how can you stand me when I cannot stand me

I wrote you a letter today

and then tore it up.

Disposited in trash cans

down the hall

like an alcoholic

disposing of bottles

(seperate or the glass clinks)

down the street

so roommate won't know.

I didn't swim to Alaska for this.

Understand I am an orca

captive-bred

I could kill my trainers 

with a flip of my tail.

But I won't.

Because I need the dead fish

they give me.

Because I don't know.

But even if you 

approached the glass

and whispered 

the secret in my ear.

I wouldn't.

My insecurity unbearable.

Better a limp fish here,

than try to hunt on my own.

diagnosis: lonely

You don't know longing like me.

A decade untouched;

a lifetime without good touch.

My loneliness a leper

contagious and consuming

clinging to all those around me.

Channel it, move it,

funnel me art, a word, hole;

an endless and infinite.

That black hole gravity

pulling colorful, satin pearls,

out my eyes and into my bed.

The void for love,

I need and need, so much 

more than I'm willing to take. 

It's that Tuck Everlasting longing.

the Office was really big then

Remember when we saw

Pam and Jim get married?

The Office episode, 

when it came out.

I wore red flats.

You said you liked my shoes.

I whispered,

"I found them in a parking lot."

It's true.

Suddenly I tumble, high from the sky

to a Wal-Mart parking lot.

And emerging from the asphalt

like Excalibur from the lake

red canvas flats.

When I was younger

I would've called them ballet flats.

Your eyes wide you reply

"I'm glad you whispered that."

Us in our bubble, the rest of the room blurred.

When we all were together

to watch a sitcom episode airing.

my therapist says

My therapist says it sounds like you like me too.

My therapist says it sounds like you like me.

My therapist says it sounds like you.

My therapist says it sounds.

My therapist says it.

dandelion

Bled thru my pants today

and it made me think of you

how you'd see it feminist

You'd yell "Fuck yeah!" 

and make it so cool.

All these years without you

I don't know what's real

between the things we did

and the things we hoped to do

and the things we never will do.

Did I imagine you curled

in the bathroom cabinet alone

or was it drunken mirage?

Were your favorite flowers dandelions

and did we read the Vagina Monologues

aloud in Chicago where we named ours-

our vaginas, Sam and Sue?

Or were you a dandelion

intrepid sunny medicinal weed, 

granting my wishes with your

dead petals, curing me with your leaf?

That's highschool sweetheart.

Did we really share that much?

I miss you,

my gorgeous Gemini girl,

two twin souls, you were both.

Yin, I see you bite into pepper green

still dirty from your mother's garden.

Yang, I watch you cock a gun,

sure and steady explaining it all.

Take charge, as I imagined you

were on the battlefield,

even if you were just just a sensitive girl

when it was just us two alone.

paternal

Are you the reason why

I fear being the older woman

but don't fear being the younger girl?

That's the unforgiving.

I know there's something in me.

That blood, my blueprint, jumbled

chromosomes and embryo.

Am I really more like you than an apeman?

Sometimes, I wake up a feral child.

Wolf orphan. Genie tied to the chair

in the attic. Mythical origins unknown.

Plucked from the river in a basket

among the snakes and reeds.

Suckling on my mom-wolfs-tit.

Greek. Roman. Celtic. Lolita.

Lore among lore; not a kernel of truth.

Except in that universal human way

how in all the millennia, I am a cliche.

James Dean Dreams

Last night I dreamt

in a past life

I was James Dean

and you were my sports car

a sweet Porsche baby

I cleaned and sparkled

and rode around

and pulled out your dip stick

and checked all your fluids

and I loved you

I think you loved me

and we paperball crumbled

together

at the side of the road

I died in you

and you wrapped around me

it was a dream

past life

loved that life with you.

serenity now !

helium balloon walking on the moon

that's my bouncing baby boy mood

drink my tea and touch my chest

this feels like content this is  that content.

to my dead ex-husband

woke up in jail the morning of our first date

bailed myself out with no bra and no panties

could you smell the puke thru the phone as i

asked for two hours more - "to get ready"

"there's bile in the bathtub" and "i was arrested"

i was still green to the world and you at your peak

vulnerable as strangers who met at night 

i performed hari kari you saw it striptease 

fed you my guts and you baby bird yours in turn

....that's a metaphor for secrets 

we didn't literally eat guts but i did see your guts

in the literal way for the last half of marriage.

more on that later.... we called it un-dating

therapists would call it trauma bonding 

who cares what it's called? I WAS ALL IN!

i'm sick but you are sicker.

my trauma a seventh heaven special

and yours a raw dawg live npr war reel.

i know the sound of a man's scream 

when you peel off the bandage from wound 

scabbed into the flesh but i cannot stop

it's the only way it will heal and that's when

i touched your guts almost everyday

the washi thin skin - porcine - that's literally pig

....these are not metaphors

no more metaphors here on this is all reality

i cleaned your bulging guts and intestine ridge

saw LITERAL SHIT move thru to a bag

filled with LITERAL SHIT id drain and dump

(and i cleaned that hole too)

and i loved and i loved and i loved

i loved you to death.

comatose in the hospital (both times)

id wash your feet and comb your hair

cut your nails and kiss your face and cry

nurses would stop to tell me how strong i was

but i was not and never strong enough to cure you

for all my devotion - dedication - SOUL MATE -

YOU know what i got cause you're the one who gave it

you slapping me like a naughty child because

i do not hold the bucket you are puking in just right

made me stay awake for days so you weren't alone

i dumpster-dived to feed myself to afford your poison

that which nourishes you destroys me 

suck out my soul it's been yours since that first date 

and you yelled at me and scheduled me and timed me

you kept saying that i wanted you dead 

you said i wanted you dead I still hear it in my sleep

"YOU JUST FUCKING WANT ME DEAD!"

