xmas. with an x.

why do words just tumble out sometimes, and they don't sound the same as anyone else's? what was that thing about how you spend your whole life trying to write the first poem you loved?

who did i love first? i loved so many. they whispered in my ear and made my breath come fast and shallow because there was no room in my chest for anything but my heart. 

i understood nothing but i felt everything. poetry is about the chest, the heart. and feeling it in the mouth. i don't write poetry but maybe that's what i do write. just in sentences. 

boredom borne of frustration. xmas eve, and nothing to say. i feel nothing today. 

i ought to, shouldn't i?


nothing. 



maybe i am not eligible for christmas. 

james wright, he was my first. he will speak for me while my heart is in my mouth. the briefest breathless moment before nothing returns. 

just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 
and the eyes of those two indian ponies
darken with kindness.
they have come gladly out of the willows 
to welcome my friend and me. 
we step over the barbed wire into the pasture
where they have been grazing all day, alone. 
they ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
that we have come. 
they bow shyly as wet swans. they love each other. 
there is no loneliness like theirs. 
at home once more, 
they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
i would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 
for she has walked over to me,
and nuzzled my left hand. 
she is black and white, 
her mane falls wild on her forehead, 
and the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
that is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. 
suddenly i realized 
that if i stepped out of my body i would break
into blossom. 

a clean, well-lighted place

the drapes are long and dark. there aren't even windows behind there just nothing just me in this stale fortress, and gravity, and fear

i need a breeze on my face, please don't caulk the windows closed mom. i need the crisp snow air on my nose so my soul can escape this place. fortress of winter. no one out, no one in. 

the more you avoid the more you are afraid. 

maybe the drapes need to not be so dark. a little air, a little light. bathe me in sunlight. stop pushing my head under. 

safety and oppression are not the same thing. i did not know that until right now. you see, writing always teaches you. i ought to feel safe in a fortress because i always have but i am not who i was and safety does not always come from seclusion and dark. 

lunar ennui

something doesn't feel right. i don't know what it is. 

i don't know what i'm feeling. 

but there are words swirling around inside but i can't hear what they're saying. they are trying to make me afraid. 

something about the way my organs feel like they're leaking out. brain through the ears. liver and intestines through the belly button. uterus. bladder. eyeballs rolling in sludge while the brain leaks. just an emptying out. 

i've started trying to throw my things away again. i have too many things. i have empty cabinets but i'm still too cluttered. 

tonight there's a sort-of harvest moon, a low-slung crescent. always i imagine i see the whole moon's roundness, its belly heavy with honey. 

the wholeness makes me feel safe. you cannot see but it's there; you take it on faith, because it is there. 

faith is safety in stasis. roundness. mass shape and form despite the blackness. finish the circle and you're safe, there's a whole in there. 

it's me. i'm still too cluttered. 


am i even here in the dark? 

wolves

i just want to shove it down and not think about it. seems easier. 

you got too close. you asked too much. you wouldn't let it go. 

but how would you know, of course you should ask, of course you should care.  


i mean, if it hadn't been you.


does that change things? how am i supposed to feel?

i know how to deal with you now but i feel so small. 

i want to dig my claws into your face and rip out that smile that i don't understand, that says either i know, but i've convinced myself i don't or in honestness i have no idea what i did. 

whatever your truth is, it would change the way you'd bleed. i'd know from the spatter of the former or the slow drip. they seem the same but it makes a difference. it makes a difference. the emptiness of you not understanding is deadness. is that more bearable than rage, than wanting to shred the rest of you?

how will i ever know when you spiral so, down down and farther down, always down and farther away?

i mean, what am i supposed to do with that, mother? what? how am i supposed to feel?

apathy

stones on my chest. my body is too heavy. i know i want to do so many things but, i can't. 

i'm not sad, per se. 

it's so dark. 

let me stay in bed. 

it's neither better here nor there 

but at least, i don't know, i'm safe?

electromagnetism

stones on my chest. the sun is setting, rouge smeared across the horizon as though california will never die. 

tug of the magnet that is my home, dragging me home, promises of cozy in place of fear. 

you are safe from the migraines you are safe from the dark you are safe from the crippling weight in your chest. 

home is a lie. it's never enough.

'tis the season of hibernation and blankets and soft slow time. quiet and tea. the fetal position. too much sleep. 

i have to fight you i have to fight i have to fight. 

the stones will drown me. they'd call it pulmonary edema or some such but what they mean is my own body will have killed me, my own stones too heavy to bear. 

shall i dye my hair for bravery?

there are monsters inside my head. 

i feel everything so sharply today. 

they are stabbing me with their little forks and i am using books and hikes as a defense but i am afraid. i am penetrable. 

they are cackling and sitting on my chest and crushing my lungs. they are flitting through the edges of my vision so the world closes in on me. claustrophobia. trapped in the open air, under the wide california sky. 

i cannot talk to anyone today. please forgive me. you do not understand my heart. 

the monsters have stolen the crayons. they are scribbling it black. 

is this how it's going to be, for all these dark months?

nobody knows the troubles i've seen / nobody knows but jesus

i do not control the fire within my head. 

it speaks of its own, it says don't remember, it says stab me with a knife and you will be able to see the fire at last, it says i own you. 

i never remember what day is it. i only see stasis, stills of the cats sleeping. me in the chair drinking tea. hiking the dogs and trying to forget. sitting in the dark, always the dark. 

i am not an addict but i ask for stronger drugs. i ask for vicodin. i ask for morphine. each one fails and no one has answers. 

pain is subjective and they can't see so i will burn you until you want nothing but to be ash. 

my head is a pincushion with ten thousand pins that the devil is rolling back and forth, back and forth, slicing at with an axe at his whim. 

that's all. i don't own myself any more. 

but louis armstrong makes me calm, and so do subways. so i know that much at least. 

my toes are cold forever

i can't remember / i choose not to remember 

isn't it more or less the same thing, mummy?

did you know you were making a ghost?


there's nothing inside you, you don't know that because you haven't looked, you swirl too fast. i have got a band-aid for you but it's a small one, last one in the box. should i buy more, if it was i who stabbed you in the beginning?

except i didn't.


do you see how these things happen? no, you don't.

generations of us. i am not proud to be called by your name.

were you there or were you?

something different in the brain, in the mirror, an empty space of shifting sand.

two of us, or one? are you the one with the thick thighs? my god that would be nice.

i read somewhere that one in eight had a parasitic twin in the womb. higher for the left-handed.

well?

i ask again, don't ask me again, what is real and which of us or both?

would you have been massacred by mummy too?

everyone is sleeping and i finished the last of the tea

everything feels like sand. 

why is it so quiet?

will i lose the writing once the novelty wears off?

i've never been scared like this before. 

i just can't

i'm so weary i can only lie on my back. i need a king sized bed but i haven't got one.
my feet hang over the edge. what if there are monsters under there.