My Oyster, My Slate

I’m giving back what you’ve given me,
The weight of your love is just too heavy.
I’m suffocating in this comfort you provide,
It’s my oyster! And my adventures, when I decide!

Things were rosy-darling-sweet,
Months went by, I had felt complete.
I sang to you of love and bliss,
Fell heels over head, sealed with a kiss.

But my wings are clipped by your own hand,
The year has flown away, the timer’s full of sand.
And I dream outside that garden gate,
I leave you now, to clean my slate.

Which Side of Time?

When I’m with you,
I feel warmth, or comfort.
I am a time bomb.
You keep me dormant.

When I’m with you,
High walls fence me in.
I am a rogue charge.
You keep me grounded.

But I love to hate those walls,
I learn to stand up tall,
And peer over,
Longing for,
The other
Side.

----------

Time,
To reconcile,
I say to the mirror.
And I summon my gall,
(whatever that really is)
And I tell you “we need to talk”.

The Words!

When it rains on my windowsill,
I cannot help but watch,
The glassy drops splatter.
Greedily, I watch their ecstasy.

Because I can’t get enough,
Of that slither-up-the-spine,
Burst of nervous bliss,
That sustains me.

And the words!
The moist, succulent plums,
And slick, pink conch depths-
Of our words. I could die.

So, I wait.
Not quite patiently,
For a time when our words,
Will reenact my raindrops.

Milk Pale

I find myself alone,
Without somewhere to be,
And I get stuck,
With these eyes,
That won’t stop crying.

They fill and fill,
So I empty them,
And they fill again,
Like a fertile cow,
Producing pail,
After pail,
Of warm milk.

Except these tears,
Aren’t comforting,
The way warm milk is.
They come because,
I’ve found myself unaided,
And I am uneasy,
Together with my psyche.

I need to be on my own,
The way the cow needs,
To release her milk,
But the tears,
Have no place here.

The cries fill my pail.
I skim off the top:
Condensed aching.
So I pasteurize my loneliness,
And swallow my tears, once more.

I want to tell him,
That I need real solitude.
But how can I explain,
That I have come unglued?

This pail keeps filling,
While I knowingly ask,
For a new set of pails,
To fill.

Aroma of Mistake

I inhale deeply the dense aroma of mistake.
It ignites my mouth, and my thirst is awake.

Like an ivy, it binds me,
I’ve been stymied.

Sweaty palms will incriminate,
As my clammy goose bumps congregate.

My conscience waits uneasily in the scale for my move.

Butterfly

Who ever heard of the butterfly,
Born purely and très naïve,
(And patterned wings so rare to come by!)
Curling back up, into the insipid brown chrysalis to die?
Never.
So…

Why do we become, that which we most hate?

Because we understand the pain, that is to desecrate.

My wings had felt the delectable breeze in every morning sky,

Until one day they shook with the weight of a thousand fractured lies.

And now I lay a crumpled thing, on a dirty floor,

With my own voice in my head,

Sadist, sicko, whore.

Boston Harbour

Black ripples,
wash against familiar granite,
worn smooth in time
with clanking halyards.

The granite seawall
remembers my heels,
banging silently
to the pulse
of my harbor.

The wind, here,
always carries away
the weight from my chest,
on a seaweed breeze.

I don't know
that behind me,
is a comatose city
that can't hear
the rigging's laughter
or taste the veritable calm,
that I cannot live without.

To Build a Hill

Today, I pulled a small, grateful ant
off the back of my tongue.

I was shocked.
I stared at my palm,
I watched little red legs wriggle franticly,
Before I swiftly flung him into the grass.

Hours later, pressed hard against the wall of my shower,
I cried.

Most days, I am the ant.
To be atomic, in an astronomic world,
Is grueling.

Not often enough,
Do we build our own hill,
But wait to be pulled,
From off the back of a tongue.

Poem Response to Dad's Poem

I barely remember life without loss,
When clouds weren't just clouds,
but a fish or a cow,
Blind now, I march to make it across.

I do not ever reminisce,
these days are gone,
tears all
They fill up my cardiac abyss.

The Couch

A couch.
A symbol the world recognizes,
And criticizes, easily.
Legs crossed carefully,
I let it pull me into its core.

As I open my heavy mouth to speak,
Each offering tumbles away without grace,
Or hesitation.

Dark roast becomes cold on the adjacent table,
Neighboring the Kleenex.

Most times I avoid using gaze,
She knows.
I know.
It is how I do.

I open the red door with white teeth,
The door that conceals spinning treasures,
A hard job to decode?
Maybe.

She reminds me of her past advice,
I remind her of my past.

The carpet needs to be cleaned.
Is that a cobweb in the corner?

This couch and I go way back.
It relishes the taste of my salty sadness.

I am reviewing the situation.
Checking off each item on my to-do list.
Did I mention,
The aggression?
Or when I forgot the guidance she bequeathed?

We both check the illuminated digital clock.
Eyes meet at once.
Embarrassed.

I sign the check and pat my old friend fondly.
Until next week.