the body never lies

i think you wanted to know
his moonshine eye, his cliff-noted past
i caught you looking through his pockets
planting seeds, stabbing your skin on 
hangnails- he was ripshorn and scarcely
alive; you loved him for the weak pulse,
the saline drip of his nose, degeneration
of his eye, where rolling stones fumbled
slowly, wet and dark and hollow.

i think you wanted to know
what you were up against: a war
you would not win clamoring against
your rib cage, a hurricane state 
in the immune system of your heart
where invaders would never be silenced
or your father ever be wrong;
he called you a slut faced bitch
i slapped him twice and took you home.

your favorite poet was Sexton,
reading her suicidal confessions, her calm
representation of madness, premeditated
murder during the childbearing years
i know you hated her for failing as a mother,
now i'm talking about you again
although you tell us how you can't blame
them forever, how you have to grow up 
and take responsibility, to forgive

to forgive the cancer that mouths it's
gumless seams against your wounds,
to forgive the blood rot that licks
sugar off your ribs-
or to forgive your parents.
why would you do that?
deny your body it's truths.

the body never forgets
how your sex foils itself again and again
your arms ache and your stomach broils,
hot plantings sewn into the curve of foot
cold buds wakening in the slip of your mouth,
headaches, dreary Sunday monsoon
flashes it's wet tears against your dry eye.

i think you wanted to know
what it was like to be un-loved
in a million different ways
this mission was your alone
torture yourself for as long as you shall live
in his arms, where he would never know
*never give a shit, want to be inconvenienced, love you*
and you would never remember
and everyone would be so pleased you forgave

it is so much easier that way;
don't you think.

where are we

at night i write a story
erase the middle and tape together the beginning and end

here we are remembering
here we are living in remembering
here we are still in rememberance
here we are, still.

it is quiet in this house
there is no youthful screaming and clawing
an entire poem of missing items:
Sunday morning breakfast,
sex every day, late night tv, late night fucking,
late night love making,
laughing until crying, crying until laughing,
tumbleweeds of family, rolling over living room floor,
your hands enormous over my rib cage,
your heart enormous, a dialect between two,
hands together, after work together, always together.
an entire lifetime of missing items:
you disappear and i disappear with you.

where are we?

maniac heartbreak

the rain deconstructs on its own
the limbs of trees, wings of bees
birds that have flown

why fail here
when i am offering it all
hairy leg, shaking fingers, limp hair

buried in the ground there is
a reminder
not like bone, nothing as new as flesh

but a glass bottle perhaps,
a broken glass
something broken

i dig it up easily
soil now mud
and hold the thing hard,

i will deconstruct myself,
i will bleed at my own request
my own power.

and the blood makes
such pretty little rivelets
down my wet wrist

curling and thinning to pink
around my arm
like the bracelet i wanted for Christmas.

although you do not love me
you will feel something hard
and now it begins.

dead dog sunday

it is the deadening of my nerves that has surprised me
more than anything
the last few years.
i continued barreling through my thirties with the sex drive
and moods of my twenties
so i didn't expect withdrawal
the Cheever fossilizing against suburbia
finally making itself known;
if anything I would have expected more exuberance
due to the children all being partly or all grown,
no more babies hanging from my breast,
in between my husband and i in bed.
at times i feel the ridiculous nature of life
is so extreme that to coast is best.
other times i feel terrified that i am secretly dying,
and will be buried in my suburban garden,
with it's pleasant cluster of low moisture needing plants
and non-toxic bug killers
with my old dogs buried near me
my old fears too,
my pretty little pussy buried underneath the roses
so by any name, they may smell as sweet.
am i old so soon?
why am i deliberate in the face of our world
hurricanes and droughts and churches away
from being a total failure,
why do i bathe my children and hold them and 
weave decorations through our lampshades,
stroke the dog's belly and feed my neighbor,
when the clock tower is nearing midnight?
it's amazing how tired you can become
long before it is time to sleep.

i hate people

in my mind are two images 
one is a child sitting next to their 
lower, left leg
which was just then blown off
by a bomb
and the child is reaching out her arms
to her father, screaming,
because her lower, left leg
was just then blown off
by a bomb.

the other is a spider quivering
as she is sprayed
with an insecticide, and releasing
a dozen or so babies in her instinct
to save them,
so they  might run, as they do, 
perhaps just one will 
make it without being sprayed 
with an insecticide.

i hate people.
i don't want to be in this merry go round
of terror anymore
i am moving to the mountains
and if i die
it will be because some bear tears me in half
not because he poisons my food,
sprays me with chemicals, skins me,
develops a weapon to gut me, shoot me, 
or obliterate me-
in fact it is the lack of malice
and creativity
that i used to see as terrifying
which i now see as practically a fucking paradise
compared to what us ugly humans do
with our big, fancy brains
and our empty, diseased hearts.

