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

Statues in the dark

Where do depressed people go

When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?

Back to their room, where one voice says – take them up on their offer

make a phone call

but the other voice knows they will not because

when you feel that down the last thing you can do is talk.

Where do depressed people go

when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?

Outside to empty streets / not reminded of what they fail to achieve

the silence, a balm on fevered emotion

for everyone judges what they cannot see

as others watch Pandemic movies behind closed curtains

the sad roam in search of meaning.

Where do depressed people go

when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?

they’re told it’s a disease as much as a broken arm yet

judgement is always a cudgel just one step away

even lovers rebuke and ask; Why can’t you get out of your head?

Do something helpful for a change, instead of navel gazing?

or worse, say nothing, ignore, over it, worn out

few can handle a season with dysmorphia.

Where do depressed people go

when the entire world suddenly feels they do?

For a quarantined period, it can even feel like fun

nothing of the permanency, nothing of that locked in sensation

pervading senses, shutting down, until all the dreams you had

are dust and ash on floor, you can’t even get out of bed, to brush your hair

or walk the dog, this inertia isn’t laziness, it’s a switching off

of life’s impulse and so the bulb dims eternal.

Where do depressed people go

When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?

This is how it feels every day, you struggle to find a reason, to steady yourself

into faking it, and surely, the falsehood runs its course and you’re back

with naught and nothing comes from nothing we’ve been all taught

self loathing reflects back in the unwashed mirror, a hateful creature

your worst enemy is between your ears, you hear only

the rebuke and chastising of that part of you wishing to be free

break out, break out, crawl, stagger, run get away

from yourself you cannot.

Where do depressed people go

When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?

trapped in a brain that doesn’t sit up and beg when ordered

motivation a distant memory, as much as you want there are

no magic pills or electric impulses powerful enough

to restart what has lain dormant and half alive

we are quarantined by our own demons they

made prisoners of us long before Covid 19

even those who love us, wish we were different

self hate is a woman without rocks in her pocket

yet

she walks to the edge many times each day

her reflection cries even as she no longer does

for tears are wasted after a certain time

fixed in place by broken ways forward

she seeks to drown the madness with one jump

and they sit on their sofas talking about how it will be called

the great epidemic, where we all stayed in place

not realizing for some of us this is

our hell already created and nothing new

we have been here before, we shall again

it is the wordless, grieving place of those

locked down by their minds in situ

watching the world build around them

statues in the dark

to a pandemic long pre-existing

where screams are never heard.

An imprint of harm

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glassy echo, reflecting

repulsion

There, at the turning of your lips

Words you want to say, willing still

Anger swirling behind dark eyes

They walk calmly

Anything but

Appearance is a veil

I saw you once

Unguarded

Without your battlement

The disguise lay strewn

With other stolen objects

Mere indents in a soft bed

Your madness at the surface

Like a Hydra you panted

For release and weapons

None heard this request

All of you is secreted within layers

No one can unravel

You divide and multiply in your apparent cruelty

There is a token of delight

A brand for some and your bequeathing

Some are not set on this Earth for kindness

They live by the stain left in their wake

An imprint of harm

Slow the leash trains unwilling

Gradual uncovering, sin takes her high chair

In the pit of things you writhe nude and tarnished

We make our own hell with toys of old

Those picture books of loss and shame, shackles for the weary

I could pick you now,

a yellow rose,

your nectar just on the verge.

There are no rehearsals left, only curtain fall

As it grows dark

As the corners of today’s page furl

Empty rooms, homes without windows, drugs without users, a body untouchable, growing cold

As if alight sparing flame

Never to relive

Nor consume nor nourish

This terrible emptiness

As she feels the pain that comes afterward

Inevitable. Old. Crushing. Familiar.

She wants to run to you

But you’re long gone, if ever present

Diminished and relinquished

Pouring medicine down the drain, till needful of no refreshment

Even beauty turns to stone

Even love robs itself destitute

As lovers hate the very thing that made them burn

The taste in her mouth of ashes

Written across her brow in heavy stroke

The cross, the lentern, the falsehood

This room loses light as she gradually declines

On her knees, so many years without touch; lies in place of comfort

Words growing smaller and smaller

A shadow book within a grace freshly dug, till she can see no more but the internal crush of loss

She was an addictive personality who couldn’t get out of her mould, it stuck like gelo, that tendency toward

