sometimes when you fall asleep your rumble becomes a gurgle becomes a pop pop! pop! becomes a… and I call you 'ma moitie' I call you 'beloved' I call you 'boo boo' I call you 'beep'
April 27, 2019
Ajax Kallistrate
there's a meme about grandmothers are you happy? are you fed? are you loved? i find it wonderful and absurd why would anyone care if i am happy? if i am fed? if i am loved? how much simpler it would have been if my father had succeeded in cutting off my air a little longer holding on a little longer until no one else would have had to put up with me had to be disappointed in me had to hate me i can't leave now though what's the use of surviving if i'm only going to go away again? i am not happy but i can find happiness on my own in my own way i need a chance to feed myself an opportunity and then they can all breathe a sigh of relief "thank god she's gone" and talk about me behind my back and lie to my face "of course we love you" and hate you and humiliate you and stand aside while you are hated and humiliated there's nothing pure in human affection it's crowded about with insecurities and despair and unkept promises i'll take friends over lovers lovers over family cats over everyone it makes me happy to make them happy it's what keeps me here still trying
January 28, 2018
I don't speak in riddles. I speak in convolutions of labyrinthine digression. I'm not sad. I look askance to give myself time to borrow a happier frame. I'm not devious, though I am a liar. I can be noble, perhaps courageous. In time.
July 3, 2018
i live an improvisational life in between bouts of depression. bravado shelters me like a tarp in a hurricane. no glass just boards spray- painted with pithy slogans. fun fact: my father tried to kill me when i was sixteen. interested yet? twenty years spent treading water is no substitute for a life. five ten hot flashes and a bad temper lines on my face sculpted by dysphoria embraced too late by forty years too late by thirty-two hundred miles. i write like i'm starving hunched over a machine bringing up gouts of words like wound fever in reverse. i never know if i'm doing it right but a key with no lock can still be a pretty thing. i live an improvisational life in between one breath and the next.
January 13, 2018
Two parental figures turned away.
Smooth, frictionless.
Blank walls.
Immovable.
Immobile.
Quiet as death.
Neither speaking.
Neither listening.
Unavailable.
Unavoidable.
Until I walk away.
Out from underneath.
Out from in between.
Into silence.
Into a place where I can breathe.
Where I can speak.
Where I can hear my voice.
Like an echo.
Trailing behind me.
A wasted sound.
Of words no longer spoken.
August 8, 2015
"do you feel loved?"
she said the words with a
low slow venom dripping
drawl, her eyes fixed
on the glow of her
machine.
i could not answer.
i stood at my work-
table distracted by
the lingering warmth
of an arm around my
shoulders, a smile,
the laughter of my
"kids"
full up
cocooned by their
affection, by their
unconditional
positive
regard.
they chose so often
to visit me there, to
share a word or
a joke or a smile, to
say my name or take my
hand, to collect two or
three or four at a time,
to surround me with the
buoyant emotions of
youth, cherubic and
unfettered by the
bitter rind of cold
pain and unlanced
regret.
a year later they stand
like giants in my memory.
i'm blessed still with
some few, while some i've
lost entirely, and one
alone has grown to be
the centerpiece of my
heart. i'm grateful
every single day for
the snapshots of their
lives they shared with me,
the secrets they told, the
tears and the grief, the
joy and the drama, the
moments when they came
to me, and the
moments when
i went to
them.
i am so lucky.
i knew it then. i know
it now.
but i still remember those low
slow words sunk flat into sarcasm.
"do you" she said. "do you
feel loved?"
i did.
i do.
February 19, 2021
Where is my joy? It's flown away again, fickle creature. I should learn how to trap and shoot. Emotional taxidermy. So lifelike! Only the glassy eyes give me away.
January 17, 2018
lost
in sleep
half awake
dislocated
in space
in time
invisible
body
pivots
at the hips
back and forth
unable to orient
are we facing
the door?
the wall?
the window?
the refrigerator?
where are we
in space?
in time?
until
like sand
after a seismic wave
we settle
back
into our familiar shape
and reality
like dust
floats
on.
November 7, 2019
This is my (parenthetical) life.
A life of multiple-choice questions.
I don't get to write an essay,
explain
entertain
my intersections don't fork,
they bifurcate.
I saw a billboard, an advertisement.
"It could happen faster than you think."
I couldn't see the meaningful text.
What could happen faster than I think?
Death? Opportunity? AIDS?
The young man looked unhappy.
It must have been AIDS. Or unemployment.
Not a natural disaster. A personal disaster.
All disasters are personal.
We get lost in them,
like a pebble in the tide,
swallowed up
disgorged
upon a foreign shore.
That's where I walk,
along the edge of oblivion. Oblivious.
The land depressives know best.
The place where you're always drowning, but never drown.
Forever in that moment when you can't
breathe,
but never fall all the way in,
because that's where peace is,
where neither breath nor life matter.
A suspended moment
free from the internal scoring etched by
relentless thoughts
of tragedy.
As if one person could contain all that.
As if I'm important enough.
As if I matter.
As if I'm not just one more pebble
in the maelstrom.
Life as a series of multiple-choice questions.
What would I choose?
It's not the answers that matter,
it's the question.
I never see the right question.
I'm always one page off,
working on something
that won't even be on the test.
Even when I'm right,
I'm wrong.
I lie alone at night
trying to solve the puzzle of the past
trying to see the picture.
I always assume there's a picture.
Maybe there isn't.
Maybe I'm making it up.
I see color and shape
where there's only gray.
I make a story.
I have to make a story.
I'm a human being,
that's what we do.
We tell ourselves the story
of ourselves.
That's how we remember
who we are.
Otherwise
we become
nebulous
unanchored
free floating
motes of dust
suspended
in a beam
of sunlight
powered by some external engine
unable any longer to assume
the right of flight
part of the conglomerate of dirt
anonymous
a non entity
compacted into what feeds
the indifferent multitude
above.
Life is not a series of multiple-choice questions.
2015
the motion of the beloved in the night when the mind deep in its distraction receives a signal that by-passes the sentinels of conscious thought and the internal self turns with a formless artless joy an expectation of reflection an anticipation of reunion before soberer attentions reassert themselves and like a hand drawing back the buoyant child from the edge of the abyss the emotive response is cut short extinguished smothered and only the cool emptiness of regret remains behind an absence where once there was a presence a wound only momentarily disturbed and a hope rises like a flare in the darkness that this might be the last time
September 17, 2015
