the many little deaths

It's funny how some people paint themselves in death
Scream out their gory fantasies to the crowds
When the real death is not black eyeliner and blood, it's
When you lay down your will and accept
The inevitable, stop
Fighting against
Destiny and soft focus.

I'm watching a morality play about death
The slower kind
Nick Cage is shaking in the final
Throes of the battle

And I'm soaking in the agony like
A napkin soaks up spilled wine.

like a magician

like a magician but not
precisely like that,
he lifted a hat, and
no rabbit was
revealed, but instead a
whirling, shifting image of
the world, changed and
filled with his own
gods and monsters and
each bore
his face.

his words pulled at my wrists
and ankles and the
warmth that spread within
made me drunk, made
my vision blur,
made it harder to breathe.

so I found myself in another world,
a universe he had created to
make sense of what he saw and
no matter where I went,
or turned, he was
there, like a soft blanket,
like a fast tornado,
like a fox hunter
and the persistence of the
last note of wind.

now when I inhale
his scent I wonder whether
I was ever real.

codependent

"Oh mama, say a prayer for me
Jesse's back in town,
It won't be easy..."
-Carly Simon


Oh, there's a poem to go with this, but
Before I write it, I must
Channel my mother's spirit, ask her
How she did it for 40 years,
Swam in my father's wake.
Was it worth it?

Is it hereditary that we require
That locus of dark addiction to spin
Around, to focus our lives,
That lends a livid edge of tragedy to
The mundane details of our
Otherwise boring lives?
To the extent that we each
Harbour our addictions to replace
Any that might be lost to
Reform and good intentions?

I thought I had no addictions, but
The tidal pull of your skin tells me
I was wrong.

freezies

in the sun it's like
you were never here.
I only see you in shadows
and in the cool taste
of blue freezies but
you know how fast
they melt.

open road

this is a metaphor

there is no here
it all flies by
all i have is this moment
all i have is this purring
powerful engine beneath me
roar in my ears
there is no here

all i have is your strong
back, these arms tight around
your waist, eyes squeezed shut
sensation of moving

and we breathe in time
melded by movement
my legs squeeze to keep me
tight against you

all i have is now
there is no here
all i have is you
and this machine
and the carving wind that defines me.

resistance

It would be so easy to
wade in that pool, drown
with all the others.

The warm water invites,
beckons with refreshing promise,
But oh, the bottom is so
Murky deep.

And it looks so solitary,
Calls to only me, but
I know about the bodies below.

Bluebeard's closet, that
is, women drawn to the honeyed
waters, never to emerge.

do I have the strength to
walk out of this glade?

chocolate

Remember the cusp of 12?
We summer-school-studied
Circus and Bop to learn
How to be cool, listened
To tapes, baby-oil-and-iodine slathered
In the backyard,
Still watched Starblazers, planned
To go to space, argued
Whose boyfriend Derek was.

We ate junk food, sunshine, movies
And experience, gobbled each day,
Savoured nothing, swallowed it whole.

That September, back at school, I
Found the chocolate bar, you
Had given me, BFF, to
Think of you while in our separate classes.

It was sun-warmed, melted, and I
Pressed my lips to it, wore it laughing,
Like lipstick. Then Todd, that
Guy we had splashed at the pool,
That you said was short and I thought
Looked like Keith Partridge,
Well, a little
Licked some of the chocolate off.

So I guess I owe you credit for
My first kiss too,
Kind of.