Melancholy and suicide

If you find her dead you can bet one of her vices is responsible

When she meets people who have not soaked their souls in cigarettes and vodka

Feeling more in the daytime bar than ever something clean and starched

Broken girl parts

Snapped in half before they knew how to stand up

Hers is a sickness, dances in pearls around her neck till pulled tight

Wanting the abyss of psychedelic music and dream of hashish

Intoxicate the pain, numb further urge to destroy what’s left

And push yourself inside me, join the sorrow dot by dot till we both burst

Such is the loveliness of sex in the fulment of grief

Replacing one pain with another small death

The telephone doesn’t ring

She doesn’t call or receive these days

The silence as palpable as the knife she carves her arms into ribbons with

They’ve danced this dance before

There are no rehearsals left, just curtain fall

Think of how it felt, long ago

Before the end, in the middle, lost now

The heaviness of her wanting is blunted by knowing

These people have only their irrevocable actions

Sparring with one another, the blood of first strike hitting white snow in masterpiece

Crimson against a hundred promises, a new form of murder

Sitting, watching herself go through the motions

Good girl who kisses her loved one, tucks in the bed sheets tight

Dreaming of broken glass down her throat, three grey birds and a fingerful of coke

The rage of impotence across flayed landscapes

That flesh and sinew long hung to cure, speaks nothing

Doesn’t forget the rebuke, even as forgiveness is yoked, chain on soft skin

To every ending

Time ticks down without mercy, and if she lives to your age

Just like you, setting the tableaux of your life, there’ll be nothing to say

But the horror of silence before deafening rain

Then she picks up her existing and leaves

Soon it seems, she was never there, just a handful of misspoken words and rage

Drinking clouds, the truth, spares the speaker

She has a generation of distillers and eyes that carry pain as if it were their child

Tonight she won’t be meeting you, she’ll keep on driving

There’s a drop off somewhere, she knows, a fateful road where the turn is sharp

And unexpected

Even for the most familiar driver

It takes a kind of control

She never ever possessed.

Mahogany

The train to my heart is very slow

Stopping at many stations

On the crowded platform a young girl watches her mother go

She never turns around, the mahogany of her hair becoming indistinguishable against fading day

A girl who since loses sight

Listening rather than seeing

Smelling the impression of movement

Folded like a Spanish rose on my chest, I breathe you in

How you form words with your quick violinist arms

Taut tense musculature, willing air demons

Those same arms clutching me to you, heart beating, no words

It rained that day all day from morning to night

“That never happens here” you said, mouth full of plum

“The desert doesn’t like to give up its ghosts. Come here to me, come back to bed”

And I

In my shedding evening dress, trailing thought

Confessed my sum;

The train to my heart is very slow

Stopping at many stations

None to embark

Stay the course

In our chalked circle

Tracing abbreviated land with invisible hands

Till cactus give wild her bloom and color reborn

Your eyes in darkness, catching light, like wine beneath glass

Ransom

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she’s ransomed for chunk change

by the betrayal of her inward gaze

pain and her varied pins

the reddened lips of an untruth

poised to strike

she stopped writing then as if

they etched her into stone and left her to moss

and rain

fall.

As a child she was told again and again

you will fail

she, being headstrong and determined

never did.

They said she wasn’t clever enough so she

left the first place prize on their desk with the words

don’t destroy futures

carved into the wood just like

her tomb.

As an adult she decided

there is no fate, you make of life what you will

by never giving up

and that worked well until the illness

turned her into a wraith and sucked the life force

out

leaving emptiness within.

No matter how hard she tried,

living

and its delights

did no longer appeal

she had a vested interest in

letting go.

God

did not speak to her

she tried calling but

the line was busy

all she could hear

voices under water murmuring

prayer, curses, little confessions

wrapped in violet leaves and cast

from sight.

Her blind faith

had improved

in the darkness she stumbled

alone because when you hit the bottom

there is rarely anyone there to pick you up

those people who pretend to giveashit really

don’t

they only suck the same air as you

noisily like cattle at trough

it is rare to find loyalty or even true depth

especially in people made of

empty promises.

So easy you see, to say, yes you mean the world to me

in fact if you did not exist, I would die surely

my life depends upon yours and I am unable

to imagine a day without you.

Such little words, running like little ink

spreading like little lies, falling like

little shoes thrown into lakes

before the drowning.

