Long Journey

The desperation culminated to a steep mountain, and there, frozen in its snow cap, I waited silently for change to transpire.

When the snow warmed & thawed, releasing me, I was an avalanche barreling fast down its tyrannical terrain.

Fearless from knowing there was no chance I’d be stopped, liquid.

All the rocks & trees hanging in my way were portals that I’d slide over & through.

Then down to the valley I plummeted, headstrong in my singularity.

The freedom of being alone & One with myself has taken a long time to get to.

Homeless in Winter

His mind rants, drunken, tequila,

winter in a cardboard box,

she’ll kill ya.

Your blood’s gonna turn

to icicles and then the sun’s gonna set

like creamsicles.

Your blue lips will open

to the sky, the booze

on your breath will evaporate

as you die.

Godhole never filled. Love & the only

prayer you had remaining—denied.

First Time

For J.R.C.

For the first time, I’m in love, mutual & real.

It’s not the “love” delusion: one-sided, clusterfucked,

chaotic & complicated, drunken BLEVEs,

when I waited for frayed electrical plugs to

attach to my heart sockets. Then caught on fire.

 “Love” was incomplete, temporarily corrupted me.

Repeatedly trying to prove my worth was a diversion

as it reeled in & putrefied my heart inside its iron fist.

Eventually disillusioned, I let go & it reluctantly let me go.

I had to give up before I could find you.

Oh and we’re both skeptics—doubting it’ll last.

Our egos always want more certainty.

We wait for a perfectly comfortable explosion,

while missing the answers, barely audible

by ears accustomed to detonations of mayhem & mania.

Tomorrow’s not guaranteed. Perfection is imperfection.

Simplify love & simplify life. Accept what is:

Simple joy & beauty of just being with you.

Simple truth that I’m here, so I must belong here.

Simply sharing our suffering & joy, our contentment.

Simple.

This, here & now exactly as it is, is happiness.

I’m blissful in the moment.

Simply…intense, it’s indescribable.

I see & feel it to my core when I look in your eyes…

To: The Body

From: I, the mind

I’m obsessing over you, then peeling away from and adhering back onto the girl in my basement. Hiding down there, the clutches of shame cage that delicate, vulnerable girl with needs, who is fearful & hiding. I won’t let her out.

I’m obsessing over you again at work, in my dimly lit office of books and misc. computer parts, sifting through Internet information on how to fix you, perfect you. Move this way. Eat this stuff...don’t eat that…when I “should” be in control of you already. “Should” be making a meaningful contribution to this world.

Instead the I that is me stands above you, looking down the staircase, omniscient. Microscopic things I see in telescopic panorama. Have wondered: are you me? You’re impermanent so…am I, too? I.

You aren’t me, cowering paper doll body. I had to drag you, day after day, out onto the Red Rocket to ride. 2 miles. Then 17. Then 37. Your limbs & eyes & joints wept & throbbed. Remember the time in cold rain, chest pumping endorphins & happy hardcore at the beginning of a perilous ride. Just you &…

I on that first winded mile around the indoor track, when you said your blood would start spurting out your throat if you persisted. I told you otherwise.

I lashed you forth on the cardio machines, precipitates of salty sweat caked up. You’d see the others around & I’d make you take note of them & their superiority at everything you ever tried to do.

You were easily maxed out so I coaxed you with promised rewards of wine & simple carbs. I’d shame you as I wrapped my brass knuckled hands around your throat & used quick, methodical jabs to the gut… for your own good.

I stopped caring about you at all, disowned you, but never stopped obsessing. Sold you off to men: for $$ & hot validation. At times, so fed up, I denied your existence. Just me, buoyed bodiless, no you here. I criticized every blemish, scar, alligator patch, stretch mark, lump, soft spot, & mocked the SoftSoul that lingers around, won’t follow my orders.

I beat & sliced up your face & belly & arms & legs ‘til bruised & blood dripping then dried & crusted for you to painfully scrub off with a rag. I murdered you, or tried to, with Daisy razor blades, dismantled carefully enough to keep the fingertips intact. I told you things that inspired you to bring the hammer down hard on your soft spots. I beat the vulnerability out of you, hardened you.

Because you were the source of cumbersome feelings & my job is pain management.

I wasn’t always so controlling & abusive: taught you to cook yourself new recipes, let you have piles of pancakes & peanut butter cookies. See how nice I was to you?

I’ve told you when & how to bandage yourself, to knead your own thrashed muscles, & I’ve given you some of the most intense pleasure you’ve ever felt. I’ve let you go unkempt, saying very little about it for months on end. 

Paper doll body, I’ve dreamed outfits to dressed you up in. I’ve torn your paper carcass in pieces, and drawn blueprints for a brand new one. I made a perfect mold and tried to cram you into it, but you never fit & you aren’t cooperative.

You’ve often been the center of my world. Focused on your flaws & features & whims & wants &

lately I obsess. Obsess. Obsess over you. What I can do with you & how it’ll change you, while you’re locked down in the basement & have to follow all my rules. 

I stay up here, dignified, so I don’t have to see your pathetic limitations. Doublethinking, my work is interrupted by the obsession yet I am detached from you.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve become you. I don’t know if I have complete control and I wonder who does, who’s on the floor above this one, looking down.

The Clinger, Part 1

"Clingers [a taxa of benthic macroinvertebrate] attach themselves to the surfaces of substrate exposed to water movement such as rocks and streams or along wave-swept lake shores." -J.H. Thorp and A.P. Covich (eds.), Ecology and Classification of North American Freshwater Invertebrates, 2011.

The river & suspended sediments flows

with rapid velocity around me—

adapted to hang onto rocks, I’m clinging,

resilient, and resisting its violent currents.

Internal solidarity binds me to this spinning spheroid,

suspended in a sea of octopus ink.

Cling so I don’t sink, I’ve grasped and grappled for 365°,

a full revolution around the sun. My 26^th time.

At once, I’ve both fought gravity’s pull into

the cliffed craters of isolated desert death,

and allowed gravity to keep me tethered here.

Didn’t drift away or let myself burn up.

I wanted to drift away but resisted the black veil

that would poison & blind me, perhaps comfortably,

or sweep me along & tear off all my hanging phalanges

by the hungry force of ripping friction.

I’ve desperately wanted to spontaneously combust

but this Soft Soul is a solid core, self-heating,

nonreactive to outside forces,

and it won’t explode, won’t burn me up

when I beg or demand. It’s the rock I cling to

that I can’t let go of because, damn it, this is just

what I was born & adapted to do.

Written 7 November 2013