ALL RESPONSES |
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Slip into ocean’s frigid bed
there lie stilly
sinking deep
into numbing chill of loss
where indifference beckons
a will-less surrender
Eyelids flutter
blinking life out
then in
apathetically
even though sun above
waits to shine
warm life-flow back
into the glacial emptiness.
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Cocktailed sky
and euphoria is since
gained in sleep deprivation—
swollen face like hoary
haze that covers up
mystery,
times—we arise to often
early, roused by the pseudo
echo of humming microwaves
as throat singers in genuflect
to our electric heaven,
and tonight
or today
our heaven feels pink
by crayons
and crazed with humanity.
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Wet cigars and finger
pecked birthday cake lie
as dead stray dogs
and innocent girls
passed out in plastic
diamonds on
Midwestern alley ways,
never waking up for
fuddled nightmares
about
how
the infinite pathway
(damned up, speckled orange
on the outside
like monarchs on their insides)
will end
tonight.
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The words didn't matter
as much as the sound,
the lilting vowels
we stretched our mouths around.
Always paying attention to the wrong things.
Diligent students,
we learned the syntax,
irregular,
subjunctive.
My knowledge of that delicate grammar
fades,
but some mornings I come out of dreams
with words on my lips
I thought I had forgotten.
My native tongue.
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Oceanography. Kids’ lit. Mechanics
made popular for the coal bin mind.
What does this have to do with the price
of tea in China?--I’m just following
words across a page the way your eyes
follow a photo’s details, snatching
a glimpse here, a curve there, making
a whole that structurally, analytically
looks like a Picasso. If not, it rhymes
at times. Had enough? A fresh fish,
smack in the face? Oh, envy!
You wake the soul at three.
Old fears, irrational as being
consumed by a camera’s lens.
Shooting as cannibalistic act.
Zounds! Pour out the cauldron
I stewed in all night. Dreams,
you’re wicked. Pencil, let us be
introspective. I used to think straight,
but that was in yesterday’s terra.
Long live Camilla and Prince Charles.
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under foreign tea leaves
we lie, far from light
wrapped in Dragon pearls,
Jade spring, Phoenix eyes
We experience withering
become less brittle
with each other
in passing hours
one house, one room
wrapped in aroma
noses of our existence
touching green coasts
of China, black smells
of Sri Lanka & India
sometimes, even during
the dead of night, while
the children sleep,
we awaken & brew tea
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A tsunami of linen pulls us
deeper with each breath, yet your slippery
tail eludes me.
Scales reflect the muted light, waves of silver
beyond my grasp, leaving me with fins
beating in a bed of my own making.
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When the alarm went off for the third time,
I resigned myself to another Monday.
I was able to turn on the bedside lamp with
one long, outstretched arm,
then collapsed into the pillow and
threw off the homemade quilt.
Incessant feline sounds were
issuing forth from Antonio,
worse than the alarm,
and I swung my legs onto the cold
hardwood floor and bid myself to rise.
I wouldn't even look at that comfortable
mess of linen until it was time to crash that night.
Good intentions of being one of those
adults who makes her bed every morning
had stopped after the first day job had
come my way back in '90.
Screw makin' the bed, man.
I'm just getting back in it tonight.
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There was nothing wrong
with the ending
The arc of a gripping story
broken down now by remembrance
sixty-nine pieces of ego
arrows that point toward desires
of salt
Vein and heart extended into thicker
flesh breeding
a discontent that cannot live on its own
At the end its like waiting on a train
you have only just made
Were that my waking life
this pregnant |
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How do you like your eggs:
over easy, hardboiled soft-poached, butter basted,
rapidly scrambled?
Will you eat them
because I cooked them for you?
Will you eat these
over easy eggs at all?
I’ve folded your jeans
over the chair next to mine.
I’ve never folded my jeans before.
Did I sleep as soundly
as you do now?
Your hair flows over
the curve of neck and shoulder,
lolling over the edge
of the comforter.
And just how will I greet you?
Hi?
Good morning, sweetheart?
Dearest? Darling one?
I’ll end up waving slowly, I’m sure.
Maybe just ‘morning’ will do,
a first of many to you,
silent, sleeping stranger.
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Like night, you slip out before dawn.
the smell of rain fills the room.
After you leave
I lie awake in this bed that feels
vast without you.
