A Disgusting Tryst

Many years hence or was it yesterday

I dreamed of giving fellatio which is

never a good dream

and wondered why in the dream

a woman had a penis and I was

hoping by opening my mouth I would

be loved by that woman

there are myths and signs and wonders

even in nightmares

totems to the soul

speaking to our inner darkness

I thought of my chess pieces

how strategizing was never my thing

the mother who hated and was indifferent

the brain damaged father who struck out

in endless anger

and my own yearning for more

more, more, more, more

but when you have no more and that is it

you keep returning to the same place

hoping the outcome has changed

surely the definition of madness

resides very closely in that repetition

no release, release found often

under the pulse of music and movement

dancing away the scathing hurt

or beneath someone I pretended cared

fucking away never worked

it only hurt

more

never good at sharing

gods aren’t male, they’re

created by men for stroking

and controlling like canes can

be weapons or lovers

language shifts like time in grief

now as a grown ass woman

I dream of fellatio as a lesbian

women with penises torturing with

confusing potential

I carry the fetus who didn’t make it

like a scar across my withering chest

and my hormones shout

you haven’t got long left!

Get out there and strut your stuff

before you are truly as invisible

as a ghost

my grandmother if she were living

would tell me to bow to Jesus

because The Old God of the Jews

let us down

and was too angry

and it worked for her

she chain smoked on her way

to saving souls

and chucked the fag butts

out the window

at 80mph

because she knew

her Mormon friends would never

smell the scent of tobacco on her lips

because they didn’t get that close

nor the perfume of vodka

just an essence

I learned to like too much and recognize

drunk women and distant woman

the black and the white queens

chess pieces ravaged by their tendency to torment

as a way to even the odds

cultures eaten by death

I didn’t complete the act

it disgusted me then

as it does in my sleep

step out into a full moon

my other grandmother said

her hands are holding

red books of communism

and when she puts them down

her hands remain red

because she, like the girl in Brothers Grimm

her crime cannot be rinsed

it is found in the pigment of her abetting

the shape of a key burnt into flesh

guilty, guilty, guilty!

I loved her until I knew that

more than you should ever

love anyone

wanting to tell someone how

the ache approximates a bomb

in your heart when it grows large

but the Shrink left her post

abandoned our discussion

she didn’t have the teeth for it anymore

so many people broken

her dance card was full

mine was empty

what a fool I made of myself

for the fiftieth time

lighting candles with my rage

causing shadows to catch with flame

I still burn beans because

I forget I’m cooking when I’m thinking

of all the people who have come and left

now you’re getting married

and I wish you horror

because my bitterness isn’t all used up

the potential for regret is endless

here we waltz to the music of time

made of stars, wrought of cigarettes

and dark bars

I wore black since then because

the shape of knives can be hidden

better in velvet and if you try

to sink it in

I will have the last laugh

one more card to play

violence

dress yourself carefully

pay attention

just so, just so

here we go

Blister

I will not be your blood blister

I will not be so abused I learn to like it and take it with a mouthful of sack cloth

I will not be your punching bag. Held by Devil for you to take your life’s frustrations out upon.

I am injured and talented at self-loathing but there is still fight left. The fight tells me not to submit to become, that smear of inconsequence you so desperately want.

Light is fading and we walk along rivers edge. You tell me to jump in, hand me the locks and chains, swallow the filagree key and cross your arms.

The river is swollen like an angry mother calling her children home. Trees weep into its corners like penitents and the sky drizzles its damp message through closed mouthed cloud cover.

I have lived 32 years and each one seems too long. The locks that separate parts of the river from each other, are black and painted with some type of waterproofing, I wish for a moment I had been waterproofed, painted shut and able to exist beneath, without air.

The dead watch with empty eye sockets from the other side of the river. They stand in unison, quiet and obedient to their demise. A flickering memory of times when they existed and tried to reach out, never quiet enough.

I am a child being baptized without a crowd.

A whore who has swallowed the semen of the river too many times and risen to the surface despite her tambourine sin.

I am someone’s daughter though they have long forgotten the birth and gone about their life. Wounds that do not exist cannot be licked, or didn’t you know?

I am the cross of a woman who alternately hates me, especially on Monday’s, when in her wrath she pitches me from her sight and turns to the wailing wall, the mumble of her faith, her ever succor.

I am your bit on the side. Eaten crumb by crumb, morsel after taste, tasty between mouthfuls. Always spat out.

I am untouched and lying in long grass in late summer and nobody walks past and nobody kneels down and performs the benediction over my sleeping form, and nobody takes their religion seriously, instead raping me there between the sun and the moon.

