,

Turne thou ghost that way, and let mee turne this,

    And let our selves benight our happiest day,

We ask’d none leave to love; nor will we owe

    Any, so cheape a death, as saying, Goe;

Goe; and if that word have not quite kil’d thee,   

    Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too.

Oh, if it have, let my word worke on mee,

    And a just office on a murderer doe.

Except it be too late, to kill me so,

    Being double dead, going, and bidding, goe.  

The Stain of Love

The stain of love covers
everything

Foolish one broken and bruised
the winged fiend

the foul jab
the artless arrow fling

Destroyer, Preserver
oh the sting.

The Siren's call
answered

I should have let it ring.

Mashup Messup Remix No More Redux

There were adventures, words, you're beautiful. Sometimes supportive, honest, intense intimacy. Too intense. Dancing in dreams. I thought you could hear me. To dance is to live. Kissing until you forgot your name. I've forgotten my name. I thought you could hear me. Messing up each others' lives. Denying the truth. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. What did it matter? Nothing else mattered. I thought you could hear me.

La Douleur Exquise

I always knew the end was nigh. I'd hoped otherwise, but I knew that was foolish. That way lies madness.

"Tell me about your lacerations," he said, flashing that deadly smile. I knew I was done for.

Ode to an Achilles Heel

The perfect masculine aesthetic:
6'2" eyes of blue
strong silent
type. Good
with mechanical device
or in the wild.

I was enthralled. Sybaritic.
I thought it was you
wrong spent
hype. Good
between my sheets
or in the wild.

Our first touch--synesthetic.
Dreamt in shades of blue
taste bud bent
hue. Typed. Bad.
In your arms
home and so much sad.

Dreaming, Fear, Fate

The dream is always the same, though it occurs less frequently. I awaken, within the dream, to find myself in a house I don't immediately recognize; somehow I know it is the house you and I shared. I know without knowing how I know. All I want is out.

But none of the doors open to the outside. They open into the room where I was just standing, or to other rooms and hallways. All I want is out.

I don't know how long I spend futilely opening doors, perhaps it varies each time, before I give up and accept that I am trapped. There is no way out.

A Long Drive to Nowhere

The truth is I may never know what I wanted from you. I only knew what I didn't want. I didn't want what you gave me; even if I needed it. Which sounds completely ungrateful. I'm sorry. I can't think of two more terrible words to use. I want to say, "thank you." But I can't. I'm sorry. I know you are too. I'm not sure how we ended up here. It's not what either of us wanted. And yet, here we are. We both drove us to this point.

This destination was never on my map. Maybe that's part of the problem. I wasn't looking at maps. I was too busy reading the signs. None of the signs I read pointed here. Maybe I misread. There were other signs. Portents. I left a book on the counter and fled because the pages burned my fingers. It felt accusatory, especially the section titled "LOVE TIPS." A stranger had marked the places where things fell apart. Outlined the detours and wrong turns we'd taken to end up here.

It's so easy to misunderstand. I ignore the obvious in favor of the subtext. So much between us was subtextual. We were beneath the surface before we'd even defined the outlines. I was drowning. Maybe you were too.

Today, I wanted to say I was sorry. But what difference would that make? You already know. The apologies lie between us like broken teacups we've forgotten to sweep up. We've cut ourselves open on the shards and these tiny pieces remain embedded in our skin. You'd be surprised how long a piece of splintered porcelain can remain under your skin. I had a fragment of Noritake in my palm for five years. It was too far below the surface to remove. I could feel it under the skin, but had to wait until it worked itself out. Maybe it will be like that for us too.

Epiphanic

I'd wasted days trying to reconcile the seeming contradiction. Endlessly sifting through the hours to separate the false from the true. Then today, a ridiculously quotidian moment, combing my hair after a shower, I caught a glimpse of my reversed image in the steam-fogged mirror, a strange, sad face staring back at me through my eyes. I realized the seeming contradiction was my own invention. Both things were simultaneously true. I'd misunderstood. It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard. I'd wanted to believe. You knew that. I'd wanted to believe that one statement was true and the other a lie. That would make it easier: if one statement is true then I can hate you. Truly hate you. Never think of you again. Obliterate all trace of you from my mind. If the other is true, then you will return to me. If both are true. None of these things will happen.

Thinking about a Boy

Sitting at a stoplight, gas tank on empty, thinking about a beautiful blue-eyed boy. I glance over to see the young man in the pristine white T-Bird in the next lane blowing bright pink bubblegum bubbles.

The Reader of Signs

“ever tried.
ever failed.
no matter.
try again.
fail again.
fail better.”

~ Samuel Beckett

On December 31, 2014, I was sideswiped by a hit and run driver. I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy reading the signs. He wasn't reading the signs. He aimed straight for me, then swerved at the last moment. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a fatal blow. For the next two weeks I was one of the walking dead. Mortally wounded, completely unaware of my tragic fate. Such a strange word. Fate. But there it is. I'd been frozen in place reading the signs. Portents of what was about to happen, what would happen, no matter how I tried to prevent it. It felt like déjà vu.

It felt fated.

Fate? Souls? Reincarnation? I know how you probably feel about people who use those words. Believe me, I feel the same way most of the time. New age shysters out to sell you something or woefully deluded, albeit well intentioned, tree-hugging busybodies out to save your soul. Oh yes, I was skeptical, cavalier even. I scoffed at the idea. Even Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence seemed too hippie-crystal-metaphysical for my taste. But I am speaking of the soul here. At least, mostly, metaphorically. I'd sustained a mortal wound to my spirit.

He'd dealt the death blow before and would do it again. Will do it again.

It won't kill me. Not exactly. It is a metaphorical death and rebirth. Like the phoenix, I will rise from the ashes and be reborn. Forever changed into something new.

Head Over Heels

I'd only ever learned to love with the force of a supernova. The purity of spring rain. I try to distance myself and be pragmatic about it. But I'm not pragmatic. I am quixotic, tempestuous, my own worst enemy. Fear. Fear because falling too hard leads to getting fucked over. I expect it. Create it. Self-fulfilling prophecy. I push you away and then accuse you of running. I wish you would stay.

No Misery, No Poetry: The Story of Us

Looking back, finding the beginning was the most difficult. The endings, like the reunions, came twice a month. Like clockwork,

a precise machine. Predictable. Inner workings somehow beyond our control.

Maybe if we'd been horologists or cardiologists
we could have some clarity.

Something.

Convinced it was a miracle, an ecstatic, a raving fanatic, so newly reborn, I pleaded against a closed door

for the miraculous

to enter my dark heart

just once more.

It's a mad world

You live in a beautiful world of perfect people and fancy parties. I'm just a girl with a broken foot writing a paper on theories of voice in literature. What is a voice anyway? How does "voice" --a physical oral and aural apparatus-- exist on the page? My book tells me that it is a construct: a physiological and metaphorical, bodily and disembodied, real and imaginary, oral and textual, uncanny, mediated, cultural affect. And so it goes... the truth from which I hide.

I'm just a regular person. Boring, quotidian, I don't even own a dryer. I eagerly await the sun to wash my clothes. A man follows you with an umbrella in the rain.