Witches, Switches and Son of a Bitches

Halloween night 
i'll be drunk and un-mothered,
all the children monsters on the outside,
all the mothers gone.
i will have stayed behind,
preying on the suburban men
the ones who have sex with their wives
at precisely eleven thirty almost every evening-
that's my neighbor;
he moans loudly when he comes.
one by one i will blow them,
fuck them, leave a trail of semen and bad costumes
on the floor behind me,
and when i arrive back home
by identity as a slut and homewrecker will follow
and destroy my house like a bomb made of snickers and tarts.
i will be completely guilty and wrong
and pass out on the bed without brushing the dogs or
cleaning the floor or
locking the doors or
checking that the children brushed their teeth or
enjoying a whore bath in the hallway sink.
i will be completely wrong and guilty 
and leave my husband to deal with the children's tears
the neighbor wives' fury
the neighbor men's sudden righteous anger 
at being tricked while in a vulnerable position,
all alone on Halloween night,
when a woman they had previously known to be fairly distant
took their hands and placed one on the curve of her hip,
the other on her right (the better, slightly firmer) breast
and whispered to them that it wasn't their fault,
she was having it all,
that's what she was told to do,
and she would take it by hook 
or crook, nut to slut,
and sleep the dreamless sleep of the damned.

computer

glowing, faceless
the light shines on my bare, swinging breasts.

i write nude
i fuck nude, i bathe nude, i vacuum nude.

wet, dark
the waves of eternity swing me in pendulum.

i am falling
asleep, i am falling?

i am asleep?

Upon Finding A Very Old, Unanswered Email

did i let you down?
i am so sorry that i did.
my face turns red
remembering.
you emailed me in
perfect faith
of my internet identity:
all encompassing understanding
that would definitely not
preclude you.
though i open myself
to public speculation,
opinion, gossip, expectation,
i forget again and again
the enormity of people.
the vastness of our needs,
the skein of face
over a hundred blue veins,
the hand on stomach,
aches in anxiety-
the hand over chest,
constricts in loneliness-
the foot in front of foot,
as if we could walk forever.
i am not sure of the realness
of your face
the way movement changes 
the surface, 
exactly like water.
i am not sure of the sound
of your voice
the way i imagine it
surely wrong.
i just know that you are here
wherever this is,
and your words were written
months ago,
and you probably think
i am an asshole.
did i let you down?
i am so sorry that i did.

Body Works

long ago in girlhood
i found my body could be a place
of escape

my home.

my body, a place where i could make marks
divine, worship, leave scar, adore. until i learned, loathe
the gathering of fat on side of thigh
saddlebag, a word for horses
the shame i was supposed to accept
infuriated me:

i saw something beautiful
and i was pleased that it was mine.

in eighth grade i read
dr. ruth's book of good sex

in ninth grade i wrote
my own erotica

in tenth grade i cut my arms
and slept with a boy

starved myself, vomited food
gave head.

a very American story.

long ago in womanhood
i found my body could be a place 
of escape

my home.

my body, a place where i could make marks
divine, worship, leave scar, adore, be adored,
create babies, cum

slice through the great Pacific with the sharks
jellyfish dangling from my hair
move into the mouth of my lover
my husband
feel myself as divine underneath his gaze
his hands
his body.

feel myself as divine four times,
babies pushed from my sliced sex
three alive, one dead.

swim naked in the hotel pool, a thousand tongues.
walk naked through my house like a goddamn queen,
for this pleases my daughters,
i can see their proud chins. 

scars of surgery, chicken pox, motorcycle pipes,
the cut of cesarian 
a plethora of living 
blooming across my skin
cellulite rippling the wind on top of waves,

the white ghost on my wrist where once
a young girl lit a cigarette and grabbed her blue jeans
to cut into the thin, white skin 
within
couldn't cut deep enough.

run, run, run.
my feet pound the pavement, i feel
bounce of my ass, gravity tug up and down
my tits,

banging against their bindings.

i love to be a woman, 
i love this woman's body,
i will allow my husband to grab my stomach from behind
though it rolls soft and loose in his workman's hands,
though it doesn't please the cultural eye
though it doesn't work for Playboy
it works, it works, it works,

it works; my body works just right.

does that sound like poetic justice

so say peace of mind, early in the morning, when the birds are out and the sky is blue 

so say, 

peace of mind,

early in the morning

where is the dying bird? when the birds all sing
where is the death bird? when the birds all sing

against a yellow sun flower petal
yellow yellow
too bright to see too bright to look away
sink your thumb

against a flower's pollen tufted center, what is the hard sting
that penetrates and hangs, pinned
lazy as fuck

peace of mind, early in the morning, when the birds are out and the sky

and the birds and the sky



____

late at night, lurk.

hard darkness dark diamond flint eyed, the blue spark you see behind the door


if i told you a flower bloomed in a dark room would you trust it
-Kendrick Lamar

Dakota is 21 Today

Happy Birthday my boy. We celebrated our hearts out yesterday and today is quiet. I am remembering the day you were born. I can never forget.

