thanks to the poet's union....

...I get to take a short break now. I'm tired from work and the heat and also my periodic depression is kicking my tail. See you all in a few days.
 

under the heat dome

under the heat dome

like being fried in haiku

all day every day

 

Confession

Bless me, baby, for I have sinned.
It has been a day since my last confession--
in the form of a poem
about a broken heart,
one that happened seven years ago and every day since.

I find that my life has two constants,
just like my two hands,
my two empty and idle hands.
Come up and see my workshop, honey.
I'll write you a love poem
or do anything,
if only you'll come.

I confess that I have sinned,
and that I can't walk out my front door,
or go to the mailbox
without a few mortal and venials happening almost on their own.
I covet another woman,
someone else's wife,
not even a Catholic.
Sweetheart, stop me if you've heard this one.

They say that Divine radiance can fill any heart.
I know I should look for God in every difficulty,
shovel the shit to find the pony,
but I am so hit-and-miss in my faith.
I try.
I do,
but honestly, the thing in this world that delights me most
is simply hearing you laugh.

Hope is the thing with feathers,
so says Emily,
and I think that surely she wrote it after saying something silly to Susan,
whose snort and open laughter sent whole flocks up into the Amherst sky.
_________

Got a confession? Tell Sister LaTonya. 

 

your kiss

Your kiss,
one of the last ones,
after I already knew that you had lied and cheated and played with my heart,

was still something I had to have.
I hadn't wanted to confront you on my birthday
with what I had so cleverly put together about what you had done;
I wanted one more day of being stupidly happy, first.

You put everything you had into everything you did,
and when you turned that on me, it was thrilling.
I'll never deny that.

Oh, I was noble and righteous and proud.
The next night I gave you one chance to come clean--
a chance you wasted.
So I broke it off, and told the world what and who you really are.

But what of that kiss, the one I remember,
the one right before you handed me the cat card, saying,
"I thought you should have some really good pussy for your birthday!"

You won't believe me when I tell you that your kiss sat in a museum
for years, in a glass case,
a forgotten exhibit ignored even by me.

Then the zoo took it over, because it had bitten someone,
or buckled her knees, or something,
and I heard about it from a friend, or a friend of a friend,
and by then I wasn't so proud anymore.
Being alone will erode a girl's confidence, and I have been alone.

No surprise, then, that the khaki-wearing student volunteer should find me
in the very early morning,
with my naked body wrapped around your kiss,
which still fit perfectly with my heartbeat.

Stop crying, she said.
Get dressed. You can't stay here.
It was just like the morning after I broke up with you,
except with no one to admire my backbone this time,
because
I no longer have any.
_________

trash trees

my yard is thick with what they call
trash trees--
mulberry, ficus and others I don't know the name for.
I love them ferociously,
as a mother does.

my companion is what they call
a mill dog from the pet store--
he'd never been out of a cage before,
and space astounded him.
I love him fiercely,
as a mother does.

I used to think
that I might meet somebody--
maybe by Christmas,
or in the spring time.
I used to think that I would not always carry this weight,
me and Sisyphus
idle and laughing by the road side.

Passion is the acid that eats me alive,
but I go up so gorgeously--
poet with her trash trees and her mill dog, beloved.
I've given up on finding anybody that's free to be found,
but I have come to love sleep--
where someone, maybe God,
holds me in a moment of respite and tells me I am worth something,
as a mother does.
_________

for the Real Toads mini challenge: passion.

In Character

The actor portraying the character of my significant other walks in.
I have to kiss him,
though I'd really rather beat him to death with a shoe.

My character is mild.
Kind.
Self-effacing.
It's in the script, written by some man.

Lighting and make-up's gonna make me look fetching
despite my bad night.
I had interminable dreams of being stalked by tigers
inside a house contaminated with hostile spirits.
I blame it on the medication
given to me by the character of my quack-ass doctor.

I shovel out some really stupid dialogue.
"Have a nice day.
Thanks for the rose.
I love you."
Who wrote this shit?
Probably some hermit trash novelist from Erie,
wearing a ratty sweater with elbow patches,
head down over his keyboard like a hunchback.

I let the actor portraying the character of my significant other fuck me last time
on a different set,
because at the time I was trying to be normal;
I'm an actress, I sleep with my leading men,
even though they wobble their heads and kiss me like ticks--
I exsanguinate slowly, and look up at them, pale as a blank page.
They fill me in,
in a foreign language,
and in black and white.

Suddenly, I can't stand any of it anymore--
the fat pretentious director in his chair,
the endless re-takes,
the sheer idiocy of the story itself.
My mild,
kind,
self-effacing character breaks a prop dish against a table,
and holds the jagged edge to the throat of the devil who imagined all of this.

Someone calls 911.
Someone else calls the producer.
A rent-a-cop shows up, disturbed from his detective novel,
fumbling for his starter's pistol, mistakenly restraining the continuity editor.
At last, here is the character of my quack-ass doctor,
with his palms out,
trying to calm me.

I make the familiar motion to cut the scene,
and this crew of self-important baboons gasps like they'd never seen that simple gesture before.
I try to tell them all to fuck off,
do not pass Go,
just please, for once and for all, fuck off and leave me alone,
but I can't articulate my lines, because

I've gone off-script,
off the rails,
off my nut,
and the feeling is glorious
for as long as it lasts.
________

 

From My Mouth

From my mouth, an egg.
From the egg, a monster, 
wearing a wet, sticky veil.

Above: the sun, stupid, cancerous.
Below: everything.
Below: my monster, full of a ravenous emptiness.

Let there be summer, never-endingly.
Let there be my monster,
consuming one, and one, and one.

Let there be lawyers and elected officials.
Let there be a rot-bog of stench and glory.
Let my monster be Lord of it.

Let the language of my monster's groans ascend,
come deluge, come Judgement.
Let my monster's instant of joy be cemented.

From my mouth, a new history.
From this history, another monster,
dwarfing the first one, and less merciful.
_______