Ghost Included

You sent a note
Ten months too late
Just a how-ya-doing
I can’t be so light
Easygoing, in and out of my life
You were my first obsession
My dark need
Connection with the inner depth
I loved you not for lust
But for isolation
Solitary solace
I loved to watch you run laps at school
And waited for your call
You and your mystery
Unnamed sorrow sat in your PE sweats
I longed to belong to it
To hold it, to rock it to sleep
Thirteen year-old need
It grows away eventually
You tried to love me
Letters from juvenile hall
Lyrics from songs I promptly possessed
It wasn’t love I needed
It was identity-discovery
I heard the truth of it
You could not give me who I was
Who I wanted to be
You found a girl who took your love
I leaned on other solitudes
Other mysteries
The five-hour phone calls
I’d save your messages for days
I could say anything to you
Back then
When lunchtime was our meeting ground
When the telephone bridged our thoughts
Your voice
It invaded me
I can still feel the weakness
Of my best resistance
Email is cold
We met in winter for brief hours
And we sat familiar
In moments we pressed to create
We moved on again
It doesn’t matter why
You didn’t call when Lita died
I found other solaces
I am still here
I still need connection
With inner depths and isolation
But the bridge is lost
Leading not to mysteries
Am I unreasonable
To ask for resolution
But you were the only one who knew
How close I am to home again
Your ghost included in these scenes
I see replayed outside my car
When I pass the old house
When I pass the park
Where I first heard why you were gone
How your mystery was first revealed
I sent a letter to your parents
I didn’t care why you did drugs
Or why you broke the law
I wanted to touch your sadness
To belong to your desperation
To hold on to your intensity
And rock you to sleep
I did not need you to love me then
I wanted to be known
But we move on
Miles and years past knowing
Can we rest in ghosts and letters sent
Can we be light
Can we be in and out
Brief hours without connection
Without depth and honesty
Without lyrics and poetry
Can we be at all…

11-21-00

Midnight Sheets

I use the voice of one
Who has not spoken in days barely audible
She drags the chair away
I stare out chewing swallowing.
I am not among these people
I want to be at home
With my sympathetic songs
And my midnight colored sheets
I elect to live and go about the everyday
I don’t share my table
It’s mostly by choice
People exhaust me
Nodding smiling,
expressing mutual response
It’s unending
I want to go unnoticed
I want to be invisible
Saying unheard words
Is the emptiest feeling I can conjure up
I am longing to be reached
From a high tower
I am glad I am not beautiful
How compliments advances must be invading
How tiring I feel just imagining it.

9-14-00

Trying to Tell You

I have a picture of love
Full color, wide
Arms draped around our brother
You are showing your teeth
Six year old hair in your eyes
I see it clear
The boys at either side
Every mouth open, squinting
You are leaning your chin
On our brother’s head
He is looking away
But he lets you hold him back
Phil and Jay still clean for now
No paths yet fallen
No lines yet broken
Your heart is bursting
On the picnic bench
What does Jeremy see?
Right elbow at his neck
Left hand on his heart
I have a picture
Love, full color, wide

9-7-00

Ivy Trimmed

I am safe here in my home.
Tree lined street curves soft,
Small blue house with window box flowers,
It is an old mother apron-tied smile.
These white walls are my solace.
I love the light spilling from every side.
Carol’s ivy-trimmed windows,
Flowered couch has traveled with me since 1994,
Cushions busting from wear, stained and flipped.
My home has painting of innocent girls, sad.
They look out at me and I say,
“This is rest.”
Surrounded by music and family photographs,
I am home here. I am in the air here.
I close my bedroom door and leave it all on the floor.
Cornered by window shades and palm leaves,
I am home here.

8-20-00

Saw Digging

I am sick tight wrenched and wrung into myself.
I felt dumb for sobbing two seconds and it dissolved.
I am sucked out like a black hole and I think of the nothingness my life is.
My pain has been behind darkness. Silence.
I know it more than ice cream chocolate.
I am not making this up.
Fuck you for even thinking that.
FUCK YOU for even suggesting I could be the one with the problem.
My problem. My problem is right.
I am drenched in loathing of my weakness.
Soaked in vulnerability.
How dare you.
Why can’t I open doors inside? Why can’t I let the flow out?
Out like bats in a cave at night, cover the moon.
I could cover the sun. I could be a light switch of corrosion.
Daylight blinds me.
I am cutting, saw digging rusty, heaving, deeper inside myself.
I am pulling and pushing back and forth.
Dry and hard as steel is the true depth, like sanding iron with paper.
I stop frequently to say, “This is not my life. This did not happen to me.
I am not this person.”
What if they can see me crying like turnip’s blood?
I have no more strength for this tonight.
No more sawing, cutting. Cannot continue.
I am sideways, heavy as stones in a Moorish castle, surviving empires and world wars.
Heat and light depress me.
It took place in the morning while he was still in bed.
It was twenty years ago. Why am I crying now?
Why do those moments win my soul?
Hating him is not my life’s only goal.
I have so much more to do.
I want to dissipate and evaporate and breathe easy and clean.
Maybe I am getting in touch with my anger now.
I imagine throwing plates, breaking at his head.
Handing out posters to his church mates.
Setting up an information website and slashing tires.
How could I consider loving him?
His dorky and awkward social manners, he thought he was funny.
I wanted to treat him like everyone else.
I wanted to forgive him for molesting me, for abandoning me, for lying to me,
But I AM THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM!!!
I am sick for thoughts.
I am exhausted from tapping into shit.
I just want to be whole.
I just want to love free and without restraint.
I am pierced and dull and stiff and cracked.
I am jello.
I am tired.
I am done with all this.
I don’t want to carry this anymore.
I want to be done with knots and stones and barricades.
I want to be me without those things.
 
8-19-00

Saturated

Stop heckling Stop cackling
I hear it through the curtains
I hear it past the window fan
And over the distant cars
I am alone tonight
With my bags packed
The night is empty
The rooms on vacation
Aloha, my friends
I go to Seattle again
I choose this knowingly
Ah, I miss it now
The distant laughter
Rhythmic and impure
A chorus of response
To the unheard remark
Car doors, ignition
Silence
And I feel I need my mother
To understand
How living here is my right
How loving her can be hard
And laborious
How memories can come in waves
That saturate your skin
And fill your pores
Until walking becomes impossible
Breathing an accomplishment
I want her to know
I have rights to be alone
To drown or to swim
She just needs to understand

8-8-00

July 1970

You seemed taller in the trees
Hair parted hanging long as limbs
How high did you climb then
How long did you remain
Among the leafless branches
Twenty year old girl
Newly mothered
You must feel young smiling
Quilted dress does not stop you
You stand up and lean over down
It is dusk on another day
You swing- arms open- in the forest
Fingers spread wide
Thick red cardigan
You must feel free
I only knew you this way
Homemade dresses
And open-toed shoes
You hate feeling closed in
You did come back for her
You must have known
As the woods darkened
A new decade was upon you
A chance to begin again
The mountain air, crisp
I imagine, filled your lungs slow
Head tilted back as you swing
Back, smiling, and
Swing forward

7-29-00