Home. a work in progress

And this is the house I grew up in
this is the swing in the back yard
that I fretted over not using more when I was younger
Because then I didn't know how much it would mean

And this is the kitchen floor
Warped and wobbled and covered in green carpeting
And the kitchen drawers we used as tables
When we didn't have any furniture yet

This is the corner of the hall
And these lines and dates
are the tree rings of children
That have grown here

Safe. warm. protected.

And this is the living room
where my father almost died
The year I was 14
And that was a bad year, one of the worst

And these are the window sills where I would sit
above the heater in winter
Watching the snow in this 200 year old house
and not doing school because I wanted to be warm one more moment

And this is the room my sister and I shared
til she moved across the house when I was 11
the walls were pink back then
and I missed her for the first year but said nothing.

And this is the closet where I wrote notes
to nobody in particular
Just because I wanted them to be found
When I was gone.

And this is the front yard that never grew grass, Only moss.
And we would lay there After spinning games
Because it was soft and the trees were very old
And I always liked the shape of them.

And this is the place that I had my first kiss
I was 16 and it was only a moment
I trembled afterwords because I was a shy child
And not used to things so intimate

And out back is the hill that my brothers and sisters and I
would sled down When we were younger
And these are the crab apple trees that we would climb
I still did when I was older, and it didn't matter that I was to big for that.

we raised our first puppy here
Her name was faith and she had eyes that used to smile all the time
When she died we buried her at the edge of the woods.
She was a good dog and I miss her.

impulse

And I will lay in the bathwater of my own guilty admissions.
Washed but not pure.
Blank slate to be reflected on in the swamp of my sins and missteps.
Mother, I am so numb.
What are these? These arms and breasts
And legs all tombstone white,
All cages, all temple.
My belly rising from the cloudy murk, infant
Distended and swollen with womanhood
The crashing jangles of what I am and am not.
Show me the way,
You said you would once.

These are my hands, my ears, the curve of my hip
And the birthmark
You noted on the day I was born.
Have I ever been so perfect?
So trusting?
So utterly demanding and unassuming?

But I am not captain of this ship,
No commander to my destiny.
Still falling, still making these deadly mistakes.

You once said I was all wind, all trust, all impulse
set to wondering.
And you had always known…
Can you blame me?
Can you blame me for it all?

One Night Stand

So you wanna pick me up?
I'll make up a lie
and we'll hop in your ride

And make awkward conversation on the way back to
your place.
We'll lie on your bed and watch tv
All the while pretending not to be
Thinkin what we're thinkin

You'll wanna touch me
And say that you
love me
Put reason on hold as you take off my cloths and promise you wont
judge me.

But what next?

Your hands in my pants looking for the magic that's supposed to undo me
Find the line that's supposed to make my mind so blank
except for the breath on my neck so you can pass right through me.

But what you don't know is I'm already gone
already fixing on the next fix
To fulfill my disappointment
The next high to get me by the low that comes crashing down around this
Staticed out emotional connection.

Climax doesn't thrill me.
I am not fulfilled by the spill of
your insufficient manhood and
fears of loneliness into me.

I will not be the rag
That wipes the smears of yesterdays
haunting failures off your chin.

I am not a weakness.
A place you can hide your dirty little secrets
To compress the desperation and panic that you feel
Recycled into a face you can keep in public
so I can be kept in your back pocket
always running to where you keep me in the closet

So you can hide
And entwine your body with mine
Til there is no you anymore.

And I was erased
without a face
trying to be what you wanted
so I could always be counted
And have a place to go so I could feel alive
Cuz I'm dead to the world_
And no one cares enough to take it to the next level
And make resuscitation a possibility

What do you want from me?

I have been come on with your
Shortcomings
Always running
From that face that haunted me
That rejected me
That made me want to prove
there is more to me
Then a body and a strict set of rules
On not to have intimacy
Can't let nobody close to me
Because I can't hurt
If you don't know the real me.

And I am tired of running from me own face in the mirror.

Can't stand to look at me
Can't stand to talk to me
I just wanted resurrection
in the fake connection
That I thought we had.