Naked and satisfied I slide
into the space you had been
to find it still
holds the heat
of you.
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The bed knows my secrets,
remembers how I loved
all the old boyfriends,
REM ghosts,
stopping by to remind me
each year, I forget more people
than I remember.
The bed also counts how many
times I’ve cheated
And smoked the perfect cigarette,
inhaling my brains out and
hazing in really cool Zen moments
of divine completeness
until I get caught.
Under my motley crew of sheets
rearranged in nocturnal Feng Shui,
I’m often falling from ivory towers
or going down in airplane crashes.
But sometimes, I ride unicorns
and learn to fly by sprouting wings.
Believe me, the bed knows my worth.
It can tell you often I’ve saved
the world from evil dictators,
or wandered a lonely, desolate earth
destroyed by nuclear bombs
(or interchangeably aliens),
teaching charred zombie survivors
radiating glows
how to live again.
It’s rough work,
but since I’ve assisted Mother Theresa,
climbed the Himalayas
and am in my Third term as President
(finally, the first female to hold the office)
I think I’m fully qualified.
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Awakened
with sensations
of arms and legs
being swallowed by fabric,
head sinking slowly in pillows,
the mind struggles comfortably,
yielding to a warm, familiar stasis.
Hips disappear.
Take one last look
at the cold, noisy world, until
lips, forehead, and nose are enveloped,
welcoming all things that lie beyond us.
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‘neath bare your feet the grasses sing
as springtime yields the world its heart
In timely tongue my language will pattern
a supple course of desire
There’s a prayer I’ve chanted made up of your motions
in a day that needs you closer to tomorrow
So, until I can approach you
having you see me as naked
without seeing me as weak
I will not call again upon your rest
Sleep
Sleep
for a moment in the hold of God
Oh, sad intangible one,
to die impossible by your side
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I saw you this morning, rising
as you will, as you have)
You dressed. I watched. Each
of us holding the world at arm’s
length, eyes searching as if
looking for coins. Or silver words.
There are days I wish you’d stay
until morning light reaches past
our room’s blinds. Like beauty
recalled by nature. Like this one.
And I should tell you so.
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"I won't buy it," I said. It's been slept in. "Of course," said the man, that's why it's discounted. "Why don't you have a showroom for beds, like every other Tom, Dick and bed seller? You know, the kind with bunks, and froofy beds, frilly beds, and squat, folding beds from far away, with Chinese Native American dream-catchers nailed above them?" "Because, " becaused the bed man. "I only have this one to sell, in this apartment." "Is this your apartment?" I asked swizzically.
"No," he announced. "Why would I want to sell my bed? I need mine. It's good business to sell a strangers bed."
" Oh," I oh'd. "Does it come with that quilt and two floppy pillows?"
"Yes," said the bed man most positively.
"But," I butted. "I don't know where those sheets have been."
"Neither have I," said the bed man.
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Observe the evidence, my friend; conclude
what you will. Whoever it was slept on
the far pillow, as shown by its marked
concavity. Fantasize, if you must,
but harden your faculties to the task
at hand. On the right is the obvious
exit point, and note that the contour sheet
matches the pillowcase but not the sheets
themselves. Curious. Dishevelled, but still
conscientious. The other pillow seems
untouched, sad, bereft. She crossed over his
space to leave. So. They dreamed of each other,
but not here, together. It's obvious,
really. Let us go then. Our work is done. |
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I woke up alone again.
You would think I'd be used to this,
but it never seems to get ingrained enough
to desensitize my heart.
Damn that pumping mess of flesh
beneath my chest straight to hell!
The other side of the bed is cold;
you must've snuck out hours ago.
If I was a betting woman,
I'd lay odds you didn't lock the door.
I pull the comforter up to my chin,
curl up on my side facing the window,
and realize your familiar scent is
all over the pillow next to my head.
I imagine what it would be like to
wake up facing another face,
maybe sleeping...
maybe looking at me...
maybe offering to make breakfast.
So much more to think about,
but maybe I've thought too much already.
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Undress
Unmask
Unwrap the
mind-spirit
free
float
on image-rush
dive
somersault
rise
amid universes
unmapped
undefined
toss and turn
meaning
a-tumble
though not lost
just layered
in fluid connectivity
without beginning
or end
until day breaks
Me-lessness
into a thousand shards of stabbing
sacrificial light.
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