I am your mother. You hand me the green dress I wore on the night he beat me blue, and I watch my nipples pop through the thin fabric like expression marks, my long neck ringed in roses of hurt. He says he loves me, he says he wants me, he knows only how to harm. And when we fall, together, I hold you in, I stop breathing, thinking if I can press every muscle against you I will protect you from coming out, a long bloody trail across his perfect white tiles and his parents never knew, for crime is the easiest thing to hide.

I am a patient. My bed is starched and folded. I am broken and belittled. My tongue blistered from licking my own wounds. They said I wouldn’t make it. I hoped they were right. You stood at the doorway and clicked your fingers and something in me knew it wasn’t yet done.

I give birth. The child is still born on wasted sheets that must be burned. In the olden days they buried quiet dead beneath oak trees and they nourished the next generation. I breast feed the silence in my head and they all close in like crows, to shut my screaming mouth.

We lie in each other’s arms and you say; “I’m not like the rest” and I never believe that because I can’t believe anything anymore, but the sound you make when you say it and when I am inside you, stays like a long song in my fevered mind.

We visit the grave site and wild flowers bloom over where your bones lie. I push my hand into the fecund earth and think for a moment, you are there, reaching out.

The edge of love can be a broken glass in your jugular. The sin can be a salvation. We are riding buses to the end of the world and you only know how to paint because you have no time for effort.

How are you today? I am finding ways to end my life. I am counting pills in little bottles. I am watching stretch marks fade from pink to silver, each one a cry from you that was never sounded, across glassy water.

Dennis Hopper has a large gun, Keanu uses his hips, Ione only knows plaid and frigging. Lying beneath a wool blanket watching blow up dolls drown, they use their youth like elixir and it’s easy to believe then, it’s easy to wait and apply Chapstick when your lips feel numb.

I’m by the rivers edge and you are with someone else. I knew it ten years ago, I know it now. Instead of a knife I have a candle. It burns its hot wax on my useless fingers and they curl like paper boats when they hit water.

We start the car, the purr like a cat I once had, cleaning her kittens. I feel your hand pull up my skirt, it’s never smooth now, it’s always wrinkled and my hands look like shrieks against my numb skin. Nobody buys cigarettes from tobacconists anymore. We import our vice by the truck full.

I want someone to claim me, to reach in and save me, to eat me alive and spit me back into myself. I want you to fuck me with love and hope. But ghosts can’t smoke and they can’t perform cunnilingus and I am getting older now.

Too old to be your blood blister. We need to burst it and let it bleed, until I see, a way out.

her inferno

a voice

something still alive

someone trying not to scream

they make a sound that could only be described as an

oral ache

stretch of sinew, wide mouth, no noise, neighbors hear

nothing

there has been too much pain for sound

still tears come, when you think there could be no more

nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows

behind well constructed facade, beneath masks

the woman with her head in the oven

probably wrote a decent poem before she expired

smoothed her apron down, sent her kids to school

before turning the dial high

her own sounds of anguish and the hiss of gas

a sigh of sighs

the postman can knock on the door and you can open with a bright

false smile and he will think to himself as he departs, she is such a happy

woman always with a nice thing to say and a bright grin, I wish my wife were

half as content

close the door, gather the rope, sling it securely

the same woman who turns the dial high

prepares her demise with thoughtfulness

she is tutored at deceiving

sickness overwhelms her and she is on the floor tearing at herself

watching from ceiling, a woman unravel and be unable to re-knit

she feels in her solar plexus, in her very marrow, the scourge of loss

she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it

the idea time assuages pain, is a falsehood

hers is a road that will always be wet with tears

her eyes are closed and she is imagining how it is some of us

never stop hurting and others can brush off betrayal like lint

walk on unperturbed.

in the silence of her house, the clock in the hallway unwound

she feels the walls closing in, the very sky descend

all her madness like balls of yarn, have no where to pretend

they are okay

she is demented with hurt

voiceless, personless, no-one to reach out to

her arms are cut again and again with the switch of abandonment

she was once someone’s baby

she was once someone’s love

lapsing into unconsciousness in hot overflowing bath

crimson for her unshed horrors, streaking clean floor

did not need to use her own hands in sterile afternoon

washing line blowing emptiness like fallen maps

now she is dirt and dust and a woman without bones

she is sinking into the soft hiss of gas escaping gratefully

if she had the courage she’d light a match to guarantee

her inferno

she left one last message on one last machine

lost in time and the rolling hours curling their faces to the wall

her tinny voice breaking and crackling over distance

saying goodbye without saying goodbye

for even in death she pretends

everything is okay

and when you come home at 6

the table will be laid, your shirt for tomorrow pressed

hanging like a specter

its loose arms waving

in mute appeal

Untitled #39

I forget

What I lived for back then

Maybe just hope

That indefinable future stretching unknown

It always baffled me how the young

Could give up and try to die

When there was always hope

And some sympathy for their tender years

I want to say to them

Wait until you get here

Then the going gets quiet

People don’t check on you

There is no sympathy for your failing

We’re supposed to be stronger

What doesn’t kill us, right?