But rescue is possible.
And it's not found in these stained sheets
Or the 3am phone calls to hide the nagging
of our own self loathing
At what we never wanted to be.

I wont follow you down that road and into that car
Because I know what waits for me
And it is empty.

I can't be that girl
Because I already have been.
And I would rather pick my self inflicted wounds
of all the bitterness
then let you cram your emptiness into me.

Something of Value

I wanted so much more then to be wanted.
Seen as a pit stop to fill a need as basic as hunger.
I didn't want to be desirable
Just to be played with and put back on a shelf and for sale.
I have value.
And the secret to my enticement is found in the layers and depth of a person
That has treasures stored up and waiting to be spilled and spent with abandon on the One who would pursue her.
But you walked past all that.
Took what you thought you wanted and stayed hungry.
Still prowling the streets for me, for this,
And you don't even know it.

While you were window shopping for little girls playing dress up
Dangling like candy in front of you
I was at home waiting.

I could of given you
Something of value.

Good Enough?

Don't you dare call me your child.
Your baby,
Honey. Sweetheart.

What you didn't know was I was
Always on the side lines
Playing good enough.

I have never been beautiful,
I have never been smart,
Just good enough.
Good enough to fuck
Good enough to be handled like cheap
Meat on the verge of turning,
Panicking to get in and out
Before I change my mind.
But how could I when you had my heart?

Highjacked like stolen electronics;
Only responding to your signal.
Living for the moments that you noticed me,
Waiting to pick out the thin invisible wire
That I thought connected us

Love? - I whispered to myself, Love?
Only occasionally.

prose? I don't know.

Her hair was black.
I remember that.
Notes stuffed in the bottom of an old drawer
That chronicled a life
That was secretly tragic.

Not that you'd know by just a look.

Whispered snatches of song
barley audible beyond the blowing
Of a million scraps of paper on the floor
Sticking to the spots
of brown stained water leaks.

And he found her on the floor,
Only sleeping,
Not like in his dreams
Where all the precious words
That made her music
Were used like tissue paper
blotting out letters with circles of blood.

And all he wanted to do was tuck her hair behind her ear
And sing her all the favorite lines of songs he liked.
But she was sleeping
And he didn't want to stare
In case she woke up and was startled by him there.
He didn't want to be labeled
with transparent tape,
barely noticeable but still there,
freak or pervert.
Didn't want to violate her privacy
or the trust that she could sleep with out something happening to her.

It took months to get her insomnia to die down.
And who would blame her for being unable to sleep with nightmares that never should of crossed the boundary into reality.
And when she cried in her sleep there was never much to do.
She would awake, not really ashamed but rather just tired of having it happen again, and for having to put me through it again.
She'd calm down at just the right pace so I felt comfortable leaving her alone. Though I knew she wasn't really calm,
just conscious that I had work in the morning and never should of been up in the first place.

silver

Sometimes I think I steal love,
Hoarding it away into dark holes for the heart,
Keeping it like trinkets to look over on rainy days.
Feeling over the bumps and rough edges
That cause me to look at the worlds ugliness
And smile on it anyways;
That soften atrocity's into forgiveness
Convincing this frayed heart to be brave.

I am really not unafraid
I am really nothing
But love tells me that I am.

ends

And you are always scrapping me with the brittle sound of your words
And I am always using my mouth to question myself
I don't want to be this person anymore.
Each footfall drags me down with the paper tears of a roll I have outstayed my welcome in

I have grown and the shoe no longer fits
I am not your Cinderella.

Everything Ends.

I still have dreams that I'm looking for you
And sometimes I catch up to you,
but you don't remember me
And I don't remember how that makes me feel.

And this is so,
So temporary.

Olive's Ocean

Would you look at me?
It's already too late and we both know it.
Your fingers tangle in my hair and think of salt and sea weed,
A faraway ocean cold and colorless.
You trace the bumps and sharp edged rounds of my spine
A sea anemone made of jelly and stringy dangling left overs.
I never wanted to disappoint.

