pansy poet.

Why? I did not want to answer why,

or when, or how either.

Because my answer is just discomfort.

It is the only way I grow and learn.

And the grass was not greener

on that other side, 

it was just as stiff, dry, and grey. 

The lush lime and rich avocado

was always just shadow play. 

So I grow and learn through hurt,

The grass is greener,

not just where I water it, but 

where I was planted to begin with.

ruins.

Am I to live the same three lives over and over again? Run so far from my childhood, I run right back into it. Silvertone. In pants, a style which is a decade too late. Circling the drain, circling the hole, into the ground, pipes running aside along. Shear my hair from inconvenience in quick and rare event. Like my head is a garden and we doing fall clean-up. It's a mother heavily sighing and frustrated to handle the torturous task of caring for your child again. You can suck the joy out of a child till she can't find it again till she's forty. Not get the thing she wants, not because there is not enough money or it is impractical, but because it is a shame to want to begin with. Funny how you don't want me. You didn't want me. But there I was. You had me. Maybe that is why I don't get the thing I want. I would rather want and not have. Than to not want and have. Resent it's presence. Negative. But not like the opposite of positive. Negative like film. Like photos taken in the painful burn of summer sun-heated cement bench. Slab. Outside a restaurant. I am pulling down my skirt hem and pulling up my tank top. I suddenly, aware, of how the dress code haunts me. Twelve and cut down to size already. Life needs a dress code so I can feel prepared and ready and able. I need a short leash. I need reeled in. I need manhandled back into the box. Just dip back into the groove, stencil and blueprint. The scaffold and foundation sturdy and ready. Easy to ride the train when the tracks been laid. Castlestone. Just repeat what's been done before. My mother built this. But it's my job to maintain. Maple steeple. I need to be caged. Kept on track, on task, on top of it. Keep at bay those teddy bear blues. Too loud. Too excited. Too sullen. Too quiet. Calm down. Fit into the spaces available. Fit into life like rags between cracks in the log cabin. Stop up the drafts. The chill which scrapes along the floor. Drags along the floorboards to bare toes vulnerable. Smaller and smaller still. Wad in the cheek. Punched in the guts. I punched myself in to guts today. It stayed the same. Gold temple. I am grape globes. I am glass. I am fragile while it lasts. Stand here on the ruins. The past hasn't passed. The roads cars drive on, on top, like icing, on the Roman roads, cakepop. 

glories of the unknown

In the rare evening event

when I toss and turn restless,

I do not count finite sheep, but

instead count the infinite unknowns

till I drift aimlessly to sleep.

Baffling all I do not know

and likely will never know;

I could count them till I die

and not even need sleep.

Such as do you bite your lip

when you are deep in thought?

The smell of your morning breath

or how you dance or 

if you'd dance with me or

how you'd dance with me.

How do you eat plums? Do you

nibble, or gnaw, or slice it up?

Do you dog ear pages of library books

or sigh before sliding into bed?

When did you last cry and why,

and how do your hands move,

piano fingers or gorrila grip?

Can you read my mind?

Would you like to visit 

a historical dollhouse with me? 

Is it odd to even ask without knowing

how you tackle museums?

How do you think of me, if ever,

at all? Do you count sheep or

do you count all you do not know?

Your list so much shorter than mine.

tell your God there was black blood.

Don't get too clean, girl.

And never too dirty.

Don't bring a gun

to a knife fight,

don't bring a weapon 

of any kind.

Any hint of defense,

is indefensible,

screams 'not victim enough.'

chaos carrie.

I want to tell you 

about my feet, about

how I am unsettled

from bottom to top.

It shivers up the ankles,

shin, knees, and hose.

That base, connect,

ground, flitters and flips.

I'm always moving

inside or out. 

Asleep, restless eyes,

darting tennis games.

Toes strain and ball

feet fists and feet foes.

My mind is a thousand miles

every direction in every way,

a furious wind of thought.

From the bottom to the top

that's all I am.

I still wear your sweatpants

I still wear year sweat pants.

They were brand new, but,

for you, no longer of use.

Your mom called me over.

Boxes. In boxes. 

Not the bags I'm used to.

That's something you 

only learn from experience.

The Air Force will box and label

and ship all your stuff to your family.

Did the postman know he delivered

a dead girl's stuff to her mom?

I just wanted a few sentimental

tokens, amulets, icons of my memory.

A scrapbook but make it fashion.

But your mom insisting I take it all.

So your sweatpants, brand new, never worn,

became mine, now fourteen years.

Your sweat pants became:

My sweat pants.

My sleep pants.

My sick pants.

My drunk pants.

My sober pants.

My first-marriage pants.

My second-marriage pants.

My grad school pants.

My stained pants.

My holey pants.

My holy pants.

But they were still your sweat pants.

I put you on. Not you, your kabuki mask.

You possessed my body. You haunted my mind.

You made these holes and these stains.

And we merged.

So bury me in your sweat pants,

faded logo on the hip, holes, paint smear,

perma-dirt and exhausted elastic,

so I can still wear your sweat pants

when I join you.

strongly worded letter to the English language

Why are the words 'within' and

'without' so vastly different?

Logic would say they operate like 

'inside' and 'outside'.

Should be obvious.

See 'inside' and 'within' 

are synonyms and

'inside' and 'outside'

are antonyms, so

'outside' and 'without'

should be synonyms too.