This is a poem I wrote for Dakota years ago.

you came to stand on my tailbone,
x-ray white heel on an angry nerve cluster
a fist in the whaling arc of rib. i could feel you
in there - this is when i understood alive

understood i was alive. i lay on the couch at night 
full in belly and face, half open books across your skull
erupting from my left side, a bud
erupting from the soil, already breaking open

everything. every night, i cried, and prayed, and wrote
and every night recognized a little more the essential
draw of parenthood: life goes on, life goes on.
i had sank more than halfway down the tunnel, 

i had touched the bottom with my fingertips.
the very existence of you meant
life was not beyond repair. you are nineteen,
and nothing has been good, or safe

i had sank more than halfway down
when my breasts swelled up like tulips in Spring
the nipples rosy and dripping with early rain,
and Mom said ' Do you think you might be pregnant?'

you are nineteen, 
and you will make the best decision of your life
one of us born for the other, 
which one, i do not know.

A Poem For Ever Elizabeth

here i am taking a moment
to write a poem for you.
you are sleeping-
it is midnight.
your hair is sweaty, 
stuck to your forehead
your hand in a relaxed fist.

you are only four.
four years old!
that is almost, nothing!
to a star, or a universe.
to me, your mother,
four years irrevocable, all.

nothing would do without you.
we are together day and night
sometimes, i want to spank you.
you are naughty in the following way:
you don't listen,
you are very loud very often
you move even when you aren't moving-

how do you do that!?
a vibration surrounds your still frame
as you watch cartoons.
this vibration says:
i am not moving,
but i could be.

you also attached a bag clip
to Maybelle's black and white tail
and she screamed and hissed
and bit me when i tried to help.
your eyes were enormous.

oh and you leave the water running,
and sneak snacks.
today i opened the pantry and saw:
four almonds and two cashews
in a tidy row,
the nut jar open with the top left off,
one half eaten marshmallow
and a few Cheerios
all left on the shelf.

you make me laugh so hard
i almost pee myself.
when i was crying, you petted my head
so sweetly, and opened your tiny mouth
' Mommy don't cry, you don't suck, Mommy,
you don't suck at all.'
Well.

your arm has the most precious elbow crook
i've ever seen.
and your armpits, or Muffin Pits, as i call them
are white and fat and adorable.
i like to pry open your arm and kiss your
Muffin Pits, to hear you laugh.

your butt is ridiculously cute. 
even your sister says, who has a butt that perfectly round?
your daddy calls it ' toughbutt ' because you are tough.
i smack your botto all day, because i love it.

then to consider your hands. 
still tiny and shrimpy, harking back to the days
i fondly hoped you might be a midget.
i know it's politically incorrect,
but i just wanted you to stay so small,
your proportions so short, 
compared to your siblings.

you were a fat, short baby
and i almost ate you up
burp
because i could hardly stand
how cute you were.
your earwax was the best!
it smelled so good. sniff, sniff.

then your nose, oh i love your nose!
it is the perfect nose for kissing, smoosh.
and in profile, looks like a doll.
your cheeks are so fat!
oh my goodness i love your cheeks!
squeeze, kiss,
and the freckles dusted across them-
well, i always wanted a child with freckles.

your eyebrows are very expressive.
you make hilarious faces, like
Oh?!
and
Hmmmmm
and 
Not so fast haha gotcha!
faces.

your legs, your short fat little legs!
i eat them like corn on the cob,
i love them so.
sometimes when you are playing,
i reach over and just give your calf
a little squeeze.

your shoulders are so tiny
that the cuteness and vulnerability
make me want to punch something.

then there is the best,
your big old head, and crazy wonderful
halo of hair,
which is long and curly half way down
and makes your big head
look even bigger
on your little body
which is just too adorable for words,
and your sister and i are pretty much
obsessed with it.
'look at her head!' we squeal every day
like annoying fans.

your smile is so cute
i could faint just thinking of it.
when you smile big, which you do all the time,
like a million times a day,
i want to give you every single good thing
that every existed and ever will exist.
but instead i just hurl myself at you
like a maniac, and hug you and yell
I'M KISSING YOUR FACE OFF YOUR FACE
which is practically a family motto.

