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For me

I  feel guilty for writing poems

for this one and all the other ones

Because everyone I know has tried to give me

alternatives to my life

I never tell them to go fuck their self

I apologize

****

I like the freedom that the fear gives me

I’ve been afraid of so much that when I feel it I get nostalgic and the surge of adrenaline pushes me to kill it’s source. That’s why it took me so long to quit.

When a thing settle in and relaxes -that’s when it hurts to get punched in the head

Fear numbs out the pain.  Compassion magnifies it

Sometimes when we make love

I cry after you fall asleep

The beauty and pain in this hard life

sometimes gets jumbled up together and is expressed in the same sigh or breath

Everyone time I’ve cried I’ve said, I’m  sorry

Without compassion for myself

Its time to change, for me

Continue reading “For me”

Dear Mother,

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I miss being able to call you
And hear you tell all about your day of weeding your huge garden or teaching English as a second language, or your studies of foreign language for another mission trip or about the new poem you wrote, usually about praising your god.
I could ask you for your oatmeal cookie recipe or crepe recipe or what temperature to roast a chicken and you would take the time to tell me, each time I asked.

I could have looked it up but hearing your voice gave me courage. I suppose it was a way to get your love and attention, even as a grown far away woman.

Now you are a broken baby crab, so diseased and crippled you can barely pick up the phone and can’t talk when sitting and can barely stand and you talk so quiet I can’t understand what you say besides the shuffling sounds of the 1 minute it takes you stand before you say hello. These sounds haunt me and let me know you are alive

I would share this with you but I can’t . This pain is not yours

You struggle in that big house next to the pack of wolves, with the forest and swamp surrounding you, falling and grabbing at the walls, banging off the furniture and wood stove.
You fight to get up.
you fight to stay up.
You fight to sit down.
You fight to lie down
Every thing you do is a battle

And I am afraid of what ails you is coming for me or worse, your grandchildren, zombie grandma

Each day I stand and clean my house I’m grateful. I have been pumping iron and dancing and scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees, smiling as I do it. The harder the better, if I can do it because I know how lucky I am to be alive and able to clean any of it.

I know you want to die fighting alone in your house in the forest of howls but it hurts all us kids to see you do it. One of these falls is going to be breakfast for a bear or pack of wolves but that is your choice and my burden and my brothers to hold dear

One that hurts more and more because it is the end of your fight, dear Mother

I’m not sure

If you are capable of love

You are the last
of of my pride
so I  hung on
even though you hurt me
so  bad  – I couldn’t tell you

When I should have let go
I hugged tighter
  made excuses for you
how you were a sick
little baby and needed
my help
how you were stressed
out cat and needed a nap
how you cared too much and were too honest

Dearest Rose,
you made me believe
I was the thorn
For the last time
You probably think
I will forgive you
-say sorry for getting
hurt like I usually do

But you are Shakespeare  to me

I thought I was on something

Or I was onto something
It was a story I had told until I believed You wanted my voice or I talked too much or I needed love or shelter or a great lake Or a lemon hanging ripe inside your hand And or you come but I leave.  There is dirt in my heart. The road calls. Then shouts. Then stops by. Then stares open mouth, and yes, then grabs me by the hair at the base of my neck and beats me against you, my life. To look down a road is a dare onto something and or off another Story that inflicts me

With the tracks more than the view

Over the worst of it

Life can get so overwhelming that time slows down

Each day on waking you are happy to live and breathe. Your nights are cocoons; your mornings are butterflies. Their suffering shadows you.   They flash inside of you. You don’t have a cure. You can’t give back .  You are an atheist. You don’t pray.

You research all night long, all day long. You do it over and over searching for a cure or a clear path to life

All hope is lost but You don’t give up.  And then there is a doctor that puts his hands on their arm and listens and says, I am going to cure you and then does.

This is the power of science. This is the result of reason. This is the price of love.

Sometimes you have to lose your religion

It was a joke

I was suppose to make you laugh

Then you would relax and start a good time.  Some of the hurt would leave your body and the anger would stop squeezing the base of your neck.

