Monthly Archives: February 2021

Mother

Mournful Messenger

Mother
I feel so very old today
How I can feel like I’m dying, yet feel numb
I can’t explain
I’m so lonely, so alone
And I wish that I knew how to put heartbroken away –
Pack it in that well-worn suitcase sitting quietly in the back of my closet…
Heartbroken is so loud
Regret and defeat, unwanted, unloved, dead dreams and emptiness clinging to it –
Time grinding away at my bones, my mind, my soul, wringing through it…
Mother
How did I get here so fast?
How is it that you’ve been gone all these years?
It seemed like you didn’t fight, but I know that you did, in your own way
I would have given up so much for just one more word
But you climbed inside of yourself without a goodbye
I was ambushed by the abnormal in the normal of your dying –
When the sound of your voice ran off, and took with it the green light in your eyes…
I was that little girl, standing on the playground at Madison
Turned toward the window of our apartment, waving to let you know that I made it
Waiting for you to wave back
I didn’t know that you would disappear before you left for good –
Was it the chemicals? Or the fear? Or bitterness or rage?
Or that you were tired of the story and abruptly turned the page?
Mother
I haven’t been happy in such a long, long time
I make the best out of it though, like I always have
I blow kisses to the mirror
And whisper to midnight
Because if I didn’t then no one would ever see or hear me
And I think I would go mad
Yes, I have someone but he finds me hard to love
I thought that it was the other way around
But he tells me that I’m crazy, feeds me IV gasoline lies
Says that I was damaged before he ever touched me –
Then stabs me once or twice
Mother
I miss our coffee and conversations in your little kitchen when I’d go home to visit
You often said that when you get old no one wants you, and I woke up old today
Too tired to care anymore
To put heartbroken away –
How did I end up here so fast, in this brutal, forsaken place?
I’m just having a moment where I feel ashamed and alone
Where wounds are reopened as rock hits each bone
If I could cry, I’d drown myself, but I’m full of sawdust like a scarecrow
I’ve tried to be kind, tried to show love, tried to be lovely, and bubbly and true
But I’ve felt like a ghost for most of my life
I can’t even come close to expressing how much I wish you were here

Even if it was just to wave goodbye

Metal

Frozen Fingers Furling

Were I to give evidence of the depth of my pain
To spew forth the vile atrocity that is this heartache
To fling back my head and howl this unflinching hell, with every muscle, tendon, bone…
Then those whom gather in my lonely corner; The forsaken, withered angels –
Would they feel my heart slamming into steel, glass and concrete, on the way down?
To strike the cement
To splatter on the sidewalk
Crushed by this fleshless entity that we all seek
Despite its tendency to snatch back all that it gives to us

– A winged heart and starburst eyes, that peer down on a rosy dream, while soaring high above heaven –  

Is any creature listening? Any… thing?
Expel this numb death from beneath my skin, having taken root 
After loves cruel, unblushing fingers left me gutted…

Dandelion eyes, spitting helicopter seeds of possibility
Floating around me everywhere, when I met you
Roots reaching to the sky, in my mind
Two flames passion crashing, setting fire to the sea
Words like filmy kisses
Desert heat like a satin ribbon, snaking down my spine
While skin and musk, aching, arching and sliding, played in my head 
Like on a big screen at a summertime drive-in
Eden without sin…
But this, this was out of my depth –
Malengine blood in your sulphuric veins
Brutal evisceration –
13 hours after God breathed eternity, you began murdering your soul in perverse ways
So disquieting that you bruised the sun
Until the sky turned black

Literary masterpiece crumpled into a morceau, by a thousand movements of your hands
Papercuts and ink stains
Simple totems that point toward your destructive appetite; All that you wait to devour
Despite the cost, the loss, the pain
Melting down, over this valley like candlewax
Like blood down a tv screen during a horror movie, syrupy-slow and sickly sweet
You were listening to me, but I caught your eyes looking over there
And where they fell, your mind followed
I know that road well; I know that little town and all of the noise in it –
Knew it before you came
Before all of this was even a blip on your radar, and you became a damn fool –
Wouldn’t let go of all of it, to hold on to me
And the lies that you bled fed the ground until even the weeds died
Your warrior way is no longer a part of the red road
So take your arrows and feathers to your prayer sticks
And humble yourself before your god
Before the last of your shadow disappears and you’re gone
Too venomous to keep in my heart
Too mangled in spirit to be a ghost
The only whispers in the air that linger of you –
Your attempts to make me the cause of your effect
To expect me to be a savior yet anoint me a demon
Your memory?… the sound of metal in my ears
Scraping down my chalkboard spine