Tag: relationships

The Afterglow

.Reading time 1 minute.

The sun had come down, but not out.
It was the bulb of a projector, casting

cool, blue light from its core; except for
lacking an electrical cord.

Where did the heat come from— 
that changed the surface of the moon
from swiss cheese to a flat screen,
capable of displaying our vitals?

A reddish tinge across your cheeks
told the answer. It was 100 degrees,
and counting down from the minute
you walked up, and I could imagine
the peak.

We were sitting close to each other,
under the pretenses of just wanting
to share a large popcorn and soda.
You hadn’t had sugar in six weeks.

An hour after it happened, I joked:
“The vision of you undoing my laces
may be my undoing. Oh, so delicately,
your fingers untwined the knots.”

Now, several days after it happened,
I have exhausted the limit of images
on the “beauty of tight binding,”
pretending an interest in macramé.

I have laid the first and only move
in single player Cat’s Cradle,
betting on you to pinch my Xs
into the Jacob’s Ladder.

So, what do you say? Let’s play
until the sun comes down,
and the afterglow fades, or at least
until we have run out of shapes.

With luck, perhaps, thereafter.

Independence Day

.Reading time 2 minutes.

There is no better occasion to begin Facing Codependence:
What It Is, Where It Comes From, How It Sabotages Our Lives

Than the celebration of our country’s Independence Day,

For which we are supposed to be endlessly grateful;
Because the outside world is an innately hostile place,
In which there are always forces at work
Seeking to exploit and control.

If I were not so codependent, I might be able to see
That I am so afraid, because of what my culture did to me;
But, instead, I search inside, for the trigger happy child,
Who would rather poke her own eyes out,

Than have him follow while she leads.
There, I find a will to change, and eyes enough to read;
The path will show up by itself.

I highlight the passages that occur in between
What I have been needing to hear |
What I have been wanting to say,
In pink,
Because, unlike red, it poses no risk of flame,
Of igniting passion, rage, madness, or whatever
They are calling women’s feelings these days.

“Resentment is holding on to anger at someone,
Clinging to a need to have the person hurt
To make up for the suffering [I think]
He has caused me. The person I resent
Becomes my Higher Power
As I think obsessively
About what he did to me.”

How do I disentangle myself from this mess
[Without waking him up] ?

“Caring does not mean assuming ownership
Of the other’s behavior or following the path
That they have chosen for themselves.
You need to belong to yourself,
and let others belong to themselves, too.”

Step 1: Let him sleep, while I get things done.
Step 2: Find the polish that will match my shoes.
Step 3: Scuff until my heart’s content. Follow the beat
Of my own two feet. Be frantic. Be fun. Be free.  

This Land is Our Land

.Reading time 1 minute.

How many watches had it been,
when I first caught sight of Paradise?

Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?

Regardless, I would have kept kissing the dry land,
until it soaked in my sins,
had you not been
standing at my bower,
with tape
and parrot flowers.

The ship was splintered,
worse that any storm
or winter could do;
my lips, too.

Yet, I was fixed

on the mountains in the distance,
skirted in Doug Fir forest,
and decked with heavy fruits
(pear, apple, persimmon,
perpetually in season),
suspended in mist.

Never had I encountered a landscape,
as hard as it was soft,
particularly at the edges,
where rocky bluffs
terminate to sand,
and primrose grows
in mats that prick,
rather than provide respite
for the sick.

Yet, I was fixed

of the pain I had long-held,
from believing myself unhomeable
outside of childhood.

Or, perhaps, restored

to original condition:
an only daughter of an only parent,
(for which the treatment is
undivided affection
and absolute understanding).

How many men had it been,
when I first washed up on Paradise?

Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?

Regardless, I would have kept gripping the shore,
until I was born into safety,
and then trained out of it again,
had you not offered more:

Your hand, a surrogate for my father.
Your land, for my Fatherland.

 

The Muse

.Reading time 1 minute.

Reading her poetry, it stirred me up,
with eye of newt, wing of bat,
and things like that;
and so I stopped.

When I called, there was no motion;
there was no potion, and yet I fell.

Instead, she slipped a note,
and I read what she wrote:

“Reading your poetry, it stirs me up.
Afterward, I can never remember
what to do with my letters.
I connect vowel to consonant,
and then consonant to vowel,
but what comes out —
is no language I recognize.”

That’s just how it was;
it happened just like that.

She came out —
in a collared dress,
with thimbles on her thumbs,
and flushed cheeks
that seemed
to say:

“I know more of
hugging and kissing
than I will ever care
to admit,”

and taught me —
how to color in my lips,
with pencil crayons,
and keep inside
the lines;

how to be
a sometimes red,
and other times deep magenta
kind of girl;

how to come out,
and say:
“I FELL IN LOVE WITH A WOMAN.”

Enacting our poetry, it stirred us up,
with each forgetting that she
was not the other,
and so we stopped.

The Editor

.Reading time 1 minute.

Turn the knob, he said.
Don’t be a stranger.
Come in.
Have a seat.
Allow me
to pull out your chair
to pin up your hair
to —
introduce yourself, I said.
Don’t be pedantic.

Not I, he said.
Haven’t you met a true Romantic?
    I fear thy mien, thy tone, thy motion,
thou needest not fear mine;
innocent is the heart’s devotion,
   with which I worship thine.

May I have a drink?
Just water, he said.
No wine.
On second thought,
you’re fine.
    Here lies one whose name was writ in water. 

In order to catch up,
with the spirit of the times,
I indulged this verbal eroticism,
tracing the vowels
of Shelley and Keats
back onto him.

I veiled my conceit,
in a deep-twin sheet,
and introduced myself
to The Editor.