See here? Your smile and the benificence of

your factor? I could measure

the extent of your professed heart ache

in jelly beans and find

sugar is too sweet

truth has a bitter taste

especially when it lies

dormant and wilted beneath your tongue

a key without opening.

your falsehood, like an actress pealing her stockings down

slow and smooth

I think of the times I wanted to believe badly enough

I swallowed the whole cocktail

syrup and all

just to feel for one moment

something was real

and we all descend

like discarded play things

compelled to stay beneath the surface

lower in gravity we sink

until air is a daydream

until breath a distant memory.

Your loyalty had a hole in it

the size of your folded lies

and in darkness we find all things

reveal themselves

including the tarnish sitting just beneath

glittering promise.

So then, what of the day above? And its

mercy

radiating like hands

pulling us up through weeds

long have we been submerged

in the weight of betrayal

there in, our sickness no end

just the owl leaving treeline for his prey

sharp eyes scouring landscape

just the lost embrace before you

punched your ticket and entered

the void.

Here I am swaddled in

soyousaids

and words do not hold much

resonance with me anymore

I am a creature of pain and unsettling

rinsed in regret, I find no place

to feel certain

only that time will continue to count down

toward something eventual and quiet

like the sound of a clock that persists

after the end of the world

has bid her leave

to tick.

Holding Water

What I wouldn’t say out loud;

At a dinner party, when the conversation turns to

matters of personal identity and the such.

That I live in a country where

self-confidence is in the very water alongside Chlorine

And possibly many pissed out Pharmacuticals

I don’t know how they import it or how they bottled it

in the first place

but everyone takes a long swig

and grows up self-important and rarely doubting

their worth

A la the internalized cheerleader

I must therefore hail

from an island of thorns

because I didn’t get inoculated against

the sumptuous barbs

my skin punctures at the slightest retort

I bled easily even after I cauterized the wound.

Necessarily, this has caused some

discomfort

people don’t get how

someone can hate themselves

be a painted sin eater

for all insult

until that gobstopper of internalized anguish

turns on them and it feels like

it’s always been about hating the self

Such a natural elegant process of self harm

looking back in the mirror

wishing she could erase

the very DNA, the very face of her.

Now I have a second sight

for bullshit and fakes

and often I’m told; Give me a chance you never know!

But O I do

and I stay away from the saturating crowd

as they live their camera-ready lives

to the fizz and hiss of the insta-bulb

wondering if I will ever

feel differently or if this

deep phlegmy cough

will inhabit my very soul and become

a new lingua of self loathing.

Sometimes I see girls who

could have been me, but grew up

in a different world where

presumably they were inoculated against

self-hate at an early age and given a healthy dose

of worth and manifest ego

they seem like an identical twin who

was raised on grass instead of hay

in the sun instead of snow

and even though they still possess

the abhorant figure of myself

with her squinting mash of ancestral sabotage

I find I like aspects of them

as they flourish weed-like

unawares

there is a shadow

watching them

wondering

if I had grown up just like them

and taken my Happy Pills along with my self deception

what would I have gained?

What would I have lost?

I might resemble them but

I suspect, I would be nothing like them

except in the cracked glass of us

broken and repaired many times

until they can stand no more

to hold

water

Night becomes us

I push people away

as they pushed away from me when I first learned

that’s what people do

so run ahead and do it first

you might tell them your real age, or show them the scars in your skin, that usually does it

with online trolls who really only want a

mirror little narcissist

you might show them your face and all the welts that

lay invisible and divisible like trails of tears

finding only drought

you might reveal your defeats and play join the dots

with stories for each one and then you may

know me just a little

except I don’t want to be known and even as I write

I remain anonymous to myself

the perpetuation of a dream instead

where we dance sweaty and disordered with our hair

collapsed like flamenco skirts in rivers of ruffles

two people with thick manes and thin skin

I taste blood on your lower lip and the depth of it

makes a vampire of me

your pulsing neck is salty from your keening

we interlace our hands like church mice and bad girls and best friends and artful dodgers

I feel your fingers pulsing within me as together we cleave

so much comes from a body who wants and so little from one who does not

when I see you, I want to close my eyes and hold onto the image

how you stand, the light caressing your flawless skin as

oil might run her rivets down your elongation

If choice were a bird, I’d choose you again

And once more, with the release of my lips from yours

A song passed between mouths like a key

Open my heart, keep yourself there

If choice were a thought, I’d choose you again

And once more, with the capture of your ebony and ivory

You, who is seamstress to my soul, play your flute

I hear it behind my eyes in the vault of my trust

If you were a dream I should better wish to wake

Our drowsy love may keep us drugged by its tempest

Sleeping in the passion of your touch

As sun sets and night becomes us

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

Unaided by light

I was not born for loving

doctor said; It’s a girl

nurse thought; What a shame, life is harder on them

psychiatrist thought; She doesn’t want to be a mother, but let’s not tell her

grandfather thought; Another generation to abuse, watch her grow, but not too much

grandmother thought; Turn your face away. Do not witness, then it never happens

mother thought; I never wanted you.

