Todd

Looking back,

I can't remember your eyes
as you held your newborn daughter
up to the sun
but I could feel the warmth
envelope my being
as I watched...

my blood ran cold
seconds later
as her fragile body
silhouetted your weakened frame
and I saw through your facade

tomorrow
you'll take
too many pills

and a little girl will grow up
without her father

when you yield to the storm and fly
I hope you hear her cry...









fuck fuck fuck. fuck you, Todd.
FUCK YOU. selfish bastard.

home

I wandered home
only there's no hearth I know
I just pass the doors
I once recognized
the numbers signifying something
I've forgotten.
I'll wait on my stoop, frozen, naked, wrapped in crimson wool
until I see myself coming up the stairs.

Mad Scientist

the parts of her are categorized;
alphabetized for reference,
lining the shelves of a sterile lab
among the white coats and petri dishes
There's frailty, hope, innocence,
misunderstanding, sensitivity, sexuality,
vulnerability,
and lastly, a vile of will;
its color faded to a milky blue
of the crone’s eye.

simmering concoctions,
white lines,
and age old lies.
his angry fists
always impending...
she braced for his blow
strangely comforted in the finality of the violence
which sent the ingredients of her,
the sum of her
to the floor.

jars of her,
formerly labeled and tidy,
crash, ooze and spill,
mixing
reformulating the confusion.
as she bleeds helplessly into herself,
on a cold, cold floor
unnatural and unexplained
a new creation arises.
a clone of the girl
he once knew

she is useless to him now.

Todd is dead.

Todd is dead. He died last Tuesday. It's been 6 days and it barely feels real.

Todd was my neighbor, friend, and a regular topic of discussion in my home and with my friends & my family. There are a thousand different reasons for that, and none of them matter anymore because Todd is dead.

I'm still processing it and trying to make sense of it all... I guess if I keep saying it out loud, I'll start to accept that it's real. He will never come and knock on my door again, and Amy and I will never have to hide out and debate if we should let him in. That may sound harsh, but the truth is in the last days of his life even I was fearful of him. I worried he'd hurt his wife or children, or even us. His behavior had grown erratic and he had shown an agression I had never seen before. It's these things especially that make it all hard to process. We noticed something was happening and something was different, but we didn't see THIS. We couldn't figure out what it was... and now that we know, I want to go back and do it all over, but I can't and it probably wouldn't matter if I could. The what-ifs are killer.

Todd left behind a wife and two kids. A 2 year old boy will grow up and have faint memories of the man who stayed at home and raised him for the first two years of his life. Most of his memories will come from what people told him, from their understandings of who Todd was. And I'm learning more and more that Todd was a different person to almost everyone who knew him. In addition to a a son who will never know his father, a 3 week old baby girl will grow up knowing nothing of her father except what she learns from pictures and family. Someday she might recall his scent as he held her in infancy, but probably not. Which brings me to his wife, J will go on with her life because she is an amazing woman who has shown more strength and courage in the last week than I have ever seen from someone dealing with the death of their husband. She will struggle to teach her children who their father was and keep him alive for them even if they don't yet know he's gone.

Jesus, this sucks.

Constellation

I temporarily deviated
To the “I’m fine,” mask
Covertly rearing to chase
Those snap-dragon ideas
With a self-concocted tonic
Of misery and bliss.

the big empty...

Oh the big empty. Here it is to swallow me.

I want to sit in the sunlight on my porch, eating a mango, with its juice running past my chin, knees drawn to my chest. I want to notice that Stellas aren't like Daffodils and Asiatics and Days are different and stare at the Lantana and count the butterflies it attracts, and smell the dusty sweetness of the Deplidenia. But I hide, a little still, or stay too busy or escape someplace different so that nothing permeates this husk, this pod, I've zipped myself into. Maybe the sun's summer will coax something from me, some juju or magic that must be fulfilled before I can find another breath. In the meantime the day slips away like the sunset through a pink sky. I just stood on the horizon, watching it burn out...