Somehow you wanted this but slightly different.
So we become this sort of accidental lovers,
Now muted down of any loneliness.
We tire of each others company and bore
Each other with talk,
So neither of us speaks.

Our love making becomes the scene of a crime,
Brutal and violent.
We avoid each others eyes after,
As if each of us knows. . .
But chooses to let our innocence hang
By the thin threads of denial and silence.
And we insinuate into our lives the half hearted attempt
That there are others . . .
But we both know it's only checking the pulse
So we ignore and glance over,
We forgive what never originally offended.
And we do only enough of whats expected to get by.

We make repetitions of patterns that lost meaning
A thousand days ago
But monotony and monogamy is harder to break
Then the disturbance at the thought of sudden change.
"What do we do, dear?"
I will say,
And you will reply with a murmur in your sleep
Which will mean anything a want it to at the moment
Because the noise keeps me up at night
And I haven't the heart or effort to tell you.

I write on lunch break sometimes

I woke up last night
And the terror of my dreams
Wasn't painted on the shadows of the wall.
But the simple stirring of your moth breath
That fluttered the roses on the bedspread
And turned pages in my mind.

I gazed at you and feared losing you
For my dreams are all the same,
I am losing you
And I cannot change.

The music of a dripping kitchen faucet
And the midnight drone of a refrigerator
Lulls me and assures me that all remains the same.
Still I am putting on my jacket
And leaving through the front door
And I'm not coming back again.

Insomnia

Here, under the single florescent light,
I become something other then myself.
The constant pull and flow of a coke heads energy
Has finally subsided to where dreams undulate
Like underwater kingdoms before my eyes.
And water log my brain
So that each step becomes gravityless.

I am not filled with delusions of my own self impotence
Or the wailing cry of drug addiction.
But under the twin bulbs that flicker,
Undecided if they will share their green tinted,
Unforgiving glow with me,
I am passive.

Fascinated with a simpletons tunneled concentration
At the crack in this table
That has sprung up between the grains.
Swelling larger, shifting uneasily, magnifying it's self,
Til it is an abyss I fall into;
A crack in the universe sucking me in.
A darkness that hides such horrible knowing things
That wish to eat me in great sucking, sicking, crunching,
smacks from there unmouths.
I scream, terrified that I will tumble in,
And the universe behind me like a thread pulled through the eye of a needle.

My eyes spring open.
I am at my desk again.
My fingers upon a split in the table
That glows and darkens under the lull
Of florescent lights...

I am alone and something other then myself.

Absolutely Nothing

I remember the oak tree in the back yard. It had a swing.
I remember the days I would lay there, with my sister or alone,
on small plaid blankets that we were given as babies.
And I remember looking up at the sun through the leaves
And how the wind would sound through the branches.
I wanted to lay there with you and hold your hand.
I wanted to share something beautiful with you.
But the tree out back is gone,
And so is my childhood home.
And we are so changed.
You never existed. The boy I gave my heart to down a telephone line and wanted to bring into my family and lay with on my baby blanket in the home I'd lived in my entire childhood never existed.
And I felt cheated.
And I feel lost.
And I am a fragment of the picture you once saw.

I have no home. I have no history. My sister now lives 50 miles away.
And I can't find that damn blanket,
I can't find it.
As if everything would fall into place if I did,
Like everything would finally make sense. . .

I try to find myself

Me looking at them became
Me imagining I was you
Looking at them wishing they were me;
And all of them equaled what I could never become.
And all the pictures of myself were pictures I could never imitate.
All of them copy's of copy's of unoriginals
That I could never compete with.

There I Found Regret Amongst The Trees

Mother To No One

It's all a mistake

It's all a silly mistake.

I just wanted to be a little part of your world.

And I am destroyed like a tiny asteroid that used to be a planet.

(still no mail no mail no mail)


Somebody help me.

That lonely sound is the sound of my heart falling out of my chest, tendon by tendon, and shred by shred.


And if it is so, . . . if you are happy with her, (please be dontbe happy with her) then I wish you the best.

