Archive for February, 2010

got up.
ran errands.
visited friends.
was social.
the whole day
gone before
i knew it.

and then
ten PM
standing in the kitchen
with a greenglass
of water
i realized

i had not thought
of you all day
or checked the phone
to see if
you’d come to
your faint senses.

i had not
worried
once.

i called it progress
drank off the water
and went to bed.

if i could put spikes up
in front of my house
i would.

just to make the bastards
slow down.

they roar through here
bass thumping, car
weaving, and boys yelling.
sometimes it’s blondes on cell
phones, yapping away
while piloting tons
of metal.

the city won’t
put speed bumps in
until someone dies
probably one of the kids
playing on their bikes
skateboards
or whatever.

spikes. if i could
i would. as it is
i ill-wish them

and wait for a
crash.

so i’m alone.

it’s not so bad. i
wake up in the
morning and i have
only my own mess
to clean up.

i leave
and i don’t have to tell
anyone where i’m going
or when i’ll be back
or no you can’t come
fine, okay, you can
just stop hurting me.

i don’t have to
lay awake at night
wondering who you’re with
and why,
wondering when you’ll
need a bed or meal
again and rediscover
you love me.

you stole from me
each time you said
you loved me.
you didn’t have to.
i would have given
so much, just for
the asking.

but now
i wake up alone.
as mercies go
it’s small
but it’s mine.

and i’ll keep it.

some mornings
are scalpel-bright
glare against
the folds of your brain.

others are fuzz
stumbling from
one solid point
to the next.

once in a while
the midpoint hits
a trembling morning
soft lambskin inside
your skull
and the light just right
for just-opened eyes.

a morning with
no pain. if it
happened more
often, less people
would hurt
themselves.

don’t blame the weather.
blame chance, luck,

and vertigo.

Walk it off, blind man
pacing back and forth
each step a shuffle. Let
the pain sink.

A drink of water, cup
of coffee. Each thought
is circular, it leads
down into the darkness.
Follow, or let it go.
None of it matters.

This is loneliness:
days with no other sound
but the wind, hollow cracks
as the joints pop.
Other voices
are a fiction

Shush-step. Step-shush.
Weight in knees too
frail to bear it. Lead
bars buried in the back. The
smell
of defeat.

Walk, blind man,
walk it off.
Trample the pain.

When they bury you
it will be Sunday
and if there are
mourners
you will no longer care.

for one whole year I ate it
crunch of bread, salt of butter
one long year between the job
and school, one endless year
while the divorce wended its way,
trouble looming over every waking
moment.

other food would choke me,
the man of the house glaring
like I cost him cash with
every breath. I tried
to fold myself into a hard
little corner, pulling knees and
elbows in, no flesh poking out
to remind him of my presence,
of my cost.

I lived on cooked bread and butter,
I starved, but the hunger turned inward;
I developed layers of cushioning
against it. my hips swelled, so did
my breasts, as if pregnant again
I loomed miserable in the space
I never should have called home.

I starved, and yet I grew, my body
trying to protect me. the divorce
closed itself up too, and I moved out
like a thief in the middle of
a sunny afternoon, hoping not to
leave behind any more than I had to
while chewing myself free.

would it have been so hard
not to slaughter me, fattening
me with cruelty? each
reminder that I was a burden
scored me, though I didn’t
show it, kept my face
a stone, my heart shrinking
as my body metabolized your hate
into another pound.

sometimes the bread
pops up, ping!
in a new toaster and
I stare at it, remembering
a hunger.

those times
when I remember, I
tip the plate over the
garbage can.
I waste
the staff of life
because I choose to,
because eating it
would remind me of you.