Not true

Everything that’s destroyed me did not

Make me more resilient

That’s a lie we tell ourselves and our friends

Or maybe for some it’s a truth

Not for me

I feel with every battering less and less

Less willing to stand and fight

For why?

The illusion things will change?

The care that rarely solidifies

I am so good at lifting others up

So poor at building my house

Because I gave my faith to them

And made nothing for myself

Instead I hear, the voices of the past

Telling me why I’m worthless

And it isn’t just the past

It’s recent and the scar

Never heals

I am

Broken

I survived only to

Fall

I am hurt beyond description

I ache and feel pain every hour

Nothing I do seems to change

The sorrow of every day

It’s too easy to dismiss it away as

Clinical depression

It is not

I simply wish I could safely die

I wouldn’t even feel guilty anymore

I’m too tired to care

Maybe when you’re not cared about that’s what happens

I find it hard to understand why more don’t share my sentiment

I don’t enjoy life

I have no purpose

I have been left by those I loved

I stand alone

Not blaming anyone

Just seeing through

The bullshit

I wish right now

Life were a dream and death reality

An external sleep

No trespass no hope

It has long been gone

And I have tried for ages to hide my belief

There is no point

For whom?

There is a crack in my heart that runs so deep

Maybe it was all a mistake

I wish I could rewind until

I ceased and never had been

It is hard to want to undo yourself

As you continue to flourish

I am tired of trying

I feel that’s all I’ve ever done

It’s a bit of a delusion

Trying and being in pain

Why try? For whom?

If there is no one

I hear the bus

Letting off children

I remember

Being a child

I wasn’t happy then

It’s not who I am

My mother was right though she was wrong

Maybe I’m a lesson from which others learn

There isn’t as much meaning in everything

As we are told

Sometimes we just exist without meaning

And it’s ugly and long

Too long

I wish I didn’t know

How most books

End

Empied of harm

Passion, you may feel it in obvious ways

How he leans in with his enveloping strength

Or, in the thunder of your chest, riding imaginary horses with your best friend

Forgetful of arithmetic and teachers who felt you’d end your days in borstel, because you did like running rings around them, didn’t you?

Regretting those petty rebellions later

Then in the crisp light and imagined stampede

Thrashing to the furthest point in your mind, bathed in fantasy

A place hard to reach, even splayed on cold Mexican tile, pretending your hand was his

Even, swimming underwater, until your lungs burned to surface

It was as if, once you grow up, the way back becomes harder

Like a secret language, only known to children, daunting you with reminder

The tree house of your neighbor, as you take the prescribed walk, your cardiologist insisted upon

The first rain lillies urging through Texan soil against all odds, their impossible fragility, an exquisite reprieve from cracked earth

Have you gone so far child? As to forget the combination? 

Here, where verbena and lemon grass, pummel air with magic 

Here, where you didn’t need anything, but the cupping of your hands, wonderment running through water, like you were born again and again, empied of harm 

Full of the vigor, of not knowing, the beaten path, to adulthood

After The Devil

After The Devil

she chose a hermaphrodite

it was quite by accident he did not advertise on his dirty t-shirt

or the filth beneath his bittern nails

something about the sad premature crease

of his grief and a slowness when they sat

drinking in silence listening to Nick Cave, fingers entwined

an ugly cupid with smooth hairless face and small hands

he had more passion in his molten brand of madness

drew her out of herself like a needle filled with blood

why shouldn’t she feel again? she was only

half used up

the finger prints of her humiliation could not

come off in his porcelain bath but there was some comfort

crushed underneath a new lover

her heart after all was deformed

mistake and gore of nature in her grandeur

how unhinged people can hold each other up

understanding the slur of repulsion

he took a photo of her before she knew

her elongated labia was showing

his pot belly and marshy dark nipples

they were horrified to see in reproduction

the honesty of their cavort via camera

disgusting really

to be so young and so

imperfect

and such a relief at the same time 

his wrinkled penis was less than an inch and she

had the smear of Electra urging her entreaty

when he held her down and reenacted

the snuff films of Dario Argento

squeezing almost tight enough to come

she saw a momentary quenching of anguish

like a reverse motion water fall

his urine landing on her flattened breasts

hanging over her rib cage in thin abandon

open your legs he said and show me your filth and scars

and though she had read Simone de Beauvoir

and Luce Irigaray

she found herself widening them

into a vile parody of former shyness

go on then she said

eat me out even though I disgust you

because he was filled with mocking self-hate

his little prick useless for much else aside frotage

he gave the best head she ever had

bar none

maybe it felt that way

because they had twisted and turned

until their skulls lay beside them

watching two ugly creatures

chew on their mutual sorrow

 

 

 

 

(thank you all at Hijacked Amygdala)