Paralysis

I didn’t get out of bed

For two days

After you swept in

With torrential rains

And bleeding winds

I gave you

My vulnerable, riverless veins

Aching for you  

To persuade the vultures

Circling up ahead

To abandon their quest.

And for a moment

The needle plunged…

I still see you

Peering so deeply

Into my soul

That the air around us

Paused for breath.  

How a Poet Sleeps

Our minds don’t stop

On a perpetual treadmill

Un-ordinary tragedies crowding out

Other emotions

Like hope…light fading in bitter  

Interactions, a mutual attraction  

Conversations that will never happen

Stories unwinding

While we lie between sheets

Of anxiety and prostration  

Brimming panic

Because we aren’t what we want

To be

And we will never be

What we want to be

Tragedies in the brooding night….

Hovering

…a figure

Stands stoic in the doorway

Just staring, standing

He’s not real…  

But we must keep our eyes closed

To fool ourselves

Because we fear the fatigue of

Tomorrow.

Death on a Stairwell

This kind of exhaustion

Belongs on a billboard

By the side of the freeway:

“Stop by our clinic

Before you die from  

Emotional prostration and depravity!

 Get the help you need IMMEDIATELY.”

I am required to walk up and down

These flights of stairs everyday

Delivering this document to that person

Or this person

All of them girls

With short, bouncy, brown hair

Typing and hustling, giggling  

In this busy, assiduous work space.  

But my head

Is static,

Permanent anesthesia

Sometimes thinking about how easy

It looked

When he died because though his breaths

Were stunted and labored,

He didn’t know anything….and wasn’t in pain

Slack jaw and dead head

And maybe that’s how everyone should go

Wrapped warm like an embryo

In an intimate darkness

Where the hearts and panic

Of others are comfortably meaningless

Maybe the rest of us are actually

 Fools

To wait to see what gore

Will claw in to our bodies

And grimly seize our breath.    

I’m going to deliver this document

To this bitch

With the short hair

And the perma smile

This document about work shit

That no one really gives a rat’s ass about

But  

What I am thinking about

Is how easy it is.

That maybe I wish I were dying

Right now

How inevitable the process

How easy the pace

Particularly when you are the vector,

The deliverer,  

Of your macabre but inevitable fate.  

Two More Minutes

Let me tell you what it’s like….

To have a man

Die on your couch.

Mouth full of un-chewed pizza

Poised to slide with easing grace

Down his throat

So loaded up on blue oxy’s and Xanax

Crimson red wine

He’s stopped breathing

And moist beads of death dew

Patiently spread across his skin

I think I am screaming

“Wake the fuck up!” and shaking him

But his head lolls and rolls

Like a marble

His fingers turning a lovely, lavender blue

While I stand there

With a phone in my hand

My soul and body shivering

Being adjacent to HIM:

The venerable. The dazzling.  

EVER OMNIPOTENT death.  

I hear myself screaming to no one

Alone with a dead man

And then

And then

His mother arrives and we fold him

Knock his lolling head into the

Stone cement stairs

Push him into the car

Curled and sagging like a sausage.  

And before we left,

While I stood inept and shaking  

I felt his soft, strange heart behind me

Alive and Alarmed

Auburn hair, bright and beautiful,

Begging me

Nudging me

Pleading with me

To get him off that couch

Because he wasn’t ready

He wanted to stay

And death was not his companion.

It only took a day

You were right,

Of course.

He’s on another bender

Another heroin one way track

To oblivion

While his son sits beside him

And says,

“I wish dad would be normal

Not like this:”

And he hangs his head down

And makes sleeping noises

Lifts his head up and laughs

Because it’s funny, really,

To a five year old.  

He nestles himself into

The crook of his dad’s waist  

Waiting for him to maybe wake up

But he sleeps on, forever,

In a black, molasses world

Of paradise.

Maybe I Sound Angry

I think what bothers me the most,

Is that you think I asked you to save me

Assuming I am a damsel in distress

Assuming that what I need is your stand up

Masculinity Morality

To straighten me out;

Smooth my hard and awkward edges.  

You are talking to the wrong girl.  

What you need

Is one of those blithe caricatures

Adorning the back of a cereal box.  

I say…

Put on your cape

And with your blunt, raging

Superman ego

Fly through the vacuous sky

And save that stupid bitch

From all other men

That are just like you.

My Letter from Jail

So you write me a letter

Empty of solace.  

Just so you know,

Loneliness is a choice

And perhaps

I need to turn my back

And find another

Until you can learn how

To write a letter

A little better

A little more refined

To buy a heart like mine

You need

To fucking know

How to write.