Your fists would relax into a hand
Your eyes would soften out water

But you didn’t laugh. You smashed a beer can on top of my head.

Grind me out when

The tree in the backyard is gone. I had the guys come and take it away

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It was dying. I had no choice.  Now the yard is empty.  Next year there will be a garden. But now I miss the tree. It was a sugar maple that branched out and up.  Now there is a stump waiting to be ground down and out.

The wood is stacked up ready for the coming winter

My birthday is coming.  I am going to be 35.  These poems are all I have accomplished.  They are for you, my love, my Henry, my earth, my maple, my sweet, my rock, my baby.

I am not as good as a tree but maybe when I am ground out my stacks will keep you warm

Hawaii, I hope you’re worth it

Tomorrow I am going to hawaii
It is going to cost a lot- The kids are coming.  My brother and his are coming.  But my dog must stay home.  I miss him already but more on that later

I was in hawaii once in the airport on a way to guam. The smell of flowers and feel of humid air has stayed with me and vowed me to return.

That was a life time ago but here I am double checking bags and all the things I needed to do to get ready, ready to pick another pipe dream true

Most of my dreams have come true because of Henry. He is magic. I rub him and ask if we can and he says yes.

And that’s how we got the dog.  And the babies and the house and all these poems, I’ve written for him so he and you will always know that he existed.

My Henry is a real man wpid-20150717_152420.jpg

Old blue house

I put her things in boxes
load up the back
of the suv and drop it off at a second hand store again, and again, I give her stuff away.

There are books in  Hungarian and old poems and a wedding dress, and old county western tapes, gospel 45s and candle sticks and maps of Rome and crosses on beaded string. The old papers that were once important and orderly now heapped and bagged and ready for the dump and all of it smells sweet like candy and perfume, like her, like she still lives

here.

A strong young man is going to rent the place. Soon the place will smell like him and all the traces of her will be sweated and dicked and lived out

now, done with the haul I pause, and allow the grief to surface and take one last breath inside of her old blue house and now, close the door on the life that sustained and raised me

Am I Good enough

Sometimes I think I am wasting my life and am suck ass loser
Who should dig a hole and lie in it until the wind covers me with dirt
Sometimes the inner critic gets so loud and hurtful I can’t do anything but listen as she cuts me into bits of flesh and failure

After a while she shuts up and then I can put myself back together and finish another line

I am

Going to leave you
And you won’t realize
At first that it was the last time
You will see me
A week or so will come
And go
and I will not be there
then months
and slowly years will shadow my memory

You will call me
and you will see
my phone on the end
table vibrating.

First you will think
I forgot it,
that I will come
back for it.  But I won’t.

You will see my clothes
and shoes.
You will assume
I’ll come back
for a change or to get
them at least. 
You’ll  hold onto them
longer then you should,
finally with guilt
you’ll  drop them off
at a second hand store.
And slowly all my stuff
will be gone
until you only have
a few photos of me
that you’ll  hide away
because when you
look at them
they will hurt you.
You will have to move
and change your life
to stop the hurt.

And I won’t know or care.
I will have already
moved on -Dead and rotten
far and forever removed

For My Mother: Better than Nothing

You aren’t that great
I am sorry to say
You had too many kids
you made us share bathwater
And wouldn’t give us sugar
You never had time
to play or cuddle
It was chores and more chores
And never tv time

You never bought gifts
for birthdays or Christmas.
If we wanted something
you made us make it
or go out and earn it

But you did feed us
and let us sleep in the house.
you never gave us up for adoption or sold us for rice
so I guess you’re better than nothing

Happy mother’s day
This poem is your gift

Alpha what

I don’t get it.  If I had that much wealth, I’d travel and eat and sail and fuck and sing and laugh and hug and have a big party with all my friends and family which would be everybody because I’d be rich and I’d let the food and ale and wine trickle down and everyone would get their mess

I wouldn’t waste time governing or hoarding or waring
I’d pay someone else to do it

Lost and found

Startled and afraid in your empty house from the sound of your
own foot stepping on an old wood board. Click, then echo,
then the long creek. Followed by another. Followed by another.