you're used to it. i'm your mom.
your voice is like a cartoon character. 
if a cartoon character was totally awesome.
which you are.

you tell jokes and play pranks.
last week, i bought new socks.
you asked if you could put them away
and i said 'sure'
the next day, i put on my sock.
hm.
this is odd.
there is a giant screw in my sock.
and in this sock, and this one, and this one!
you put a screw from Daddy's toolbox
in every one of my socks.
now that is genius.

we sleep together every night, 
sometimes you throw a leg over me, 
sometimes you wake up scared
for no apparent reason other than thousands
of years of humans being afraid at night,
and you say
Mommy??
and i say ' Mommy's right here '
and it is the most perfect and natural thing
that ever happened
and you go right back to sleep, totally secure.

when you wake in the morning you are radiant,
like Wilbur the pig.
you leap out of bed and say MOMMY WAKE UP
IT'S TODAY!
i grab you and kiss your face off your face
and smell your delicious stinky breath
and think every single morning,
how lucky, how lucky, how lucky i am.

everything you do delights me
even when you are really pissing me off.
i can't explain it,
but that is love.

i love you forever.

buried

the silent face of space
noise from a mouthless ocean
that moves across our face
in one endless motion

how far would i go to be with you?
as far as i could go
what would i endure to please you?
only god can know

the world each world within
yet contained each in the other
i love, you love, we love
for without one, what is the other

i hear the song within the song,
i see the face within your face
i have loved you now for so long
this note held in place

your suffering, far below
the plow does not strike your heart
buried asleep beneath the snow
a silent, prehistoric art

how far can i deliver these medicines?
as far as air to breathe
how can i go on when i cannot go on?
when, is time to leave

a conspiracy of silence

i am not stitched mouth, stone rubbed smooth
skeleton stomped to soil. i am !
still alive, still needy, still necessary.

the crowd grows more festive
against a backdrop of starvation and suffering.
they drink wine and dramatically, i think of blood.

i am dramatic?
i feel.
a middle aged woman who feels-

can it get any worse?
the fear is bright in your eyes and wide laugh.
i am driven from the room

by a tidal wave of laughter.
night and darkness arrive as they must
the sound of silence for the determined laugh-

agonizing.
there is a list of reasons it would be polite for me
to shut up.

there is a list of reasons it would be helpful for me
to shut up.
there is a list of ailments that women have died from

for thousands of years,
stitched mouths, stone rubbed smooth.
i pluck the stone,

stay up all night burning the tips of my fingers
marking the story with charcoal and flame.

Lola's Poem: Priceless

Lola's class was assigned poetry- they had to write a poem about happiness, or depression, and Lola chose depression ( she's the least depressed kid, ever ) She wrote about coming out of the fog of pleasing other people, and finding yourself.

Her poem blew me away. I am so proud of her spirit, I am running over with it. I am going to show her the comments here, so if you want to encourage a young poet, this is it.

PRICELESS

Dried blond wisps of hair blow into the eyes that crack open with tears. Cracked red nail polish like blood running through your veins. Diamonds fall to the ground. And remind me of those tears. You look at me; you know why I"m crying. 99 cent mascara eyes run, black horses running down my cheeks. Nervous tapping and looking down. I wish I could express myself in a book where I could be put into so many words. Maybe then they could understand. Heart bruised, hands bruised. Long days. Beating heart set apart to my own world and offered my imagination, happiness and slight love. I now walk stronger, I don't cry rivers anymore. Don't love me out of regret, love me because I am what I was meant to be. Not anything more, not anything less. So maybe the black horses get tired and stop running down my cheeks, and maybe I looked up and steadied my hands. And slight love turns into real love. And self respect has been earned. Remember you are priceless.

riptide

you go down 
i'll take it slow
go down where the dead people go-

awash
to the shore,
lie flat like a shell

face crack
wide open to the skull
sun bleached bells

ring bright 
sunburst tones in the eyes-
those eyes yet

alive
but not, held open to the
briny wave

come 
tongue clean the 
face god gave.

beckoned 
the slap cold water
heartbeat of deep blue belly

a seahorse,
dolphin eyes, the tentacles
of jelly.

solitude 
sun inside the skin,
water

depth
sink
in.

far off 
hear them?
the living, noisemaking as they do

i churn
in the riptide
one exhale behind you.

you go down...
i'll take it slow
go down where the dead people know.

wildfire

the wind slaps, sighs
lack moisture, lack relent-
bones bleached concrete.

