this was written last week

ok so i've been kinda busy doing nothing. forgot about this and then found it when i opened my computer and it was still there. good thing i remember stuff right?

The stereo does its best to fill the the oppressive void left by the silence that clings between us. He said I’m giving him the look again, I don’t even need to ask what look it is. It’s the one that says some thing akin to: you are nothing more than an annoying bug, what are you doing in my life? It’s the one I don’t mean to give, but do, all too often. I tell him I think I’m bipolar, I keep going from one extreme to the next, he tells me I just need to vent to get all the things that are in, weighing down my heart and my mind, out. I tell him that this just makes things worse, I wind up hurting people and making a bigger mess… he tells me this is the only way things will ever have a chance to heal. I shut my mouth and begin the silence. We arrive at the store and I walk quickly to get what is needed and go to the self check out we complete the entire transaction without a word, or a glance. We get back in the car, I drive like a bat out of hell, he doesn’t even open his mouth to tell me to slow down. I think; there are many barbs I could let out, ones that would just reflect, ones that would pierce the skin, and the ones that would go right through the heart. I could kill with four little words, but I decide to swallow the venom, and slowly poison myself instead. We arrive and he’s ready to jump out the door before I even stop the car. He goes in, he doesn’t even ask me if dinner is done he just pulls it out and sort of looks at it. The salmon is perfect the potatoes are still hard. He sits down to watch tv, I escape to my room. I realize all is forgiven when I hear babe dinner is ready without that edge to his voice. I feel slightly relieved, but more like a bitch when I realize, I don’t even know what started the fight, but I know it wasn’t the real reason.

I am discontent… this isn’t the normal pms kinda crabby hormone swings kind of mood, its bordering on mania. I don’t know why, there are a few things it could be, my desire to be living on my own, the strangely satisfying dream I had the other night, a longing for something I cant have. Feeling unproductive. I don’t know… there’s a million things that are bothering me but none that should make me feel this way. I should go, dinner and some semblance of normality are waiting, and while I do not like pretense, I hate cold fish.

Plus poemmes


To a Lover from a Married Woman

What can I say to you,
who have loved the unknown bits and
pieces of me into being
and watched the fragments
weave themselves into another
whole with no more room
for a divided love?

The warp of my existence
lies now in my own hands,
steadier and wiser with the
passage of my inner time,
knowing more now of what I
chose than when I chose it.

Yes, I would choose again
the same end, but in a
different way, not out of
desperation and the need
to cling to clarity, but out of
freedom and the need to find
my soul’s own fabric.

The beginning?
I would not change
a single breathless moment
nor do I fail to savor
all the sharpened memories of it
this hot July night.



Woman

After the thousandth insult
She wakes up to fury

having waited ten thousand years
like the people of India
under their yoke of acceptance
assaulted again and again
by barbarians.

She was Saint Sebastian
bleeding from the arrows.
She has become Saint Joan

a determined Guerrilla
in the centuries old, undeclared
war against her.


The choice

You can carve a life for yourself
just as your bones have been carved
from some larger bone
your flesh peeled from some larger flesh

Or you can life the paring knife
from the kitchen drawer
and free the veins
that rise to meet the skin

There is no one
save the poems you might write


Forbidden Lover

The forbidden lover beckons.

I refuse to follow until
Nightfall cloaks
My heart-tracks
And all eyes are turned aside.

In daylight we pass eachother coldly.
We wear dark glasses.
We speak in tongues and riddles,
Our lovepoems coded on casual conversation or
Passed under tables in large raised letters that
Must be swallowed before we part.

Islanded
Raised in dark barrooms and parking lots
Nurtured on subterfuge our love grows
Deformed. Plans orchestrated in
Hushed phne calls mis-
Communicate. We grow distrustful. We grow wary.
Voices of propriety
Raise haughty heads in snickering chorus:
No blossoming without daylight
Without daylight no blossom.


The Life I Didn’t Live

I wish I never married
I wish I had fewer children
I wish I were lesbian

I wish I ate less meat
less dairy
more umeboshi plums

I wish I talked less on the telephone
celebrated fewer holidays
paid less for cosmetics
dropped more in the poor box

I wish I found less time
for shaving legs and underarms
more for visiting planetariums

I wish I lived in a hermit’s hut
surrounded by edible berries
instead of lawn

I wish the loon called more often

Eating Cantaloupe

I scrape the seeds
from a halved cantaloupe
pare off the thick
veined rind, cut and hold
a wet orange slice. I eat
standing over the sink.

Juice runs across the back
of my hand, drips from my wrist
forearm and chin
even though I quickly suck
and lap as I bite off
each chunk.

The brash color, variegated
texture and gush of juice
from the fruit give me the purpose
for this day

I am the fruit
seeds gone, wrinkly shell
peeled off to reveal
soft flesh covering muscle,
electric-bright mind
and life-juice still rampant
still far from being sucked
away.

If I Could Begin Again

grow
a speck of dust would grow
then let me begin
by being a better daughter.

Let me begin by understanding
the silence of your life;
by showing you the sounds of
sight:
how a peach full in the sun
might be the sun,
how a flock of starlings
fanning the sky
is like one large wing,

by remembering Dad’s gentleness
his quiet but deliberate way
of speaking, so easily read by you.
Let me begin with patience—
that I need not shout,
simply face you
when I speak.


On loving you

One day when I am ninety-one
you will look bat me from the doorway, leaning
with your head tilted to one side
and I will wonder if you remember
how I too used to lean
and lay bay hair down black and whispering on the
pillowcase fresh from the wash, or how
later I would turn
tucking my knees under yours
for the nights insensible hours.
And if I haven’t forgotten— my mind
gone blank as a sheet— I’ll remind you then
of the old amazed look your face wore once
at how much your hands already knew,
and I will call you back from the doorway
to adjust the sweater around my shoulders,
the robe in my lap, and take your hand, upturned
in mine, to show you how that line is still there:
the lifeline I once traced with my nail,
that day on the bench by the river, that first
time, when I—troubled—leaned my head on your shoulder,
sideways, the way I do now
and you will then.