When

I was six.
I opened a book
found among the dusty caskets
of paper memories
in the attic of my parents house
dancing on the pages
in front of me
were women,
unveiled and vulnerable
with backs arched
nipples erect
and hips I yearned
to touch

I was eagerly taking in
every sinuous curve
and years later
I could still almost feel her skin,
the warming coral of her lips...

I caged the lust that sang in my body
pleading like a lark,
let me out
I'll only fly
in circles
around the room...
I'll stay,
I'll sing the songs
you like...

But I can no longer
escape the feelings
or out run my desires
as I might have out run a boy
playing kiss chase on
the playground
all those years ago...

time

Things taken for granted
each day
leave unphased,
you soak in them,
unnoticed and soon forgotten;
seldom remembered,
if ever.

But the moments of
sorrow and despair,
when you felt something
within your fragile mechanisms stop
and the wheels,
the bridges,
the ticking mechanisms,
bevels,
stems,
mainstays
and jewels
sift through your hands...

No longer a time piece
but a piece of time
that altered you

you will never be the same
again.

Broken.

Unable to be reassembled.

When I feel those moments
I like to pretend I'm an orphan,
my memory is a train-
I can see it getting smaller
as it pulls away.

But the things
I can't remember
tell
the things I can't forget.

That kind of history
puts a saint
in every dream.

holden on

Clearly it's a bad idea to read the bell jar, catcher in the rye, howl, native son, and hamlet all in the same week...



I’m tired of Plath’s whining,
Ginsberg’s howling,
Shakespeare’s serenading.

I don’t like music with no tune,
songs full of screaming and murderous plots,
tunes with no instruments or artistry,
no fingers flickering on keys.

I’m tired of plays that end in deathdeathdeath
of Ophelia or Willy or Thomas a Kempis
and films where no one is ever happy.
Give me Rick and Ilsa
give me exotic Casablanca
give me the antihero with a strong chin and an unexposed neck
give me Germans to shoot
give me a night fog to walk off into
give me Louie and the start of a beautiful friendship.

Arcane

I sat
stoned
on your emerald couch,
And danced with the notes of your grace

You cupped my face with both hands
and I had never felt your voice
so clearly
resonating in my hips...

Later
I found myself
lying on my floor,
as you sat
in the empty room below

On top of a quiet stereo,
In a whispering wail to a lost love,
You lulled my eyelids to sleep...

This will be our secret.

blackout

Ophelia drowned herself
Two weeks ago. Submerged,
Head first into the lake.

Air bubbles formed
At the corners of
Her mouth until
One by one
They burst;

She couldn’t shout.

With only the withered
Wild plants to keep
Her company, she sinks,
Deeper

Curls clinging
To her cheeks.

The surface is still
Until

The last beat of her heart
Sends ripples that disturb
The silence.

I can hear you now.

Ophelia

Ophelia, you walk in the mist, in the edge of the cliff,
With your memories, the toll of bells, and the hush
Of dead leaves under your silently purple promenade.

Some people think that Emily Dickinson dreamed of you
In the silence of her room, one fall evening, apples falling
On the ground as she took a breath and gasped awakening.

Ophelia, you roam the open, the cloudy day, inversely,
Unlike the horse running mad to the horizon, neighing,
But simply going with the wind. Your black hair says.

They say you wanted to taste the edge of the Milky Way,
And would stretch from your window at night, your tongue
Out and reaching into the coldness, swiping the dead air.

Ophelia, you chose to choose and picked those who picked
At your breasts. Your father always told you your destiny,
Not with cards but with the esoteric smoke from his cigarette.

Your mother chose to stay in place while your father ran,
And you didn’t know whether to stay or disappear. Men
Led you to yourself and left you there alone and silent.

Ophelia, I see you, carved across sad stone, sleeping
Inside white marble, sleeping forever in 1966, with moss
Covering the i, your bones brown and still, in place.



note to self: stop listening to Tori Amos.