Category: Poetry

i believe language creates reality
a conclusion which i have reached
after learning that solitary isolation
would drive anyone crazy. we need words
not to describe the world around us
but to create something real which we can share.

i created our love with five people,

singing along to rhett miller:
our love
became our love
by name
when i wrote it to you
in a song

explaing to a friend the trust and comfort:
can i tell you something?
and you’re not gonna tell him everything?
cos i need to wait for him.
to say it you know
i love him, though
i’m sure of it.

expressing the frustration of your infidelity over the phone:
i love him.
followed by a shocked pause.
and then,
i mean,
i’m falling in love with
him
or i do
but don’t let that get out
i mean
i don’t tell him that yet even

before your arrival at our table:
i just wish i could acknowledge it
it would make it so much easier
if i had the word to say
or if i just knew and didn’t have to doubt

i guess we spoke of love
in the soft noises
which lovers utter loudly
and we knew it was truth
because we saw it

so the look of surprise
which decorated both of our faces
as one single correction
of a statement in past tense
and we stopped
in the middle of my soliloquy
to sigh in the wake of such honesty

i miss reading our horoscopes and looking for each other
the way in the summer i checked every day
for the rotation of my moon into some house
which unbound me from the chains which i lamentingly tied myself
astrology was my lover, uncoiled
whispering sweet secrets of solidarity
and a promise that one day, somehow
the moons were going to cast a shadow on the wall
of a bedroom where a boy sat waiting
to convince me to kiss him as much for myself
promising me hope in something new

i miss the dream of you in my waking most when
the bathtub spills water predictably, and
those sloshing cascades seem so violent in their descent
to the floor ((which later i will cursingly reconstruct dryness
with the once-used towel which is now in need of laundry))
yet, i submerge myself under water letting my knees rise
and my head sink, opening burning eyes to watch dissipating bubbles
turn into peaks and valleys, it’s like bob dylan said:
How many years can a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea?

when i wake i am surprised that time has passed, somehow.
i accuse the clock of lying; still, trusting it enough to rise to a new day
where i eventually find myself in the third phase of a long journey with therapy
explaining to a new face the story of you with the same pit in my stomach
in the same part of the story: this is a new favorite novel and
everyday i turn the page and want to warn the hero to…
stop my heartache at the suture which is healing
we will protect ourselves for years in choose your own adventures
we will dogear the pages of a book which we will never claim as a favorite
daily almost we leave the bookstore with the bitter taste of espresso
floating above our taste buds until one the sunlight breaks in the revelation

nothing,
outside the chalky outline
of my skeleton
matters more than this frame
which we constructed
and then leapt from
in one
graceful
final bow

You were kissing my boyfriend
and he was calling me crazy
and you were saying nothing
in my favor
but maybe some awkward laughter:

This is why we’re not friends anymore.

I find myself clumsy and unfamiliar
with the pattern of his staircase
and awkward yet at home
with the touch of his hand,
your words find me electronically
and I’m surprised
by the urgency of your concern.

So for taking your cues to leave
as a cue to leave,
I apologize.
But I’m easy,
not naive.
I’m devoted
but hard to keep.

The weather was delivered in the form
of a novel, or a non-fiction, written to inform
some reader of a setting which was not their own;
inside, this was neither
Susanna Kaysen’s therapy center
nor George Adams’s prison
and yet I was holding onto my socks
considering
the black-white-black-white ice cream store floor
or the state of being out of the typical pattern:
an intellectual.
and there we were
parading through the hall
like ghosts on their way to breakfast.
a meal of fake eggs
and fake cheese
and no questions
no conversation.

We are children reliving ourselves.

i could hide the truth of this pain
with the word hospital
and i could hope people would assume
tragedy and ignore the obvious.

no one sees me often enough
to imagine my dreams of coping
with slashed wrists
or swallowed pills
with gunshot wounds
or far-away sidewalks
with knifes in stomachs
or the slow suicide
of food depravation.

I have no one to blame but myself,
he said,
no one can hurt you but you
and i think in that statement
i died, just a little
hiding on the elevator
riding it up and down
waiting for a friend
or an enemy
for a new story to cry about

and
waiting for your unpredictable silence,
i bought new shoes.

The horizon is
an abnormally linear
tract proclaiming
what may be,
and stoically I look
with focussed eyes
toward an unpredictable distance.
I see the gray fuzzing of the sky
below the dark clouds
and hope for rain
like God’s an artist
smudging charcoal
and giving me a sign.
Behind the silences we cling to
I know I can’t hide my eyes
which question language.
There is no Truth
there is only accessible truth
and Universal Truth
like some vague line
which we can but hope
to intersect.
I am sine;
you are cosine.

And I guess the burden
which one word removed
from my shoulders
was enough to make
me weightless.

today, when you add
the date and the year
the total equals
the month
and everything is divisible
by three into
multiples of two
so the pieces of my ch’i
which respond best
to days of
mathematical synergy
are quiet and at peace.

seven-thirty-three a.m. finds me
snuggling into my bed next to you,
feeling safe
in newly unfamiliar terrain.
i remain steadily awake
as you breathe so loudly
with yr cold or flu
and in the night you
have watched cartoons
i notice
while i search
for the kicked around
blankets, under which
i am in the habit of sleeping.

i notice
i am in the habit of sleeping
next to you
so under yr arm i wait
silently and patiently
for sleep to find me
or awake to find you
in these minutes,
i hope wherever it is
we find ourselves
sleeping or waking
together.

Within me, a passion has been erased.
And in these long rows of people
On these long benches called pews
I feel something near empty.

And where were you when I called your name?