First is the swallowing panic, then it is horror,  then the crazed fear grows into the chest gripping, to finally your ears ring so loud you can’t  hear if it is you screaming or a siren some where far off in the next town over

It hard to live soft enough
Not to wake up the fear
that hides in awareness

You are here
And Henry is not

Practice

I woke up today and I was clear

In my whole life I never ordered room service
in a riot
no matter how hungry she gets
I never feed her. The monster
is a trapped black hole.
She screams and threatens
-begs and promises.

I listen carefully so I can duck her next blow or sidestep her strong
grab and pull

She wants power.  She wants to make me jump or bend or break.
She wants to order my universe around and when it doesn’t listen she wants to jam her fingers into it and bounce it off and out of my  existence.

Freedom

Horse shit broken dick ear
Slimy pony fucker
I hope you are free
Tomorrow when the sun explodes
I hope you are alive and free of nets
Even though you said unpopular horrible stupid stuff
I hope you are never silenced
from spewing rancid words upon innocent ears and you thrive on to other bad jets of reason
I hope that in the last morning you are still here to speak of neural cells and puppy tails and cold blue waters with love so sickly sweet
It makes all cuss and swear at your idiot hands and subjective mind
I hope you are free to tell everyone there is no god or you are a bugger or the great jesus reincarnated
This is a path. It is dangerous and dirty. It is full of hopes and steps backwards and stupid fucks

and I hope you are on it

The Bit

Its two thirty in the morning and

you dear, stumble to bed and put your

knees into my back.

–

I lie there next to you

for an hour

–

then get up and stand outside on the balcony

–

I can’t sleep

–

I piss

–

I drink water

–

I lie on the couch

–

I piss again

–

Its morning.  Its time to get

daughter ready for school

–

For the past 30 something weeks all I have been

doing is lying on the  couch and feeling

dizzy.

–

This is pregnancy

–

This is why I’d rather the stork

bit were true

Bills or Bicycles

A friend said everyone has to grow up.

He said it like a man who had been

molded by someone else’s hammer.

–

It heated me and made me malleable

like burning kittens or drowning puppies.

–

It is hard to grow up, friend.

–

So what

if we die too young.

–

Lets make paper airplanes

with scraps of paper sent

by the bill collectors.

–

Lets ride a bike around the lake

with a little ginger ale in our bellies

and a plumped up grin

to meet the noise of the old people

doing the boring and necessary things

to keep their lines and moles in order

–

Lets walk on the beach and kick the waves.

Lets pick up rocks and suck on them.

Lets climb the mountains and jump off

giggling fear into the abyss

I Promise

I am going to die

and I am not sure when

but while I am here

I am going to fuck

with you whenever we can

.

There are going to be bad days

-absurd happenings and stubbed toes

.

and I’ll accept it

-the universe and my ordinary

place in it

.

as long as you are here

to bring me licorice and root beer

and other dreamy stuff

like titty kisses and big warm hugs

.

and your extraordinary love

Even Puppies Smile

I guess you have to be beaten

to learn to smile through

the pain because it too will end

and you will remain

–

To withhold your hand from scratching

while the scab it is still healing I guess

you have to have a scab or two

ripped off before you’ve healed

to learn the sting is not worth the satisfaction

–

And to marvel at your ability to heal

I guess you have to know broken

parts and open wounds and near death

experiences before you realize

how wonderful it is to be healed by you

–

but to be happy, why even a puppy

knows how to be happy on a warm

sunny afternoon with a full belly

and a friend to bum around with

–

Don’t you?

How long

It is easy to say it in a poem or in front

of a crowd but when you are alone and you accept

your ignorance or beauty or frailty

–

it is very hard not to  lie.

–

How long can you play dumb or cheat

smart or fake love or pretend poise

staring in the mirror?

–

I suppose, you’re not the only one

to have a wasted an afternoon or more

reflecting what delusion told you to

–

I have too