wildfire, eat canyon
hare's ears erect eyes overbright
frozen still amongst their young

coyotes scream and streak
across rock, through
wide red swaths of chemical retardant

mammal beards drip red
flocks of birds wing frantically side to side
crows call in scattered gunshot

across suburbia an unsettling
nests in the houses and condos and carports
smoke

ashes fall on children's bikes
news blares each window, each door
the freeway caravans of heat

i stand in sunset, hand over my eyes
watch the birds
news blares from each window, each door

wildfire, across the canyons
something coming to the bubble
something breathes and breaks

flocks of birds wing frantically side to side
my daughter calls, points-
smoke.

the opposite of controlled

Am I forgetting, becoming surviving
real world
the American
success story
a chaotic submergence in busyness
a re-structuring of the word adult
adult means controlled.

the opposite of controlled
swimming naked in the ocean
mid-Winter, only boys as
mermen companions, the salt thick water slicing through their
balls, their laughter an unhinged
slightly hysterical
mix of pain and arousal.
i was twenty years

a pocket full of pie,
smearing whip cream and green
jello, the candy creamed top of cupcakes on each other's
faces, moving through each room
without awareness of
each room
only aware
of life

baked in a pie, the blackbirds
flew upward and i climbed the brown
horse's back with a fistful of mane,
barebacked and skinny legged I rode the strange animal
without awareness of
the risk
only aware
of life

beginning to sing, we leaned out the windows
blew smoke to the night's black
bold face and the moon's round bottom back
fuck you motherfucker we screamed at no one
never laughed harder
never a reason
never a rhyme
just life

simple is a word for crayon drawings
not human beings
yet i am sure we are getting
something very wrong
in the definition of adult.
do you want to die
like an adult?
or do you want to die
wingtip touching the sun,
the crayon colors of some big bang
melting the Pi of your eyes

licking the cellular stuff of your face
until you are a
wave, a tree branch scraping mountain rock,
a mud hole underneath the magnolias,
a cloud, honey on the stinger of a bee,
the dirt forming the footprint of your child
as she walks down the wooded path.

MIGRAINE

day four migraine desert
hot sun, blown pupil-
stop-
core the vessel from
the blood diamond

every vein clogged
stiff as a cock
erect underneath
the thin thin skin
of my forehead
and scalp

hump, hump, hump
little desert apes
fuck my skill
furiously

caffeine/advil/sugar
massage
slap
nothing stops their
masturbating

the sahara is crowded
with skeletons
bleached bloodless
in the heat
i am on the bakers rack
across the highest
point of dune

carry my head like 
trophy on stick
huyahuyahya chanting
my eyes bulge
from the platter

yes, i watch my own demise.

to train up a child

everything makes me feel someone's suffering.

this is the truth of myself for as long as 

i can remember:

the endless porous repeating knowing

of another's deepest pain.

in the bath i think of a little girl i read

her story in the news

one silent Sunday morning

her mother 

drowned her in a bath so hot

she could hardly hold her under.

now

i'm not asking if i need to think of this

or that horrible 'should'

if i could

have a choice 

i'm not even sure what i'd do

this is how i've been as long as 

i can remember:

my closet stays open 

so i don't remember all the children

who at the pulse of this hot now

are locked alone in closets.

also the babies left to cry-

i'm telling you,

the chorus of their weeping 

is a soundtrack in my life.

i  hear them above the calling of Saturday

morning birds,

i hear them begging to be held and loved

to be freed from fear.

fear of being alone

abandoned, hurt, etcetera, etcetera, ee

i think of all the mothers who 

put gates on the suburban doors

of their toddler's rooms-

toddlers, we agree, are babies with 

faster legs,

but still babies, the rounded belly

feet, hands, cheeks and foreheads,

the universal open eyes

the cellular expectation to be nourished.

we are animals, we work to forget

but i rarely do

forget we are animals

and animals are not created

to be born and put into a room

with a gate

and left alone in the dark for hours.

this to me is a fundamental truth

and i can't make friends 

saying it

but nevertheless-

these babies and children 

weeping, until

one mother said on Facebook

in a humorous post on the amazement

she feels

that toddlers will cry until they vomit

after being left in their locked rooms

to 'learn how to 

sleep'

well yes

i guess we must learn how 

to sleep

and did you know

i heard that many adults in America

have insomnia and did you know

i heard

that many adults have insomnia

because they are afraid of the dark

well i suppose

this is a better incarnation-

metamorphosis of this memory-

than being afraid of the mother

well yes,

i might have mentioned to her

that i have cried until vomiting

from loneliness and despair, also

although i was lucky enough

to do so 

in front of locked doors

not behind them.