It's math, It's logic,

It's not your strong suit.

Perhaps this helps.

"If I am within her, I am inside her."

"If I am without her, I am outside her."

This would make sense.

But that's not how you roll.

You made confusing meanings

so I can be 'within' her and 'inside' her, 

But when I'm 'without,' her, I'm not just 'outside' her,

She not even here, for myself, or others,

not even for her own pleasure or doing.

So different. No hope of respite.

'Within' her, 'Inside' her, I'd have a bed at night.

'Outside' her, the hope of sleep tomorrow.

But 'without' her? There never was sleep,

No blankets, no pillows, nothing was real.

Nostalgia fades so much faster on a past

you are trying to remember. 

So in summary:

Inside=Within

Outside ≠ Without 

Fix it.

Respectfully,

Caroline

BESTIE RESTIE

On my hind legs again

dancing and prancing.

It's the same ol' fight

we've had for 20 years.

Even the mob has rules,

but friendship? Nah.

It's grafting oranges

onto pine trees.

It's Italian dressing

vinegar and oil, spice.

It's pushing magnets

polar end together.

Ask me my opinion, but 

know I am not a psychic

nor a liar, so I can never

tell you what you want.

plop plop fizz fizz (death) what a relief it is(n't)

First successful organ transplant was in 1959,

a year before my mother was even born,

way before you or I were born or met.

It was a kidney. Now you're dead.

They donated your organs. 

Which ones? How many? Who got them?

Even dead, is your marrow walking around?

deep in their bones, some stranger don't know

how their blood forms in a core that hates me.

Is someone just getting groceries reading labels

with corneas which stared me down at my worst,

muckiest of the muck in your shoe tred?

Someone taking in the fresh air with lungs 

which stole hits off my cigarette and yelled at me?

Where is your liver, your heart, that pancreas, skin,

all the things that seemed to make up "you"

that you that I loved, the you I grew to resent, 

the you I tried to leave, the you I finally left,

and the you I hoped would finally leave me

once you were cold dead in the ground.

But like all things in our marriage, its end, 

no one got what they wanted or promised.

dust bunny bones

Poems, Poems, 

in the the shag rug,

crumbs of my life

embedded and tredded

with the rest of the dust and dirt

a hoarder's home.

All my jolted art, bottled pop, 

God, I forgot.

I scare myself.

Thought I was covert 

MORSE CODE

decoder ring 

not included

just beeps and boops

robot music beats

echoing between cracks 

with the filth.

Thunder in the distance-

know the sound?

Imagine that sound.

Hooves to run me over-

my own words, specks of me, the

Would've, Could've, Should've,

but I am messy, crummy, cruddy crud

I did not. I would not. I have not.

Surprise, horror, 

my grimy whispers were heard

between the warp and weft.

Perhaps louder than I thought?

Not just bare-foot stuck 

grains of grot, for which others

clabber to remove, but savored. 

My trash savory. 

I thought it disposed 

to a pit only I would visit.

Suppose if I am to be taken in, take it all.

I will distill every breath of my humanity,

from greasy forlorn to squalid bone,

my chaotic assumptions that no one

actually, really, in fact, indeed looked,

if for more than a minute, not longer.

how to kill a flea like me

If I was a lab rat it would be much harder. If I was a cool cat you would not wanna. But I'm just a flea, a flea like me. It's too easy to kill a flea like me. Not mention my good hair day (or do). Or notice my nails are different (or don't.) If only I had a snout or scale. You could rub my belly and sleep on mat. But I am flea. It's terribly easy to kill me.

And far too hard to make me happy.

on the motion of the heart and blood in animals

We used to not know our blood circulated 

like an infinite carousel nor know 

what blood even did yet, then we knew.

Same-Same, my heart, I am clueless.

And like when William Harvey published

and the world laughed. Same-Same, me.

Years of feeling and I'm still ignoring

with a chuckle and a jolted joke.

watch me burn up alive to get close to you

when the heart is a muscle and don't know

love is a even a thing just like me.

She, I wanna.

I wanna crawl inside and taste Greek muse

             -and whiskered sea weed. 

I wanna go so deep and feel your secrets 

             -from your playground days.

I wanna know when you tire and panic

             -in my bones miles away.

I wanna smell your neck in my heavy slumber 

              -track you through crowds.

I wanna meet jelly thighs over weak knees

             -wobbling breath beating.

I wanna hear all the quiet and loud noises

              -you never made before.

evenings

Sometimes you can capture

rising smoke in a glass cup,

but it will always disparate,

always fade into pale air.

Can't hold on to the night

with a iron claw fist grip

only a few moment blink

it is memory on the brink.

why ask me what you should do?

why ask me?

when you have

soup brain

and Mac truck will 

and donkey stubborn

stick in the mud

dried in deep.

why ask me?

want me to bully

or browbeat or

tear you all down?

I will and I will-

and you still won't

so why ask me?

bludgeon

Something, something whisper softly,

mouse-whisker small, tiny branch out,

fingertip tall, I am thumbs on hand,

so thick and useful, never elegant, ok?

darlin plays

Part the curtain,

we open at the scene

birth of an offense

both taken and given.

More dizzying spells 

of question or want

for what I do not know.

It's been decades

we ain't kids anymore

looking out the 2nd 

story window, nor 

laying flat on the floor.

Our antics and twists

just uncute and unjust

move along, lil doggie

we grown and need

to quit keepin score.