I am so happy for you.

It just breaks my heart to see you smile.

I don't mean to ruin your wedding day,
please just tell me you don't love me
And I can move on.

She looks so beautiful, and everything is just right, just perfect, just the way it's supposed to be. ( except its not)

And I hope life goes well for you. And I hope when she smiles at you
that you feel so much love.

I hope you enjoy every day with her til she's 90 and every blissful second is filled with as much love as I feel for you now
In this moment,
For the rest of your life.

I hope you are so god damned happy
I really do.

Farewell.

PS:

Don't marry her. I love you.

PPS: Disregard the last.

A day in the life of a ordinary housewife

He hit me again today.
The slap painting a primary red onto my cheek
The stinging surprise turning my face into a burning question mark.
Today there would be nothing further, thankfully,
My eyes swim but I do not cry;
For outside the sun is shinning and there are birds
So i am happy.

Today there was more
He hit me and then there was rough hands
Pushing me down into thin sheet covering the mattress.
The breathlessness as your weight pinned me there;
Black spots dancing into my vision.
The hardly noticeable agony of what our lower halves were doing.
My eyes roll to the window
The sun is shinning but there are no birds today
But perhaps there will be grass in the spring
Luxuriant, soft, fragrant, blades of grass and I think of this
And I am happy.

And today was the last time
That he would hit me.
Blue and violent blooming on my face like badly placed make up.
(I'm so sorry dear, let me get a tissue to wipe it off)
The red lines exclaim on pale skin where he took my clothes off too hastily.
There were no birds or sun;
A white sheet wrapped around my face and neck so I could not see the window,
But only stars once, when my head hit the corner of the bedside table.
I will not get to see the grass in the spring,
But I think of it winding it's roots over me
And the flowers that will grow there,
And I think of how lovely they will be.
Perfect and delicate, fragrant and frail, pink petals that I may never touch -
But still, I think of them,
And I am so very happy.

Daughter Father

If only you could hear me,
Hear the screams of my uncomfort
Stretching and ripping this skin dress
That I have tried to live in
For the past twenty years.
Trying to be what you wanted me to be,
Or at least what you could stand looking at.

So look at me!
Shinny and plastic but I'm not smiling.
Ripped from the heart and roots up.
Wondering if there will ever come a day
When you will see me and accept me for what I am.
Wondering if there will ever be a day that I can walk with my head up
Scuffling to school with my back pack and old shoes.
Wondering if your tongue will ever be unloosened and you can speak the words of love to me -
Daughter.
If there will ever be a day I can live with out your acceptance
Haunting me down in the foot tracks of everything I touch.

That I can touch
With out the hate and knifes
Of loneliness slipping from out between your hard lips and teeth
Killing everything I love.

I dream of the day that my rootless heart,
The roots you cut hoping I would die,
Would be free to drift like a child's balloon
Off into a new place of rainbows and neverland island.
That I can erase the name whose hate only drags me down
Like a weight on my foot in the ocean.
That I can find a word that will mean love
Instead of the bitter rejection that you have crammed down into my thoughts
And slipped into my baby bottle
Like a slow working poison.
That you have plunged like shrapnel into my heart with every missed childhood moment
And silence of ignorant, ignoring, avoidance of eyes
When I needed you to see me the most.

No more will these memories of pain and missed chances
Wake me up at night and follow my home.
No more will the dream that you will embrace your self,
The self in me,
Remove the love I have for you in my heart.
I don't need you
And I am through.

Hey

I can't help but remember your face
Are you happy?
Are you well?
Is it hell?
It is for me.

Does she smile when she see's you?
Does she always greet you
like it's the first and the last time?

Do you talk with her like we used to
And when she dreams is it with you?

I don't have nice things to give you.
I don't have a innocent girls room with turquoise walls
And pink bedcovers
Filled with stuffed elephants you won for her.

I don't have anything.

My mind tells me all the reasons why this isn't good
Why it should be right
But I can't take my eyes off of you

And I hope when you dream it's of me.

And all the while I was dreaming
About being
her.