…

when I carried you

you reminded me of a rock

I wanted us both to drown

except I would lie and float above

whilst you gulped salty brine

and free of your clutch, hail a boat

take myself somewhere, far from children

I never wanted

trapped by circumstances

anything to escape the confines of my day

but how?

…

I told this story many years later

by then I was

much older than my mother had been

when she gave birth

and in that jaundice saw

her lot

and shook it off

as any woman escaping shackle would

…

I do not blame her a bit

nor for her inability to love

me

though others she loves quite well

like folding napkins can be

an art

I do not feel anger toward her

even when she turned her voice from

human to machine

told me to go hang myself when I was ill

“you are too dramatic and I am not

going to take any of your soap opera anymore”

I should have tattooed those words and others

that cut deep and left a permanance

all over my body

because I hear them in my sleep

but the needle was blunt and my favorite song

played in someone else’s room

and the breeze was fresh and I wanted to

like my mother

run away from pain

so I did not hate her because

she is as much survivor as I

just doing what she has to

to maintain some semblance of

denial

…

it is not the fault of the broken

they cannot perform on cue or

find ways to put back together

shattered trust

though why she picked me of all the people in the world

to loathe

that I shall never understand

I can imagine she would respond, given the chance

oh but darling it’s because you are not worth loving

you are a disappointment and a liar and all things foul

she thinks I don’t know

she is wrong for once or twice or always

such is the calamity of overestimating intelligence

I did no such thing; keeping my mistakes out like a flag

when she left me to drown I only partly did

then and now

just as others have also taken their leave

it is a bloodied procession of grief

…

she would say it is evidence of

my UN-likability and a pattern is a sign

I’m the issue, I’m the cause, common denominator

does she think I don’t hear those thoughts?

especially from myself

though in truth and without the need

for shrinks to proclaim

I know it’s neither

but some kind of family recipe

repeating itself in clumsy tragedy

I tried to stop it

but some things were in place before I got there

…

lucky really for bad luck

I wanted a baby of my own

she lays now in formaldehyde

along with my womb

the scar shines in the sun when I

walk to the kitchen in my turquoise panties

I think then of you my darling

the contrast of death and life

your flawless skin against mine

mottled with shorter time and longer

suffering

we were like two cats

let out to search for cream

except I fell in love

even as the rule book dictated

haven’t you learned anything?

I was not born for loving

though love was all I sought

…

it is the whimsy of the neglected and unwanted

such a cliché, such a burning shame

to follow a trajectory set before you knew

this is the path for idiots, follow carefully until

you too, fulfill the prophecy of fools

…

I think too often still

of the past, though it will never

save me and only devour

any compunction for peace

I dream of her telling me, she hates me

it feels like petals upon my rotten cheeks

I see her dark eyes retreat and in sleep

reach for her, like somehow

all the scars can be healed, though

nothing I say will ever make her believe

the truth she insists, is a lie

…

in fact she says;

I am one giant lie

from my name to my ethnicity and birthright

and maybe she is telling the truth

for I have lost myself in make-believe

and catching butterflies

since very young retreating to

what I could pretend and not what was

real and crawling toward me

with the unwavering tenacity of

cruelty

…

if I could I’d rewrite the future

as I know what it portends

one or other of us shall die

the rest will grieve eternal in fractured silence

such as its always been

generation after generation

losing before truly lost

nothing repairs a pattern sewn

before you were born

…

and I, as I’ve told you

was not born for loving

though it consumes me still

especially when I am weak

which is often as

the sunlight will predispose me

to fantasy

thinking I see you reaching for me

taking all the pain back

returning your heart to where

as a child I placed it

high and gleaming

the greatest illusion of all

warding off my fear that

reality was

real

so

whitewash the sky my love

paint the steps

polish the lamps

this evening we will watch

the night flowers perfume

and bloom

unaided by

light