Inner Thoughts & Feelings

 I keep a skull inside my head

like a gravy boat for holidays

stuffed inside a china hutch,

a child sent to its room.

I talk to people at parties,

on the job, riding the bus,

as if I were immortal, the

Eternal Co-Worker, the Passenger Outside of Time.

I act as if there were no skull inside my head.

Is my affectation of skulllessness hideous?

What if I could remove the hidden skull,

would my hideousness become unbearable?

Would this poem float right out of my head?

I keep a skull inside my head

and smile as if I were on stage.

The hidden skull defines my shape,

but will shed me like an old jacket in the end.

Am I unbearable?

Was I unbearable before I said all of this, 

or only after?

So now you know, and I know about you as well.

Let's kiss now, don't be bashful

and don't retch. 

_________

JAMA to this, motherfuckers

I had a little ache in the heart,
and so sought the cure prescribed in pop songs
with you
and you
and you
and you
and you.
Results ranged from muttered obscenities Q 2 hours as needed
to inability or disinterest in getting out of bed, observed for up to 3 months.
In sum, none of it was worth
the elevated heart rate, 
the altered mood,
the little swimmy endorphins which followed my boat after you'd been aboard.
Darlings,
all of you may kindly fuck off.

Contrary data poured in in response:
"She is mercurial, alternately combative or child-like,
not as interesting as she seems at first,
too solitary, talks everything to death, 
writes those god damn poems afterward."
They allowed as to how I could kindly fuck off as well. 

Too bad
that we arrived exchanging charm and kindness,
only to follow the usual course of dis-ease
to a trading of vitriol and silence.
The good news is
that we are immune now,
free to walk again among men (or women) without fear or hope, either one.
Dig my dead smile
promising nothing,
desiring nothing,
done and cured after all,
patient X back at ground zero, sick of love but medically cleared--
a success story in journals that do not publish poetry.
______

for "Love Hurts" at Toads.

 

The Skull In The Book

The skull in the book asks me what I'm reading.
We both know that he only wants to criticize.

The train rolls on, works looms.
I had hoped to get in a few pages, but no.
The skull in the book won't shut his pie hole.

I tell him it's about a woman
whose husband has a secret;
it's about a girl
who hears voices from her closet,
and it's about a cat
who stays on the stairs in the dark, watching.

The skull in the book scoffs. 
He wants spies and intrigue and sex.
"There is, Skully," I say. 
He frowns.

For a while I describe the scenery to him. 
He hasn't got eyes, but he has curiosity. 
He tells me to kiss him, he's a Prince.
"You wish."

At my stop, I tire of it all,
and discard my book with the skull in it. 
I can hear him, fuming inside the barrel with the coffee cups
and McMuffin wrappers.

I think I won't go to work.
I stand there for a second, stupid and a little afraid,
like a woman who wakes up not knowing where she is,
how she got there, what this strange body is
or why she's inside it, casting about for a clue.
________