Silence

Silence
grown grand and gravid is awesome.
Awful. Full of awe.
Dripping with it.
                           Heavy.
Humming with long
drawn-out thoughts--
have you ever heard the earth
sing in quarter time? It
drowns out all other sound
with sighs.
                  Hush.

My head rested on my daddy's chest--
I still called him daddy, then--
on the days when we'd stay home
and he'd stay in bed.
I counted the hairs on his arms
watched his belly rise and fall
listened to his breath.
Listened to the empty song.
Learned to wrestle with the gift he gave me.
The heavy sound.
                             Silence.

A self-portrait in watercolor, 2014

I saved in a vial all the tears from exes
gasping, begging me to stay, from my father
the last words I said to him twisting like a knife,
and from my own crocodile self pity.

I mixed in rich pigments of hazel,
whiskey brown and crushed ice blue
and with a brush of hair gathered up from around my apartment,
cleaned out of the shower and the couch cushions and the pillows on the empty bed
and a handle made of cruel stoic heart-of-oak

I made the perfect reflection of my heart.
It’s a masterpiece.
A fully realized vision.

The dreamer

I was waiting for him outside the theatre,
under the marquee that hadn’t changed in thirty-two years;
I watched him walk home,
his shadow playing boko-maru with my footsteps.

This Falstaff, this Hamlet,
his whole world masks and makeup down to the bare skull,
stopped and stared at the reflection of the moon
in a puddle.

I pitied the man just as
I pitied the ones who went back and sat
in the cave and watched the shadows play on the walls,
the names we had given them as children, forgotten.

Bark your shins and stub your toes and bite your tongue

I hissed at the corner of the coffee table
that had  jumped out at me
from the darkness of my midnight-lit room
and bit my shin.

for the burning moments while the pain ran up my leg
I had a chance to pause and breathe deep
the night-sounds of cicadas
for the furniture in my room to tell me to slow down
and dance awhile

but hatred is a sweeter fruit
sweet as blood from the tip of my tongue
dribbling over my chin as I spit out curses
chewing on seeds like hot coals
damning the darkness as if it had an ear to listen.

Le petite mort

I’ll swallow you whole
I’ll start with your toes
I’ll engulf your heart and you’ll die
“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,”
I’ll whisper, cold lips on cold thighs.

Burnt Buildings

TO MCCLUNG, BURNING
sometimes you feed the flame

I walked through you, once
when you were being erected.
I slid my fingers over the the new
corners, the nooks and crannies,
the walls inside your walls,
all your plumbing exposed.
I watched as they dressed you
and breathed life into dirt.
I remember you before you were tall.

But you were filled with a desire
for the lick of flame, the tongue of fire
pulling up your skirts
you showed everyone your girders

And I’m feeling sick because
I trudged, half-drunk
through knee-deep snow
to see you
and I see you
I see you slumped over in the night
and I see your ribs poking through your back
and I see your brick skin hiked up like a sundress
and a wink in your broken windows
that glitter with a smirk
and a crooked finger

I can’t tell
if it’s your last time
to beckon me in
or because last time was the last time

I was the only one to come inside.

Homecoming

I was breaking into the house i grew up in
and paused for a moment
on the ledge outside the second-story window
where my brother and I snuck out
and smoked weed
and made promised each other we’d never turn out like Dad

I had a fleeting feeling
the empty house would be deserted
that the lights had been dark for years
I indulged myself in a little bit of hope.

I wondered if it would be easier to explain
to the old family where the hell I had been
than to the new one who the hell I was
what the hell I was doing
breaking in
to their home