These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

I overflow, I absorb,
I push, I retreat — and then
I pour it out.
I gave myself names,
So, I took on forms,
Types, meanings,
Traits I had never worn before —
Unlikely mutations.
The end was
The Beginning of Everything.

II
I materialized,
Threading time and space onto myself.
I exploded,
Giving birth and dying —
In multiverses.

III
I budded through fractals,
Creating illogical gravities.
Where there was supposed to be no life —
Angular feelings emerged,
Flattened stars,
Ellipsoidal planets...

Until Human Beings appeared.

IV
Then everything changed.
They began to put me in boxes
Shouting with anger:
“My Faith!”
“Your Philosophy!”

And yet I am everything:
Existence in non-existence,
A colorful flash,
Undulating silence,
A sigh that screams.

V
Drink me,
Eat me piece by piece,
Discover me — but don't defend yourself
Against denial,
Consequences
And mistakes
When you see a wall in front of you.

VI
Don't take yourself away —
Because YOU ARE
Also, in that
In which you sink

Your Gaze

Your Hearing

Your Thoughts.

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
E. M. Forster

There was no spoon feeding life to me,
gentle nibbles from a mind set on
sugar coating there would be more
days of blackberry thorned hours than sweet pudding.

How does one speak of horror
to a child who trusts fairytales
grow reality from glittered imaginations?

I learned so very young monsters
don’t leave when a storybook presses
them between its pages…They stalk you
at dinner tables, in empty rooms,
within the sound of voices oblivious
to screams trapped in the cage of your throat.

In the oddity of breathing terror circumstances turned
me comedian, precocious child full of questions,
a crybaby at scratches while silent in the clutches
of a demon.

In the etiquette of spoons never judge
the one who doesn’t hold it correctly.
She may be a survivor who’d rather
eat the soup than explain why she
doesn’t have an affinity for shallow silver.

My voice slipped out as I slept,
taking the path between rows of white narcissus
to the upturned boat, just port side and starboard side,
no deck, no keel, with the world below and beyond.

It had normally slept in the blanket of my throat,
silent, cupped in a chrysalis.
Now it went up and down upon the earth
filterless, making many enemies, there when I awoke.

I hid my voice inside a bell, but it was only louder.
I stuffed it in the pages of a newspaper, but caged birds repeated everything.
I set it in the hands of my lover, and my lover left, cursing.
I hid it in the sound hole of a guitar and it spoke in every language.

I taught it manners and it died of boredom.
I taught it doublespeak and it ran for high office.
I taught it sanctimony and it attracted a congregation.
I taught it flattery and it was beloved.

Desperate, I taught it poetry and it lay down again in my throat
where my bones fell in love with it.
A doctor diagnosed the shaking as palsy
and prescribed a pilgrimage to Branson or Las Vegas.

I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.

Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.

Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a ****** will grow.

When I met you, you were day-sleeping in somebody else's car
and running around scrapping all night.

With your shaggy hair and that roll of your shoulders,
you made me jelly-kneed right from the start.

Sunny, you kept your loneliness hidden from your running buddies,
your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars in the Texas night.

I kept you coming back by feeding you, like some Italian mother
with a full pantry and a real bad crush. Come onna my house, birichino.

You had nothing, expected nothing, and were fearless, so fearless,
but when I fussed over some new cut you turned boneless as butter.

When I drank you turned to a rumor, gone like smoke, hating the stuff
yourself, and somehow above it. You made me want to kick loose of it, like you.

How did I charm you into staying, my gorgeous one?
How did we teach other what love was, with your silence and my words?

Til the day I die I know my heart is full of you, and all that you gave me.
I held you in my arms as you gasped and ran free, in the black hour of your end.

Oh, I learned to care again, about life, about myself, about it all,
but it took a long terrible while. and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Girls always fell for you like autumn leaves, light as sighs, stars of a moment.
I know how lucky I was to be the one you gave your heart to.

It's been thirty-two years and I still say your name and picture your face
every day. Even the angels won't be able to tame you--I won't let them.

Wait for me. When my hours are over I will find you. I will come running.
_

I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
in an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors.
I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
and a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
and I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
an art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
and to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then that I would shortly get a real job, a car,
and marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
and still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun
but not yet walking the earth.
_