getting older

growing less poetic,
and more professional

the places we leave the ones we love

i don't want to play the part
of your beaten dog
tied to the neighbors fence,
your puppet on display
under a stack of plates
at your weekend garage sale

haiku

still finding your hair
between the wooden floorboards
we once walked naked

to tell you the truth, she said,
no matter what, it changed me,
and maybe its for the better and maybe its for the worse,
but i've got pictures of horses
and i don't look at the bridge that way anymore,
haven't since i moved in

a summer spent alone in 1310

Indee said they feel the sadness within the brown walls and makeshift bed sheet partitions of this halfway home and they had to go.  I stay alone letting the cockroaches roam freely in the kitchen while I explore the unimportance of “I,” staying stagnant like a small glass containing what passes through me.

Understand the consequences of exchanging energy.

The cats come and go through the windows. They press their faces against my shirtsleeves, purring in the morning and drawing my blood by dusk. “We all take what we need,” says the foam ceiling tiles pushing their way down to the kitchen table, offering our appliances to the sky.

A gold heart is painted on the empty bedroom wall. Scribbled inside is, “I love you." "Mostly." "Maybe." "I love you sometimes.” A black marker X covers the uncertainty and I’m still not quite sure what it means, a comedy or tragedy. The ones who came before me remain a mystery. Those who follow, they will not know what we have made and destroyed here.

I am always looking behind my back like a paranoid vagrant, wondering when someone will wander quietly inside. Each room is a long hallway. This house is an ongoing rumor.

The adhesive connecting the bathtub to the beige tile is loosening, revealing the dirt beneath our dirty feet. This house is tired of balancing on the stilts built to keep us afloat, slowly sinking unsuspectingly. The floorboards are as disconnected as those who tread them. The decay has not been discussed. Our mouths are heavy with pride. We are sinking and we find it trendy to wear our bright colored life jackets daily. We are not sustainable and why should we be?

Inside the refrigerator, the shelves are weighted with the water that seeps out onto the muddy floor. The small black spiders and young cockroaches take comfort in the moist cold of the insulation, crawling over molding food like hikers conquering mountains. The kitchen floods. We all flood, indulging. An orange extension cord sits idly in a brown puddle. We crave movement. A frozen fish sits in the freezer with its one eye always looking out and its mouth wanting one last say in this world. I am a frozen fish waiting. 

The pink salamanders keep to themselves, running along the corners and cracks of the baseboards like guilty bandits. The ants and maggots migrate along the sink each morning. Some of us have licked the honey from the table and we carry our sticky shame inside our pockets. We’ve all turned paranoid. I press my breast against the front room window, watching the neighbors surely watching me, embarrassed in my lack of movement. Insects crawl out from the shells of the insects who came before them. This house is delirious, clogged with soul searchers guided by false prophets and romance and ego.  The windows stay open, but the metal bars stay fixed.

who am i?

who am i to say i love you with a quick tongue
who am i to smoke in yr bedroom and blood stain
yr sheets so quickly
i am a mess but i
always call back and cry to whomever
picks up the phone
i sing again and again
i am better off alone
but i don't sing on yr message machine
won't you leave
and let me wallow
by the rocks and the waves
stay afloat a few days
there's an open invitation
to join me at the bottom
of the Mississippi
suffer silently
sink into the clay
who i am to send a letter
i know better
i already
linger like driftwood
in yr sheets
i don't change the tide but i dirty
the scenery
i am a limb looking
for my tree
you are missing from me
who am i to send a search party?

can't let go

i can't let go of the South,
the drugs, i think,
i can't live without

can't let go
of yr feet dangling from our window
last spring and
yr homemade earrings,
i'm pulling

at yr lobes,
i can't let go of the empty Pimm's,
skeletons, who needs them,

and dreams, what have you,
i can't let go
of words that have no meaning,
i keep searching, searching

through broken things,
yr ankle, three places,
my empty Miller cases,
this place,

i can't let go
of the smell on yr pillow,
the idea of home
and the songs we sang about it

i can't let go
of the water, the trains,
the tracks that lead to this pain
i can't let go

the innocent pains we cause and the crimes of lacking passion we commit

i've figured out the pattern of
letting someone down
in 6 easy steps

1. give someone your heart (fall madly in love)
2. get let down (experience loss)
3. hurt (wallow in this step indefinitely, continue to step 4 simultaneously)
4. take someone else's heart (in hopes of a savior or a distraction- you are mad here, you don't know any better)
5. continue hurting (classical conditioning in preparation for next step)
6. let them down (unknowingly)

step 5 is a blindfolded reaction
the innocent crime step 6
step 3, well, it never really ends
sometimes we don't see the pain we inflict
a rabid dog kills with a lack of understanding

i do not know what i am doing
i have not been sober for
a long time now

it is much more complicated
than these 6 steps
but i am hurt and turning mad

did you know tears are also effective
for cleaning wounds?
did you know
it is human instinct to suck the blood from a cut?

my paws are sore
as i tread on your chest without feeling
my nails in your skin
too preoccupied with my own feelings
to let anyone in

poems about you

everyone falls in love with me

except you.

blood orange

i took you in pieces,
my blood orange,
your bright colors
still scattered 'round my bedroom floor

my dog teeth sunk right into you
my swimming fingers peeled you layer by layer
naked, i sucked the life right out of you

your citrus scent still hangs from my high ceilings
the taste of your fruit hides under my tongue
my hands are stained red
shame-faced
and we both know why
i can only call you my blood orange