because i asked to try doctors orders?

asked you to wait one LITERAL minute?

how do you figure that i wanted you dead

the girl who waited by your hospital bed

didn't eat for days and taught you to walk again

you kept saying that i wanted you dead

but how? when all i ever did was will you to live?

every minute every breath every action to save you

i fought harder for your life than you ever did

but every day you said i wanted you dead

well don't you believe in self-fulfilling prophecy? 

wishful thinking? well i do and i don't care who knows

being married to you was LITERAL hell

i had to leave, it was you or me, and i chose me

getting over you took more than the lawsuits

you sued me you sued the girl who washed you

picked your body up from bed and carried it to couch

so yes i loved and i loved and i loved you to death

but you still had the final fucking word.

girlboss secret sauce

Girlbossed too close to the sun again

and now I am mannequin, wax figure,

embossed and tarred and feathered.

So don't speak to me about hubris,

Cause I been decaying in it all day, sir.

numb

Show me the evolution tree; I need to see

the branch where the DNA mangled back.

Point at the name, the hominoid grunt,

where it all circled back to make me like this.

I could be something, not much, but something,

alive in my fantasies, daydreams, gnat,

crosseyed, it's double vision of life, fiberglass,

both reality and the vast dreamscape.

I want to have paper cut vulnerability

and casual friend's of silk lace threads.

But I am walking on thick disco snow

not leaving a single foot print mark.

 

Not disappear, nor die, or unalive,

as if it's too terrible to die, as if (laugh)

It hasn't been done before by everyone.

Unalive is real but it isn't death.

Breathe, walk, talk, pay bills, snacks

for Joey's soccer. There's a being unalive,

sitting next to you right now, worse

than the death guaranteed, so let's die.

But first- LIVE! Be alive. Bite the orange.

Suck out the juice. Let it dribble down chin.

Feel the sticky hands and sugar, savor.

Eat the bits under your nails, LiVe! 

(Whispered)

I want a pill.

I need a pill.

I took a pill.

To numb those mitochondria emotions

Which I needed to feel. I needed my emotions.

Tears salve to my sunburnt mitochondria.

DNA strands hair-maze. It's not a line.

Climb the branches, drill down in the earth,

turning corners till I find right where and when

my blood and and and my cells were infected

with fear to face life as it really is, not blended.

forest gump

Maybe we all are just Forest Gump

stumbling clueless into the fringe of history

and fumbling till a touchdown death.

Good on paper, lost in head.

Like all the important people in books.

windy city.

She's a wholesome harpie hand

deifted down to my eye level

and I will inch and inch till

she bolts, flies off, never knowing

I had thought of catching her.

1999

y2k time

a new schrodinger's cat

dead or alive

hanging by the clock.

to give you a pedicure

On my knees before you

soak your feet in warm soap water

scrub off the miles and miles you walked

crown each toe with a tender kiss

my piggie soldiers in the trenches

and you will be anew, soft, and fresh

as a baby in my care.

shower thoughts

Funny, how I know you masturbated 

lying on your belly, only way to get

the pressure just right. And know

your face and eyes on your first

plane ride, you told me what each 

sound was - 'that's the landing gear.'

Even now, I can feel your hair,

thin and long and painfully straight,

and how you brushed it, right hand,

ripping through it fast, and know

how you want held when you cry.

Yet, I will never know your kiss,

or how your tattoos taste, or feel

(each one I have memorized)

many made with me beside, chatting.

Never wanted to know how much I love you,

but I am glad to know I can love.

dawn.

She sold nudes two weeks ago

how can she now be dead?

That temporary restraining order

doesn't restrain the sadness

only relief it wasn't by your hands.

Such is the life, and death, 

of a feather-wisp digital girl.

Gifting you pieces torn off her 

till there's no more left, vapor.

28, dead, in bed, Happy New Year.

'Stay safe' is hallow in wake,

in mourning light of the news.

Don't just 'Stay safe' but get mad, 

get angry and rake the coals,

and burn down the world in rage.

'Cause no one else will.

on "adulting"

Sometimes you get itchy

from the snug fit of a state-

like 'United States' not 

'State of the Union' state.

A dead thick husk shell 

castration till liberation, split.

So you move and it's grand-

or so that's what you say.

Reneg? On a move?

L-O-L, gag-me-with-a-spoon,

3 decades pining only

to uno reverse last minute.

Take the lil' scamp who 

packed one meal to run away,

returns soon, tail between legs,

whimper, whimper, 'hey.'

You a Hounddog cryin' for 

her old school, and old friends, 

and old toys. 'Adulting' is 'kidding'

just a slightly different scope.

It's not that you cannot,

but you'd just rather not.

You aren't 'in the doghouse'

just a puppy comin' home.

sugar cream tea

Crushin' so hard,

come home to you

meet your sisters

conduct symphonies

mixing microbes.

I can be part 

of your ecology

a mushroom

a compost heap.

Can I sleep in the corner

with all the cat hair 

with all the dust

mouse-eye view?

Be a dust bunny

corner-bound

watching you

with doted eyes.

Watch love brew,

Can I be a wasted,

discarded tea bag

saucer happy 

by your spoon?

timeout time.

I want to go home, stamp my feet, pout

and grind jellybeans into shag carpet.

Cross my arms, chin jutting, stomp.

Take me home. Take me home now.